The Next Day
Janet is holding her son and crying. She remembers from her psych rotation that babies that are born to depressed mothers have the whole world stacked against them from the start. They get held less, and talked to less, and end up with delayed development. Most often it can mean the difference in 20 or 30 IQ points by the time that the kid enters school.
She is determined that isn't going to happen to her son. So every day she picks up her son, and holds him to her chest, knowing that this is the place where her son would be most likely to recognize her face. She'd started with trying to smile, and jabber to her son, but it had reduced to crying after a couple of minutes.
Daniel walks into the bedroom, and becomes alarmed right away. "What's wrong?" he says, walking quickly up to look at his son, expecting to see some kind of injury on his body.
"Daniel, I think I need some help," she confesses.
"Ah, ok, what do you need me to do?" he asks.
She shakes her head, "No, I'm sad, really sad."
"Oh," he says, and there is a really long pause that makes his wife wish she knew what he was thinking. "Am I doing something wrong?"
"No, this is hormone-based," she says.
"Ah," he says, looking relieved, "You're not going to McKenzie are you?"
"Are you afraid your friends at work are going to find out that your wife is nuts?" she sneers.
Daniel shakes his head, "No, I just don't trust him with my wife. I want you to get better, and I'm pretty sure he'd make you worse."
It's her turn to smile with relief.
"And you're not crazy. You just have a chemical imbalance in your head."
"Honey, that is what crazy is," she says smiling at him.
"But you're going to get better, right? I mean, when it's from a baby, it doesn't last that long," he queries.
"It can last anywhere from a couple months to a year. I didn't get help before, because I thought it might go away. You know, it might just be the baby blues that almost all women get, and not actually post-partum depression which fewer get. But now it's been a couple of weeks and…"
"It's time to ask for help, and get better," he finishes for her, smiling.
"Yeah," she nods. She'd been nervous about how he was going to take this news, and is relieved that he is taking it in stride.
"I'm really glad you asked for help," he tells her kissing her. "Now, I'm going to take little William for some Daddy time," he says, taking the baby from her arms.
"Daniel, I'm fine to take care of him…" she starts to protest.
"Go make an appointment and then go take a bubble bath or paint your nails with Cassie or something fun. I've got baby duty for a couple of hours."
One Month Later
Teal'c picks up the phone and stoically says, "My name is Teal'c of Chulak. Please state your business in contacting my residence."
"Teal'c, Mommy won't pick us up, and teacher left, and everyone left, and Becky Lynn and me walked over to the gas station to call you."
"Tell me in which cardinal direction you walked, and I shall be there shortly to offer you transportation to your place of residence."
"Well, I don't know what it has to do with a pretty red bird, but we went west from the school."
-0-0-0-
Teal'c has figured out by the tenth knock on the door that no-one is home, but Becky Lynn keeps knocking, each pound has a bit more panic in it.
"Your mother has no doubt taken another short vacation. Shelby and I shall house and care for you until she returns."
After Shelby and Teal'c got married, they converted his old room into a bedroom for the girls when they came to stay. There are two beds, and a dresser which was by now nearly full of clothes, a book shelf with one shelf full of children's books, and others full of toys, as well as two fluffy stuffed animals that the girl's loved.
They love the stuffed animals so much that Shelby had asked them if they wanted to take them home the last time they visited.
"No," Beck Lynn had said, looking at the pristine animal, "You take better care of it than Mommy ever would."
"Plus, it's clean and whole here," Tammy had added thoughtfully, not missing the comparison between herself and the toy.
Now, Tammy looks at the door of her house ruefully, "Mommy would tell us when if she was going on vacation."
Teal'c doesn't say a word. He tries hard not to disparage the girl's parents, but he doesn't believe it.
"She's done lots of things, but she's never left us without telling us before," Becky Lynn agrees gravely.
Teal'c catches the terror in the little girls' eyes.
"She's probably sick 'n needs help," Tammy adds.
"Is there a way to gain access to this house without causing damage?" he asks looking at the windows and doors.
Becky walks over and retrieves a key that is taped behind a drainpipe. She hands it to Teal'c, who pries it in the lock. It's old, and rusted, but the door gives way.
