Medical Records:Property of U.S. Air Force
Subjective Observations:
47 year old Caucasian active duty-Air Force (O-6) male presented
at SGC Infirmary at 1630 hours due to increasing inability to
maintain adequate nutrition intake and sleep. Complaints include:
fainting spells, headache, nausea, pronounced startle response,
increased irritability, and difficulty sleeping due to flashbacks
and nightmares. Patient was accompanied to Infirmary by two SF as
per orders of SGC OIC. Patient has thus far refused medical
recommendations to discuss the cause for psychological
trauma.
Objective Observations:
Upon examination, pupils were equal and reactive, the sclera of
both eyes were red in color. The patient complained of pain when
eyes were examined with a pen light. Temperature: 101.6,
Pulse:120, Respirations: rapid and shallow, BP: 180/94. Facial
bone structure more pronounced, due to recent loss of 30 pounds.
Dark discoloration present under both eyes. No evidence of
previous physical injuries is present. (see previous entry dated
two weeks ago)
Assessment: Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder, accompanied by nausea, insomnia,
flashbacks, nightmares, and pronounced startle
response.
Plan: Treatment will consist of...
***
Dr. Janet Fraiser, Chief
Medical Officer of Stargate Command sighed and gazed wearily
around the Infirmary located deep in the bowels of Cheyenne
Mountain. The Infirmary, her little kingdom, where her word was
law, was much quieter now. The only sound she could hear was the
steady beeping of the EKG monitor affixed to her current
patient.
"Thank God it's quiet,"
she muttered under her breath. Quiet meant that her present
resident was asleep, thanks to the sedatives she had administered
two hours ago. 'A little Ativan IM can do wonders,' she
thought.
She sighed again and
glanced at the watch. It informed her it was 0238 hours.
'Oh-dark-thirty in the morning!' No wonder she felt
beat!
Her eyes wandered back
to the medical file she was up-dating. 'Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder. Such an impersonal sounding phrase. Such innocent words
could never convey what it meant. How it turned horror into a
daily personal movie filled with images engrained in the brain.
Horrible images that numbed the mind and made the eyes of its
victims glaze over. Shell Shock. Yeah, that's what they used to
call it. Well, the word shock certainly fit.' she
mused.
Grimly, she pulled her
eyes and mind back to the task at hand. If she didn't finish
up-dating these charts, she'd never get out of here. The medical
chart she was presently working on was pretty thick and getting
thicker by the minute.
The chart's name said it
belonged to Colonel Jonathan (Jack) O'Neill. His chart kept
getting bigger every time the owner stepped through the Stargate.
And this was volume III. 'Whew! Not a good sign.'
It wasn't that the
afore-mentioned Colonel was a complainer. Hell no! In fact, he
was just the opposite. She smiled and shook her head as she
remembered the time he'd called her a Napoleonic Power Monger.
'Yeah right!' She half chuckled to herself as she remembered the
thud that sounded as he had hit the floor, face first, beside his
bed. 'So much for that escape attempt. Jack had definitely had
that one coming to him. He couldn't even stand on his feet, and
he had been trying to sneak out of the Infirmary. Napoleonic
Power Monger, indeed!'
Her mind drifted back to
the cause of that attempted "jail break". Daniel Jackson hadn't
come back from that mission, and Jack was worried sick about him.
So the combination of his fear for his friend, and the guilt he
felt for leaving him behind had pushed him to make a stab at
escaping from her clutches early. That hadn't really surprised
her. One of Jack's most firmly held rules was, "We don't leave
anyone behind."
Her mind shied away from
the reason Jack felt so strongly about this. She had read his
chart. Hell, that was part of her job. As CMO, she was duty-bound
to familiarize herself with the past medical histories of all
personnel assigned to SGC. Still, his chart didn't make for
pleasant reading. Four months as a prisoner of war in Iraq would
give anyone nightmares, flashbacks, and everything else that goes
along with experiencing such traumatic events. Well, I guess
that's one way of putting it. Yeah, I'll bet those "events" were
traumatic.
