Chapter 2
“Ohhhh …” Jack moaned from
his bed in the infirmary. The effects of
the cough syrup had worn off, and the reality of his injury had begun to plague
him.
“Easy there, Colonel,” Janet
said softly as she elevated his right leg to get a better look at the wound.
“You might not think that a
mangled, torn-to-shreds knee would hurt much, Doc,” he said, distressed. “But it does.”
Dr. Fraiser grinned slightly.
“Oh, come on,” she
teased. “Where’s that
‘keep-a-stiff-upper-lip’, ‘never-admit-you’re-in-pain’ military bravado of
yours?”
“Sounds like something my
wife would have said,” Jack mumbled.
Janet giggled softly.
“Well, your x-rays do show a
trauma of some kind, but I’ll have to do an MRI to further assess the damage to
your patella.”
Jack stared at her blankly.
“Your kneecap, Colonel,” she
clarified.
Jack nodded silently.
“I’ll give you a little
something more for the pain, and then I’ll do the MRI,” she said.
“You know me, Doc. I’m a trooper,” Jack replied, giving her a
weak thumbs-up.
Janet nodded and grinned as
she reached for a syringe.
“… Except when it comes to
that,” he added with a pained look on his face.
Janet rolled her eyes and
grinned as she prepared to give Jack a painkiller.
***************************************************************
“What is your assessment of
Colonel O’Neill’s injury, Doctor?” General Hammond asked Janet as she joined
the remaining members of SG-1 in the briefing room.
“Well, Sir, his MRI scan
shows a fracture of the patella.”
“Kneecap ...” Sam joined in.
“Mmm-hmm,” Janet nodded. “Now, displaced patellar fractures usually
require surgery. Luckily for the
Colonel, his fracture is mild and can be treated with immobilization.”
“Sir, he should be out of
commission for at least a couple of weeks.
He’ll have a cast and will get around with the use of crutches, but
until the bone heals completely, I don’t want him going off-world for a few
weeks tops.”
“All right. All the other
SG teams are currently off-world, so I don’t think I can find a temporary
replacement for Colonel O’Neill. I’ll
have to put SG-1 on stand down,”
“Thank you, Sir,” Janet
replied.
“Please keep me appraised on
the Colonel’s condition, Doctor,”
“Of course,” Janet nodded
before she left the room and headed back toward the infirmary.
“SG-1, I’m putting you on
stand down,” he said.
Sam and Daniel exchanged
looks as Teal’c raised an eyebrow.
“For how
long?” Sam asked.
“For at least a week,”
Sam nodded.
“Thank you, Sir,” she said as
she got up from her chair and left the room.
“Is something wrong with
Captain Carter?” he asked Daniel.
“Ah … I don’t know,” Daniel
shrugged, and with that, he too left the room.
*********************************************************
Sam rooted through the small
rolodex that she kept on the corner of her desk, looking for Meredith’s phone
number. She had attended her 15-year
high school reunion in
She sighed in relief as she
found Meri’s contact information in the “G” section of the rolodex. She whipped out her cell phone and dialed
Meri’s number.
“Hello?” a deeper, male voice
answered.
This must be her fiancé, Sam thought to herself.
“Um … Hi, is Meri around?
This is her old friend, Sam Carter,” Sam chirped into the phone.
“Sure, just a second,” the
man answered. “Uh … what did you say
your name was?”
“Sam Carter,” Sam repeated.
“Hold on,” he replied.
“Sam?!” a familiar voice
squealed.
Sam winced and pulled the
phone away from her face for a moment.
“Yeah! It’s me!” Sam replied with a forced smile.
“OhmyGawd!! I don’t believe it!! Sam Carter calling me on the
phone!” she yelled jubilantly.
Sam giggled.
“What do you mean? You
emailed me early this morning, asking to get together. I emailed you back and I told you I’d get
back to you.”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t
think you’d get back to me so soon!
Especially since you said you were busy and everything! I don’t believe it! Jon, it’s my old friend, Sam Carter on the
phone!” she addressed her fiancé.
Sam rolled her eyes and shook
her head. Cut it out, Meri, she thought to herself.
“So, Meri, um … let me know
when you’ve calmed down so we can talk about when to get together,” she said
facetiously.
“Tsk. Oh, Sammie!
You’ve still got that dry sense of humor!”
“Yup,” Sam replied.
Meri calmed down a bit and
became more serious.
“Gee … um, are you doing
anything tomorrow night?”
Sam quickly turned toward her
desk calendar and flipped the top page over.
“Tuesday the nineteenth?” she
clarified.
