Stargate SG1: Cocidian (4/11)

May 21, 2010 09:18

All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: Cocidian


Chapter Four

"Incoming traveler!"

The familiar call came just as Major General George Hammond was starting up the stairs toward his office. He gripped the railing and sighed. At just past eleven at night, he'd been about to sign out and go home. Instead, he found himself standing on a spiral staircase and staring out the control room window, waiting for bad news. He was mildly annoyed that his plans for a hot bath and a soft bed had just been cancelled, but he was seriously concerned by the implication of a gate activation in the middle of the night. A team returning early was rarely a positive thing.

None of his off-world teams were due back yet.

"Have you got a signal?"

"It's SG-1, sir."

"Thirty-six hours early," Hammond said aloud, neither knowing nor caring if anyone else heard him speak. "Open the iris and call a medical team down here. Let's see what they've gotten themselves into this time."

The iris rotated out of its closed position as Hammond retraced his steps back to the gate room. He walked through the door just as the wormhole rippled, and three of the four members of SG-1 stepped through. The fourth member, Hammond realized immediately, was being carried in Teal'c's arms. Jack O'Neill was standing shoulder to shoulder with the Jaffa, holding Daniel Jackson's head in his hands. Samantha Carter had preceded the men through the gate and was ushering the SF team assembled at the bottom of the ramp out of their way.

"Colonel ..." Hammond began. He wanted to ask what had happened to Dr. Jackson, wanted to find out why all four of them had chains dangling from their wrists, wanted to order them all to the infirmary at once, but was prevented from doing any of those things by the abrupt responses of the three people he was trying to talk to.

"Daniel Jackson is gravely ill." Teal'c's voice made it clear that no more explanation would be forthcoming.

"Sir, Daniel's sick." Sam Carter's trembling voice and wide, moist blue eyes were more telling than her words.

Jack O'Neill pulled his attention away from his archeologist just long enough to cast a distracted glance in Hammond's direction. "Um, yeah... in a minute."

Hammond bristled at being so quickly dismissed by his own second-in-command. "Colonel O'Neill!"

"I said give me a minute!" Jack responded as the three walked past their commander and out of the room. The medical team, led by Dr. Janet Fraiser, arrived at the door just as the group exited. The offered gurney was ignored and the three continued on their way. "Doc, Daniel needs you. Now!"

Jack stayed with them until he was satisfied that Dr. Fraiser was in control of the situation. After carefully nestling Daniel's head back against Teal'c's chest, he released his hold. His left hand lingered on the long hair for only a second before he placed his right hand on Teal'c's back. "You take him from here. I'll catch up in a minute."

Teal'c nodded and continued down the hall as Jack turned and jogged back to where Hammond stood waiting in the door to the gate room. He stopped two feet away and faced his superior officer.

"Colonel O'Neill, what the hell ...?"

"He's sick," Jack answered quickly, glancing back over his shoulder to watch the hurried procession disappear around the corner of the corridor. "Carter thinks he's got meningitis."

"Meningitis?" Hammond's eyes grew wide, and he took a few instinctive steps backwards. "She's sure?"

Jack shrugged. "Pretty sure, yeah. She's not that kind of doctor, though."

Hammond filed his concern away momentarily, and moved on quickly. "And the chains, Colonel?"

"Um... yeah. Unfriendly natives, General. Big, ugly, smelly, hairy, unfriendly natives. I don't think they'll be much in the way of allies, sir."

"Well, are the rest of you injured?"

"No, sir," Jack answered with a quick shake of his head. "They knocked Daniel around quite a bit, but the rest of us are fine. They didn't much like Daniel, sir. Some kind of Darwinian thing. They tracked us, ambushed us, dragged us off to some little hole, and chained us up. Then they just left us there."

"Well, did they say anything?"

"Yeah, they said a lot of stuff." Jack looked back over his shoulder again, then back at Hammond. "Sir, can I ...?"

Hammond nodded quickly. "That's good enough for now. We'll debrief fully later. Go, Jack."

"Thank you, sir," Jack returned. He spun around and jogged down the corridor toward the corner the others had disappeared around.

General Hammond was left standing in the door of the gate room, staring at the retreating back of his second-in-command. He started towards the stairs to the control room, but stopped and turned back around.

