It was supposed to be only one chapter… but it was so long that I had to break it.

Enjoy!

M.

Thirty-seven.

"Social services?" he asked, and the woman nodded. " Nice to meet you, Miss Kelly. Now can you tell me why I'm here and not in the exam room with my family?" He asked with a rough look.

"We should wait for Doctor Atwood," the woman commented and observed him trying to make him feel uncomfortable.

"Look, we play this game of glances, and I can win or even wait all you want after I know how my daughter is doing. She's somewhere in here with my wife," he explained, but the woman said nothing. "My daughter was sick since yesterday but her pediatrician told us to hold it up for the night and bring her to a hospital in the morning is she didn't improve. She was feeling better in the morning before I left for work. Then I got a call to let me know my wife brought her here, I still don't know why we are in this facility and not in a military one. My chips are on distance as the probable cause, but I won't find out for sure unless someone tells me where they are." Jack tried.

Being in front of so many enemies before and having mocked so many false gods into kicking him instead of his team made him well aware that this sort of things rarely worked. But he couldn't avoid it; it was a habit of his. With a sigh, he sat on the couch in front the woman, and they kept a glancing match for a while. Until he remembered the door was still unlocked, he was a man of action, so he chose to act. He stood up and walked towards it.

"If you don't tell me, then I will find them by myself," He said opening the door, hoping that his actions would make her take him to them. He was half way out when her voice stopped him.

"If you leave the room, I'm calling the police, Mister O'Neill," Shannon added firmly, making Jack turn around with a frown.

"What?!" he exclaimed, apparently loud enough to have two MD's walking towards him, to make him lower his voice he presumed.

"You heard me, Mr. O'Neill. My only counsel to you will be for you to sit down and wait for Doctor Atwood quietly and hope you don't aggravate the situation any more than you already have," she warned.

"Situation? What situation?" He asked again.

"General O'Neill?" A voice he knew came over, and he turned around again to find Doctor Quinn as well as a Doctor he didn't know looking expectantly at him.

"Oh! Doctor Quinn, how's Naysa? Is something with her," he cleared his throat, "special needs?"

"I haven't had a chance to check her yet, General. I thought you were with them and that's why I came over here."

"No, apparently someone called social services on me," he pointed over his shoulders. "I can handle social services. Go, let me know how they are. Please, Doctor."

Doctor Quinn frowned since she didn't understand the reasons to call social services when she had never found a family so willing to help each other out of their situation so much as the O'Neills.

"Ahm, what do you mean with special needs?" The other doctor asked with a frown. "I'm Doctor Atwood," Jack frowned, and his family Doctor nodded.

"Both my wife and daughter are having issues with different kinds of food," Jack explained quickly, "Can I see them now?"

"No." Miss Kelly added firmly and moved to ask them all to enter the room; the trio walked in.

"Can someone explain to me what the hell is going on?" Jack asked looking to all of them.

"Both your wife and daughter show signs of malnourishment, General O'Neill. That's a flag, and we need to call social services for such cases," Doctor Atwood explained, "just like we would've called the police if it was a gun shot for example."

"Your wife also shows some signs that point to someone who was under some sort of psychological torture which still needs to be evaluated. We can't let you close to them you are the only probable source of this."

"Sorry, I should've had told you to bring her straight to Bethesda. I forgot about the civilian norms," Doctor Quinn winced.

"What?" he asked incredulously, "you think I did that to them?" he looked at the Doctor he knew for a while, looking for some form of help. The woman looked at him and sighed.

"Look, Miss…" Doctor Quinn trailed.

"Kelly."

"Miss Kelly, General O'Neill is in no way harming his wife or child. They both are under a special treatment for their current issues with food. Also, they are all on counseling sessions as individuals and as a couple."

"So he allows them to get to this point and then he pays for therapy? Aren't you something special, Mister O'Neill," the woman sighed.

"Look, Miss Kelly, I have no idea who are you taking me from, and I'm sorry if you experienced something so wrong that you need to find a guilty party in every case, even if there's no case at all. I'm not harming them in any way; I'm trying to help them!"

"Even if you are working on assisting them in improving, that doesn't explain how they got to such condition. Someone had to allow it!" The woman hissed.

"Oh for crying out loud!" Jack exclaimed pacing the room. "Doctor Quinn, please, go and let me know how they are, don't tell Sam I'm stuck here. I will find a way to give them enough details for them to understand, or clearance if there's no other way," he whispered, and the woman nodded and left the room.

"Clearance for what? On how can military man mistreat his wife and children without consequences? I don't want such kind of permission, you can shove it up where the sun doesn't reach it," she told him. The woman was clearly affected by the situation, and Jack didn't know quite well how to start to untangle the mental mess she had managed to create out of Sam's and Naysa's situations.

