AN: half a league, half a league, half a league onward... Don't ask me where the light brigade came from. But here's another chapter in any case.
Jack tried to shove the medic aside who was stitching up his wound. It was a through-and-through, which simplified matters greatly. It even managed to miss the bone. But the man still did not back down.
"I need to stitch this up, sir," the man said shortly.
"No, I need to go check on the major."
But he would not win this one. The medic, and a small group of others, had come from the base with Janet. And Jack knew for a fact that they feared the small woman's ire far more than anything he could even think to threaten. The man simply glared at him until Jack settled down again. "Just hurry up, for crying out loud."
As soon as the last bit of tape was applied to the bandage, sling already in place, Jack got up. The mild dizziness at standing up went completely ignored. He rushed out of the room still wearing the same shirt he had been shot in. The area around his shoulder hung in tatters, cut apart to gain access to the injury. Between that and the drying blood on it, it made for a gruesome sight to behold. Jack couldn't care less though, and the thought of wasting any time changing didn't even cross his mind.
He rushed down the hallway, the entire floor of the hospital having been occupied by Air Force personnel. Jack eyed the heavy doors behind which Janet worked with her trusted team. After staring longingly for a few moments, wanting nothing more than to crash through and be there himself, he turned left and entered the waiting room.
The others looked up from their various internal conflicts at his presence.
"Anything?" Jack asked hopefully.
Daniel shook his head.
"Is this not where the Tau'ri would use the saying 'no news is good news'?"
Jack shook his head sullenly. "You know how I feel about cliches, Teal'c. But nice try."
Teal'c gave a slight nod of his head.
Silence descended, and Jack took in the occupants of the room. They all looked like they hadn't slept in a week, which really wasn't that far from the truth. Even Teal'c looked rough around the edges. Daniel and Olivia both sat, a couple of chairs between them. Daniel was leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, while Olivia curled up in the plastic seat, hugging her legs against her body. Teal'c stood in front of the two, as if to guard them against whatever news might come through that door.
Despite his imposing stance, Jack doubted that the jaffa could succeed in that task.
The lingering effects of shock and blood loss had Jack less than steady on his feet. He sat down, on the opposite side of the room. Right now he needed space, both physically and mentally, between him and the others. The scene kept replaying in his head. Sam staring at the gun. She had been willing to use it. Jack shook his head sullenly. No, to say she was willing was too tame, she had used it. And it was only extreme luck that she hadn't succeeded.
He couldn't help but wonder what he could have said differently. If he had simply picked different words, would Sam have changed her mind? It was hard for him to think that if she had been steadier, or if he had been just one instant slower, she would already be dead. Jack had failed her so many times on this. He couldn't protect her from Talquin on the planet. He couldn't figure out just how disturbed she was when they got back. He couldn't even talk her down from the precipice. He just kept failing her. And, with a brief glance over at Olivia, Same wasn't the only one he had failed.
Daniel sat down heavily beside him, and Jack barely contained a sigh at the unwanted intrusion. Both stared at the floor in front of them.
"How's the shoulder?" Daniel asked, clearly trying to start up a conversation.
Jack answered with a disinterested grunt.
Daniel sat back in the chair. He was tentative. "What happened before..."
"Before Carter tried to shoot herself, you mean?" Jack said when Daniel trailed off. "What happened is I screwed up."
"Jack. You can't..."
"I could have just snuck up on her, grabbed the gun before she even knew I was there." But he had opted out of that choice. Maybe that was where he really had went wrong.
"You can't know that that wouldn't have just ended up worse. You did everything you could, Jack."
"And she still tried to do it," Jack pointed out.
Daniel frowned, clearly as unsettled by that fact as he was. "She wasn't thinking clearly."
"No," Jack said in agreement. That much he could agree with. "No she wasn't. She thought this all... thinks that this is fake."
He winced at his own slip in tense. Sam was not dead yet.
"Fake," Daniel echoed, wrapping his head around it.
Jack frowned. "She called it a hallucination. And said that she wouldn't get fooled again."
Daniel didn't immediately respond. Jack was thinking back to Sam's words. These hallucinations, they had clearly happened more than once. He wondered how many times they had tried in that span of days, and just what did they consist of?
"She didn't call me 'sir'."
"Really?" Daniel said with legitimate surprise at the statement. It was so completely un-Sam-like.
"Well, she did once." He let the sentence hang, but it wasn't a long pause before Daniel grasped its meaning. Jack sighed.
"Oh," was all the other man managed to choke out.
Jack didn't want to talk about it anymore, think about it anymore. He eyed the doorway anxiously.
"Come on, doc."