Mathématique: The Cold Clear Light

Carolyn Lam changes her direction, spinning on the axis of the naquadah in her pocket.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Pain.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

The Cold Clear Light

It’s half-past one in the morning when Carolyn Lam stops in the hallway between her office and the crowded floor space of the SGC infirmary.    

She’s alone.

Slowly, blindly, she presses a hand to the wall.

The nature of the problem that faces her and its inevitable solution have hit her in the same instant.

It’s a lot.

That’s why she’s paused here, palm pressed to cool cement, letting fear and hope battle it out.

She can beat the hand of shit cards she holds.

It’ll cost her.

She moves again, alive to the satisfaction in the sharp strike of her heels on the floor, the feel of a file in her hand, the weight of her stethoscope around her neck, the presence of a checklist in her mind. She passes from the quiet of the hallway and plows into a huddle of personnel outside OR-3. They scatter as she advances.

“We’re not doing it here.” She cuts through their argument. “Not here. The toxicology isn’t back on this stuff in the air. It could be infectious, a cumulative neurotoxin, some kind of vector. We’re not opening up surgical fields outside of isolation.”

The opposition to her statement is immediate and unified.

“But—” someone begins, the comment swallowed by other voices that rise together and settle finally into: “Carter isn’t going to hang on much longer, let alone the LA Jane Doe, and if Brightman is cleared to come down we have to move on this now.”

She doesn’t slow, but she turns as she passes. “Pack it up,” she says, lifting the hand that holds the file, pointing it toward OR-1. “Move it down the hall. We do it all the time.”

“Not on this kind of timetable,” shouts the scrub nurse.

“Pack it up,” she says, implacable. “Move it down the hall.”

“Dr. Lam.” Johansen steps out of the crowd, follows her a few steps. “You’re bleeding.” The medic makes a delicate gesture toward her own forehead.

Lam reaches up to touch the mirrored place at her hairline. She’s rewarded with a sharp sting. There’s a graze along her temple, tracing the path of a bullet fired from Colonel Mitchell’s gun. The blood has matted her hair. She looks down at the collar of her white coat, shifting the fabric to get a better view.

No stains. It’s stayed in her hair and on her skin.

She’ll handle it later.

“Thanks,” Lam says.

“I can throw a stitch or five in it,” Johansen calls after her.

“Sure,” Lam shouts back, already out of sight. “Later.”

The main space of the infirmary is chaotic, the door to the corridor thrown wide, the air still misted. Bodies lie on gurneys, and her harried staff flit between them. Military personnel swirl in an anxious, knotted mass near the doorway, bringing in the wounded, checking on their friends, offering help.

Near the wall, someone screams. Plasma burns will do that.

“Carolyn,” someone calls from the tangle in the doorway. “Carolyn.”

“Hey,” she shouts, turning to the anxious mass of black uniforms that block the door. “Make a path. All non-medical personnel without serious injuries report to the med station one level up. If you’re not sure whether you should be here, you shouldn’t.”

She reaches forward to pull Dr. Brightman through the personnel at the door, and they form an island of stability in the flow of people around them, hands to forearms in a two-way grip.

“I waited topside for six hours.” Brightman’s voice is high and strained. “They just cleared us. I ran down the stairs. MacKenzie’s doing triage on twenty. He’s psych, but it’s better than nothing.”

"Good,” Lam says.

“I know it’s bad,” Brightman says. “But how bad?”

“Bad.” Lam hears the dread in her own voice. “Eighteen wounded. Of those, four are critical. Two GSWs and two with plasma burns. Unknown gas through the entire facility, with everyone exposed, including you, now. We’ve got Colonel Telford and SG-3 in secure lockdown, no critical injuries, but it looks like they were tortured, plus or minus coercive persuasion. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Like I’d go home,” Brightman scoffs. “You need a surgeon.”

“Yes,” Lam says.

“Is everyone triaged?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s first?”

“A Jane Doe in her twenties, past medical history unknown, presenting with a subclavicular GSW at point blank range on the left. She’s unstable.”

Brightman looks at Lam. Then she looks at the flow of people that weave in and around them and leans in. “Are—all the criticals Lucian Alliance?”

“No,” Lam admits.

