When she opens her eyes there's so much light she can't help but squeeze them shut again. She can't remember ever having seen so much light. She finds it a wonder that light can be as blinding as darkness.
"Sam?"
She waits and wonders if Sam's voice will sound familiar. The others did, now that she thinks back on it. She's not quite sure who they were but they were familiar.
Sam doesn't answer so she opens her eyes again. The light still hurts but she manages to keep her eyes open through one quick breath before she closes them again.
"Carter?"
Carter. That's another name she remembers. No voice is forthcoming. Why don't these people talk? Of course, she's spent the last forever willing him to shut up, so perhaps she's finally been granted her wish.
She tries her eyes one more time. This time she squints and the worried brown eyes are back. She looks down to a pert nose and further still to soft, slight scowling lips. The lips move, "Sam?" Brown Eyes is looking right at her.
She looks down further and sees a nametag, "Fraiser." She can't imagine how she can read the strange writing, but it looks like the language sounds in her head so she thinks she must really have been able to read something once.
"Sam, can you hear me?"
Fraiser seems to be talking to her. She opens her mouth to speak, can feel her lips move, hears an odd scratching sound come out of her mouth – but it doesn't sound anything like the language in her head.
"I don't think she can talk, doc."
Fraiser glances away with an irritated look on her face. "Thank you, Colonel."
She turns her head to towards the other voice. More brown eyes. She looks down the face again – strong, whiskery jaw, tanned skin, nametag, "O'Neill". She looks back up. This one is familiar to her but the name is wrong. The voice stirs something within her, though.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Natalie collapses into the brown leather chair and cringes as the castors scrape across the concrete floor. There are files spilling out of a four-drawer filing cabinet, piled high along a cheap metal credenza, and obscuring the top of her desk. It's a fine mess left to her by Dr. Mackenzie.
Nearly twenty airmen are on scheduled sessions and another thirty require at least a single follow-up of some kind. A dozen are awaiting post-mission reviews. Seven require pre-posting determinations.
She sighs. All of this and she's still reeling over the news that her patients require her expertise thanks to events that happened on other planets.
A knock on her open office door grabs her attention. The tiny woman she instantly recognizes as the base Chief Medical Officer, Janet Fraiser.
"Doctor Jordan?"
Natalie stands and smoothes her hands over hair that had been, six hours ago, relatively dry and frizz-free. "Yes. Doctor Fraiser, right?"
Doctor Fraiser nods. "Looks like you're…" the doctor trails off and casts a wary glance around the office, "absolutely buried." A bright grin flashes across her mouth but lines of stress etched deep around her eyes don't ease.
"Apparently you guys are breaking all kinds of records here." Natalie tries for disarming but thinks she comes off a little too sarcastic. She shakes her head. "Sorry. You needed something?"
Doctor Fraiser steps further into the room and Natalie notices a thick manila folder in her hand. "We recovered an SG team member from a Go'auld prison off world yesterday. She's going to need an eval."
Natalie takes the folder and flips it open. "Samantha Carter. Major. Presents with—" she cuts off her narration with a thick exhale but continues reading page after page of injuries in the stark relief of laser toner and military grade paper. "She's speaking?" she finally asks when it seems like every other question is six kinds of pointless.
Doctor Fraiser shrugs a little with just one shoulder. "Yeah."
"Impressive," Natalie says more to herself than to the other doctor.
"You'll find most things about Sam are pretty damn impressive."
The way the woman says it makes Natalie observe, "You're friends."
Same shrug, same half answer. "Yeah."
"Are you close?"
Doctor Fraiser looks uncomfortable and suddenly Natalie is grateful she's not military herself. "It's okay, Doctor. There's nothing wrong with friendship."
"Yeah, well…" She does that maddening half shrug once more and Natalie can't help but think Janet Fraiser might benefit from a few sessions of her own.
"Well," Natalie says and flips the folder closed, "send her down when you're ready. It'll probably be, what? Four days? Six? Until you release her?"
"She's got three dislocated joints, various breaks and fractures, a crushed trachea, and a lacerated gall bladder." Doctor Fraiser says these things with a hint of incredulity.
"So you're saying it'll be longer?"
"I'm saying it'll be longer."
"I'll come to her, then," Natalie says. But she's talking to Doctor Fraiser's back. She thinks she probably made a bad impression.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Two days later Natalie still hasn't made it up to start Major Carter's evaluation and when Jack O'Neill steps into her office she really wishes she'd had more time.
"You're the new head shrinker, right?" he opens without even a hint of kindness.
"I am," she says as she stands up from the nest of boxes she's been in since seven that morning. She glances at her watch as she brushes dust bunnies off her slacks. Three o'clock. She wonders idly if the commissary is still serving lunch. "And you're Jack O'Neill." His file was in the pile of necessary follow-ups.
"You need to clear Carter."
"I'm sorry?"
