The crisp rap on her lab door made Sam sigh. She'd made it almost the whole day – well, really, she had made it the whole day, considering it was nineteen hundred hours – without having to deal with anyone. Except Daniel, but that conversation had been short. It was entirely possible that he was just a little bit scared of her, and she was starting to think she liked it that way.
The knock sounded again. Damn, she should have left two hours ago with everybody else. "Come in," she called, annoyed.
Janet Fraiser opened the door and stepped just inside, pulling it tightly closed behind her. "So, I just heard something," she said conspiratorially, "and I wanted to ask if it was true."
"Oh, my God!" Sam exclaimed, wishing she could just sink through the floor and die. "The rumor mill here travels faster than the speed of light, I swear." Wasn't it bad enough that everyone in the gym had heard him say it? And that all the people she'd passed on the way back to her lab had seen her upset? She'd known word would travel, but sheesh!
The doctor raised a surprised eyebrow and said nothing.
Whoops. Feeling more than a little like an idiot, Sam ventured, "You didn't know."
"No, but I'm suddenly extremely curious."
"Yeah, I'll bet," she muttered. "At least that means the whole base didn't know by noon."
Janet made a sympathetic noise. "Speaking of noon... lunch... I was thinking. All that's waiting for me at home is a bag of stale popcorn that should have gotten left in my last apartment. How about dinner, instead?"
Having already dug herself a pretty deep hole and not looking forward to the questions she'd set herself up for, Sam scrambled for a reason to say no... and came up empty. There was nothing at her place, either. "Uh... I hear there's a great pub downtown."
~/~ ~/~
As it turned out, 'great' was a bit of an overstatement. O'Malley's was a pub, all right, with the requisite pool tables and old, smoky scent. But there didn't seem to be anyone from Cheyenne Mountain there – apparently, it hadn't caught on yet – and that was a plus. The two officers sat at a tall table a bit away from the horde of smokers, although the distance didn't help much.
"He said that to you? Really? Just... out and said it?" Janet asked in disbelief.
"In front of everyone." Sam downed a good bit of her rum and diet Coke. "It was humiliating. I mean, I've dealt with it before – the looks, the off-handed comments – but it's... I don't know, it's different somehow. He's not even one of us, you know? He's some total stranger who just walked in and passed judgment, and I..." With a sigh, she took another long sip. "I don't even know why I care, but I do."
The other woman considered that for a moment. "Well, if that's how he feels, I'll just keep that in mind next time he's in the infirmary."
"Why?" Sam asked, confused.
"Did you know that needles come in different gauges? Vaccinations are normally given with a twenty-three, twenty-four, or twenty-five gauge – somewhere around half a millimeter. Needles used for blood donation are more like a millimeter and a half, and you can feel the difference, right?"
Sam nodded, uncertain and uneasy about where the conversation was headed.
"I can order needles all the way up to four and a half millimeters thick. How do you think he'd like that?"
"You... wouldn't," the captain protested, but she wasn't entirely sure.
"Use a seven-gauge? No, that's just cruel," the doctor admitted with a grin. "I'm just saying that there's a certain percentage of professional leeway, that's all."
Wow, the woman had guts. "I'm not sure how I feel about that," Sam admitted, "but I think I'm a little afraid of you now."
"Nah. I only use it on people who really deserve it. War criminals, chauvinists, guys who persistently ask me out," she added gleefully.
Men, Sam couldn't help but notice. All men.
"It's one of my favorite parts of the job," Janet said. "That and outranking every man in the room when it comes to my area of expertise."
The captain stared at the smaller woman for a moment – smaller, but gutsier. Brash, even. And maybe a little crazy, but with more self-confidence than Sam could even comprehend. But she seemed to carry the same us-versus-them mentality that men like Teal'c did and an odd mentality toward rank. "Can I ask a moderately offensive question?"
"Sure."
"Why the hell did you join the military?"
Janet shrugged. "I want to serve my country, even if I don't like the violence or the testosterone. And they paid for medical school. And the Air Force had a pretty good track record of keeping spouses stationed together."
"Spou..." Sam nearly choked on her drink. "You're married?"
"I was at the time."
"Oh. I'm... sorry." A broken-off engagement had been bad enough, but divorce was a trauma she couldn't even contemplate.
"Oh, don't be," Janet reassured her. "He was one of those chauvinistic, testosterone-driven guys that I would have used big needles on. In hindsight, we were completely incompatible."
Sam didn't quite know what to say, so she settled for a nod.
"And speaking of incompatible," the doctor went on, "that's what I was coming to ask you about before. So. You and Captain Hanson? Really?"