“We’ll get pushback on this, Carolyn.”

“I know.” Lam keeps her voice brusque. She loosens her grip on Brightman. Steps back a pace.

“Who’s the other GSW?” Brightman asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lam says. “The LA operative was identified as a friendly.”

"We're going to get pushback on this, Carolyn. Who’s the other critical GSW?”

“Carter,” Lam says. “Colonel Samantha Carter.”

“Carolyn.”

“This is on me,” Lam says, feeling the weight of her own words. “I can keep Carter alive until you finish with the girl. I’ve kept her alive. I’ve kept her alive for eight hours. I’m telling you to start on the girl.”

She’s not military, and she doesn’t give orders.

That doesn’t mean Brightman won’t take them.

Brightman nods.

“And I need ten minutes,” Lam says. “Right now. Watch things for me. Plasma burn by the far wall needs morphine, Carter and the girl are unstable, wide bore lines open in both arms. Carter’s bled through twelve units already. I placed a chest tube. Overhead page if she crashes. I’ll come.”

“Jesus,” Brightman breathes. 

Carter will crash. Lam has to be back before she does.

She weaves her way between the personnel at the door, who ignored her orders to go elsewhere. In the hall, she walks with a quick stride through faintly misted air. She moves through empty corridors, cleared of everyone but the most essential personnel.

When she’s alone, she removes her slingback shoes and scoops them up by their straps with one hand.

She begins to run. Fast and soundless, though the mist.

Later, they’ll see her on the security cameras.

Later doesn’t matter.

Not yet.

Her breath burns. She tastes the acrid tang of impure air at the back of her throat. Her eyes water as she passes through opaque collections of mist far from the ducts of the ventilation system, where the gas is still thick. It doesn’t take her long to reach the Astrobiology Unit. She slips through the door and goes to the far wall of the main lab, sorting through well-labeled drawers with hands and eyes until she finds what she is looking for. 

She pulls out a small vial.

She darts to one of the balances, pulls a plastic, disposable, weigh-boat from a drawer and carefully tips a precise amount of the silvery-gray suspension into it. She transfers the minute amount she’s measured into a second vial. She fills the second vial with ten milliliters of sterile saline. She replaces the remainder of the substance into the slot in the drawers where it belongs: after naphthalene and before naquasone.

Naquadah.

She shakes her vial as she runs back toward the infirmary. Around the corner from the entrance, she replaces her heels. As she weaves through the crowd near the door, she tries not to let her breathlessness show.

She’s pulled to a stop as someone catches her arm. She knows before she looks that it’s Mitchell. Eight hours ago, he’d pulled her from under a dead man and down the gate ramp. Back to safety.

She’ll know him anywhere now. Forever. For the rest of her life.

“Dr. Lam. Dr. Lam.” His voice is hard. Her eyes flick from him to the huddle across the hall, where Dr. Jackson and Teal’c stand in silent solidarity.

“She’s alive,” Lam says. “She’s alive. I’m doing everything I can.”

Mitchell doesn’t let her go. His eyes are hard and wild, his face is set, but his grip on her arm is gentle.

“Everything,” she says again.

“Is she gonna—” Mitchell can’t finish.

She won’t lie.

“You need to let me go,” she says.

He lets her go.

She darts back into the infirmary. No one’s paged about Carter yet. That’s a good sign. She grabs an IV bag.

“Don’t bother with that.” Johansen materializes at her elbow. “I’ll get it for you. What do you need?”

“Grab the bicarb, the NAC, and the special sauce we backwards engineered from the stuff in the Ancient database and meet me in the ICU.”

“Renal protection protocol?” Johansen takes the IV bag from Lam.

“Absolutely.” Lam subtly inverts the suspension of naquadah in her pocket. “Get everything set up, but don’t place the IV until I get there.”

“You got it.” Johansen heads for the supply cabinets. The light gleams off the gold in her hair.

Lam ducks back into the hallway where her office is located. She walks to a locked cabinet built into a load-bearing wall. She opens it and removes a small case. She shuts it again and turns back, feeling the tingle of anticipation as she waits for that overhead page. For someone to call a code.

On Carter.

On Colonel Samantha Carter.

