Dr. Sandburg
Oct. 22nd, 2012 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_gal
Considering that the original request was for some Blair-O'Neill bonding over annoying partners with a little humor being of the good, this bunny is going in a far darker direction than I expected..Dr. Sandburg Visits Cascade
Sequel to Dr. Sandburg Finds a Sentinel.
Dr. Sandburg has headed off to Cascade so Captain Ellison can say goodbye to his old life before becoming part of the Stargate program. Things don't work out as planned.
Warnings: AU
Pairing: pre-slash Jim/Blair
Rating: Teen
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Four
“How is he?” O’Neill stood at the door to the room, but after a quick glance, Blair went back to staring at Jim.
“The doctors said that sepsis is setting in. All they can do is support the organs and hope he heals.” Blair reported the words mechanically. He couldn’t let himself feel anything.
“Well now, some of us don’t give up that easily.” Janet’s easy drawl filled the room as she brushed past Jack, a chart in her hand and two more doctors trailing behind her. “Our men don’t die. They don’t have permission, and they know what I’ll do to them if they go dying without it.” Janet gave Blair a little nod and then focused all her attention on Jim. One of the other doctors immediately went for the machines, and the third started a physical examination of Jim. Blair stumbled out of his chair when a careless hip caught him on the shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” the nameless doctor said in an absent voice, all his attention on Jim.
“Let’s give the doctors a chance to do their work, okay?” O’Neill caught Blair by the arm and pulled him toward the door, but Blair caught the edge of the door jamb and set his feet.
“I’ll wait here.”
“Blair…”
“No. You want me out of the room so I don’t see him die.”
“Oh for crying out loud. He’s not dying.” O’Neill gave Blair’s arm a solid pull and Blair lost his hold on the edge of the door. “However, if you go annoying Doc Frasier, you may die.” Blair lost the fight and found himself dragged toward the waiting room.
“Blair!” Daniel came rushing to his side as soon. “How is he?”
“Nice, Daniel, don’t even give him time to breathe first,” O’Neill said as he kept pushing Blair right on past him. “Eric, get Sandburg to eat something before we have to admit him.”
“Colonel Reynolds?” Blair stopped dead at the sight of his ex-marine escort. Seeing him here felt too much like he was giving up on Jim, like Jim wasn’t going to be around to watch out for him. Daniel moved toward Blair, but O’Neill caught him by the arm. Yeah, just like the military to just shove people around, like they didn’t have a right to sit by the bed of the man who got himself nearly killed saving you.
Reynolds awkward touched Blair’s arm, nothing like the way Jim’s arm would just casually find itself resting against Blair’s back or hanging over Blair’s shoulder. “Hey, doc. Let’s go get you some food, okay?”
Blair turned on O’Neill. “And why is Colonel Reynolds here?”
“Because you’re too much trouble for me to keep track of. There’s a new rule, you know. No one single officer can ride herd on more than one geek. It’s bad on our blood pressure.” O’Neill gave him one more shove toward Reynolds, and Blair would have ripped into Colonel Insensitive, but Reynolds caught his arm in a firmer grip.
“Come on, doc. You’re making me feel unloved here. You can lecture me about the chemicals used in modern food.”
Blair let Reynolds pull him toward the elevator. “I am not in the mood.”
“Then you can tell me all about how Ellison kidnapped you. I’ll tell you about this time in Texas when he got drunk and propositioned a patrol officer. At nineteen, that man could tie one on, at least once you got past the stick up his ass. Come on, we’ll swap stories.”
Blair didn’t have the energy to protest, but he also didn’t have energy to swap stories. Choosing the least objectionable thing he could find in the hospital cafeteria, he poked bits of salad and chunks of chicken around on his plate, rearranging them into random patterns as Reynolds described a young lieutenant Ellison right out of Ranger training.
“Hey, Sandburg. He’s going to be okay. Between Carter and Frasier, they can fix anyone.”
Blair abandoned his attempts to stack his cubed chicken into a goa’uld pyramid and looked up at Reynolds. “Then why am I here?”
“What?” Reynolds wiped his hands off on his napkin.
“If you’re so sure that everything’s okay, why am I here, exiled to the cafeteria, and do not obfuscate.”
“If I knew what that meant, I would be sure to avoid it.”
Blair narrowed his eyes. He was not getting distracted by a vocabulary lesson. “Why am I here?”
Reynolds sighed and tossed his napkin down on his plate. “You can’t sit in there and stare at Ellison.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can.”