He watched Jack disappear around the same corner, and then glanced up at the control room. With a deep sigh of resignation, he turned and hurried after the strange procession in the hall.

Janet Fraiser took in Daniel's condition quickly. She was only mildly surprised when Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c waved off the gurney.

"Doc, Daniel needs you. Now!"

"Okay, let's get him to the infirmary ..."

"You'll probably want to put him in an isolation room, Janet," Sam interrupted.

"Isolation?" Janet felt her apprehension rise a notch. "Threat of contagion?"

"We think it's meningitis."

Janet turned to her nurses immediately. "Masks, STAT." The doctor pulled one from her pocket and handed it to Sam. As Sam pressed it to Daniel's mouth and nose, Janet turned to her again. "The airmen in the gate room ...?"

"I moved them all away. No one's been close to him since we've gotten back."

After making certain that Teal'c and Sam had both been masked by nurses, Janet slipped a mask on her own face, then spun on her heel and marched down the corridor toward the isolation units. "You realize that if that is the case, the three of you will have to be quarantined."

"We'll do anything you say, Doc," Jack replied as he ran up behind her, accepting a mask without question. He slipped it over his head quickly before placing his hand back on Daniel's head. "Just make him better."

Janet nodded without turning around. She had seen that same look of haunted desperation in Jack O'Neill's eyes once before, and had no desire to see it again. "Tell me what happened. When did it start?"

"Yesterday," Jack answered, shaking his head. He could hardly believe that it had really been less than thirty-six hours since Daniel had first made mention of the minor ache across his lower spine. "His back... he was limping a bit. He said he'd hurt his back-thought he pulled something."

"So his symptoms have gotten worse rapidly then?"

"Oh, yeah," Jack said with a sigh. "We camped for the night. When he got up this morning, he could barely walk... he was stumbling all over the place. He kept saying he was fine, he was fine."

"Daniel Jackson was not fine," Teal'c added.

Sam shook her head. "By the time we got him to tell us how bad it really was he couldn't even stand up straight. The light hurt his eyes so much he could hardly open them, and his head was hurting so badly that he couldn't see straight when he did."

"How long ago was that?"

"Since he woke up?" Jack asked. "Eighteen hours or so. Since he told us the truth? Twelve, maybe thirteen."

"What other symptoms does he have?"

The door to the Isolation Room opened. Jack and Teal'c stepped through with Daniel, leaving Carter to continue relating Daniel's condition to Janet as they followed.

"Well, the neck and back pain," she began. "Severe headache and sensitivity to light. He's been very tired, irritable, and he kept getting confused. His fever was at least 103 when I checked it earlier."

"Put him there," Janet instructed Teal'c and Jack, indicating the gurney in the middle of the room. She turned back to Sam. "Anything else?"

Sam watched as the two men carefully lay Daniel on the bed. "Um... he threw up once, right before he fell asleep." Sam wiped at her cheeks impatiently. There was no more reason to be afraid. They were home, they were safe, and Daniel was going to be just fine. "He had a seizure ..."

Janet had been busily assessing Daniel's condition, but she snapped her head up at Sam's words. "Seizures? How many?"

"Just one," Sam answered, never taking her eyes from Daniel's face.

"How long did it last?"

"A couple of minutes," Jack replied, stepping back from the gurney after adjusting Daniel's hands and arranging the chains to keep them from hanging over the side. "Not long."

"How long ago?"

"Um... an hour and a half? Maybe two?" Jack locked eyes with Janet, and this time she could not avoid that haunted expression or those trembling hands. "He might have hit his head... we couldn't get to him. I tried... we all tried ..."

"It's all right, Colonel," Janet reassured him as she continued her examination. She pulled a penlight from her pocket and opened one of Daniel's eyelids. "The black eye and bruises, Colonel?"

"He had a bit of a run-in with the natives last night. A whole lot of the natives, from the looks of him." Jack closed his eyes and shook his head. "Damn it, I blew this whole mission from the word go!"

"I'm sure you did everything you could. You brought him home."

Janet jumped when Daniel flinched away from the light and cried out in surprise and pain. "Jack!"

"It's all right, Daniel," Jack answered quickly, stepping back to his side. "It's okay. You're home now. It's just Doc and her silly light."

"Hm... okay." Daniel's voice faded as his eyes fell closed again.

