The Tegan Chronicles

Intuition and Lies 11

Dana jumped lightly and looked up at the monitor. Even if she'd been expecting it the terror would have made her jump out of her skin. She looked back down at Tegan and reached out to check for a pain response. "Damn it."

Janet entered the room unnoticed and watched Dana sitting there holding Tegan's hand in hers. Her mind replaying some event. She swallowed back any jealously as she saw Dana shiver. She was a close friend, and she shouldn't be jealous of her. "You ok?"

Dana looked over and nodded unassumingly. She couldn't tell Janet she was thinking back to the staring contests she's had with Tegan. How she'd get lost in those pools of shimmering green. They were friends, and yet somehow she'd found herself very attached to the younger redhead. Even her own mother had all but adopted her. Again she tried to blame that on Margret Scully missing her youngest daughter Missy, but again Dana reminded herself Tegan was more like her than Melissa.

Dana let go of her hand. "There haven't been any changes. Neuro checks are the same. Vitals remain stable, temperature is still elevated, and she remains unresponsive to painful stimuli."

Janet sighed. Despite the rest she'd gotten she was still too tired to hide her disappointment, her fear. "What if she doesn't survive this? What if she's given up?"

"She doesn't give up." Jack announced his presence.

"Sir." Janet squared her shoulders and slid easily back into her professionalism.

"Dr. Fraiser?" The voice came from behind Jack and he stepped out of the way.

Janet glanced at the medic who was holding a mask in front of his face. "Yes?"

"You've got a call on line one, it's on hold in your office."

"Tell whoever it is I'll call back."

"It's your daughter."

"Take it." Dana glanced at the clock. "My first pre-mission physical can wait a few minutes."

"Thanks." Janet nodded and turned stepping around Jack. She moved into her office and spoke into the phone, "Hello."

"Hey mom." Cassie's voice lacked its usual exuberance. "How's Tegan?"

"She's the same."

"Mom?"

"Yes Cassandra?"

"Is she going to wake up?"

"I don't know, honey. I'm not giving up on it happening yet."

"But?"

Janet sighed. "The longer she's like this the less likely it is she'll recover."

"Thanks."

"For?"

"Not lying to me." She paused. "Mom, I love you."

"I love you too Cassandra."

"I'll let you get back to work."

"I'll call you as soon as anything changes, ok."

"Bye."

"Bye hun." Janet hung up the phone still feeling the weight of the world crushing in on her.

"Janet?" Sam approached the foot of Tegan's bed. "Do you have a minute?"

Janet double checked the monitor as she nodded and moved over towards the far wall where Sam pulled a tube of rolled up papers from under her arm.

"How's she doing?"

"I'm not going to be able to hold off complete amputation much longer. Her temperature keeps spiking, the infection is in the bone, and I'm afraid she could go septic with a microbe we can't fight."

"How much time can you give me?"

"What have you got?" Janet didn't want to say they where looking at less than a day.

"Allies of the Tok'ra have agreed to make her a biomechanical arm. They suggest replacing the humerus with a Naquada implant, but we'll need to do some scans so they can forge the implant. But there are several tricks to this."

"Such as?" Janet watched her unroll the schematics she was holding and place them on an empty table.

"Well for one she's going to need a hole in her upper arm that will allow the prosthetic arm to basically lock in place." Sam pointed to the sketches she had. "Even though their physiology is a little different then ours, they have some procedures that are successful. Daniel's working on the translations as we speak.

"Secondly, she's going to need a small chip implanted in her brain. Again because of the differing physiology the only way to get it to work is to interface it with the technology the Gamekeeper used. They were more than happy to share it with us and Dr. Lee is close to engineering something based on the technology that works with radio signals to interface between her brain and the arm."

"Sam, there's no way she'll survive more than one surgery right now."

"Then I guess you're going to have to do it all at the same time."

"I –"

"General Hammond says to call in anyone you need and he'll make sure they get here with clearance in time."

"Thank you Sam."

"Don't thank me yet." She shook her head. "So how much time?"

"Less than twenty-four."

"Alright."