Janet sighed again, and
grimly pulled her attention back to finishing the notes in Jack's
chart. At this rate, she's never finish, and she still needed to
complete her report to General Hammond. No one keeps a General
waiting, not even the Chief Medical Officer.
'Let's see, where was I?
The plan. Which treatment should I try this time?' she asked
herself. 'Oh yeah, and just how am I supposed to explain how
those broken bones of his had healed so quickly?' The General has
already been hounding for an answer to that one.
She was still trying to
figure it out, and it rankled her to admit that she didn't have a
clue. It would have made her look real good to be able to say
that her skills as a Doctor had repaired him. But she knew she
would have been lying to herself and everyone else, if she had
taken the credit for that miracle.
Giving up on the charts
for now, she tiptoed over to the isolation room where her
"miracle patient" was lying in bed. The General had recommended
he be placed in an isolated room for privacy, and she had agreed
that it would be a good idea. She moved to stand at his bedside.
He was sleeping, at last. She placed her hand on his forehead to
brush his hair back. His skin felt dry, normal. The fever was
gone; he was breathing easily on his own.
Jack turned his head
away from her touch and groaned in his sleep. "Please stop," he
muttered. "Hurts."
As if that was a signal,
he suddenly became more agitated, his body beginning to thrash
about on the bed. "No! No! You can't do this!" he moaned, as his
head continued to jerk from side to side on the
pillow.
Janet drew back quickly,
dodging Jack's wildly waving arms. She turned to the bedside
table and efficiently picked up the vial of Ativan and a new
needle. Drawing out the required dosage, she gave the syringe a
practiced flick with her finger to remove any air bubbles. In one
fluid motion, she inserted the needle into to his IV line and
injected the sedative.
In the meantime, Jack's
level of agitation was growing. His body was now writhing on the
bed and his moans were growing louder. "No, I can't. Please
stop," he whimpered.
Suddenly, he sat
straight up in bed and screamed, "Oh, God! No!"
Janet stood riveted to
the spot. She realized she was holding her breath, afraid to make
a sound. She let her breath out, slowly. It came out as a long,
drawn-out sigh.
Trying to talk over the
sound of her own rapidly beating heart, she asked,
"Colonel?"
At the sound of her
voice, Jack's head whipped around to look at her. His eyes were
wide open, glazed, and seemed to be looking straight through
her.
Again she asked,
"Colonel O'Neill? It's Dr. Fraiser. You're in the Infirmary.
You're safe now," she crooned soothingly.
She noted that his
respirations had slowed somewhat, and his clenched fists had
begun to relax. 'Yep, right on schedule. Ativan will do the trick
every time. Of course, it helps if the dose is enough to knock
over an elephant,' she mused. As the sedative continued to do its
work, Jack's eyes blinked. He started, as if seeing Janet for the
first time. He ran his hand shakily through his sweaty gray
hair.
"Doc?" he asked
fearfully. 'Good, he's with us now,' she thought.
"Sir, you're in the
Infirmary. You're safe now," she repeated. Her words seemed to
calm him somewhat. He rubbed furiously at both eyes with his
fists.
"Oh God," he whispered.
"That one was a doozy."
"Sir, look at me," she
ordered, with the hope that she would regain his attention. Her
words had the desired effect on her patient.
"Can you tell me about
it? It would help if you did. You know it would, Colonel," she
said.
"Crap," he said watching
her out of the corner of his eye. "You know I would have to shoot
you if I did, Major," he replied stubbornly. 'Maybe he could pull
rank on her,' he thought hopefully. At that, Doctor Janet Fraiser
stiffened, crossed her arms in front her, and glared down at her
recalcitrant patient.
"Colonel O'Neill!" she
bellowed. "If you insist on disrupting MY Infirmary time after
time with your shrieking, I will have no choice but to take my
concerns to OUR Commanding Officer. Just what do you think
General Hammond will have to say about that?" Eyes blazing, Janet
continued to tower over the subject of her ire.