“No, you can’t. You have to get a break or you’re going to wear yourself out.” Reynolds leaned forward. “You drive yourself until you drop. This is a marathon, not a sprint, doc. You’ve got to pace yourself and not get so emotionally invested that this—”
“Thanks for the unsolicited advice.” Blair stood so fast that his chair screeched across the hard floor. Heading for the exit, he just wanted away from Reynolds. If Jim were awake, Reynolds wouldn’t be here, but he wasn’t. He was dying because he’d put Blair’s life first.
“Doc!”
Blair heard Reynolds, and he started a sprint for the elevator. Behind him, Reynolds cursed and heavy footfalls came after him. Adrenaline rushed through Blair’s veins, and for the first time since being taken hostage by Kincaid, he felt like he was doing something. Okay, so the something he was doing was stupid, but still…. Bypassing the elevator, he slammed through the door to the stairs, and the echo of his own footsteps reminded him of the stairwell where Kincaid had dragged him. His imagination supplied the sharp metallic tang of human blood as he conjured the image the Jim lying on concrete steps... bleeding… dying.
“Sandburg!”
Ignoring Reynolds, Blair bolted up two flights of steps and burst out into the hall so suddenly that a nurse squealed and nearly dropped a chart.
“Sorry,” Blair called over his shoulder as he headed for Jim’s room. He blew through the visitor’s lounge and slid to a stop a few feet from Jim’s door where O’Neill, Daniel, Sam, Janet and random doctors frick and frack seemed to be having a meeting in the hallway, their bodies pressed close together.
“Shit, Sandburg, under what theory of the universe was *that* logical?” Reynolds grabbed Blair’s arm, his face tight with anger.
Shaking his arm free of Reynolds, Blair focused on O’Neill. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nice job wrangling the geek, Reynolds,” O’Neill said dryly.
“At least he didn’t get kidnapped on my watch.” Colonel Reynolds answered in an equally dry tone.
“Well, not in the last month anyway.” For some reason, O’Neill transferred his glare to Blair as if he’d done something wrong.
“Oh no. You are not distracting me again. What are you talking about and how will it affect Jim?”
Daniel was the first to answer, muttering to O’Neill under his breath, “I told you that was a bad idea.” O’Neill spared a second to glare at Daniel. At this rate, O’Neill’s glarer was going to break.
“Sandburg, you’re upset and you haven’t been cleared after a hostage situation. Actually, you’ve had two hostage situations in a row, and that’s a record, even for you.” Once again, O’Neill had that creepy soothe-the-crazy-man tone going, the one he used with children and Daniel.
However, Blair wasn’t going to be placated, and he didn’t like O’Neill as much as Daniel did, which meant he wasn’t about to let the condescending attitude stand. He crossed his arms. “I’m not emotionally compromised.”
O’Neill turned his back on the others and squared off against Blair. “Really? So you didn’t just flee from your protection detail?”
“What are you talking about and how will it affect Jim?” Blair raised his chin.
“You’re a stubborn little shit, Sandburg.” O’Neill rubbed a hand over his face. “Frasier, do you want to….” He waved a hand in the air before turning his back on Blair.
Janet gave Blair as small smile and stepped forward. “Now you just remember what I said about men not dying on my watch. It seems like the sepsis has set in, and we don’t dare move Ellison, which is posing a bit of a problem.”
Blair’s mouth went dry. “Problem?” The word sounded strained and ugly when it came out of his mouth.
“Sam here brought a certain device to help Captain Ellison out, but any sudden and inexplicable recoveries could prove a little difficult to explain.”
“So you’re going to let him die?” Blair’s heart pounded painfully fast.
“Now hold on.” Janet drew up into her full height. Since she was such a short woman, that shouldn’t have looked impressive, but somehow it did. “I’ve never let a patient die in all my life. We’re discussing how to handle the aftermath and some people,” she glanced at O’Neill, “suggested that you’d throw up such a fuss about needing to move faster that Reynolds here was supposed to keep you busy down at the cafeteria.”
“Good job with that,” O’Neill offered Reynolds.
Reynolds snorted. “Short of shooting him in the leg, that was the best I could do.”
“Next time, carry a beanbag gun,” O’Neill suggested. Daniel planted his elbow firmly in O’Neill’s side.
“Men.” Janet rolled her eyes. “Now Doctors Williams and Borowski and I have some dazzling bullshit that we can use to blind anyone who comes looking too close. Sam, would you like to head into Captain Ellison’s room?”
