Chapter Eight

"And wait till you hear this... I think that it's the most interesting part," Jonas paused with one finger upraised before he continued. "Ἄδμηθ', ὁρᾷς γὰρ τἀμὰ πράγμαθ' ὡς ἔχει λέξαι θέλω σοι πρὶν θανεῖν ἃ βούλομαι ἐγώ σε πρεσβεύουσα κἀντὶ τῆς ἐμῆς..."

'Crap.' Jack scrubbed his face with both hands and then clapped them over his ears in frustration.

'Homer in English is bad enough, but in Greek it bores twice as long. The only Homer I care about is Simpson. And this ain't that. Not by a long shot.'

"Enough! For crying out loud, what do you want from me?" Jack spat out, his patience, thin at the best of times, was like tissue paper now and easily rent. Jonas' reciting of Homer's Iliad in the original was more torture then any man could endure. 'No wonder those Greeks were so tough,' Jack thought. 'They had to be to sit through that crap voluntarily.'

And thanks to that damned download, Jack understood 'way' too much of the damned stuff even in Greek. Like anyone else he liked a good adventure, but there was such a thing as too much elaboration and the ancient Greek's were masters of that, and even worse was all that kowtowing to their crowd of gods. Especially now that he knew that crop of gods were nothing more than snakes in people clothing.

Jonas smiled that smile that turned his stomach and pushed the travel mug full of Naquadah Nectar forward. Jack couldn't stop his reflexive flinch.

It was pretty damned clear what price he'd have to pay. He was actually starting to feel a bit better; the nurses hadn't been in to view his crappy ass for almost two hours. Course he'd not spewed anything for just as long either, so no crappy ass to view. Though right now he'd not complain about having a little Vaseline jelly applied, that had long since rubbed off onto his gown and the sheets, his cheeks were feeling painful once more.

Amazing when one could find creature comfort in what was essentially an extremely humiliating procedure.

"And if I do?" Jack forced out from between clenched teeth, really not into giving in, especially not to Jonas.

"No more Greek" Jonas smirked.

If Jack hadn't felt so awful, he would've taken great pleasure in wiping that smirk off Quinn's face, as if was, he only grimaced and pulled the mug toward him. He hefted it in his hand and winced when he heard its contents slosh inside the cup. "All of it?"

"All of it," Jonas confirmed and turned up his thousand kilowatt smile a notch.

"All of it, he says," Jack muttered before he took a cautious sip. He swallowed it and his stomach roiled in complaint. "Okay, but will you be ready to catch?"

"Catch?" Jonas looked a little less confident.

"Um hm," Jack smiled and took another swallow with predictable results as his stomach gurgled its protest. If he had to puke... and other things, at least he could put it to good use. Oh yes, Jonas was going to pay. Too bad he wasn't in the position to enjoy it more.

His long fingers curled around the cup as he gazed off into the distance, lost in thought.

As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, Jonas was doing him a favor by blabbing on ad nauseam in Greek about some long-dead hero who didn't know any other way than to kowtow to a god who could've cared less whether he lived or died. It did provide him with something else to occupy his mind - other than his own rather considerable health problems. And once he'd accepted that, maybe - just maybe - Fraiser really did have a cure here; he still had a problem, a more permanent problem, and one without a cure. This possibility was yet another reason to keep his team, especially Carter, from seeing him.

He wiggled uncomfortably as his chapped butt-cheeks rasped against the sheets. He'd been exposed to radiation, and considering that he'd been practically sitting on top of the source, that meant that certain parts of his anatomy - parts that were near and dear to his heart for obvious reasons - parts that defined who and what he was - might have been adversely affected... severely affected. As in roasted - like chestnuts over hot coals.

It was no great secret that exposure to radiation made a man sterile, that particular scenario had been done to death in sci-fi thrillers in the 50's and 60's. But when it might have happened to you... well that was a whole other kettle of fish - the kind that had three eyes.

At first, he'd managed to keep that particular worry safely tucked away in the nether regions of his brain, the same place he stored all other things that bothered him. Usually, because he couldn't - or wouldn't - do anything about them, those nameless worries and memories just stayed there, tucked away and didn't bother him unless he - or circumstances beyond his control - let them out. Circumstances like now, he admitted sourly to himself.

But when he'd awakened for several days in a row and noticed a distinct lack of activity in 'Carter Territory,' so to speak... well that particular worry had busted out of the box he'd locked it into and had been making a downright nuisance of itself ever since.