Jack blinked several
times before answering. Putting on his best "little boy lost"
face, he stammered.
"Uhh, that I should be
discharged from your tender care and sent home to recuperate?"
Judging by the sound of Janet's foot tapping on the floor, and
the fire in her eyes, his ploy wasn't working. 'Crap,' thought
Jack. He wouldn't have been surprised if Hammond's face suddenly
appeared over Janet's rigid shoulder.
He took a deep,
cleansing breath, as he ruthlessly forced the horrifying memories
back down into the darkest corner of his mind. 'It was better
that he kept them hidden,' he resolved. Continuing her attempts
to draw him out, Janet uttered just one word.
"Colonel?" Seeing that
she had his attention again, she added. "So, what's it going to
be, COLONEL O'Neill? Do I go up OUR chain of command to GENERAL
Hammond, or will you talk to me?"
At that, Jack's eyes
widened and his fingers started drumming nervously on the
sheets.
Jesus, I think she means
it this time, he thought His mind was racing, frantically trying
to find a way to avoid divulging the latest in a long string of
nastiness. He knew General Hammond would NOT be a happy camper if
he heard an unfavorable report about him from his CMO. 'Double
crap.'
He glanced at her again
before looking down. "I don't know if you could take it if I told
you," he confessed. "I mean, those snakes can get pretty rough
out there, Doc" he added, hoping she would buy it.
Janet responded by
rolling her eyes and retorting, "Colonel, may I remind you that I
KNOW those snakes can get rough. Just who the hell do you think
cleans you up and records every single bruise, cut, burn, broken
bone, or whatever else you can get afflicted with in your chart?
Hmmm?" 'God, that man can be so exasperating,' she
thought.
Jack sneaked a peek
towards her, unwilling to meet her eyes. 'Yep, She is really
pissed now.' He let out a long breath and looked at the ceiling.
'If I don't look at her, I'll be OK. Yep, just peachy. The
cesspool I have for memories won't come spilling out if I just
don't look at her.'
"I'm waiting for an
answer, Colonel. And, I don't have all day." Colonel O'Neill
continued to stare at the ceiling, counting the tiles to distract
himself.
"Look at me, dammit!"
His concentration broken by the outburst, his head and eyes
jerked automatically towards the author of the curse. In doing
so, his eyes were caught like a deer caught in the headlights of
an on-rushing car. Inside, he could feel the barriers he had
erected to keep the darkness in beginning to weaken.
"Oh, God," he moaned.
"Don't do this, please."
Janet could see the
panic in his face. She knew reliving those awful days would hurt
like hell. She was equally certain they would eat him up from the
inside if he didn't find a way to release them. Those remembered
horrors were like a poison in his system, not allowing him to
sleep or eat. She couldn't stop now when he was so close to
finally letting it all out.
He could feel the dam he
had erected to hide away those thoughts beginning to
crack.
"Oh, God. Can't you just
leave me alone?" he whimpered. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if
that could prevent the dam inside his head from
crumbling.
Janet could see beads of
sweat pop out on his face, making his skin glisten. His hands
were clenched into fists and were rhythmically pounding the bed.
She didn't like to see her friend in such pain, but knew she
couldn't stop now. Remembering to keep out of reach of any sudden
punches, she decided to push harder.
"Colonel O'Neill!" she
barked. He jerked and involuntarily looked at her again. His body
seemed to relax and his eyes glazed over.
"Ok, you win, Doc," he
said softly. "But don't blame me if you toss your cookies over
this," he warned as he tried to smile. Janet nodded at
him.
"Don't worry about me.
Spill it, flyboy!" She waited, and said in a quieter tone, "Mind
if I sit down, Sir?" Jack's eyes lost that glassy stare as he
answered her question by nodding. He took a deep
breath.
"You think you can
really handle all this?" he asked, hoping for a last-minute
reprieve. Janet cocked her head at him.
"Have I ever lied to
you, Sir? Come on, let's get this over with so we can both get
out of here. That is, unless you like it here," she taunted.