There are few people who are irreplaceable; but Colonel Carter makes the list.

She walks back into the main room, heading for the ICU.

“Dr. Lam.” A voice comes from the organized chaos she’s trying to skirt, the tangle of suffering that could pull her in and hold her for too long. But she knows that voice, that silhouette, and she turns.

“General,” she says.

“Carolyn.” She can tell from the way he says her name that he’s there to see her. But, “I’m here for a status report on Colonel Carter,” he says.

It’s a half-truth they both feel, but she changes her direction, spinning on the axis of the naquadah in her pocket, because she owes him this. She doesn’t owe him much, but she owes him this moment.

“I’m doing my best,” she says. It’s bland and truthful and perfect, a line from medical school she’s dressed herself in for years. The thing that she says when she has nothing else to say. Coming now, it as it does, to this man who is also her father—it sounds childish.

Or, perhaps, it simply makes her feel like a child.

“I know,” he says. “I know that.”

She can tell by his demeanor, by the shift of his gaze and stance, that his fear for her is easing. His fear for Carter is growing.

“I still have hope,” she tells him.

“It’s bad,” he says.

“It’s bad,” she confirms. “I need to go. Sir.”

He nods.

She slips past him with her eyes down, hoping he won’t remember this moment—the case in her hand—the way he could’ve reached out and stopped her, but the thought is brief and doesn’t linger.

She continues, building momentum as she goes, hitting the double doors. They fly away from her, rapid and symmetric. She passes the telemetry monitoring station and turns into Carter’s private room.

Johansen waits, her eyes shadowed. “We’re ready.” The medic taps the IV pole with one perfect nail, covered with pale pink polish that breaks regulation.

Instead of replying, Lam turns and locks the door. It, like the wall, is made of glass. Transparent. Bulletproof.

“Um,” Johansen says.

Lam lays the case she’s carrying on the foot of Carter’s bed. She opens it to reveal a Goa’uld healing device. She traces it with her fingers, following its rounded contours. Then she looks up at Johansen.

“Are you—” the medic swallows. “Are you Tok’ra? I mean were you ever—” she doesn’t finish.

“No.”

“There’s no one on the base who was a former host.” Johansen’s tone turns tight. Anxious. “We checked. We checked.”

“We did.” Lam reaches into her pocket and pulls out the suspension of naquadah. She hands it to the other woman. “After we start the IV,” she says, “we’ll do a slow push.”

“Of naquadah?” Johansen’s fingers close unconsciously over Carter’s calf. “You can’t—”

“The IV isn’t for Carter,” Lam says. “It’s for me.”

Johansen freezes, her eyes locked on the subtle pattern in the weave of the blanket that covers Carter.

Lam removes her white coat.

“This isn’t what we do,” Johansen says.

Lam unbuttons the cuff of her blouse.

“This isn’t right.”

Lam rolls up her sleeve.

“We don’t make trades,” Johansen finishes.

Lam says nothing, thinking of the astrophysicist who was dragged through the gate as Mitchell fired the shot that grazed her hairline. She holds out her arm.

Johansen hesitates, looking between Lam and Carter, who lies silent and pale against the sheets of the bed.

“Tamara,” Lam says, “you don’t have to help me.”

The medic raises her hands and looks away, as if she can’t bear the sound of her own name. She takes a lateral step, and Lam thinks she’ll leave the room. But the other woman reaches into a drawer and tears open an alcohol packet. She comes back. She rubs the crook of Lam’s elbow in a slow, cool, outward spiral. She lets it the alcohol dry as she connects tubing, readies the needle.

“Don’t look,” the medic whispers. “Little pinch.” The needle slides in effortlessly, then Lam feels a tug as the metal is removed, leaving the flexible cannula in place. Johansen tapes down a square of gauze, securing it.

“Thanks,” Lam says. “Hook it up?”

Johansen attaches the tubing to the IV bag and opens the line. Chilled saline snakes through the thin plastic over her arm. She shivers.

“If it makes you feel better,” Lam says, “there’s a strong tradition of self-experimentation in medicine.”

“It doesn’t,” Johansen says. “We’re doing a push of a heavy metal? This stuff could sclerose your veins on contact.”

“It could.” Lam picks up the healing device.