“That’s right, hon. How does some dinner and dancing strike you?”
Sam shrugged.
“Um … d-dinner’s fine,” she
stammered. “Have you heard of a place
called O’Malley’s?”
“I have a better idea,” Meri
interrupted. “There’s a really nice club
called Club Rio on
“Oh … um …
a club?” Sam asked with a hint of
uncertainty in her voice.
“Yeah. You’re not
afraid of going to clubs are you, Sammie?” Meri asked with a hint of teasing in
her voice.
Sam snorted softly and rolled
her eyes. She could just see Meri’s
smirk on the other end. She tried to act
as if she felt bad for Sam, but it always came off as not-so-lighthearted
teasing. She had done it to Sam very
often back in high school. Sam often
thought that maybe she was taking it to heart, but it did become annoying after
a while.
“No, Meri, I’m not afraid of
going to clubs,” she said wearily.
“Then, what’s the problem?”
Meri prodded.
Sam was surprised that Meri
hadn’t asked if she was seeing anyone.
She used to tease Sam about not dating anyone, while she herself had the
boys flocking toward her. She had
proudly told Sam that she and a boy in their class were ‘going steady’, only to
break it off about a month and a half later.
The old boyfriend was replaced with a new boyfriend, and by the time she
and Sam had graduated, she was involved in a relationship with her prom
date. Sam was obviously happy for Meri,
and although she envied her somewhat, she was more intent on going to school and
studying astrophysics. It was no
surprise, then, when Meri told her in the email that she was engaged. Sam thought she had spotted a ring on her
finger back at the reunion, but Meri had never mentioned it.
She suddenly remembered why
she had reservations about getting together.
She would obviously be meeting them alone, and to Meri that would mean
that Sam wasn’t married, engaged, or dating.
She would question Sam about it, probably brag about being engaged and
tease Sam for still being single. Still,
it was too late. Meri seemed insistent
on meeting at a club, and she usually got her way. Sam turned back to the phone.
“Nothing,” she sighed.
“Look, if you don’t want to
meet at a club, it’s okay, hon,” Meri answered.
“No, the club’s fine,” Sam
insisted.
“Okay, if you’re sure …”
“I’m sure. Really, Meri, it’s okay.”
“Okay, Sam. So, what time do you want to meet us? Is
“Uh … sure,” Sam replied
carefully. “I guess we’ll meet you at
eight inside the club, then.”
Did I just say “we?” Sam thought as her eyes widened.
“Sounds good, hon,” Meri said
unfazed.
“Great, see you then,” Sam
said quickly.
“Okay … um, Sammie … did you
just say ‘we’ll’ meet you there?”
Sam felt her cheeks grow hot
as Meri had picked up on her seemingly Freudian slip.
“Um … yes, yes I did,” Sam
replied coolly.
“You mean you’re bringing a
date?” Meri pressed.
Oh boy, now I’m in trouble.
“Yeah. He’s … a guy I
met at work some time ago,” Sam replied, clearing her throat. “A great guy.”
“Sounds
good, Sammie! What’s his name?” she asked, sounding like an
excited schoolgirl.
Sam’s face was on fire.
“Oh, geez, I have to go,
Meri. I just realized I’m five minutes
late for a meeting. I’ll see you tomorrow
night at eight,” she said quickly.
“Okay. Bye, hon!”
“Yeah, bye,” Sam said,
flustered as she pressed a button and ended the call.
“What have I gotten myself
into?” she said dreadfully as she put her cell phone back in her bag.
Just then, her stomach
growled and she quickly looked down at her watch. It was nearly 1400 hours, and she hadn’t had
anything to eat since before they left to go on their disastrous mission at
0630. She headed for the commissary.
***********************************************************
Sam sat alone at a table in
the commissary, staring at her Chicken Caesar salad, which sat unappetizingly
in a plastic container. She had been
starving, but her appetite began to disappear as she put the first bit of salad
in her mouth. It wasn’t only due to the
fact that the salad wasn’t very good, but she was still dwelling on her
conversation with Meredith. Had she told
her that “we’ll” meet her there? Now Meri was expecting Sam to show up with a
guy. If she came alone, no doubt Meri
would attempt to make her feel bad the whole night. She had to ask someone to come with her, but
who? General Hammond was out of the
question, not only because he was too busy, but because he could almost pass
for Sam’s father. She obviously couldn’t
ask Jack, since he was laid up with a fractured knee. Teal’c had just gone to Chulak to visit his
wife and son, and she probably wouldn’t have asked him anyway, since he was
still not acquainted with many Earth customs and would be out of place at a nightclub.
