STARGATE SG-1: Do No Harm Read Free

she said, and knew it wouldn’t be enough. She was going to lose Major Jake Andrews. She’d seen too much impending death in the last three years to believe he’d survive his dreadful injuries. His trauma score was too damned high.
    Rage was squeezing her, brutal as a wifebeater’s fist. She looked at Liz, who was taping down the second saline bag’s canula. “Okay. Let’s go.”
    As she and the rest of her team got Andrews and Ariel onto their gurneys she caught a sideways glimpse of General Hammond and Jack O’Neill, hovering on the edges of the bloodbath. Needing to be there, but knowing when to stay back. Sam, Daniel and Teal’c had remained in the control room. Like Sergeant Harriman they watched through the window, as though plated glass could shield them from grief.
    “Doctor,” said the general, his round face drawn tight with all the things he couldn’t let himself say or feel.
    “I don’t know, sir,” she said, although she did and so did he. “I’m sorry, we have to — ”
    “Go,” said Hammond. “Godspeed. Keep me informed.”
    “Good luck,” Jack added, even though he knew too that all the major’s luck had run out.
    Leaving Jeff to deal with the walking wounded, she and Liz raced Jake Andrews to OR 1 with Trinni and Rob rushing Ariel Lee close on their heels for OR 2. Kate Dokic and Bill Warner were the other surgeons on duty. Kate took Ariel and Bill scrubbed in with her for Jake.
    As the anesthetist put in the tubes and connected wires and pumped warmed red blood through the places it was meant to flow, her eyes met Bill’s across the major’s blanched, barely breathing body, and what she felt was reflected in his face. Jake was almost out of time. But they were professionals and this was one of their boys. Nobody was giving up till the flatline had sung.
    Which it did, twenty minutes later. She wanted to weep.
    “There was nothing else we could’ve done, Janet,” said Bill afterwards, once the machines were switched off and the carnage was decently shrouded beneath a green sheet. “He was dead before he stepped into the wormhole.”
    She nodded, vaguely aware of a crushing headache happening to someone, somewhere. “Yeah. I know.”
    He was a good man, Bill Warner. A lot of surgeons would’ve transferred to Outer Mongolia rather than continue in Stargate Command if they’d been him, the last couple of years. But Bill just shrugged, and smiled, and put in another i/v. Removed another spleen. Packed another liver. Splinted a couple more fractured fingers. Refused to give up.
    He squeezed her shoulder. Giving comfort. Getting it. “You going to see Hammond?”
    “After I’m done here and I’ve checked on the others.” She glanced at the wall clock. “Your shift ended an hour ago. You should think about heading home.”
    “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I will.”
    But she knew he wouldn’t. At least not until, like her, he was certain the rest of SG-8 were dealt with.
    “I’ll finish up and file the paperwork,” he added. “Don’t keep the general waiting.”
    By ‘finish up’ he meant tidy Jake Andrews’ gaping wounds, so that when his team-mates came to say their goodbyes they’d take away with them an image not entirely horrific.
    Throat aching, eyes burning, she managed a brief, small smile. “Okay. Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it.”
    She left him with Jake in the silent operating room and went to see how Ariel Lee had come through her surgery.
    “It could be worse,” said Kate Dokic, who was still new enough to the SGC after four and a half months to be visibly rattled by what came back through the wormhole. “No arterial or nerve damage, which is some kind of miracle since the arrowhead nicked the femur. She’ll be out of rotation for a while but she’ll be fine, eventually.”
    Still stupored by anesthetic, Ariel snored softly in the recovery room. Under the light blankets the bandage on her wounded thigh was bulky.
    Janet pressed her fingertips to the