She steps to Carter’s side, dragging the IV pole with her, blending it into the little garden of machines that surround the colonel, keeping her alive. She studies the other woman, still against the sheets, the shock of her blonde hair fanned over the pillow.

She slips both hands through the strap at the back of the device. She has to grip it with her fingertips to keep her palm centered. She looks down at it. Feels its weight in her hand.

“I always wanted to try one of these things,” Lam says, ruefully. What doctor wouldn’t? To cure disease with a wave of the hand? To power another person’s healing with the energy of her own head and heart?

“Dr. Lam,” Johansen whispers.

“She won't make it.” Lam looks into Johansen’s troubled eyes. “Not without this.”

“I know,” Johansen says. “But—”

“Load up a syringe,” Lam says.

Johansen, again, seems as though she might refuse. “This could kill you,” the medic says. “It could stop your heart before you get the chance to help her.”

“Please,” Lam says.

Johansen turns, pulls a syringe out of a cart, and draws up the naquadah. She fits the needle to the IV. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Lam’s eyes flick back and forth between Carter and the device in her hands.

She feels the moment the metal enters her circulation. There’s a burning in her arm, a strange taste in the back of her throat, and damn it she should’ve known this would trigger the chemoreceptors in her area postrema. The nausea is overwhelming.

She watches the device in her hands.

“As soon as it lights up—” she’s interrupted by a dry heave. “Can you please—”

“Zofran?” Johansen asks.

Lam nods.

Her arm hurts. Her arm has never hurt so much. Nothing has ever hurt so much. She clutches the edge of the bed.

She’s afraid.

Her left hand comes to her chest, to her throat, to her eyes, back to her chest.

Her right arm is steady.

She can feel her heart hammering beneath her closed fist. She’s gasping, her breath coming in short, shallow spurts and it’s an effort to keep it coming at all; she can’t tell if it’s because of the naquadah or because she’s so frightened of the things this will do to her liver, her heart, her lungs, her kidneys, her nerves, her muscles, her eyes, her brain, without a symbiote to process the toxin that’s entering her bloodstream in a slow slide.

“Dr. Lam—” Johansen’s voice is high and strained and terrified.

Lam can’t speak.

She’s breaking her oath.

She’s doing harm. 

Her left arm hurts. It burns on the surface and it aches deep down. This could be a direct effect of concentrated naquadah, or it could be pain referred from somewhere else. Her diaphragm. Her lung. Her heart.

She clutches the device, curls her fingers around it, willing it to light up. To light up, so this won’t be a waste. “Come on,” she snarls. She won’t die. Not before this thing in her hand glows red.

Light up. She envisions a flare of bright, ready energy. Light up, you bitch.

Her teeth are clenched, she’s turned away from Carter, doubled over.

Johansen, standing close, continues her slow depression of a plastic plunger, whispering, “Please, God. Please God, please God please God please—”

“Come on,” Lam gasps, her eyes streaming, her mucous membranes burning, her fist pressed against her sternum, choking, dying. “Come on.”

The device comes on.

Lam laughs, a sobbing, savage exhale. She forces past her pain, brings her hand around, and focuses on Carter. She clenches her jaw, she breathes through nasal passages that are on fire, she visualizes what she wants: bleeding to stop, tissue to regenerate.

She hears a needle hit the sharps container, senses Johansen move away and return.

Lam snarls, her face twisting with effort as she imposes her will on this alien thing in her hand that’s fighting her. She’s ignoring the signals from her own body, trying to focus on Carter, only on Carter, when she snaps down to another level of awareness, synchronizing with the device in a mental readjustment that’s startling, complete, and satisfying.

Nothing hurts quite so much anymore.

The device feels warm and correct in her hand, accepting her current, integrating seamlessly, amplifying her intent into something so powerful that the resulting radiation is visible in the air as a yellow glow between her right hand and Carter’s body. She moves the device and her focus shifts naturally as passes from lung to descending aorta, from descending aorta to pericardium.

“Dr. Lam.” Johansen speaks from far away.

Lam doesn’t answer.

She can’t do everything. She can’t replace blood that’s been lost. She can’t make torn tissue new again, but she guides internal scarring, braids it down as collagen outcompetes the division of myocytes and the branching of regenerating microvasculature.