"Mom!" Shelby and Becky Lynn both call as they run into the house. Teal'c quickly attempts to outrun them, fearing what they might see if they get there before he does.
He was right to be afraid. When the run into their mother's bathroom, they see the woman fallen on the floor with an empty pill-bottle around them.
"Call 911, and bring me the phone, Tammy. Becky Lynn, get out of this room, right now!"
The older sister obeys as he starts the CPR which he was required to learn for his job at the SGC. But the younger sister stands frozen in horror.
-0-0-0-
It's Teal'c's first time in an Earth hospital. To be sure, he's spent a lot of time in the infirmary at the SGC, but this is a little bit different. Maybe it wouldn't be so different to him if he was only here for himself, but it's different with the two girls.
"Is Mommy going to die?" Becky Lynn asks, crawling onto the big man's lap.
"Of course not," Tammy says.
"But she didn't talk to me when they put her in the 'bulance. Is she mad at me?" Beck Lynn asks.
"No, you're mother was too ill to speak with you at the time," Teal'c responds.
"What does ill mean?" Becky Lynn asks.
"It means sick," Tammy says, her vocabulary having grown a lot since coming to know Teal'c.
"So if she's too sick to talk, does that mean that she's going to die?" Becky Lynn asks worriedly.
Just then a women approaches. "Are these the dependents of Mrs. Linstead?" the women asks.
"She talks like you, Teal'c," Tammy whispers, and the same time that Teal'c responds with "Indeed."
"Are you a friend of the family?" the women asks.
"I am their brother-in-law. Their sister and I have typically cared for them when their mother was indisposed," he replies.
"Their mother has had previous incidence like this one?" the women asks.
Tammy pulls frantically on his shirt sleeve until he leans down so she can whisper in his ear, "You never air your dirty laundry in public. That means that you never talk about the bad stuff that happens."
Teal'c stands up, "On previous occasions their mother has left them in our care while she went on vacations. I am a foreigner and am unfamiliar with your language."
"It doesn't really sound like you are unfamiliar with our language by the way that you talk, and I'd have to be pretty dense to not notice that you just got a patented 'shut up' whisper from that little girl. You're hiding something."
"I learned to talk from a book, but am quite unfamiliar with slang. The little girl was just informing me of my error without embarrassing me in front of you."
The women looks skeptically at him, but then says, "Would you and your wife be willing to care for them on a short-term basis, until we decide what custody situation we are going to have? We find that it is always best in these situations to keep children with people they know. Of course, there is some training you are going to have to go through to become certified to be a foster parent."
"We would be most willing to take care of the children until their mother becomes better."
The women smiles at the children, and then ushers Teal'c away from them. Becky Lynn looks very uncertain, and her big sister wraps a comforting arm around her.
"You realize, of course, that their mother might not be able to take care of the children for some time. There are going to be some custody issues."
"Are you the people who stole Shelby from her house when she was a child?" he asks, glaring at the women before him.
"We do not steal children. Someone from my office removed her when she was a child, because she was in danger. We intend to do the same thing for these children. Our goal is to keep them safe, and to return them to their parents as soon as their parents are able to take care of them."
"My wife, and I will care for her sister until her mother recovers. Then they will return to their home."
"I'm afraid we are going to be making those decisions," the woman says, bristling, "Including whether or not the girls will be able to stay with you. And she is no doubt going to need some psychological care before she gets her children back. We aren't sure yet if it was a suicide attempt or if she overdosed using drugs, but either way, we are not going to send children back into that environment without first making sure that they are going to be alright. So I need to know if you are only going to be willing to do temporary care or if you would be willing to do more long-term."
Shelby doesn't want kids. She's already spent a lot of time looking after these kids, and she's young to have this sort of a responsibility.
Yet, they are her sisters and they need her. Shelby had shared, once or twice late at night after a flashback or nightmare, some of the things that had happened to her in foster care. He knew that she would not want her sisters to go into that place.
If he wasn't married, he would take them by himself. He would love them, and take care of them, and raise them all by himself.
