From Here to Alternity: The Great Escape/The Ransom of Red Chief O'Neill
Season 6: post 'Paradise Lost'
Disclaimer in Chapter 1. Please don't sue. Unless you want my cat. And, you know, the resulting restraining orders. Stupid pet mice. This has been edited to take out boneheaded mistakes now that I've seen Season Six.
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Stargate Command
Spring 2003
The Great Escape
General George Hammond, head honcho of the Stargate Command, figured that his week might finally be looking up. SG-1 was about to enjoy some well deserved downtime following Colonel Jack O'Neill's recent unplanned vacation with Harry Maybourne and SG-1's frantic efforts to bring their CO home. The last few weeks had been stressful on everyone, as O'Neill fought vegetable-induced paranoia and hallucinations – and didn't that look great in a report to the Joint Chiefs – on a moon half a galaxy away. The rest of the SGC had bunkered down in offices and labs and hoped that Samantha Carter wouldn't actually disembowel anyone who suggested that rescuing O'Neill was a lost cause.
The 2IC of the entire base was stranded off planet with a known enemy, unlocatable by any means known to Stargate Command. His own 2IC was showing all the mettle one might expect of an officer with her record and a personal friendship with the missing man. And base gossip found verrrry interesting the lengths to which Major Carter pushed herself to rescue him (again). Not to mention the lengths to which she was prepared to drive the scientists under her authority. General George Hammond hadn't drawn a calm breath in weeks.
Truth be told, he'd been concerned with the team dynamics on SG-1 for much longer than a week. Dr. Daniel Jackson had given his life to save the people of Kelowna months ago, and ever since then his remaining team members had been struggling to replace that missing member of their family. Although, and perhaps in part because, SG-1 had jumped directly back into saving the universe after Dr. Jackson's death, the members of SG-1 still mourned his loss in a variety of subtle ways. Not the least of which was Major Carter's passionate devotion to her commanding officer's rescue. Her fierce determination not to lose yet another member of her team had spawned Hammond's latest headache.
Between the search and the speculation, most of the SGC had been wrapped up in SG-1's latest mission for far too long. But that mission was over now that Colonel O'Neill had returned to the SGC. He was gaunt and exhausted, as were the people who had done so much to save him, but he was home. So it was with great relief that General Hammond gave his premier first contact team downtime until Dr. Janet Fraiser cleared O'Neill for further duty.
Privately, Janet assured Hammond that O'Neill wouldn't be cleared under any circumstances for 10 days and they could probably stretch it to two or three weeks if he didn't gain weight back fast enough.
Hammond wondered if she could make it a month.
The conference room was full of the very people General Hammond had been considering as he gave them official notice of their upcoming vacation. The Colonel's debriefing had finally finished and the entire team was grateful that O'Neill was home safe and temporarily free of all medical support.
Hammond even hinted that when Jack got out of the infirmary he should consider taking some time off. As much as he needed. Really.
"So, what's everyone doing with their time off?" Jonas grinned innocently. He was looking forward to tracking a large hurricane system forming in the South Atlantic. He'd learned quickly that discussing The Weather Channel in detail was a good way to get the room to himself, so he didn't volunteer his own plans.
"Oh, well, uh… I'm off to see my brother Mark and his family in San Diego. I was planning to visit soon and I think I'm in the mood for a road trip." Sam smiled triumphantly at her teammates. Her expression clearly said: Let's see a fishing trip top that.
"Indeed. I am also planning to visit family." Teal'c would almost have looked worried if he allowed himself that expression. He walked quickly towards the door, passing Sam on the way out.
"Oh, really. Just gonna hop through the 'gate the minute you get a chance, hunh?" Jack's sour tone followed his retreating team down the hall as they skedaddled out of fishing-trip-invitation distance. The slow and unwary were inevitably found in Minnesota soon thereafter. With the big horkin' mosquitoes. And loons - human and avian.
"And you, Colonel?" Jonas continued, gathering up his papers and heading towards the door.
"Hunh." Jack O'Neill could put a lot of disgust into one syllable. "Doc Fraiser seems to think I'm underweight and need to be in the infirmary 'until further notice'. I'm supposed to spend the next week tied to an infirmary bed sucking down milkshakes and going crazy with boredom. Let the fun begin."
"Hey, I'll come visit you. We can play chess or something." Jonas and Jack made their way past the usual suspects scurrying around Level 28.
Jack was almost genuinely touched. He knew the enforced leisure would drive him and the infirmary staff nuts before the first day was over. Probably the first hour. Or less. "Thanks, Jonas. That's nice of you to offer."
"Oh! I can show you the progress of this great storm system I've been watching…" Jonas wasn't quite wicked enough to actually make Jack watch the weather, but it might buy Janet Fraiser a few hours of good O'Neill behavior. It never hurt to get the woman with the needles on your side.
"Oh, um, Jonas, I don't know. I'm probably, ah, going to be sleeping a lot of the time and –" Jack frantically backpedaled. Maybe he could get one of the newer nurses to slip him a sedative just before Jonas came in. Or as soon as he woke up. Suddenly sleeping for a week looked better and better.
Gen. Hammond smiled to himself as the last two members of SG-1 got into the elevator. Yessiree, things were indeed looking up under his patch of the mountain.
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The Ransom of Red Chief O'Neill
It was the morning of Day 8 of downtime when Jonas answered a request for his presence in the briefing room. He was a little surprised to see General Hammond and Doctor Fraiser in with Colonel O'Neill, but he gave his usual blithe grin and sat down at the table. He cast a questioning glance at a T-shirt-and-jeans clad O'Neill, but the tiny shrug O'Neill sent back meant neither one knew why they were here on their day off.
