a/n: Another short chapter, but hey, it's better than nothing, right?
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The first thing Jack noticed when he walked into the briefing room was how pale everyone's faces were. "What's going on, sir?" he asked, his heart already picking up pace in his chest.
"Colonel Ronson from the Alpha site just got in touch with us. Apparently, some Edorans showed up there claiming to have Colonel Carter in the care of Laira…"
"WHAT?" Jack screeched in utter shock. "Laira?"
Hammond nodded. "According to the Edorans, Sam showed up shortly after Daniel and Teal'c were there looking for you. They went to the planet with your base camp, but your men informed them that they had no way of getting in contact with you…"
Jack let out a loud sigh of regret. He had been so out-of-his-mind when Daniel and Teal'c had told him about Carter's death and his son, that he never even thought to leave a radio and Earth coordinates with his men.
"She was unconscious when they found her, and the Edoran doctor was unsure if she would survive at all. She recently came to, and gave the Edorans the Alpha site coordinates so we could send men to bring her home. I assume you want to be part of that team?"
"Yes sir," Jack croaked out, his heart clenching unbearably in his chest.
Hammond nodded. "Alright, SG-1, SG-9, and Dr. Frasier will be joining you. You head out in ten."
Jack nodded and started to turn around to head to the gear-up room when Hammond spoke again.
"Uh, Jack?"
Jack turned back around.
"We all want it to be Colonel Carter, but before we can bring her back to the SGC, we need to confirm that it really is her."
Jack swallowed the lump in his throat. "I understand sir."
"Very good, dismissed. And good luck, son."
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Going through the gate, arriving on Edora, walking to the town, it had all been done on auto-pilot. If Jack thought back, he wouldn't even be able to remember anything after being dismissed from the briefing room to prepare for this mission. This very, very, very important mission.
He didn't take notice of Laira's house as they arrived. He didn't see the new wooden chair on the porch, or that she had made new curtains for the windows. It was as if it wasn't even there to Jack. He walked up the front steps, opened the door, and went straight to the room where his heart told him Carter would be.
Approaching the threshold, Jack stopped abruptly, causing Janet to bump into him before mumbling under her breath and scooting past him to get to her patient.
There she was.
Her eyes were closed, her golden hair was matted and tangled spread out on the pillow. Her face was pale and hollow-looking. Her body was limp and small lying on the small feather-downed bed.
Jack couldn't move. His feet might as well have been cemented to the ground, because he was completely frozen in his spot at the door.
His eagle eyes never left her frail body on the bed, his heart was beating erratically in his chest, praying that she was alive, that she would survive, that they had gotten here in time.
But, for the life of him, he just could not step into that room.
He was scared.
And he didn't understand why. He just knew that there was only one other time in his life that he had ever been as scared as he was right now.
The day his son died.
He was unconscious of the other men in the room now. They had all had to push their way past Jack to get into the small room, but they had done it without saying a word to him. Without him even aware that they did.
Janet's small hands were busily moving over Carter's body, and he knew Janet was talking, but he never heard a word of it, his mind completely zoned in on one thing and one thing only. Everything else was just a small buzz in the back of his head.
And still, he couldn't enter the damn room.
"J-Janet?" came the sweetest, softest, most wonderful sound in the world to Jack, and he felt his knees weaken as Carter slowly opened her eyes.
"Yes, Sam, it's me. Daniel, Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill are here to. We found you, we're going to take you home."
Sam's eyes fluttered up and landed on Jack, a look of sheer surprise flashing across her pale features.
And still, he was stuck in the doorway! He tried to smile at her, but his fear wouldn't let him. The most he got was pursing his lips together while the blood rushing through his veins felt like hammers pounding on his head.
"I need you to tell me where it hurts, Sam?" Janet's voice cut in and Sam's eyes fluttered closed.
"Everywhere," she whispered.
"Sam? Sam?" Janet called, lightly patting Carter's cheek. But, the air force colonel didn't even flinch.
