Tegan Chronicles
Intuition and Lies 22
Janet walked into the infirmary the following afternoon hoping to find Tegan had refused lunch. She's already read the notes from that night, and it seemed the Vicodin was helping to control Tegan's pain. Though if she were a betting woman, she'd bet her salary for the next decade that Tegan had only pretended to sleep and dealt with the pain as best she could. If Tegan's slightly elevated blood pressure was any indication, Janet would win that bet.
She glanced at Tegan's untouched tray a small outward frown pulling at her lips, inwardly a small smile tugged. It wasn't that she didn't want her going home. Tegan would be safer at home, away from base emergencies, and alien bacteria and viruses that returning teams could bring back. It was just that there was something off about Tegan. Despite her wanting to go home, and her not eating there was still something that just wasn't right. Janet supposed that was normal after the trauma she'd been through.
"You didn't eat." Janet shook her head.
"Burger and fries, still hot." Jack put the brown bag on the table. "Best burger in Colorado springs, and I had them make it fresh so it'd still be hot."
Tegan looked at Janet and smiled. "If I'm going home I need to get my strength back, and that crap isn't going to do it."
Janet watched her reach into the bag, pull a fry out and bite it in half.
"How much do I owe you?"
"They were giving them away free today." Jack grinned.
Tegan pulled the hamburger out and opened the wrapper. The sesame covered bun was soft and warm from the heat radiating from the one-third pound lean grilled burger. It was topped with mustard a thick slice of tomato, the best dill pickles around, and 3 pieces of romaine lettuce just the way Tegan liked it. Not that she ate them regularly, Cassie still preferred the stuff national fast food chains liked to pass off as ground beef. "Thank you Colonel."
She picked it up with her right hand and sunk her teeth into it. Savoring it she chewed the bite for a minute before swallowing. "Perfect."
Jack smiled and looked at Janet curiously, she wasn't as happy as he'd expected her to be. In fact she didn't look happy to him at all.
"I'll leave you to your lunch." Janet announced.
"Do I get to go home?" Tegan asked around another bite.
"We'll see, finish eating and I'll come back."
Tegan gave a one armed shrug, she was getting good at not moving her left arm at all, whether the prosthesis was attached or not.
Forty-five minutes later Janet re-entered the infirmary to find Sam sitting on the end of Tegan's bed. There was still a quarter of the hamburger and most of the fries sitting on the table that had been pushed to the side.
"You didn't eat it all?"
"I was going to toss it for her, but she said you'd want to see it." Sam stood up.
Janet nodded.
"I'll, uh, I'll leave you two." Sam didn't know why she'd stumbled over her words, only that things hadn't felt that awkward between Tegan and Janet since before they'd admitted they were in love. But what she was feeling definitely wasn't sexual tension.
Janet waited before pulling the curtain around them and pulling her stethoscope out.
"You know..." Tegan started to tell her that Julie had already listened to her lungs just a few hours ago.
"What?" Janet tried to ask softly but it came out more as a clipped bark.
Tegan shook her head. She wasn't going to start an argument before she knew if there was reason to, instead she used her right arm to pull herself forward so Janet could get to her back.
When she was satisfied with what she'd heard Janet put her hand on Tegan's shoulder and gently pushed. Tegan laid back and Janet listened carefully to the front of her chest, pausing for a couple minutes over her heart. She pulled back and replaced her stethoscope in her lab coat pocket, and pulled out a pen light. When she finished her routine examination she looked at Tegan's healing incisions and then pretended to pour over the notes from the night before. She shook her head negatively and closed the chart after making a few quick notes of her own.
"I'm going to be taking care of you."
"I don't..." Tegan knew if she said she didn't need help that it would be an outright lie, so would saying she didn't need anyone taking care of her. "I don't want you using up your leave."
Janet didn't see that coming. "I'm not, I'll be working from home. General Hammond's orders."
Well that settled that, no arguing with the big man.