"Let's see, that special shipment of needles I order just for
Colonels who are a pain in the mik'ta just came in. And I'm just
dying to try them out on someone."
'Crap, not those big,
honking, needles,' he thought. His cheeks were still sore from
the last injections. He glanced in her direction again. 'Nope,
she was still there.' This was so not his day. He could feel the
beginning of a headache coming on. He pinched the bridge of his
nose and let out another long breath.
Janet could see him
struggling for composure as he confronted his inner demons.
'Well, the Ativan should help a little,' she thought.
"You remember how this
crap all started, don't you?" he asked.
Yeah," she agreed, "It
was about two months ago at that barbeque, wasn't it?" General
Hammond had invited the SGC staff officers over for some
well-earned R&R.
He ginned and
nodded.
"That must have been
something to see. One minute I'm sitting drinking a beer, chewing
on a hotdog, and then poof! I'm gone in a flash of white light
and beamed up to Thor's ship. Thor even brought along my beer,"
he chuckled. "I would have loved to have seen the look on
Hammond's face." Janet chuckled, remembering back to that
day.
"I thought I was going
to have to do the Heimlich maneuver on him. His mouth dropped
open, and he just about choked on his hotdog. Of course, I was
doing a pretty good fish imitation myself, you know. I think we
all were. Can't that guy ever give us any warning before he zaps
you away?" Jack's smile faded away as he continued to
remember.
"Nah, he likes it to be
a surprise. Especially to the zappee." He sighed as he continued.
"Thor was all business that day. It seems he was worried about
me. He said he'd heard about the death glider problem, and he
wasn't at all thrilled about it. He bawled me out for awhile, and
said I should be more careful. He told me the Asgard couldn't
take the risk of me kicking the bucket somewhere cause I was too
important." 'Gee, you could have fooled me,' he
thought.
"Anyway, to make a long
story short, he put a locator beacon doohickey in my arm. He said
it would tell them when I was in trouble. It's supposed to have
something to do with my blood chemistry, I guess. I've still got
it, see?" He raised his arm to show it to Janet. "No one can
figure out how it works, and it's been driving Carter crazy," he
continued with an impish grin.
Turning serious again,
he continued. "You know, Thor never did tell me what it is that
makes me so damn important. He still hasn't."
"So, after he injected
that beacon thing in my arm, he zapped me back down to the party.
I did invite him to come along too, but he turned me down. I
guess he had better things to do than eat hot dogs and drink
beer."
Janet laughed to
herself, Only Jack O'Neill would invite a member of the Asgard to
a backyard barbeque! She looked at his face. He wasn't looking at
her again.
Instead, he was back to
the "gazing at the ceiling" routine. 'That's not a good sign,'
she thought.
Reviewing her own
memories of that day, she realized he hadn't returned to the
party. In fact, no one had known where he was until he appeared
in his quarters at SGC the next day, not even the
General.
'He's hiding something.
Better confront him now and get it all out in the open,' she
resolved firmly. She took a chance and leaned a little closer to
Jack.
"If your visit with Thor
was no big deal, why were you gone so long, Sir? You were missing
for over twenty-four hours. Just what are you leaving out, huh?"
she asked in her best "I'm the Mom here, so you'd better spill
it" voice.
Startled, Jack whipped
his head around to find her boring a hole in his head with her
eyes. And he could see those eyes knew he was trying to bullshit
her. He swallowed hard and tore his eyes away.
"I told him no," he
mumbled.
"What? I'm sorry, Sir, I
really didn't catch that last one. You're going to have to spell
it out to me."
"I said, I told him no!"
he shouted. "I told him to keep his fucking locator thingy and
that I didn't want it," he shouted. Seeing the puzzled,
incredulous look on Janet's face, he turned away
again.