But, he was married, so he couldn't make this decision all by himself. After all, there was no way for him to take the children unless Shelby took them too.
"I am going to have to talk to my wife before I take them for very long, but we will certainly take them for a couple of weeks."
The women nods, and looks at the girls behind her, "I'm going to have to do a background check on you, and get some information before we make any choices about you placement."
"My place of employment can provide you with my background. I work at Cheyanne Mountain Complex," Teal'c says stoically.
"I'm going to make some calls, and see if we can clear them to stay with you tonight. In the meantime, are you going to be staying at the hospital?"
"Will they be able to see their mother tonight?"
"I do not think that that would be for the best."
"Then I will take them home."
"Can you give me your address?"
"Teal'c?" Tammy asks pleadingly, looking down at the child on her lap.
"We can finish this conversation in the presence of the children, can we not?" Teal'c says, moving over and picking the small child up in his arms. He doesn't say anything to her, it is not the Jaffa way to whisper meaningless lies into the ears of small children. But his strong arms relax her.
The social worker writes down his address, and goes off to check out this man's credentials. But she's already seen everything she needs to. She knows that these children will be safe in the care of their large relative. You develop a gut in her business, and her gut was rarely wrong.
-0-0-0-
"Where were you this afternoon?" Teal'c says, even more stonefaced than is typical for him when Shelby returns home that night.
"You know that I have a night class every Thursday," she says carelessly.
"Why did you not check your cellular device for communications?" he asks.
"You know that I can't have my cell phone on in class."
"Why did you not check it during the break?"
"I don't get what the big deal is. Whatever you had to tell me then, you can just tell me know."
"Your mother is in the hospital, because she consumed too many pills."
"What? Is she back on drugs, or did she try to kill herself?"
"The doctors have yet to determine which of those options is more likely."
Shelby shakes her head, "The girls are here, right? Did they get to bed alright?"
"They are asleep; however, Tammy has already awoken with a nightmare."
"They didn't see it, did they?" Shelby asks, for the first time realizing that her little sisters are seeing the same kinds of things that she saw so often when she was a little girl.
"Becky Lynn did not follow my directions. I attempted to shield her from what I knew would be a traumatizing event."
"Was mom conscious when they saw her?"
"No. It took much reassurance to convince them that she was not dead."
Shelby shakes her head, "When does mother get out of the hospital?"
"They don't know yet, but one of the child-snatchers was at the hospital. It would have been nice to have you there to talk to them with me."
"What do you mean by child-snatchers?" Shelby asks, alarmed.
"The people who take your children away from you because they do not think you are good enough at taking care of your children. They want to take your sisters away from your mother."
"I suppose social services would be sniffing around. What did you tell them?"
"Tammy informed me that you do not wash your laundry in front of them."
Shelby gasps, "She did not say that in front of them did she?" If the social workers thought that the family was hiding something, that would make it far worse for them.
"No, she was quite secretive about it. I do wish that you had briefed me in the proper treatment of workers in social matters before I had met the first one. I feel that then I would be more able to evade them."
"But they let us keep them, right? I mean, you must have done alright."
"We have been cleared to take care of them on a temporary basis. But the social worker has given us an important question to consider."
Shelby gives him a questioning look.
"They thought that the children might require long term care, and they were wondering who might be willing to provide it."
"They aren't going to need long term care. Mom is really good with social workers. As soon as they let her out of the hospital, she'll have the kids back. That's the way it always worked with me when I got taken away."
"I am not so certain that this is true. The social worker indicates that she will require care in a mental hospital."
"They'll be here a couple of weeks, and that is all," Shelby says in an assured voice.
"If it was to be for a lengthier period of time, how would you feel about that?" Teal'c presses.
"I don't really have to answer, because it's not going to happen; it's going to be short term, like it always is."
"It may be important for the children to know that they would have a place where they would be welcomed should they ever need it. I know that you are not fond of the idea of reproduction, but I was wondering if you feelings would change if you knew that it was your own kin that already existed in the world."
Shelby looks up at Teal'c with shock apparent on her face, "Of course we would take them if they ever needed it; they are my sisters."