Jonas just blinked and smiled. He'd been relaxing by re-reading some of Dr. Jackson's oldest journal entries to bone up on some of the odder things SG-1 had encountered before his time, so he didn't mind the interruption. He'd come up with a list of questions for Teal'c and Sam when they got back, but on the whole he was more curious about this impromptu meeting. There had been no alarms or off-world activations, so it must be something here on Earth. He studied the other people at the conference table for clues.
Jack O'Neill was currently on exceptionally good behavior. He'd been ensconced in enforced gourmet leisure for the last week as Janet "Napoleon" Fraiser 'supervised his diet and activity levels' and forced him onto the scale daily. God help her daughter Cassie if she ever went on one of those weird diets women seemed to find so necessary. All Cabbage All the Time. Grapefruit to Lose. Celery Saves the Day. Whatever. She'd have Cassie back up to a healthy weight before you could say 'no thanks, I'm full'.
He just considered himself lucky that he'd gotten out of the little power monger's empire and onto outpatient status yesterday. Nothing quite like escaping just ahead of a pitchfork carrying mob of orderlies to make a man grateful for his mobility. It wouldn't have been half as bad if they could just learn to take a joke.
Jack glanced at the head of the table and did his damnedest to look healthy, well fed and totally in control. The general had intercepted him on his way down to the infirmary and he had yet to submit to the latest round of tests. If Doc Fraiser found out that he was still a little tired and 'off' in the afternoons, he'd be bound, gagged and fed by I.V. before you could say 'medically necessary'.
Meanwhile, Janet Fraiser eyed her erstwhile patient with seven days worth of aggravation. The colonel had been a horrible patient. Beyond his usual. To an extreme degree. The cranky, snarky mini-tantrums had been their usual joy to weather, but O'Neill had gotten bored with verbally harassing the infirmary staff approximately 2 days after he'd been admitted. Probably because Janet had given her staff leave to speak freely whenever they spoke to the Colonel. She reasoned that the respect due a senior officer had to be earned and told Jack as much when he complained that his nurses/victims had started snarking back.
That had apparently been an inadvertent declaration of war on her part. The colonel gave up his verbal frontal assaults and seemed to actually tone down the amount of chaos he fostered. Janet had been surprised as well as pleased. If she'd realized all she had to do to get him to settle down was to let her nurses talk back, she'd have started this years ago. But since Hammond had laughingly backed her up once she explained her plan to keep O'Neill under control, their battle of wills had shifted to a more covert form of resistance on his part.
O'Neill was as canny a strategist in infirmary ambush as in battle. He'd known he was outgunned on his own and sought allies in the other soldiers who were sentenced to time in the petite powerhouse's domain. Two teams had come back from an archaeological mission with a severe but non-threatening rash. Doc Fraiser insisted on keeping them until she knew exactly how it was communicated, which took twice as long as the cure did.
It turned out to be a rare and virulent strain of poison oak that had overgrown the temple they'd been investigating. Two days of calamine lotion and Benadryl later she'd had an infirmary full of restless soldiers. Of course, O'Neill had taken advantage of his new roommates and instigated a new round of "aww-we're-just-having-fun-here" mayhem.
What better way to cause trouble without actually getting himself sentenced to isolation than to stage the Infirmarolympic Games?
Whenever the nurses' backs were turned, the different sides of the infirmary launched into raucous games of Bedpan Basketball, Ace Bandage Bowling, Gauze Toss (for both distance and height of arc), the 5 Bed Water Jug Relay, Tongue Depressor Tennis and Penlight Freeze Tag. O'Neill's side had lost overall to Ferretti's, but the colonel had been caught on security camera demanding a rematch on a couple of the more obscure and creative events.
The nurses probably couldn't have actually gone on strike - they were, after all, federal employees - but the larger ones were eyeing their least favorite patient with enough violence to make Janet sure the next blood she cleaned up would be O'Neill's. Lots of it. She had enough to do without entertaining a forty-mumble manchild with a contagious attitude problem. But she was a doctor and an officer and had sworn an oath to do no harm.
Darnit.
So she ceded this round to Colonel O'Neill when he'd gained back 14 of his 20 missing pounds and put him on outpatient status. She'd bitten her tongue and scheduled his daily weigh-ins opposite the shifts he had most completely alienated. There was no reason for her nurses to suffer. But Jack O'Neill was NOT going to enjoy his next physical. She didn't even realize that her face had shifted into a slit eyed killer grin.
Regardless of her current unhappiness with Jack O'Neill, she reminded herself as he busily polished his halo, she'd put him on medical leave with the proviso that he retain his outpatient status only if he'd weigh in every day and avoid strenuous activity offbase. Since he technically couldn't even catch up on his paperwork while on medical leave, the general wouldn't have called them all in here without a really good reason.
And it better be a damn good reason, too. She'd just managed to avert a full scale dirty tricks campaign on the nurses' part (and whatever O'Neill and the other Infirmarolympians thought, nobody out-pranked staff with easy access to medical records and prescription strength laxatives) by putting most of her staff on epidemiology detail. SG-6 had come back from a treaty signing with a seriously infectious virus that none of them had ever seen before. The latest set of lab results had just finished printing when she'd been paged to the conference room, but the follow up on those tests would have to wait for an hour or so.
Now that Feretti's team, Mathison's team, and The Evil One himself were out of her care she could leave the infirmary for an hour or two at a time and not return to a disaster area. Hopefully.
General Hammond cleared his throat and the whole room shifted its focus. "Gentlemen, Doctor, thank you for coming in on such short notice. Doctor Fraiser, I know that you need to be in the infirmary so I'll try to make this brief. Has anyone here had contact with Major Carter since she left the base a week ago?"