Sam paused, a metal case in one hand, and Blair found himself staring down at it. It was Jim’s last hope—an alien device made by evil aliens who wanted to enslave humanity was Jim’s last hope. That’s what none of them were saying. Sam reached out and rested a hand on Blair’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best, Blair. Okay?”
Not trusting his voice, Blair nodded. Her best. Her best as in sometimes she couldn’t control the devices as well as someone who still had a symbiote. Her best as in he shouldn’t get his hopes too high because they might come crashing back down.
Blair had known Jim less than a week, and the thought of Sam’s best not being good enough was tearing at something vital in his chest, something that Blair couldn’t even recognize.
Surprisingly, it was O’Neill who came up and put his hand on Blair’s back, urging him to follow Carter into the hospital room. “Hey. Don’t underestimate Carter.”
Blair nodded. Janet came in the room along with Daniel, but the two random doctors waited outside the door. Blair saw them looking at a chart together as the heavy door drifted closed. O’Neill positioned himself in front of the door and pulled out a scanner. “We’re secure,” he said, his voice all business. Carter set the metal case on top of the tray table near Jim’s feet and clicked it open.
The hand-held healing device with its oversized stone rested in the middle of a Styrofoam lining, and she carefully pulled it out, sliding it over her hand. Wiggling her fingers, she seemed to get it settled in place before he glanced over at O’Neill. With a nod, O’Neill gave her permission to break one of the most critical standing rules of the SGC—never use alien technology outside the mountain.
Moving to Jim’s head, Carter held the device out, her face tight with concentration as the stone began to glow. The fear around Blair’s heart had just begun to loosen when all the machines around Jim began to wail warnings. Jim’s body jerked up off the bed, his body convulsing and his hands twisted into claw shapes.
Distantly, Blair heard Janet yell for something, O’Neill demand to know what happened. Carter’s shocked face seemed stained with blue, and then suddenly Blair wasn’t in the hospital at all. He stood in a forest bathed in blue light, and lying at his feet was a weary-looking Jim, his army fatigues in tatters and one of his hands dangling over the bank of a stream, the fingers creating new pathways for the water as it flowed over his flesh.
“Jim?” Blair whispered. Unfortunately, Jim looked very much dead.
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Dr. Sandburg Visits Cascade 4
Date: 2012-10-23 06:10 am (UTC)Re: Dr. Sandburg Visits Cascade 4
Date: 2012-10-23 06:15 am (UTC)Re: Dr. Sandburg Visits Cascade 4
Date: 2012-10-23 11:12 pm (UTC)Thanks for *yet another* evil-cliffie-of-dooooom! :-)
Looking forward to the next chapter.
Wee fixes:
- like they didn't have a right to sit by the bed of the man who got himself nearly killed saving you [like you didn't]
- Reynolds awkward touched Blair's arm [awkwardly]
- It's bad on our blood pressure. [bad for our]
- Reynolds caught his arm in a firmer grip [firm]
- Okay, so the something he was doing was stupid, but still…. [still...] no period needed
- he conjured the image the Jim lying on concrete steps... bleeding… dying [image of Jim]
- "At least he didn't get kidnapped on my watch." Colonel Reynolds answered in an equally dry tone. [watch," Colonel]
- "Frasier, do you want to…." [to...]
- before he glanced over at O'Neill [she]
- Distantly, Blair heard Janet yell for something, O'Neill demand to know what happened. [something as] and [demanded to know what had]
Re: Dr. Sandburg Visits Cascade 4
Date: 2012-10-24 07:01 am (UTC)And thank you for all those catches. I appreciate it more than you can know.
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Date: 2012-10-23 08:20 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2012-10-24 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 12:17 pm (UTC)Wonderful blending of the worlds, and your, as always, fabulous writing style make this story a delight to read.
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Date: 2012-10-24 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 04:33 pm (UTC)Shakatany
PS Reynolds awkward touched Blair’s arm, nothing like the way Jim’s arm would just casually find itself resting against Blair’s back or hanging over Blair’s shoulder. The sentence doesn't make sense as it's a bit... awkward ;)
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Date: 2012-10-24 07:06 am (UTC)And yeah, that is awkward. I"m going to have to do a little polish on this one, that's for sure. I'm trying to get back into this headspace, and it's not always easy.
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Date: 2012-10-23 04:52 pm (UTC)Good going.
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Date: 2012-10-24 07:07 am (UTC)I know, I know. At least today's chapter actually got you off the edge of that cliff.
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Date: 2012-10-23 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 09:49 am (UTC)Off to read the next bit. I love this...