“Dr. Lam.” 

She can’t answer. 

She feels Carter reenter a sustainable path. Feels her circulatory system close again, the blood loss stop. She feels the moment when she knows that the other woman will live.

Lam can’t remove the bullet that’s deformed against the back of Carter’s scapula, but now—

Carter will survive Brightman’s extraction of the splintered LA round.

The blaze of her satisfaction turns something in the device.

She feels its focus shift.

She feels it reflect.

She looks at herself, moving her hand and mind. She confronts her own options.

She sees the naquadah, depositing everywhere. Her vessels, her skin, her heart, her brain, her eyes, her lungs, her liver, her ovaries, the roots of her hair and the roots of her teeth.

She can’t get rid of it. She can’t vanish it. She can’t chelate it. She can’t sequester it.

The only option left is redistribution.

She purges it from her nerves, pushes it into her blood, forces it all into one compartment that she’ll sacrifice. She knew, going in, that it would come to this.

When she’s finished, the device shuts down.

She pushes back from Carter’s bed, staggers a few steps, tears the lid off the biohazard container near the door, and empties the contents of her stomach. It’s not much. She hasn’t eaten for hours. Her mouth is full of acid.

Johansen is next to her. She’s dragged the IV pole across the floor to follow Lam’s dash toward the door.

“Dr. Lam,” Johansen whispers, in tears.

“I’m okay,” Lam chokes, shaking against the wall. 

“Are you?” Johansen whispers.

Lam nods, her jaw clamped shut.

“We should tell someone.” Johansen’s hands are wrapped around Lam’s arm. “You could— We should— We have to—”

“We will.” Lam thinks of the conversations that await her. None of them are pleasant. “We will. But—later. I—fixed myself. I healed myself. Mostly. I—I triage out to the bottom of the pile. Right now.”

“Do you?” Johansen’s eyes are wide and frightened, her mascara smeared.

Lam nods at her.

They look over at Carter. On the surface, nothing has changed. But—

“Heart rate’s down,” Johansen says. “Pressure’s up.”

“She’s not bleeding out anymore.” Lam wipes her eyes.

They stand together, very close, not speaking, breathing heavily, as if they’d just outrun something terrible.

Johansen swallows. “What did you do?”

“It worked,” Lam whispers. “It worked.”

“I meant to yourself,” Johansen says.

Lam can’t speak the words aloud. Not yet. So instead, she says, “Thank you, Tamara. For helping me.”

Johansen pulls Lam into a hug, surprisingly fierce. Lam, still trembling, wraps her good arm around the medic’s shoulders. 

Ten hours later, Carter is post-op and stable. Lam has changed her clothes, signed out her patient load to Brightman, and her report is in hand. She stands outside the general’s office, fingering the six careful stitches that Johansen had placed near her hairline.

“It almost doesn’t feel worth it,” Lam had said, dry and hollow, as the medic ran the line of suture along her temple. Johansen had stopped and looked away, setting sterile instruments down on a sterile tray, shaking hands pressed together as she took a long slow breath. Lam had said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”  And Johansen had picked up her forceps and her needle driver.

Lam has a headache.

There’s no secretary outside the general’s office. The base is still cleared of nonessential personnel. So she knocks.

“Come in.”

She steps inside, her fingers tracing the edge of the file she holds to her chest. She looks at the floor for a moment before she can look up at her father.

“The woman of the hour,” he says in that aggressively jovial, sonorous command style he seems to prefer. Underneath it, she hears his pride. His relief. “The grapevine says Carter’s going to make it. I hear the LA defector’s gonna make it too.”

“Yup.” Fear and irritation and a sense of accomplishment war in her mind. 

“What can I do for you, Dr. Lam?” Landry asks.

“Any word on the nature of the gas they pumped through the gate?” Lam asks. She already knows the answer, but she needs the conversational space.

“Not yet, which I guess is a good thing. The chromatography guys say it looks pretty inert. Pending the toxicology analysis, it should get turned over to the Gen Chem Unit later today.”

“Great,” Lam says. “Great.”

He’s smiling at her.

She tries to smile back. “I came to deliver my report.”

“Really.”