"Miss Kelly you need to hold your horses," he sighed. The truth was the only thing he knew would let him go. "My wife, she's an Air Force officer, she has been one since she went to the Academy fresh out of school."

"She doesn't seem an Air Force officer," Doctor Atwood muttered to which Jack rolled his eyes.

"Of course she doesn't! There are only a handful of people who look like an Air Force officer out of the uniform as it is. Now go and find one who has been MIA for as long as she was and then you will know how a USAF officer looks like at his worse. But no! You have this lovely image of how one is supposed to look out of movies and television shows; we are real people. Living real life and facing real dangers, like being MIA as Sam was!" the widened eyes told him he had managed to get his point across.

"Well, that might explain your wife, General," At least part of his point, he thought. "You certainly are good with words to explain and defend a military person. However, you are still out of explanations for your daughter's condition." Shannon huffed. Jack clenched his jaw several times trying to convey the strength to tell her, but she took it as a sign of discomfort with the situation. "Ha, see, you can't justify it… you were probably just making up all that you said before…"

"My wife," he whispered so low that the woman blanched, "is doing everything in her hands to improve her health and her physical condition. But if you must know some of the gruesome details, then I'll tell you. Sam, my wife, she was a couple of months pregnant when she went missing, Miss Shannon. And if that doesn't seem to be enough for you, then I will need to add that they only got back around eight weeks ago which isn't enough time to heal all the mishaps. We are doing anything in our hands to move on from that, which includes a dietary plan, hours in a supermarket to find things they can eat, and phone calls to me every two hours since my daughter is afraid that I'm not real. I'll appreciate if you can back off now and let me see my family."

"That makes sense, with the situation, I mean. If she was MIA she was underfed and probably subjected to some torture; even her pregnancy could've been a form of torture for whatever the conditions of the place in which she was held," Doctor Atwood added looking at the social service woman, "My brother, he's a marine. He told me being MIA can be awful." Jack nodded

"Definitively not one of the perks of being military," Jack added. "I can attest that both being MIA and having a loved one going MIA are tough things to overcome. We have a complicated lifestyle, but we wouldn't change it. We both love what we do, and we both love our daughter." The woman mulled over the information for a while.

"Very well, you can see your wife and daughter, Mister O'Neill. But I as well as Doctor Atwood will be present during this." Jack nodded, for all he cared they could film it and showcased it on national television if they wanted. He only needed to see them. They walked into the exam room and got there as their Doctor closed the door behind her back, she smiled at Jack.

"General, her vitals are normal, and at the moment there aren't signs of anything too out of the ordinary. You should go in," she smiled, and Jack nodded. He opened the door and smiled at the picture; Sam was fast asleep on the bed holding Naysa protectively. He walked over them slowly and caressed both of their faces with a finger. Sam woke up slowly as she felt his touch and smiled.

"Hey," she whispered not moving an inch but smiling.

"Hey yourself," he grinned. "Doc Quinn says everything seems controlled for now," he whispered and she smiled thankfully.

"What's up with the club?" She asked looking at the end of the bed.

"Well, you came to a University Hospital," he grinned.

"I should've gone to Bethesda, but Naysa wouldn't make it so far without making a mess on the cab," she chewed. "I'm sorry, I know our issue pulled you out of a meeting."

"Don't be. They are still trying to find an answer, so no harm was done." Her cell phone vibrated beside her. And she grabbed it and frowned. All the people she knew wasn't currently on Earth.

"Carter. Ah, Mister President, thank you for sending your MD before," she smiled knowingly at Jack. "She's improving we guess. Jack will let you know more when we find out more. Yes, Mr. President, that's a promise. Thank you." She placed the phone back in her pocket.

"Hayes?" Jack asked.

"Yup, you worried him."

"Hey, his guy was what? Five blocks away? I was half town away," he smiled, he heard someone clearing his throat. And he turned around, "I'll be right back. Don't move," he told her placing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"As if your daughter would allow me to," she rolled her eyes happily. "Go."

He walked out, and looked from the social services woman to the Doctors, waiting for someone to be the first to speak.

"Well?" He asked as all of them seemed out of words.

"You are off the hook, Mister O'Neill. The hospital will provide me with your address, and you will have to go through a full check out. And I'll warn you if I see anything that points differently you will have me behind you until I get your head."

"Look, Miss Kelly, you can warn me all you want, and you can try and threaten me, but don't mess with my family. We have gone through enough. And if you bring your guns out, you will force me to bring mine and trust me; I know people who know people." The woman huffed and walked out.

"Now Doctors, please if one of you can tell me what's going on and when can I take them home I will be grateful, keeping this discussion out of her reach will be nearly impossible if I don't get some news to share."