By the time it was starting to get dark, Jack was really worried. He'd left a half-dozen voicemails on Sam's phone and hadn't gotten any response. Abbie had started getting cranky since she was hungry, so he'd heated up some leftover pasta for her.

"Damnit," he muttered as he hung up his phone after yet another attempt to call his fiancée. Something was seriously wrong; he could just feel it. There was no other reason for them to not be back yet. "Hey, princess, how about we go for a ride?" he suggested to Abbie as he picked her up.

"Truck?" she asked.

"Yep, we're going for a ride in the truck." He was just about to open the front door when his cell phone started ringing. Jack instantly pulled it out of his pocket and answered it. "Sam?"

"No, Jack; it's Janet."

He frowned and was about to end the call as quickly as possible, but it dawned on him that Janet might be helpful. "Have you heard from Sam recently?"

There was a slight pause that worried him. "That's why I'm calling. I'm at the infirmary at the SGC… You need to get here, now."

Jack broke the speed limit on every road on the way to the SGC. Janet had told him disturbingly few details on the phone, other than the fact that there'd been an accident, and it was very serious. After Sam's Air Force ID had been found in the car, they'd been brought to the SGC for treatment. That instruction was designed to protect them; a normal hospital would have discovered that Sam and Jake both had some strange, unidentified substance – Naquadah – in their blood.

Some poor hapless Airman was waiting at the entrance to the base to escort Jack down to the infirmary. He unfortunately had no answers for the retired General and therefore got quite a bit of his wrath during elevator ride. Abbie had picked up on Jack's tension and was near tears by the time they reached the infirmary, where Janet was waiting.

"Where are they?" Jack demanded.

"Jack, calm down."

"How the hell do you expect me to calm down?"

The diminutive doctor gave him a stern look. "You're not going to be able to see either of them until you do." Jack forced himself to keep his mouth shut and took a couple breaths. "Thank you."

"How are they?"

"Critical, at the moment. They got hit going through an intersection; the other driver ran the red light. According to the police on the scene, there was serious damage to the car; the firemen had to cut the roof off to get them out. Sam has a concussion, broken ribs, and a punctured lung. She's in surgery with Dr. Lam at the moment."

"And Jake?" He knew there had to be some significance to the fact that she'd told him about Sam first. If he was okay, she would have just said so…

Janet held his gaze. "We're trying to get him stable enough for surgery. He flatlined in the ambulance, but we got him back. He's had extensive head trauma but we're not sure yet how bad it really is. Right now, we're most concerned about intracranial hemorrhaging."

"In English, Doc."

"He's bleeding into his skull, and his brain is swelling. We need to cut away part of his skull to reduce the pressure. We're hoping to get him prepped for that surgery very shortly."

He'd known it was bad, but hadn't been prepared for how bad. Broken bones were one thing, but this was completely different. I was just playing ball with Jake a couple hours ago and now… "Wh-what are his chances?"

She was quiet for a long minute. "We're not sure… Would you like to see him before the surgery? I think he could use a little love and a little luck right now."

"Yeah." Janet led him over to Jake's bed; he was hooked up to a ventilator and wires led to different machines. For a moment when Jack looked at him, he saw Charlie – bloody and lifeless – but he closed his eyes to banish that thought.

This wasn't the same. Jake was going to be okay. He had to be.

"Hey, pal," he whispered to the unconscious little boy. Jack took his left hand; the right one was in a splint. "You gotta be strong, Jake. Me and Sam and your sister are here waiting for you. You… you just gotta fight."

"Jakey sleep?" Abbie quietly asked.

"Yeah, princess. He's sleeping right now so he can feel better."

Abbie blew him a kiss. "Feel better!" she told her brother.

Jack held her a little closer. "Hear that, pal?" he asked Jake. "We're right here waiting. Just…stay with us."

Jake was soon declared stable enough for surgery and a couple of the med techs whisked him away. Janet offered Jack a small, tense smile before following them; everyone was going to do absolutely everything they could for both Jake and Sam.

Abbie was starting to get sleepy, and one of the nurses offered a bed for Jack to put her on, but he wasn't interested. He wasn't letting any other member of his family get too far away from him, not tonight. He found a seat on a bench against the wall and let Abbie snuggle up in his lap to go to sleep. Jack was left to wait by himself, feeling very alone.

About ten minutes later, Daniel wordlessly sat down beside his friend. Jack nodded a greeting to him. "Hank called you?" he quietly asked.

Daniel nodded. "Yeah. Any news?"

"Nope."

"They're in surgery?"

"Yep."

And with that, they settled into comfortable silence. Over the next hour, the rest of SG-1 slowly trickled in and joined them. "Any word?" General Landry asked as he was the last to join the group that now included Teal'c, Cam, and Vala.

Jack shook his head. He handed Abbie, who was still sleeping, to Daniel before getting up and starting to pace back and forth. "This is taking too long," he muttered. "They'd come say something if anything had happened, right?"

"Surgery usually takes a while," Daniel tried to calm him down.

"You think there's a reason nobody suggested waiting in the observation gallery? At least then we'd know what was going on."

"I think that was for both your peace of mind and the docs'," Cam commented. "Do you really want to watch?"

Jack thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. As much as he wanted to know what was happening, he really didn't need to see someone taking a knife to Sam or Jake. "No."

They all took turns at trying to distract him over the next hour. Everyone was instantly alert when Carolyn came around the corner. "What's going on?" Jack asked her.

"Colonel Carter's out of surgery. She should wake up within the next hour. She's going to be hurting for a few days, but there isn't any permanent damage."

"And Jake?"

"Dr. Fraiser still has him in the other OR. If you want to wait with Sam, I'll have someone come talk to you as soon as we know anything."

Sam was still unconscious when Jack approached her bed. She seemed incredibly pale and fragile. A few stitches closed a gash on her left temple that ran along her hairline. The blood had been washed off of her face and out of her hair. The heart monitor beeped at a steady interval, its continuous rhythm reminding him that their situation still could be much worse than it currently was.

Jack sighed as he sat down in the chair beside the bed. Abbie was curled up in his arms, still asleep. "Well this sure isn't how tonight was supposed to end," he murmured.

Daniel lingered behind him, unsure whether he should speak up. "Jack?" he finally whispered. "Do you want me to take Abbie back to the house? Let her sleep in her own bed?"

He shook his head. "No. No, she can stay here. When Sam wakes up…"

Daniel nodded. "Okay. Janet said we could get her set up in the corner. It's a little darker and less busy…"

"The kid's fine, Jackson," Jack snapped. "Leave it alone."

He was a bit taken aback, but knew that Jack needed someone to be mad at and he'd made himself a convenient target. "Okay," he agreed with his hands raised in surrender. "We're all going to stick around a little longer, wait for word on Jake."

Jack turned around and saw that Landry, Vala, Cam, and Teal'c were still in a group by the infirmary entrance, watching this exchange. "You don't have to stay," he told the other man, his voice a little gentler than before.

"You really think you're going to get us to leave?" Daniel asked. This was one of those incidents that proved they were all a family. Jack finally shook his head.

TBC...