"I spent most of the day
arguing with him," he continued in a lower tone. "Can you imagine
that? Jack O'Neill spending the day arguing with a guy who looks
like something out of a low-budget science fiction movie from the
fifties. A short, gray guy who knows how to build big, powerful
spaceships that can zap unsuspecting humans off the planet. A
skinny-assed guy who can ruin your life, just when you least
expect it. I yelled at him, called him names, kicked the wall,
everything I could think of, to talk him out of it. And do you
know why?" He took a deep breath before continuing.
"Because I knew that
once I got back with the news about that locator thing in my arm,
I could never live a normal life again. As soon as I told anyone
that the Asgard thought I was important, I was
screwed."
"Hell, once the NID
found out, I knew they would be just itching to get me into one
of their labs to find out just why O'Neill was suddenly so damned
important. I spelled it out to Thor in detail. I pointed out to
him that they could have me sliced up before anyone even knew I
was missing." Jack stopped to wipe the sweat off his face with
his bed sheet. He was dripping with it and had already soaked his
hospital scrubs.
"I begged him. Thor, old
buddy, please don't sentence me to this living hell! I explained
to him that every bad guy in the universe would want to know just
why O'Neill was suddenly so fucking important to the Asgard. They
would say, hmm, maybe O'Neill got some more stuff downloaded into
his brain. Let's slice him open and find out."
"And you know that the
NID would hear about this bit of juicy gossip five minutes after
I came back. Once the NID knew, then it was only a matter of time
until the snakes found out. You do remember, don't you, Janet,
that the NID has this nasty habit of snaking their own guys,
thinking they can control them. Even I know that's fucking
impossible." Nervously, he rubbed the scar on the nape of his
neck and shivered. He ran a shaking hand through his hair again
before continuing.
"The minute Thor put
that beacon in my arm, I knew any chance I had to live a normal
life was over. It was as if he'd painted a big, honking, bull's
eye with neon lights on my forehead and sent out engraved
invitations! Thor just told me that they would be able to tell
when I was in trouble and beam me up to their ship, or something.
If they happened to be in the neighborhood, I guess," he said
morosely.
"I told him not to do
it, Janet. I begged him not to. He just said they couldn't afford
to lose me. Hell, I even demanded that Thor explain to me in
simple words about why I was suddenly so damned important to
them. Do you know what he told me, Doc? He wouldn't tell me
squat! Something about how I wouldn't be able to understand it
yet. Well, he's right about that. I DON'T understand it! And I
DON"T like it! Believe you me, the Asgard are definitely off my
Christmas list!" Janet could see that the Colonel was on a roll
and had a lot more anger to vent.
"Hell, he might as well
have had a sign taped to my back saying "Attention all bad guys,
O'Neill, the famous Tau'ri, has a secret in his head. Come and
get it."
"I explained all that to
Thor. I begged him not to do it, but his mind was already made
up," he said tiredly. "Crap, why else do you think I had him beam
me back to SGC? Thanks to his skinny gray ass, I couldn't even
stop at the local gas station to fill up without putting other
people in danger. Can you imagine what would have happened if
those NID headhunters tried to grab me there, or on my way to
work? Cuz I would defend myself, have no doubt about that," he
stated soberly. "But at what cost? Who else would be hurt while I
was fighting to stay alive?" He paused and looked at
her.
"Didn't you notice that
I spent all my time here at SGC after that? That I never left,
not even to look at the stars at night? That I never even sent
Daniel out for pizza? Didn't you notice?" he asked again. "I
COULDN'T leave."
"When I briefed the
General about what had happened he was pretty upset too. He
called me a security risk. Me, Colonel Jack O'Neill, a damn
security risk! And it was all Thor's fault!"
"Of course, I had to
break the news to Carter, Daniel, and Teal'c. They didn't like
what had happened at all. I could see that they were worried
about me. Then, they started treating me different. They wouldn't
let me go anywhere alone. I swear they took turns hovering over
me. I told them to stop it, but they told me that the General had
ordered them to protect me. God, I hated that."