She doesn’t usually deliver her reports in person.

“Yes sir,” she says, releasing the file from her grip and extending it, letting it come to rest on his desk. “There’s—there’s something in there you won’t like.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows lift. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

She sits.

She thinks about all the ways she’s ever broken bad news. Despite their fractious relationship, he deserves all the professionalism she can bring to bear. She knows what he knows. She knows what he understands. She knows what he’ll need as context.

“When Colonel Carter arrived in the infirmary,” she begins, “it was apparent she wasn’t going to survive her injuries. The damage to her left lung was extensive. She was bleeding into her pleural cavity and she was also bleeding into the membrane surrounding her heart.”

“But you fixed that,” the general says, still expansive, but watchful now. Wary. “You and Brightman. You fixed that.”

“Yes. We did. Colonel Carter will be fine.” Lam smooths her hands over her skirt. “In order to repair her injuries, we had to make use of a Goa’uld healing device.”

Her father looks straight at her. Straight at the little girl he’ll always see. He’s a fast and methodical thinker. “Who used it?” he asks.

“Use of the device requires naquadah in the bloodstream,” Lam says, “and there were no former hosts on the base at the time.”

“Who used it, Carolyn.”

She feels the gathering tension in the air; the calm before the downpour. She’s sure that, by now, he must know the answer to his own question. “My solution,” she begins, “was to artificially create the conditions necessary for use of the healing device.”

An unbearable silence descends. The general interlaces his fingers and leans forward.

He’s ready to hear the words.

She’s ready to speak them.

“I injected myself with naquadah,” she says.

“You WHAT?” He’s forward, out of his chair, hands braced on the desk, unleashing everything he’s held in check.

“I injected myself with naquadah,” she says again. “I used the device.”

He’s still standing, his knuckles turning white, fear and pride and anger and loss warring over his features. He doesn’t know what to say.

She can help him there.

“I recognize that there will be an inquiry,” she says, her voice cool, reminding him that their professional relationship is a strong one, that it supersedes their troubled personal history.

“You’re damn right there’ll be—” He cuts himself off. Takes a breath. “Carolyn, you need to check yourself in under Brightman. You need to be monitored, you—”

“Dad,” she says, startling herself, startling him.

“I’ll take you down there myself,” he growls. “Right now. You—”

“I’ve consulted with Brightman,” Lam says calmly.

“And she released you?”

Her mouth feels dry. Moments like these were why she hadn’t chosen pediatrics. “We have a clear picture of what’s happening. Of what will happen.”

He sits. He says nothing.

“After I finished with Carter, I used the healing device to sequester all the naquadah in my system into my kidneys.” She does her best to be clear, so he’ll understand the first time. “I’m showing early signs of acute renal failure.”

He says nothing.

“I’ll have a short, symptom-free window,” she says. “But I need—this is something that should be handled by a larger facility. I’ve already called CS General and set up my own chelation protocol. Their renal service is top notch. I think it’s best if I go now. The sooner the better.”

“When Vala gets back—”

“The healing device can’t remove heavy metals from the body. I’ve done what I could to mitigate the damage.”

“What are you saying, Carolyn?”

“I’m saying that, best-case scenario, the only collateral damage from this is that I lose both kidneys. Worst case scenario—” she pauses, unable to look at him. “Well, in medicine, the worst-case scenario is pretty obvious.

He stares at the desk. At his hands. She hopes he’s not thinking of that moment, hours ago, when he stopped her in the infirmary on her way to see Carter, the healing device in her hand. She hopes he’s not thinking of her as a child.

“This was my decision,” she says. “I don’t regret it.”

He still doesn’t speak, and she thinks maybe it’s because he can’t.

“And I’m handling it,” she finishes.

He moves, his hands searching his pockets. He pulls his keys free. “You ready to go?” he asks. “I’ll drive you.”

“You can’t drive me,” she replies. “The base is still locked down, you’re—”

“I’m driving you.” He shouts it.

She flinches. “Okay,” she says quietly, one hand extended.

The phone rings. The red phone. They both look at it.

“It’s all right,” she whispers.

The look he gives her is wrenching as he reaches across the desk to capture her arm. His grip is tight, preventing her from leaving.

