Tegan Chronicles

Intuition and Lies 17

"Janet?"

"Hmm?" Janet raised her eyebrow at the breathy whisper. Still she kept her eyes shut relishing the featherlight touch of warm finger tips brushing hair away from her face.

"I have to go." The voice was more insistent.

"What?" Janet sat up and looked directly at Tegan who was sitting on the edge of the bed dressed in a white blouse with matching eyelet skirt. Somewhere in her brain it registered, she'd never seen that outfit before. "Where?"

"Away."

"Away? Like on a mission? You've never worn an outfit like that off world before."

"Janet."

She didn't like her tone. The way it made her want to bury her head in a porcelain bowl of water and heave. The way it made her brain swim.

"I don't have much time, but I wanted to tell you goodbye."

"We don't say goodbye." Janet insisted. "We never say goodbye."

"I know." Tegan nodded. "Always and forever."

"That's how long..."

"I'll love you."

Janet opened her eyes to find herself in her quarters. The room was dark and despite knowing it was a dream, she could swear she could still smell Tegan in the air around her. It had felt so real and as she remembered the message she was compelled to her feet. Slipping stockinged toes into her military issue shoes she scrambled down the hall ignoring the fact her recently washed hair hung in loose curls on her collar.

"So I'm not dying?"

"Do you want to be?" Irene asked, her voice full of her Irish heritage.

Tegan looked at her stump for several long minutes, as if trying to decide. Nana hadn't told her she wasn't dying like before. "Whatever happened to 'Happily ever after'?"

"Happiness is what you make it." She smiled. "The rest of your journey is up to you."

"Nana!" Tegan called out after her. "Nana, I don't know what to do."

She started walking towards her.

"To follow me is a one way trip child."

"But I miss you Nana."

"I'll be right here waiting for you when the time is right."

"Are you telling me it's not my time?"

Nana shook her head no. "That's not my decision."

"I love you." Tegan called out to the fading figure. "I love you!"

"I know child." Floated across the wind and then all traces of the old Irish woman were gone.

Dana looked up as Janet came rushing in making a direct line to Tegan's side immediately noticing the lack of a ventilator tube. "What the hell did you do?"

Dana looked down at Tegan and back up at Janet. "I was just coming to get you."

"After you pulled the plug, against my orders."

"Janet," Dana spoke evenly, trying to calm her. It was almost comical, had Janet not looked so frantic. "She's ok. I'm waiting on blood gas results, but she's breathing on her own."

Janet turned and looked back at Tegan, she honestly didn't look much better than she had on the ventilator. Most patients looked marginally better when they were weaned off, Tegan looked dead. "Sorry."

"It's fine, you've been through a lot."

General Hammond stepped out of the shadows of the observation room and pressed the button so he could talk through the intercom. "Doctors, how is she?"

"She's breathing on her own." Dana answered.

"That's a good sign right?" Jack interrupted as he joined General Hammond.

"A very good sign Colonel." Dana smiled slightly as she nodded.

Janet sat at Tegan's side trying not to replay the dream she'd just had in her head. But the memory was raw and vibrant. Tegan had looked so good, had smelled so alive. In this room with the quiet sounds of medical equipment around her and the light strains of music rising from tiny speakers she couldn't smell her, all she could smell was antiseptic medicinal odors.

"You can't tell me goodbye in a dream and think that I'll accept that." Janet took her cold limp hand in hers and squeezed. "You are not going to die on me, do you understand?"

She almost expected to hear Tegan asking just who was going to stop her. Instead she heard a lone male voice singing; "'Yes I understand that every life must end. As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, aw huh...

"'I'm a lucky man to count on both hands the ones I love. Some folks just have one, others they got none.

"'Stay with me. Let's just breathe...

"'...Yeah I don't want to hurt, there's so much in this world to make me bleed. Stay with me. You're all I see.

"'Did I say that I need you? Did I say that I want you? Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see. No one knows this more than me, as I come clean.

"'...Nothing you would take, everything you gave. Hold me 'till I die. Meet you on the other side."

Janet took a deep breath as solemn strings began to play, she immediately knew the song was "The Other Side" by Micheal Nyman, only because Tegan had made her sit through the entire movie "Gattaca" in which the only two things she found interesting were Jude Law and the music. What she wouldn't give to sit through just one more boring Scifi movie with Tegan.

She didn't know how Tegan listened to music so much, each song was a painful memory of what may never be again. She shook her head at the thought, she usually wasn't so pessimistic, but Tegan should have been awake hours after surgery, and days had passed. The only improvement was she was finally breathing on her own.

"'What if we stop having a ball?'" It was the song Tegan sang to her when she asked her to move in with her the final time.

She couldn't listen to this song, she just couldn't think about those happier times right now. She started to stand, determined to break the cycle of depressing songs playing on the MP3 player when she felt Tegan's finger move. "Tegan?"

She jumped to her feet, her eyes searching Tegan's face, locking on her eyes. Her hand moved again.

"'What if your eyes close before mine?'" The song continued playing.

Tegan's eyelids fluttered.

"Tegan?"

She moaned and opened her eyes. "How's –" Her voice cracked and she licked her chapped lips before forcing hoarse words across them. "How's my team?"

"They're fine."

"Daniel, he was..." She glanced around the room.

"He's on the mend." Janet promised.

"My arm, it hurts."

Janet watched as Tegan turned her head to look at the empty area of the bed where the rest of her arm should be. "We'll get through this."

Tegan closed her eyes. "It hurts."

Janet put the button to the patient controlled analgesic in Tegan's hand. "PCA."

Tegan pressed the button.