1015
Jack's pacing was driving everyone in the monitoring room nuts. But Daniel couldn't blame him – the man had been practically glued to a chair since Friday night. He was a doer, not a sitter. And after two and a half days of mostly sitting, even Daniel had chosen to stand. "So, what do we do after this?" he asked, well beyond sick of staring at the screens in silence. He didn't understand the readouts, anyway, and it was more than disconcerting to see the close up of Sam's exhausted face when it was completely beyond his control. "The radiation kills the organisms. Then what?"
Doctor Lam's head was propped on her hand, her elbow on the desk, and she twisted the whole assembly to look at him. "You're not going to like the answer to that."
The archaeologist raised an eyebrow.
"We wait."
"Of course we do. What else?"
Leaning back in her chair, she said, "The good news is we shouldn't have to wait very long. Not for the bleeding issue, anyway. Assuming their megakarocytes are functioning – and they seem to be in Airman Stolz – their levels should rise above critical fairly quickly."
"How quickly?" Jack asked, taking a brief reprieve from his pacing.
"Uh, well, platelet levels are considered normal down to about a hundred and fifty thousand per microliter. We start to get concerned at fifty thousand, and serious bleeding is an issue as high as twenty thousand. But a healthy person creates about thirty-five thousand platelets per microliter per day."
"Two days, then," the general said.
"They are not healthy," Teal'c spoke up. "Surely it will be longer."
"Actually, I think you're both wrong," the doctor said. "We're not starting from zero, for one. Probably more like five or ten thousand, even in Captain Menard. And when the platelet count drops, the body usually kicks up production, so we could be looking at more like forty-five thousand in a day. And once the potential for bleeding is controlled, we can start transfusions for both platelets and red blood cells. It'll take longer to recover from the anemia, for sure, but at least we won't have to worry about-"
An alarm went off. It took Doctor Lam a moment to find it in the wall of monitors, but she clicked the mouse once, then again, and the room went silent.
Dead silent.
It was Landry who asked finally, softly, "Who?"
"Captain Menard."
That wasn't a surprise, but still a punch to the gut. "Is the alarm audible?" Daniel asked. "Can the others hear it?"
"No."
He nodded. "Small favors, I guess."
Movement caught his eye, and he turned to see Jack stride across the room. Lam leapt to her feet as he yanked the door open. "General, you can't go in there!"
He ignored her completely. "I got it," Daniel said, hurrying after him.
But Jack didn't head for the infirmary. He'd stopped right outside the door, and his friend watched in silence as he slammed his open hand against the concrete once, twice, three times, then kicked the wall the for good measure. He knew, as Daniel did, that Menard had been the last real barrier before Sam went critical. All the remaining patients had been exposed for the same amount of time. And that meant that any one of them could be next.
"Siler's sicker than she is," the older man spat. Then, slamming his hand into the wall again, he cursed. "Forget I said that. Forget I even thought that."
"It's okay, Jack."
"No, it isn't." He couldn't trade one of them for the other. Carter would kill him just for the very idea of it. He'd given up his leadership role, but he had to hold on to his humanity, at the very least.
"It could be worse," Daniel confessed. "At least you didn't go visit them to try and figure out how sick they are."
His friend stared at him.
"They thought I was being nice, keeping them company. And I was. But there was always a part of me doing the math. To know who would be next. If it would be Sam."
Jack sighed. It was easy to forget, in his own pain and grief, that Daniel and Teal'c had just as much to lose as he did. "Do I want to know?" he asked finally.
"She's probably mid-pack. Siler's sicker than she is, but the medical staff is really concerned about Baker's hand. They never operated, so there are still bone fragments floating around in there. They've kept it elevated and iced because they're afraid inflammation and pointy things won't mix."
The other man ran a hand across his face, then through his hair in irritation. "I don't want to be relieved by that," he growled. "I don't want to be happy that a man with two kids and a wife might die before Carter does. What kind of monster am I?"
"You're not a monster, Jack," Daniel said softly. "You're just human."
He shook his head. "Landry was right to pull me. I can't be neutral anymore."
"Jack. You haven't been neutral for a long time. It's just... more now."
That was probably true, but it didn't mean he had to like it. He took a moment to rein himself in before stepping back into the monitoring room to check the timer. There was more than an hour and half left. With a sigh, he slid into a chair.