Janet sighed. "She's back out." Turning, she looked at Jack and then to the other men in the room, who Jack finally noticed were there. "Let's get these stupid tests done and get her home. She's running a high fever and I need to find out where the infection is."
Immediately, the men of SG-9 and Daniel and Teal'c jumped into action. They buzzed around Jack's prone position and helped Janet get the tests she needed to prove Carter was Carter.
Jack just kept watching Carter. His body tense as he waited desperately for her to open those beautiful blue eyes of hers again. She was alive. She was alive. She was alive.
"Jack?" a familiar voice sounded next to him, and quickly, Jack's eyes darted to the woman next to him and then immediately back to Carter.
"Yeah," he croaked out.
"She will be fine. Your doctors will heal her," Laira told him in a sure voice.
Jack's only response was clearing his throat.
"I believe she chose here to come to in the belief that she would find you."
The words shocked Jack, and he pried his eyes away from Carter to stare at Laira in disbelief. "What?"
Laira let a small smile touch her face before continuing. "The first time she awakened, she asked for you. When I told her you were not here, I could see disappointment clearly on her face. Major Carter knows many coordinates, but she sought out our world, with little knowledge of medicine and healing, as opposed to your alpha site or other advanced worlds. It is my strong belief that she was looking for you."
"W-Why?" Jack meekly asked, his eyes once again trained on his former second-in-command.
"It has long been proven that many times, when someone goes through a traumatic or painful experience, they seek comfort from those they love and trust the most. Major Carter was barely alive when she arrived here. My woman's intuition tells me she was looking for you to comfort her, to take away her pain."
"Carter's smarter than that. She wouldn't have let emotions get in the way. Her mind doesn't work like that."
"She's a woman, Jack. I assure you, her mind does work like that. When she was in agonizing pain and trauma, she sought out the man she trusted the most. She sought out you."
Jack swallowed the enormous lump in his throat and kept his gaze on Carter. His feet still stubbornly refusing to move.
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As soon as the tests and blood work confirmed Carter was Carter, she was immediately taken to the SGC. Jack hadn't said a word the entire way back home, and Sam had not awakened again.
It was hours before Janet finally left the infirmary. Jack, Hammond, Daniel, and Teal'c were all restlessly waiting outside in the corridor. "She has a blood infection. We have her hooked up to broad-spectrum antibiotics now, but with her protein-marker and the length of time she's had this infection, I can't guarantee…"
"You can't guarantee what?" Jack growled, standing up and towering over the petite doctor. His disheveled appearance almost frightening to Janet.
Janet took a step away and stared up into Jack's dark orbs, and she almost gasped at the desperation she saw in them. "I'm sorry, colonel, if we'd gotten to her sooner…."
Jack's large hands immediately clapped onto her shoulders and shut the doctor up instantly.
"Gotten to her sooner? Gotten to her sooner? You're the damn doctor! We're on Earth now! She survived on Edora, she can't come home just to end up dead now! Not after everything she's been through. Not after everything I've been through!"
"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond shouted at the same time that Daniel and Teal'c pulled Jack off of Janet.
"I assure you, colonel," Janet practically spat at Jack. "I have no intention whatsoever of giving up on Sam. I was merely informing all of you on her condition. The Edorans did an excellent job with her superficial wounds, but her internal injuries, while, thankfully, were not severe, still led to a blood infection. This is the main thing we are worried about right now. As soon as we clear up the infection, she will be on the road to recovery."
Jack nodded, his body relaxing in defeat.
"Doctor!" a nurse yelled at the door to the infirmary. "The patients crashing!"
Janet ran into the infirmary and Jack stood stoic in his spot. Fear, once again, grasping his body and rooting him immovable.
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a/n: The freezing in the doorway was actually a personal experience of mine when my great-grandmother died. She was the first person who died that I was close to, and even though I had cried beforehand, when we got to the funeral home, I froze up and couldn't enter the room where her body was. It was a very emotional experience and I thought it would work well in this story. I hope all of you thought it worked nice as well.