Chapter One: The Beginning
Page Three3, July 1999 Saturday Sometime in the year, they'd started letting their on base relationship affect their off base one as well.
When she'd first
come on board the SGC, they'd agreed it would be better if they showed nothing of their old friendship while on duty since they were both in positions of command.
So while he still called her,
it wasn't as often and usually was only after something had happened in the infirmary.
Janet sighed, turning the water a bit warmer now that she'd adjusted to the previous temperature level in
order to clear her sinuses.
They always acted up in the summer.
Memories of a younger Jack O'Neill made her smile.
She could still see their last assignment together, as if it had ended
just the day before.
Covered in dirt, she'd been desperately trying to put together a proper triage on the men wounded, guarded by soldiers who weren't wounded yet, but would be by the time
they retreated.
She'd never been on a black ops assignment before and the curiosity she'd initially felt about the secret side of the military had evaporated in the face of a mission gone
wrong.
It was only the second time she'd officially seen Jack, though after their first meeting they'd gotten their families together regularly for a short time.
Meeting Jack O'Neill had
been one of the single most irritating things that had happened to her back then, second only to Bill, her ex-husband.
Thank goodness Sara had changed Jack for the better…well, until Charlie…
Just a couple years after those two had gotten married, she'd been pulled aside and given the option of accepting the assignment blind.
She hadn't even known Jack was on it until he'd
gotten into the plane beside her.
Then, later, all she'd known was that she barely left the car before being thrown to the ground with him on top of her as bullets started flying.
The
makeshift shelter the soldiers erected was rickety at best and she was face down in the dirt more often than she was helping those around her.
Jack said something about a leak, but she never
did find out who was responsible.
As soon as they were on the plane, the wounded as comfortable as she could make them, she'd asked a few questions.
Jack's firm, but kind answer was to try
to forget it all and never ask about it again.
She'd learned that covert ops was not the branch she wanted to continue in, a feeling that was securely reinforced when she was repeatedly
debriefed about who she'd talked to, seen, touched, etc…
She'd been driven back then…determined; unable to stop even if she'd wanted to.
She'd caught the attention of many, going through
ranks faster than most medical personnel do.
Janet picked up her razor, her thoughts turning back to Bill as the water tickled her little toe, trying to remember what she'd seen in him.
Married young, she'd had no clue what a pathetic, chauvinist her highschool sweetheart would become.
Whiny when he found out she was on the pill; he'd been quite matter-of-fact about his
opinion of her ambition to become the single best air force medical doctor there was.
She'd wanted to know everything…reading and learning day and night, until their marriage was nothing but a
technicality.
His Army versus her Air Force was just another fight he would constantly fall back on whenever she had enough free time to make an appearance at home…which, she had to admit, was
a rare occurrence.
The divorce was inevitable with his angry comment about her ineffectiveness when it came to saving her mother being the relationship's death strike.
Margaret Fraiser had
been a gentle; loving woman and her inability to exist outside her mind without incessant medical supervision had battered against Janet's memory of the small, vivacious woman until she couldn't
even visit her without breaking down.
So she'd vowed to learn the entire world's wealth of knowledge when it came to viruses as well as make cures for them all.
Her father's defection from
reality, wandering the streets talking to lampposts and strangers hadn't helped the already flailing marriage.
Bill had been less than sympathetic and Janet hadn't been able to do a thing for
either of her parents.
Therefore, she'd ended it. ...continue to
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