Daniel. Could she ask Daniel? The thought had entered Sam’s mind, but when
she remembered how she had treated him that morning, before they set off for
the mission, she thought it would be a bad idea. She had snapped at Daniel and hurt his
feelings, and then she’d be begging him for a favor. What would that make her out to be? Sure, she had apologized to him, but the more
Sam thought about it, the more it seemed like a forced apology. Moreover, Sam felt it would be like taking
advantage of him, and she cared for him too much to ever do that to him.
Sam was suddenly totally
oblivious to anything going on around her.
The commissary had become a bit more crowded, and the room buzzed with
conversations between airmen. She impaled
some more of the wilted lettuce with her fork and made a face. The dressing wasn’t even real Caesar
dressing; it tasted like watered-down mayonnaise. Sam hadn’t had Caesar salad in the commissary
for quite a long time, but she couldn’t remember it being this bad.
She was jerked from her
thoughts as she felt a tray being placed down on the table. She looked up and saw Daniel standing in
front of her.
“Is this seat taken?” he
asked tentatively.
Sam’s head was swimming, as
she was pulled so quickly from her thoughts.
“No, not at all,” she shook
her head.
Daniel nodded and sat down
across from her. He began to tuck in to
his bowl of soup when he noticed Sam staring at her half-eaten salad with
disgust. His brow wrinkled slightly.
“Is everything okay?” he
asked curiously.
Sam was still agonizing over
her plans for the next evening. She really didn’t feel much like talking about
it. She hesitated for a moment, and then
shook her head.
“You know what I notice about these things?”
she smirked, gesturing to her salad.
“Whenever they serve the salads in these plastic containers, it always
seems like there’s less inside than there really is.”
Daniel nodded.
“I’ve seen those before. It’s a bottomless salad,” he said cutely.
“Yeah,
exactly!” Sam exclaimed with a
grin.
Daniel chuckled softly. His smile faded and he looked at Sam
intently.
“Sam, are you sure
everything’s all right?”
Sam looked at him for a
moment.
“The General gave us a week
of down time, Daniel. What are you still
doing on base?” she asked, still evading his question.
“I don’t have anything else
to do,” he shrugged. “What are you still doing on base?”
Sam shut her eyes and sighed.
“Why do you avoid my
question, Sam? Something is bothering you, isn’t it?”
“What makes you think
something’s bothering me?” Sam muttered weakly.
Daniel shrugged.
“Oh …
nothing. It’s just that you were a bit testy this
morning before we left, and you’ve seemed preoccupied ever since we got back
from P5X-978.”
“Okay …” Sam sighed. “Remember when I told you this morning about
my friend from high school emailing me?”
Daniel’s brow furrowed as he
tried to remember what she had said before they left that morning.
“Oh, yeah,” he nodded.
“Well, she wants to get
together tomorrow evening. Daniel, she
was a good friend of mine in high school.
She used to tease me endlessly about my luck with boys, though.”
“Your luck
with boys?” Daniel interrupted,
raising an eyebrow curiously.
Sam smirked.
“Yeah, she always used to
have the boys flocking toward her, while I wasn’t as lucky. She teased me about it a lot. I never told her, but it hurt. She was just trying to poke some lighthearted
fun at me, and I guess I took it too much to heart, but it didn’t always seem
lighthearted. I guess it’s almost the
same kind of thing with you and Colonel O’Neill.”
Daniel shrugged.
“So, what’s the problem?”
“She’s engaged,” Sam blurted
out.
Daniel’s brow furrowed in
confusion.
“That’s a problem?”
Sam grinned and shook her
head.
“No. The problem is that I’m going to meet with
her and her fiancé. She expects me to
show up with a date.”
Daniel looked at her
seriously.
“Oh.”
“It’s partly my fault,
actually. I made a Freudian slip and
told her that ‘we’d’ see them
tomorrow night.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Daniel asked
curiously.
“That’s my problem,” Sam said
ruefully. “If I don’t show up with
someone, she is going to torment me the whole night.”
“Really,
Sam? She would do that?” Daniel
asked, leaning in toward Sam.
Sam grinned.
“Oh, yes she would. You don’t know her, Daniel.”
She removed a folded piece of
paper from her BDU pocket, which turned out to be a printout of the email. She unfolded it and gave it to Daniel.
His brow creased as he read
the email …
“It was great seeing you at
the reunion a while back, reminiscing about old times ... the trouble we got
into, the boys we knew … well, the ones that I knew, anyway...unfortunately it looks like they weren't too
impressed by that scientific mind of yours, so they were looking for someone
who could have a bit more fun …”
He looked back up at Sam and
winced.