But he has to pick up the phone. They both know it.

Story of her life.

Story of his.

She understands.

She does.

“Mr. President,” he says, his voice entirely at odds with the expression on his face.

Gently, she pulls away.

He lets her.

She nods at him, then opens the door to the office and steps into the hallway. She closes it carefully behind her, shutting herself out of what is sure to be a difficult conversation. She looks up and is startled to see Cameron Mitchell leaning against the opposite wall.

“Colonel Mitchell.” She inclines her head towards the general’s office. “He’s on the phone. The red one. Probably will be for while.”

Her words don’t seem to faze him. They don’t seem to even register. She wonders if she’s spoken aloud. 

“Hey.” Mitchell’s tone is gentle, at odds with the determination in his ice-blue eyes.

Maybe he’s not here to see General Landry. 

“Hey.” Her eyes sweep over him, taking in the familiar black laptop bag slung over one shoulder. It’s her bag.

“Brightman told me the big picture,” he says. “TJ filled in the details.”

“That’s—” she’s not sure what to say. “That’s a HIPAA violation.”

“Yeah.” Mitchell smiles. “Get used to it. In about three hours you’re gonna be a legend. The med staff wanted you to have an honor guard. But none of them can leave. Too many plasma burns to deal with. You know how it is.”

Mitchell has always been kind to her. He never compares her to her predecessor. To Janet Frasier, who was compassionate and composed and brilliant. Who adopted alien children, who threatened System Lords, who could think her way out of parasite-induced psychosis. Who had died doing her job in the middle of a combat zone.

“I can manage,” she says. “Thanks.”

“I know,” Mitchell replies. “C’mon, doc.” He starts forward with her bag, and she falls in beside him.

“So there’s an SG-1 tradition,” Mitchell says, when it becomes apparent she’s not going to argue with him. 

“There seem to be a lot of them,” Lam agrees.

“Goes like this: every time one of the docs here pulls one of us back from the brink of death, SG-1 cooks them dinner.”

“I’ve been here a year and a half,” Lam says. “And I’ve never heard of any such tradition.” She looks up at him, matching his uncertain smile. “I feel like I’m owed at least four dinners by now.”

“It’s a new tradition,” Mitchell admits. “I’m starting it. We take requests. So think on it.”

Lam considers the days ahead, considers the possibility that despite her efforts with the healing device, she may not have fully assessed or controlled the damage to her body. Considers that—best-case scenario, over the next months she’ll be spending three hours per day three times per week hooked up to a dialysis machine while waiting for a renal transplant match that may never come.

“I will,” she says. “But maybe I should be cooking you dinner. If it weren’t for you—”

She trails off, unable to complete the sentence, unable to complete the thought, haunted by Dale Volker, who wasn’t so lucky as she—who wasn’t a general’s daughter, who had been everyone’s priority number two. She knows the guilt she feels is misplaced, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to grapple with. 

It must be worse for Mitchell. He’d made the choice.

“Yeah,” Mitchell says, and the word is ragged.

“Thank you,” she whispers, “for not letting them take me.”

“You’re welcome,” he says quietly.

They don’t speak again until they’ve emerged into the pale light of early morning. They shield their eyes against the glare as they traverse empty swaths of the parking lot to approach what can only be Mitchell’s car, a blue Chevy Camaro.

“If there’s anything you need,” Mitchell says, “anything you want, just name it.”

“Colonel,” she begins, absently rubbing at the crook of her left elbow.

“Call me Cam,” he says. “Everyone does. I mean, if you want—or.”

“Cam then,” she says. “If for some reason I don’t get the chance, be sure you tell Colonel Carter,” she breaks off, unsure what to say that won’t sound pathetic or pedantic or posturing. “Tell her I’d do it again,” she says simply. 

“No regrets?” he asks.

“Nope.” She gives him a small smile. “None.”

They stop at his car. Mitchell pulls out his keys. He stands with his hand on the passenger-side door handle, on the verge of opening it for her. He catches her eyes, and she feels the intensity of his presence in the bones of her spine.

“Did you know?” he asks. “Did you know what would happen?”

“Yes.” She leans against his car and tips her face up to the cold, clear light of early morning. “I knew.”