Before Doc had found a cure for him, he'd not worried about it overly much because, if he were dead, the state of his manhood was a moot point. And then when he'd started the treatments, he'd been too miserable to care whether all his other parts were in working order.

Terminal diarrhea and constant puking up everything but your toenails will do that to a person. But now that things had slowed down a bit in that department, at least for the time being, he had time and cause for that particular worry to resurface. And it did with a vengeance.

As much as he loved and respected Samantha Carter, the last thing he wanted was to saddle her with a husband who was less than half a man. And if he couldn't perform in the love department - and give her lots of babies... Well let's just say that she deserved to have a man who could give her all that and more. So it was just as well that she not be allowed to see him. After all, it was for her own good.

"Colonel?"

The voice of Jonas seemed to come from out of nowhere and Jack jerked in response. As a result, the cup flew out of his fingers, spun to the edge of his table, and then teetered for an instant on the edge.

"Crap!"

Jack's jaw dropped as he watched the cup seem to hover in mid-air, and then, as if in slow motion, it toppled toward the floor.

Jonas lunged for the falling cup but was too late. It hit the floor and then bounced. When it hit the tiles again, its momentum rolled it into the corner.

Jonas glared daggers at Jack who peeked over the edge of his bed, a look of utter surprise on his face. "It was an accident, I swear." Jack waved his arms and tried his best to look innocent, mainly because he was... this time.

Jonas shrugged and smiled as he picked himself up off the floor and retrieved the cup. "Lucky for you it didn't spill." His smile grew wider as he placed the cup on the table in front of Jack. "And you're past due for your next dose."

Jack's stomach gurgled loudly as he winced and picked up the cup. "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you."

***

"Major Carter?"

Sam's head popped up from her scrutiny of the circuits laid out on her work surface, McKay stood in the doorway. Not quite in and not quite out, he flinched at the glare she threw him.

Sam didn't moderate her expression, but it was more severe than her thoughts, mainly because Rodney was visibly gathering his courage. No sound emerged from his working lips, one hand fluttered to the right, like a distraction and his eyes fixed on the left-hand wall.

"Well, I... I... guess I deserve that. Ah, I... I... " he closed the distance between them, in short little jerks forward, as if he were being reeled in by a rope, reluctantly, but he was 'very' careful to keep the worktable between her and he.

By this time Sam was rather enjoying his discomfit, in her opinion he had it coming. How dare he think so little of Jack O'Neill, he hardly knew him. He had excellent genes. She just bet Rodney's weren't as good; he probably had something essential missing that Jack had in spades. She smirked at the thought.

Rodney took the smirk as an invitation.

"I assume I said or did something that offended you. Just my quirky sense of humor. Sorry," McKay beamed as if the smirk had been his absolution still totally clueless about the dangerous ground he trod. It seemed as if he believed that if someone actually spoke to him after one of his 'little' offenses, all was forgiven. Yeah right.

"I didn't know you had a sense of humor," Sam replied tonelessly, wondering just how thick his social rhinoceros hide was.

"I do," the superior genius retorted, that self-satisfied little half-grin, half-smile firmly in place. The one Sam would love to push half of a freshly cut lemon into to see just how it affected him.

"In your opinion," she was finding it difficult not to burst out laughing; the man was glutton for punishment - either that or totally oblivious to what she actually thought of him.

Rodney looked both shocked and offended, and then smiled. Sam knew he thought she was joking and struggled to keep her professional persona firmly in place on her face. He really didn't have a sense of humor. Too bad he didn't realize it.

"I've brought you a peace offering. Just a little something that I whipped up - a spur of the moment thing."

It was amazing just how fast that arrogance of his reasserted itself. He held out a small box to Sam. He waited half a beat too long before it dawned on him she wasn't going to hold out her hand for it. He made a show of placing it within her reach while keeping as much distance as he could - the worktable still firmly bolted to the floor between them.

Sam was determined to make him squirm, so she just stared at him.

"You going to open it?" Rodney inquired after an embarrassing long period of non-reaction from Sam. He'd spent it looking at her... but only flitting over her face... his eyes kept dropping to her breasts and stopping there - fascinated; like a hormone-driven teen. He reddened when she pointedly picked up a folder and held it to her chest.

Sam shook her head and enjoyed his confusion.

"Ah... let me explain," Rodney stammered, looking like a puppy eager to please, somehow hoping no one would notice the stinking pile he knew was a mistake. He reached over and snatched the box back to his side of the table, opened it and removed what looked like a caplet-type pill or pellet. He placed it exactly between them, close to his edge of the table. He rattled the box; it was full of the little white pellets.