"Uh, yeah." Clearing her throat uncomfortably, Sam motioned for the waitress. This was about to get painful – somehow, this woman seemed to be able to drag out all the things she desperately didn't want to talk about. "Could I get a Zombie, please?"
"Well, if we're going for sheer alcohol content, I'll have a Long Island," Janet chipped in. Once the waitress disappeared, she ventured, "Yeah, I figured it didn't turn out well between you two."
Sam narrowed her eyes, a little hurt. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"Just that you seem pretty straight-laced, while Hanson looks like trouble from a hundred yards away."
"I'll have you know I own a motorcycle," Sam – who'd never thought of herself as particularly conventional – defended, then added petulantly, "and your vision is apparently better than mine."
Janet gave her a wry smile. "It improved dramatically after my divorce."
"Is that what it takes?" Sam huffed. "Dragging it through the courts, making it ugly for both of us? And here I thought it got ugly enough as it was."
"Can't have been pleasant, having him show up like that," the doctor observed. "Unless, of course, you're one of those people that keeps in touch with their exes and everything is all happy-cheery. Personally, I prefer never to see them again."
Generally, yes, Sam tried to do the former rather than the latter, but her attempts with Jonas had failed miserably. "I think it would have been better that way," she said softly, "if our paths had never crossed."
"Rumor has it he's trying to get you back." Janet gratefully accepted her drink from the waitress and took a sip. Sam, on the other hand, swirled hers a little on the table and stared into it. "I'll take that silence as a yes," she observed gently. "How do you feel about it?"
The table-swirling motion ceased, but only for Sam to grab the decorative straw and start stirring that way, slowly mixing in the Bacardi floating on top. "I... have no idea how to answer that question," she admitted finally. "I can't figure it out myself." She could feel the other woman's eyes on her, and she kept her gaze down.
"Sam," the doctor began, then added quickly, "I can call you Sam, right?"
Her smile was more than a little twisted. "Considering we're sitting in a bar talking about our exes, you probably should."
"Good. Sam. Do you smell that?"
"Uh..." Grateful as she was for the change of topic, it left her more than a little befuddled. Sam wrinkled her nose. "I don't smell anything but old wood varnish and cigarette smoke."
"That's what I meant. I take it you never smoked?" Janet asked.
"Oh, hell, no. My father walked in right as Tony Creighton handed me my first one in junior high, and that was the end of that."
The doctor grinned. "I did. I started in high school – to piss off my parents, mostly. And then college was stressful, and my marriage, and medical school... so all in all, it was more than a decade before I quit."
"I have to say," Sam ventured, "that I've always found doctors who smoke to be something of a contradiction in terms. It's... the ultimate unhealthy habit."
"Actually, some would argue that riding motorcycles is far more dangerous," she pointed out. "But I agree with you. There are a lot of us, though, even though we know how bad it is for us. And I could feel it – the strain on my lungs, my compromised immune system. At one point I even calculated exactly how much money I'd spent on cigarettes, and it was a little bit staggering. But I was addicted, and quitting was one of the hardest things I've ever done."
Uncertain what the other woman's point was or what to say, Sam settled for, "Well, I'm glad you did."
"I haven't had a cigarette in over five years," she went on, "and all those reasons still apply – the cost, my health. The social stigma, yellow teeth... a million other things. But when I smell it – a smoky bar, a couple of Airmen standing in the parking lot – I want one. My body just craves it, even though my mind knows better."
"Is that your not-so-subtle hint that we should leave?"
"No. You're missing the point. Sometimes reason gets no say in how we feel. They talk about people who have addictive personalities, but really, we all do. Everyone – everyone – has a drug," she pressed. "Even you."
She meant Jonas, Sam realized, and in a way, it was a soothing thought. It did seem like an addiction – wanting him even though she knew better – and that made excusable. And not her fault.
Didn't it?
"I don't know what I'm going to do when he comes back," she admitted softly. "I don't want to have to avoid him, and... and have it be awkward, and everything, but..."
"But dealing with him is a little like juggling flaming bowling pins?"
"Yeah. And I'm a really bad juggler."
Janet took a long sip of her drink. "It's not going to get any easier as long as you have feelings for him."
"I know, but I... It's not like there's an off switch, you know? I don't want to feel this way – I know everything about him is wrong for me, but when I see him, I just... I can't help it. I told him to stay away, but I know he won't. And if he keeps pushing, I... I don't know what I'll do."
"Then for your sake," the doctor said gently, "I hope SG-9's mission is a long one."