"You still can't ambulate on your own."
"I'm not arguing with you, Janet."
"I know, it's just I have this conversation all planned out in my head. You don't usually do this so easily." Janet looked at her watch. "I need to talk to Dana, and see if I can find someone who can help me get you home before we can leave."
"Colonel O'Neill and Sam both offered."
"Good, we might need both of them."
"You don't want me going home do you?" Tegan was picking up an odd vibe from her.
"It's not that, you're better off there."
"You're waiting for the other shoe?"
"Something like that."
Tegan nodded. She was too, but it was a different shoe. She didn't know how much longer she could hold the soul corroding anger in, but she certainly didn't want to destroy her friends and loved ones with it.
Jack and Sam had followed Janet home in his truck and helped Tegan from the garage into the living room where she took up residence on the couch. All the excitement, if it could be called that, had worn her out. Janet had brought a pair of gray Air Force sweat pants and an Air Force academy t-shirt in for Tegan to wear home. She'd managed to stand long enough to shower on base and get changed before she had to be helped into a wheelchair, which was how she'd gotten from the infirmary to Janet's car.
"Do you need something for pain?"
Tegan surprised herself by nodding. "So much for being strong."
"Hey, it's not a sign of weakness." Jack interjected. "We're going to head out and let you rest. It might be a couple days before you see us, but at least one of us will call and check on you tomorrow."
Tegan nodded again. They'd told Janet earlier they wanted to give Tegan some time to get settled at home.
Half an hour later Tegan was dozing on the couch, though Janet wasn't convinced there was any real sleep occurring, when Cassie came home from school. "You're home!"
Tegan twisted her head slightly to look at the teen who had some how transported from the front door to between the couch and the coffee table in a blink of an eye. "Hey kid."
Cassie sported a huge smile. "Mom told me you might be coming home, but I didn't know for sure."
"Me either, but here I am."
"Cassandra, let her rest." Janet called from her office. "You need to do your homework."
"Mom." She huffed, at sixteen some things never changed.
At five-thirty Janet heard Cassie coming down the stairs. "Cassandra can you check the mail?"
"Sure." Cassie continued out the front door and a few seconds later walked past a resting Tegan and into the kitchen.
She was carrying a little bundle of fur in one arm and a couple of envelopes in her free hand. "Look what I found on the doorstep."
Janet glanced up just as the ball of golden brown, tan and dark spotted fur meowed. "Ye-ow."
"What the..."
"It's a kitten." Cassie put the mail on the counter and held it up under it's arms to show Janet it's almost white belly and unusual markings. "Can we keep it?"
"No we can't keep it." Janet argued. "It's probably got fleas."
"It doesn't I checked." She lied, she hadn't had time to check.
"It probably belongs to someone, and it's lost. A cat that pretty doesn't get dumped."
"Well this one did." Cassie wrinkled her brow. "Wait you think its pretty?"
Janet ignored the question. "How do you know it was dropped?"
"Because lost cats don't walk up onto front porches with their own little cardboard boxes."
"Was there anything on the box?"
"No, it was a plain box, no writing, and nothing in it, except spots here."
"Cassandra, you know better than to open strange boxes. It could have been a bomb."
Considering all the things that had happened to her mom and more so to Tegan in the past it was true. "But I knew it wasn't because bombs don't meow."
"They can." Janet reasoned, just relieved Cassie was fine.
"Ok, but this time it didn't. So can we keep it?"
"No, we don't have any food for him or a litter box."
"We can get all those things, and we have that can of tuna in the cabinet." Cassie pointed out as the kitten wiggled out of her hands.
"That can of tuna is for dinner tonight." Janet was still trying to come up with dinner plans.
"Tegan doesn't like tuna."
"She doesn't like cats either."
"She's a vet, she likes all animals."
"Speaking of, where'd the cat go? I swear if he craps in the house..."
"So we can keep it?"
"I didn't say that." Janet reminded her the discussion wasn't over.