“Ouch, that’s not very nice.”
Sam nodded grimly.
“I guess not, but
unfortunately, it’s her way,” she shrugged.
“Well, if that’s her way, she
doesn’t seem like a very nice person,” Daniel said, sounding almost indignant
over the way Sam was being treated in the email.
Sam shrugged again.
Daniel looked back down at
the email and resumed reading …
“… Of course, having a dad in
the military must not hurt either …”
Sam giggled softly as he
turned his head sideways to make out the winking smiley face that Meri had
typed after the sentence.
“Well, she certainly has a
way with words, doesn’t she,” he surmised.
“What exactly did her dad
do??”
Sam was surprised that Daniel
seemed to care so much about how her friend was treating her.
“Daniel, it’s okay, honestly,”
she smiled faintly, holding up her hands.
Daniel shook his head sadly
before finishing the email.
“…We could go out to dinner,
or a club, or whatever strikes your fancy … no boring air and space museums,
though, please.”
He looked back up at Sam with
an evil grin.
“Just for that, you should
drag her to the
The tension eased away, and
Sam began to laugh. A couple of seconds
later, Daniel joined her.
“You know, that’s a good
idea,” she said in between giggles.
Daniel shrugged nonchalantly
and grinned back at her.
She calmed down and sighed.
“I don’t know what I’m going
to do. I mean, there’s no one on base
that could join me,” she fretted.
Daniel gave her a surprised
look.
“There isn’t?”
She thought about what he had
been through two weeks earlier, when Hathor had made her untimely visit to the
SGC and had made all the males on base drunk with her presence. She especially took a liking to Daniel, attempting
to make him her first pharaoh and help her create more goa’ulds. Sam winced slightly. Thankfully she wasn’t there to witness what
had happened, but she had a pretty good idea when she found Daniel in the VIP
room, sitting on the edge of the bed with his shirt unbuttoned, hair tousled
and a blank stare on his face. She was
really concerned about him, but was more worried about finding Hathor and
stopping her from achieving her goal.
She knew it was psychologically overwhelming, and that it would probably
take a long time for him to get over what had happened. Even though it had been two weeks, and Janet
had cleared him for active duty, she didn’t think it would be right for her to
drag him out for a night with her, her friend and her friend’s fiancé so soon.
“Daniel … I … I don’t know
how to put this,” she started.
Daniel raised his eyebrows.
“I’d love for you to join me, but … I …”
“What is it, Sam?”
“It’s only been two weeks
since that-goa’uld-who-shall-go-nameless paid us a visit,
and …” she trailed off.
Daniel nodded in
understanding.
“And you didn’t think I’d be
up to a night out after what I’d been through,” he finished.
Sam’s cheeks flamed.
“Well … yeah.”
Daniel reached across the
table and touched Sam’s arm.
“Sam, I’m okay. Doctor Fraiser cleared me for active duty,
didn’t she?”
Sam nodded.
“Well, yeah, but I’m still
worried about your psychological well-being, Daniel,” she said uneasily.
“Sam, I’m okay,” he
repeated. “It’s been two weeks. At first, I had nightmares about what had
taken place, but they’ve gone away. I
know I’m okay now. You’re my best
friend, and I don’t think one little night out will do any harm. We both need a break, anyway, and hey, we’d
probably have a good time,” he smiled.
His smile warmed Sam’s heart
and dispelled most of her earlier fears.
She grew a smile of her own and nodded.
“Okay, then. Daniel Jackson, will you go out with me
tomorrow night?” she asked playfully.
“I’d be more than happy to,”
he answered.
Sam smiled gratefully and
nodded.
“Thanks. We’re supposed to meet them at a place called
Club Rio at
“Do they serve food there?”
he asked.
Sam shook her head.
“I don’t know, I’ve never been there.
Maybe we should get something at O’Malley’s before meeting them,” she
offered.
Daniel nodded.
“Sounds like a good
idea. I’ll meet you at your place at
“
Daniel nodded and went back
to eating his soup.
“And it appears that my soup
has gotten cold,” he said dryly.
Sam giggled and patted Daniel
on the back.
“I’m sorry, Daniel.”
“No harm done,” he
smiled.
Sam nodded.
“I’m glad. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at
Daniel looked up from his
soup and nodded.
As Sam turned and began to
head for the door, she turned around and saw Daniel at the microwave, heating
up his cold soup. She giggled softly and
made her way out of the commissary, down to her office.
************************************************************