"These are radiation sensors," he explained with an ingratiating smirk, "It occurred to me that we have no way to measure the reduction of particle decay in Colonel O'Neill." Rodney picked up another pellet from the box and pantomimed his next words, "He just swallows a couple of these every few hours. They travel though his digestive system, they will turn color according to how much short-ray radiation they encounter. I've even calibrated a color system that will tell us fairly accurately his current level of internal radioactivity."

"You really want to make it up to me?" Sam frowned, deliberately coating her words heavily with doubt.

"Ah, yes," McKay looked disappointed, but also hopeful.

"If you really want to do that - make it up to me that is - there is a way."

Rodney smiled broadly, confident, happy. Once again master of all he surveyed. He nodded emphatically yes.

"Then see Doctor Fraiser and implement their use."

"That's all? I do that and we're square?"

"Yes."

McKay lit with joy as he snatched up the box and literally skipped from the room.

'Holy Hannah', Sam thought with chagrin. 'Just how do I get out of this one?'

On one hand, the ethical virtuous part of her felt rather bad about taking advantage of him like that. She had a pretty good idea that Rodney hadn't really thought through the whole process his pellet would go through. That what went in - would have to come out. She felt certain that he hadn't thought through the 'out' part . . . and what that would entail.

The other part of her, the female genius who'd had to put up with his social blunders and faux pas remembered how he'd managed to get on her last good nerve - how he'd stared at her chest just a second ago. Not to mention his remark about the colonel's genetic potential.

That part of her urged her to forget feeling sorry for the buffoon and that if he had to shift through some shit to find his pellets; well he had it coming to him; especially since she was pretty certain that Dr. Fraiser would delegate that particular duty to the creator of the pellets.

Sam snorted as she remembered what he'd said . . . and what she'd thought he'd said that day in the Infirmary - penis instead of pianist. That day seemed to have happened to so long ago and to someone else. That had been before the colonel - Jack - had gotten so sick.

Yes, getting even with Rodney McKay was just too easy. And she had to admit to feeling a guilty pleasure about it. And she had the feeling that the colonel would be proud of her.

Sam's exultant smile lit up her face and eyes in a way that had been absent. Her day was just getting better and better.

***

Janet smiled grimly as she tiptoed from her listening post outside Colonel O'Neill's private room. With Jonas handling her most seriously ill patient - at least for now, she had some free time on her hands. Time she could spend in putting her feet up and maybe catching up on the mail that currently resided in her overflowing in-box.

She'd barely had time to eat or sleep lately, but she happened to know that one particular letter on her desk came from her colleague in Area 51. Due to the colonel's serious medical problems, she hadn't had the chance to open it - that is until now.

Once out of earshot of the colonel's room, her heels tapped out a staccato beat on the tiled floors as she headed for her office at a fast trot. There was no telling how long it would take for the colonel to start having problems again, even with Jonas' best efforts, and she couldn't wait to see what was in the letter.

Once in her office, she closed the door, her signal to the staff that they'd better have a pretty damned good reason to disturb her. Her staff had been well trained; they would give her the privacy she needed.

Various other reports and forms were piled on top of the letter and she brushed them aside with barely concealed impatience. She hadn't been this excited about opening anything since she'd gotten her first Mother's Day present from Cassie.

She hooked a chair with one foot and pulled it toward her as she sat the letter on the desk in front of her. 'Hmm. I wonder what it's about?' she wondered as she slid her finger under the flap.

"Dammit" she cursed to herself when her finger was promptly sliced by the sharp edge of the paper. She stuck the stinging digit inside her mouth for a moment as the other hand opened the middle drawer. "There it is," she muttered as she spotted the letter opener.

She slid the opener under the edge of the flap and sliced along the upper edge of the letter. Then she tipped the letter up and a piece of paper slid onto her desk blotter. Janet picked it up and was just beginning to read it.

"Doctor Fraiser?" Rodney McKay stood in her open doorway. She'd been so engrossed in the letter that she hadn't heard her door open. 'You must be more tired than you thought, Janet. Something like that doesn't usually get by you.'

Irritation at the interruption made her words brusque and to the point, "Don't you ever knock?"

Rodney stood in the doorway, stunned. "Oh... ah... did I interrupt you?"

"The door was closed for a reason." Janet nailed him with a glare that had sent nurses scurrying for cover and cowed Air Force officers.