"Major Carter. You have to clear her before she can resume her duties. You haven't seen her yet."
"Mister O'Neill—"
"Colonel." He says it with such a hard glint in his eye that she very nearly laughs. But she suspects men like Jack O'Neill don't much like being laughed at.
"Colonel O'Neill," she placates, "it's my understanding that Major Carter will be in the infirmary for quite some time longer. And also that she's having a bit of trouble speaking at the moment. And furthermore, that even if I cleared her for gate travel at this very moment, there are quite a few physical requirements she'll still need to meet."
He shifts uncomfortably. He's clearly a man that's both used to being in charge and also used to action. He's silent and she thinks, in the situation they're in, that it's a very uncharacteristic reaction.
"Colonel," she says more kindly, "I'm still getting my feet under me. As you can see," she gestures around the office, "things were left in quite a state. I understand Major Carter is important to you all—"
"Who else has been here?"
"Well, Doctor Fraiser brought me her file." She shakes her head to clear it. "I understand Major Carter's importance here. And I will do her evaluation. But honestly, Colonel, whether it happens yesterday or five days from now matters not. She's healing. She's got a good bit of physical healing to do before we can even start on emotional healing."
"You haven't even evaluated her yet. For all you know all the healing she's got to do is physical."
But Natalie can tell by the look on his face that he doesn't believe what he's just said. She gestures at a chair despite being certain he's not the kind of man who sits when he could be standing. She sinks into a chair anyway. "I've been doing this a long time. Fifteen years, in fact. My specialty is PTSD and I've been working with POWs for the last ten years. I know that the things Major Carter experienced while she was in that prison are going to affect her. No, I've never met her. I don't know how things are going to manifest. But I can guarantee you that things are going to manifest. We're going to have some significant work to do before she gets back the façade she had before."
And then, to her complete and utter surprise, Jack O'Neill sinks brokenly into a grey fabric chair. He scrubs a hand through his short silver hair and suddenly he looks very old and not at all like the intimidating soldier who'd marched into her office moments ago.
She sighs. "You're friends." It's the second time she's observed the same and she's beginning to get the impression that everyone's got a soft spot in their hearts for Samantha Carter.
"She's my second in command."
"But she's your friend."
"She's my second in command," he says again in a way that, for most people she's certain, would brook no argument.
"But," she says slowly as if to a child, "she's your friend."
"Look, doc," he says suddenly standing, "I'm her CO. It's my job to make sure everything is clicking along for her return to her duties."
"Colonel, sit down," she says in the voice that generally makes people do what she's asking. She's seventy percent sure it won't work on Jack O'Neill and she's right. She tries a different tack. "Colonel? Please?"
He quirks an eyebrow at her but does as she asks.
"I understand that the military has regulations. I understand that relationships aren't meant to get too deep, too close. But I'm not accusing you of anything here. You're friends. I could tell even if I hadn't gotten my doctorate in psychology. Not for nothing, but I could tell Doctor Fraiser is her friend, too. What I can't figure out is why you're all so hell bent on convincing me you're not her friends. To be honest with you, she's going to need friends. Lots of 'em. This isn't going to be an easy process for her.
"As her commanding officer, you're privy to the recount of what happened to her in that prison, right? And to her medical condition now?"
He sighs again and she suspects that's all she'll get from him by way of any emotion that isn't anger. "Yeah."
"And I've read your file, too. I know your history. You've been exactly where she is right now. You remember what it took to get through it?"
"Yeah," he says, warily this time.
"Well, that's what she's in for. Major Carter isn't married. Does she have a close family? A boyfriend? Hell, a dog?"
"No," he hedges.
"No. What she does have, Colonel, are her friends. She's got you all. Her team. She's going to need you to be a friend long before she's going to need you to be her commanding officer." She lets him stare in her general direction for a moment. "Now, Colonel, if you'll excuse me. I've got several more boxes of files to get through. And then I've got some evaluations to get done. Please, stop on your way out and make an appointment with Airman Cullison. You're way overdue for a follow-up and it's about time I started making a dent in those."
She swivels her chair away from him before he can even rise and she gets the impression he's not a man who spends much time getting dismissed. She thinks the sensation will probably do him a bit of good.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
"Carter, I think you should get a dog."
She looks up from her jello. "Um, what?" She's not sure she's up for getting her sweater off the table next to her and he wants her to get a dog?
"A dog, you know. For the company."
"I don't think Janet's going to let me have a dog in the infirmary."
A look passes across his face as if he just realized she's going to be taking up space in the infirmary for quite a bit longer. She can promise him it's something she's been dwelling on for quite some time. As if she hadn't been a prisoner long enough. She'd seen the date on the news three days ago. She'd been missing for seventeen weeks.
"Sir." She tacks it on as an afterthought, but then she realizes it had been nearly a minute since she'd last spoken and it likely came across as pissy and insubordinate. Well…tough.