Janet glanced at Jack across the gurney. "He wasn't unconscious?"

"No," Jack answered, shaking his head. "He's asleep... well, was asleep. We had to give him a syrette of morphine, for the pain. And he was so tired ..." Jack let his head fall slightly. "I should have gotten him here sooner!" he declared suddenly. "We should have left the second we noticed the way they looked at him. Damn it, I shouldn't have let them take us!"

Janet leaned down, seeking out the colonel's eyes. "Colonel?" When he looked up at her, she spoke again. "Colonel, you saved his life."

"Daniel Jackson will recover?"

Janet looked from one stricken face to the other. It was clear that the three people standing before her had suffered greatly from having had to watch their friend deteriorate so quickly, and from having been unable to help him when he needed them the most. Telling them the truth now would be devastating, but lying to them was out of the question.

"We'll do the best we can, Teal'c... Colonel, Captain. He's got a good chance."

"What do you need from us?" Sam asked.

Janet sighed and smiled up at them. "Right now, there are a whole slew of tests I need to be doing on Daniel. And I can't risk allowing the three of you back into the base population until I find out exactly what he's got ..."

"Can we stay in here?" Jack asked quickly. "We've already been exposed to whatever this is. And we'll stay out of the way, over there by the wall."

Janet thought about telling them that they'd have to wait in another isolation room, but from the looks on their faces it was clear that asking them to leave would result in a fight she didn't want to have and one that wouldn't have done any of them any good. After briefly considering the possibilities, she nodded.

Jack gave a quick nod of his own, and gestured to Sam and Teal'c to follow him. He backed away from the gurney slowly, not stopping until he felt the wall against his back. Sam and Teal'c moved after him, each taking a place at his side-Sam to his right and Teal'c to his left.

Janet turned her full attention to her patient, and began asking questions of the nurses in the room. "What's his temp?"

"One oh three point five," was the answer.

"BP?"

"One oh eight over seventy. Pulse is eighty-six."

"All right. Draw blood for a standard battery of tests, and put a rush on the CBC. I also want an IgM and a serum glucose. We'll need a CT, an MRI, and an EEG. Get them quickly; I want to get an LP done soon. I'm also going to want a chest X-ray, and a Foley."

"Colonel O'Neill, if you have a moment now?"

The voice came through the speakers in the room, from the microphone in the observation room above. Jack stepped out from the wall and spun around. He found himself looking up at an obviously worried George Hammond.

Jack cringed inwardly. He had known that his short explanation outside the gate room wouldn't satisfy Hammond for long, but he had hoped to have a bit more time to prepare his team. "What can I do for you, General?"

"Well, you could start by telling me everything that's going on ..."

Jack closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Sam spoke up beside him and saved him the trouble of answering.

"Sir, with all due respect, can't the debriefing wait a little longer? It's the middle of the night, and we've only been back a few minutes."

"Captain ..." Hammond began.

"We do not yet know the condition of Daniel Jackson," Teal'c put in.

"Yes, Teal'c, I understand that ..."

"General," Jack interrupted, his voice tight and strained. "I can't think of anything more I could tell you right now. They were big, and ugly, and they smelled bad, sir. And they didn't like Daniel. We just wanted to get him home, and they wouldn't let us leave ..."

"Colonel O'Neill!" Hammond emphasized the rank as he spoke it. He had no intention of pressuring SG-1 into talking before they were ready, but he also had no intention of allowing it to appear that the delay had been anyone's idea but his own. "I understand everything the three of you are saying. And I agree with you. That's why I scheduled the debriefing for 0900 tomorrow, so that you can at least get some sleep."

The three people on the other side of the observation room window lowered their heads, suitably chastised. When Hammond spoke again, his voice was much softer.

"I only wanted to ask if there's anything you need."

Jack looked over his shoulder at Daniel, who had all but disappeared under the swarm of medical personnel and equipment. He heard Janet swearing softly about something interfering with her progress, followed by the sound of scissors slicing through cloth. He glanced at Teal'c and Sam standing on either side of him, and saw his thoughts mirrored in their eyes. Jack shrugged at them, smiled quickly, and raised his eyebrows. Lifting his hands in front of his face, he looked up at Hammond once more.

"Well, General, a pair of bolt cutters might be nice."
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