"Oh, it was?" He shifted from one foot to the other, as if uncertain what to do next. When he held out a small box, it was done with a sense of desperation. "I brought you this." He paused when she didn't move to take it. "Sam... I mean Major Carter said I should bring it to you."

Janet sighed and slipped her unread letter back into its envelope. "Well, since you're already here, you might as well come in." She beckoned with her hand. "Come on in. I don't bite... much."

When he was standing next to her desk, she looked up and smiled, very aware that she hadn't invited him to sit down. That had been no accident. Surprisingly, he hadn't tried to. It probably helped that the only other chair available was piled high with charts.

"Now, what was so important that you had to barge into my office?"

Rodney lips stretched in an ingratiating smile, exactly the wrong tact to try with her, though his social skills being what they were, she figured he wouldn't pick up on it until it was too late.

"I have something for the colonel, a little something that I whipped up in my spare time."

"Oh?" Janet wasn't giving an inch. It wouldn't hurt to make him sweat a little. She'd heard about his ill thought - and considering who he's said it to, very dangerous - remark.

He held up the box and shook it, which made the contests rattle. "These pellets are radiation sensors. He, Colonel O'Neill I mean - swallows them, they travel through his digestive system and when they come out, they'll tell us how much radiation is left in his body."

Janet remained silent but her mind was working furiously. Rodney took her silence badly and launched into an explanation. "I worked out a color-code that will tell us how much short-ray radiation is left..."

Janet waved her hands to get his attention. "Wait a minute."

"What?" Rodney looked stunned, either that or constipated, and knowing Rodney, that was quite likely.

"You're saying that these pellets will show us how much radiation activity occurred during their transit of the colonel's body once they're expelled?"

Rodney blinked as if he were checking her words for some hidden meaning. "That's what I said."

Janet sprang to her feet, grabbed Rodney's face in both hands, and deposited a kiss on his lips. "That's just what I needed!"

Then she dropped her hands to her hips and stood, eyeball-to-eyeball and glared at him. "And if you ever barge into my office like that again, Mister Rodney McKay..."

When he flinched away from her, she knew she'd hit home. "Well, let's just say that you'll need a full exam and shots before you leave for Russia."

Rodney's face turned pasty white as his Adam's apple bobbed nervously in his throat.

"That means a prostate exam and all your shots. Do you get my drift?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Rodney squeaked out, and then he dropped the box of pellets on her desk and beat all present speed records as he exited her office

***

Jonas kept his smile firmly in place as he watched Colonel O'Neill retch helplessly on the bed in front of him. Just in the nick of time, He'd shoved the basin under the man's chin, just in time for the majority of the contents of his stomach to be spewed into the basin.

As he watched, Jack curled into a ball, one arm wrapped around his stomach as he heaved once again. Then he collapsed back onto the pillow, obviously spent from the effort.

Jonas dabbed at Colonel O'Neill's face with a damp cloth he'd found on the bedside table, part of the supplies Dr. Fraiser had said he'd need. Now he understood exactly why. And he also understood the colonel's earlier cryptic comment about being ready to catch.

"Sorry," Jack gasped. "Didn't... do... on purpose..."

"I know you didn't, colonel." Jonas assured him as he continued to wipe the remnants of the naquadah solution from his chin and arm where it'd splattered.

"Is there anything else I can do?" Jonas looked worried. "To make you more comfortable, I mean?"

Jack sighed and shook his head. "More?"

"Why don't you let me take care of this first? Then we'll see if you need anymore. Okay?" Jonas gingerly lifted the half-full basin and set it on the table. "I'll let Dr. Fraiser know you still can't keep it down."

Jack nodded but said nothing, his pants overly loud in the room. Jonas took a second to study his team leader, in the days since he'd piloted the X-302, he'd seemed to have shrunk to a mere shadow of his former self.

His ribcage showed beneath the pressure bandages and his frame, always lanky, was whip thin now. The skin on his face seemed papery thin, stretched taut over a skull-like visage that seemed to consist of nothing more than bruised and blotchy skin. His wispy hair looked brittle and stuck up at odd angles that seemed to defy his usual orderly manner.

The only part of his face that seemed alive were his eyes, which burned with an unnatural fury, as if incensed at the radiation that seemed determined to reduce his body to a cinder.

Jonas turned away from him and turned his attention to the basin, the liquid could be recognized as the solution he'd so recently swallowed, but it was stained liberally with crimson streaks.

"I'll be right back, Colonel."