I heard her voice first, fast and clipped.

"Move it people. Out my Goddamned way!."

That worried me. Janet Fraiser very rarely used bad language. Why now?

I wanted to ask her why. For some reason I really wanted to ask her what the hell was going on.

What…no. Wait, why was I lying on my back with the copper taste of blood in my mouth?

I must have made a sound, because she was instantly at my side, her voice clipped, breathless.

"Almost there, Colonel. Hold on."

Almost where?

My last clear memory was of… wait, yes the planet. That cold inhospitable planet with the tall trees and the never-ending rain that chilled me, sank into my bones, and made me … cough.

It was horrible, and I couldn’t prevent it.

"Colonel!"

Someone, no, someone’s were yanking me on my side as a rush of coppery fluid gushed from my mouth, preventing me from breathing for one long agonizing moment that seemed to spiral downwards into darkness.

"On three. One-two-three."

I am surrounded by warmth, cocooned in light. I have died and gone to… hell.

Only hell could hold this type of gut wrenching pain that sent my nerve endings shrieking like tracer bullets hitting armor plating - splattering and zinging everywhere, a dangerous but oh so hypnotizing display of instant death.

"Colonel?" Hands, rough hands were prodding me, slapping aside my hands that sought to hold the pain inside as I had been doing for… God, it hurts, it hurts it hurts ithurtzzz.

"I know Colonel."

At first I thought that I must have spoken aloud, to my eternal shame, but she was still speaking.

"I know it must hurt, but hang on, you hear me?" Her voice took on a desperate tone. "You hold on, you hear me?"

"Doc?" My voice was rusty, gurgling in an unfamiliar chest. I had to know, despite my pain, whether there was more, a deeper pain yet to come. "My team?"

"They’re gonna be fine," she answered, her voice striving for calm. "It’s you I’m worried about now." She placed a warm finger on my lips. "Save your strength."

I was trying but how could I do that when my body was slowly betraying me? Each breath was so hard to take, my lungs felt like they were filled with molten metal and there simply was no space left for life giving oxygen no matter how hard I tried…

Then I could breathe no more and the strident alarms told the world of this fact and someone was holding my head back and someone else was pushing something into my throat and through it all I heard her voice, tight and controlled, calling to me and telling me to be strong, and despite my dislike for where she worked I could at least do that for her but Oh God it hurt, and despite my vow to hold on I felt the corners of my mind being eaten away by speckled dots of swirling black and red and then I took a breath.

And another, and another, and finally I knew that I was no longer in hell.

"Colonel?"

I smelt the antiseptic smell of her way before she touched my brow, brushing that irritatingly long hair from out of my eyes.

"You need this cut," she said, again reading my mind. "It’s almost touching your ears and if I know Daniel, and I know Daniel, he’ll soon be teasing you about it if you don’t."

I had meant to, as soon as we returned from that planet with those tall trees and incessant rain and fine boned native population that had…. Oh God.

My eyes flew open and I looked around wildly, as if they were still around somewhere, waiting to see if I could survive being speared in the gut.

"O’Neill." Teal’s tall shadow loomed over me and I relaxed, so pleased to see him.

He reached for my arm, his thick fingers so warm and strong against my flesh, his mere contact making me want to sigh in relief through the snap and hiss of my mechanical lifesaver.

"Doctor Fraiser says that you are still very weak, and are not out of danger yet, but rest assured that I am at your side." He hesitated, looking for absolution. "Nothing will catch me that unaware again."

Bits and bytes were coming back to me now, like squares on a patchwork quilt, all interconnected but still in some sort of bizarre order, their colors jarring. I recalled, yes, a frozen moment, noticing the heavy spear with its gold tassels and marveling at the strength of the person that could throw something like that with such unerring accuracy and then…"

"Jack?"

He always looked so young and defenseless in the infirmary, as if the veneer of the lethal soldier that he held onto so tightly elsewhere on the base simply didn’t work in here.

"You in there?"

Like I could be elsewhere? I would have snorted at Daniel had I been able to, but found that impossible to do, so held out my shaking hand instead, sure in the knowledge that it would be taken as it was, he needing the comfort as much as I did.

"We thought that we had lost you," he said, his voice almost a sob. "You gave a gasping ‘huff’ noise that I will simply never forget and…"

I held on tight, needing to know this as much as he needed to tell it.

"It was horrible. You staggered back three steps and just collapsed. At first we had no idea as to what had happened and then we saw the spear sticking out of your back and Sam said that we had to take you back in exactly the same way as you had fallen because she wasn’t sure if the spear had hit your spinal column at all…"

"It didn’t, thank goodness," she said from the door, her perfume sweet and floral.

She touched my face, her fingers gossamer soft.

"You almost died, and for what?"

I couldn’t remember and desperately wanted to know, my eyes meeting hers in an unspoken plea. What did I do?

"You had your hair covered with that olive bandana, don’t you remember?"

Finally that last missing piece fell into place, and the jigsaw puzzle was finally complete, the quilt done, if you will, the colors now muted and pleasing to the eye.

It was my headscarf, a square of cloth I had used so many times before to cover my silvered hair thus disguising myself from any casual eye that might take a disliking to it and blow my head off. This time had been one of many, only on this planet the local indigenous population had objected.

Violently.

"Luckily for us, and I really can’t believe how incredibly lucky we were," Daniel said, "we were wearing our camouflage uniforms, you know, with all its swirling mix of black and brown and I guess you would call that burgundy. That saved our lives. Had we been wearing either our solid blue or khaki uniforms we all would have been as good as dead."

"You, on the other hand, had been wearing that olive headscarf," Sam said, her voice sweet and light. "That immediately made you a target. They objected."

Not half as much as I did.

EINDE

BetaTested by CiGiK - Cape Town, South Africa - 4th October 2003