"The way Teal'c handled
his babysitting chores helped a little. He's a soldier and we
think a lot alike. We worked it out so that he would sit in my
quarters doing his kel-no-reem thing when I was trying to get
some sleep in my bunk. Yeah, trying, and failing. You know that I
didn't sleep much those days. The nightmares, real
bad."
He paused and looked
down before continuing.
"You know how I feel
about being cooped up, Doc. I wanted to go out and do something,
anything to force the NID to show their hand. I've always hated
waiting. But the General threatened to sic a body guard on me if
I so much as looked like I wanted to catch that elevator to the
top. Can you honestly see me with a body guard? ME? I'm supposed
to do that stuff!"
Janet sat still, not
saying anything. The General had given her the "short version" of
Jack's visit with Thor soon after he had been debriefed. She
remembered how she had noted in his chart how the normally
vibrant, active Colonel had changed since then. She'd given him
an exam every other day after his visit with Thor, General's
orders. The medical notes had told the story of how much his
physical and mental condition had deteriorated over the weeks of
his confinement at SGC. He'd become increasingly nervous and
jumpy. He started losing weight because he wasn't eating or
sleeping right.
Janet dragged her
attention back to the man lying on the bed in front of her. She
could see that Jack wasn't finished yet.
"The Pentagon informed
Hammond that my going out on missions with my team was out of the
question, at least for awhile. They all agreed that it was just
too damn risky. And to tell you the truth, I had to agree with
them." He paused and looked at Janet. "Just how the hell was I
supposed to be leading my team, when I was such a big, fat, juicy
target, huh? How was I supposed to go through that gate knowing I
was putting my friends in danger?"
"The NID and the Goa'uld
did find out, didn't they, Sir? The word did get out, just like
you figured it would," added Janet as she started putting what
little she did know together.
"Yeah, I guess you could
say it did, didn't it?" He replied softly. "Only we didn't know
it had gotten out, or that the bounty on my head had gotten so
high, did we, Doc?"
Janet whispered "No,
Colonel, I guess we didn't. Did General Hammond have any
idea?"
"No, I really don't
think he did. I mean, he wouldn't sell me down the river like
that. After all, he'd been working overtime just to keep me off
the slice and dice table at NID. You know that couldn't have been
a walk in the park. Those guys play dirty. Senator Kinsey may be
a slime ball, but he has a lot of power where it
counts."
"So, SG-1 took a chance
and went off world, anyway," Janet prompted.
"Yeah. The General and I
figured that any interest in me would have died down. After all,
a month had gone by without me building any strange doohickeys
and I wasn't even talking weird. We figured that I was over the
worst of any threat from the bad guys, so he gave the OK for SG-1
to gate to that planet." Jack continued.
"We'd been to their
planet before. In fact, I'd nicknamed it BR 549 cause they did a
lot of farming." At her questioning look, he explained, "You
know, from that corn-ball TV Show from the 60's with all those
country hillbillies and cornfields." Seeing that she still didn't
get it, he said, "Well, I guess you had to be there. See, this
planet had cornfields out the whazoo! Miles of 'em."
"Anyway, the people on
Planet BR 549 seemed real friendly. We had made some good
contacts with the guys in their High Council. I surprised the
hell out of Daniel when I spoke fluent German with them. I
considered those people to be my friends." He chuckled,
remembering how Danny's mouth had dropped open when he took over
the introductions. "Hell, I even taught some of the kids how to
play ball."
"So we thought it would
be OK for SG-1 to carry out the negotiations for a treaty when
they asked for us. The plan was that we would give them some of
our technology, and they would give us some naquada. Everyone
would go home happy. A nice, easy, meet and greet. Let SG-1 dress
up spiffy in Class A's for a regular dog and pony show. Yep, go
impress the natives, Jack. Go play catch with those nice kids,
Jack. A piece of cake, Jack. Yeah, sure ya betcha." His voice
trailed off at the last.
"But it wasn't a piece
of cake, was it, Sir? They were waiting for you, weren't they?"
asked Janet.
"Yeah, Doc, they were
waiting for us. We never stood a chance."
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