Remix fic DVD commentary
Apr. 2nd, 2006 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minxyOr, how I took the first serious fic someone had ever written at 13 and made it all about Janet and Teal'c.
The author's names for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
remixredux have been released, but rather than repost just the fic, I thought I would comment on remixing with this ultra-shiny DVD commentary edition.
The original fic is Bedside Vigil byhathy_col = Hathor. It's short, early seasons team fic. It's also stuff she wrote years ago (I'm actually impressed that she wrote something this interesting at 13. I'm not sure I could've done it), but SG-1 was our only overlapping fandom even though she hadn't written in it for years. I have to thank Shaye fourteenlines for the boost of confidence about remixing an older fic with a new spin and different take, because I was worried that Hathor would be bored with a fic from her distant past fandoms. My remix is on the remix site here:
Title: Bedside Manners (remix of Bedside Vigil).
Rating/pairing/spoilers: PG, gen, set early early season 1.
Warnings: none.
Word count: 1700
Authors notes on the fic: Thank you tojanedavitt for beta, particularly since she's also written Janet, and rydra_wong for alpha, beta, general cheerleading and ego boosting. They are my heroes, and I didn't get to thank them on the webpage as we started out anonymous.
DVD commentary: AKA How I stopped worrying and learned to love my job. Follow the lj cut below. Might want to read the story uninterrupted through the link above first, though.
~~~
SG-3 could probably tell she was angry by the way her heels clicked curtly down the bare concrete floor and reverberated through the halls, but Janet knew, from years of late nights, every-others, on-call pages and midnight emergencies too numerous to count, that a doctor’s needs should be dwarfed by a patient’s.
[Opening line. It started out a ranting run-on sentence, but both my betas had me tighten it up. So from this line, a reader might glean that this is going to be a Janet fic, that she’ll be doing multiple doctory things (and you might worry that I’ll be shoving that down your throat), that she’s on her way to see SG-3, which might imply that she had just seen SG-1 (since this is an SG-1 fanfic) and that she is pissed off. If one were really astute, one might surmise that SG-1 had somehow contributed to pissing Janet off, and hopefully be curious enough to read on.]
An angry doctor made for a nervous patient, made for snapping and cursory attention and unnecessary pain and mistakes. Her anger would cause this, would do harm, and she knew it, even as she mentally drove the spikes of her pumps through the thinly painted arrow on the floor directing her around the corner to her triage infirmary.
[Pissed off!Janet And on her way to triage, which is probably important stuff, and she’s worried about her focus. Not good.]
Because Janet had buttons, and some of them, once pushed, created an anger that couldn’t be quenched, not even by her not inconsiderable will; had to burn itself out, and that meant dwelling, for the space of a hallway at least, on Colonel O’Neill and his uncanny ability to find her weaknesses within months of working together and yet fail to understand the inherent stupidity of pissing her off when he needed her help.
[Oooooh! Feisty girl! *displays kink* Also, Jack, you bastard! and the setting = early season 1. That was my call, I don’t think it was specified in ‘Vigil’. Everybody is just getting to know each other and the trust is building, but not comfortable like the same doctor you’ve been seeing for 7 years would be. Also, Jack can be rude and irreverent, and Janet can be feisty and stubborn; mix and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.]
“I’m not telling you this for my own amusement, Colonel,” she’d said, her voice calm and dangerously controlled. “There is nothing to do now but wait.”
“Doc, all I’m saying is the standard party line won’t cut it.” She knew he could be stubborn, knew he was worried, but now he was heedlessly alienating the one who wielded the needles.
Which was ironic.
[I'm punny with the ‘alienating’ bit, but I’m also hiding/hinting who the patient is. Also, this is the first direct allusion to the fic I’m remixing; in a bit from Jack’s POV, he wittily comments that they came straight to the infirmary from the gateroom like good little trained monkeys and went through the “whole rigamarole” just like they were supposed to, so I’m extrapolating here to assume that he’s giving Janet grief without really meaning to about why she isn’t doing more or why. At one point the word ‘rigamarole’ was used by Jack in a deliberate hat-tilt to ‘vigil’, but it didn’t make it to beta-draft. Better to jump right into him winding her up and assume the reader knows how tactless Jack can be, especially when he’s worried. I originally had Janet significantly more angry at this point without really knowing what Jack could’ve said, I found myself curious (after RW made me curious) about what words had just been exchanged, so I had to ramp down the danger warnings a bit, because it didn’t seem like Jack wouldn’t be that tactless accidentally, I don’t think.]
And interrupted, as it turned out, by an unscheduled off-world activation announcement followed immediately by a call for a medical team to the gateroom; turned out SG-3, the marine combat unit, had had a run-in with some staff weapon blasts. A fact that Colonel O’Neill had found to be unimportant, resulting in an insult Janet had found to be the last straw.
[Here it is, the single line that spawned this fic: "Janet gave us the usual rigmarole, then left us for SG-3, who had had a battle with the Goa-uld, or something unimportant like that." which was Jack’s POV at the time. From that throwaway line I jumped to Janet’s POV and walked the story down the hall, away from our regularly scheduled heroes… and out of the first person. Because I just can’t write in the first person, I get all twitchy. Some people can do it and do it well; I am not in that club.]
“Colonel O’Neill.” She’d emphasized her thoughts on the matter by snapping off her gloves. “I’ll thank you not to question my commitment to a patient in my own infirmary when he is stable, apparently recovering, and likely to wake up on his own in a few hours as we have discussed ad nauseam. Moreover, and I’ll tell you this for your own safety, questioning my competence is not the way to get on my good side.”
[That competence thing? That would be me. That would be me Mary-Suing Janet and I can see that you are shocked. Shocked! I can only apologize.]
Pull the palm of one glove to slide the first hand free with a snap, then slip a finger under the cuff of the second glove and flip it inside out to remove gloves without contaminating your hands. Discard in an appropriate biohazard container.
Walk down the hall, turn right. Try to maintain a professional façade. Don’t continue the argument in your head.
[There are several reasons that I liked the simple textbook medical stuffs: one, they really aren’t too squicky, unless you have a horrible fear of latex gloves for some reason, two, it works as a centering chant and three, Janet is Pissed Off, and I like her regaining focus on exactly what she is doing. All while making a statement in a satisfyingly feisty 5-year-old behavior way; same with the heels, only she tries to cut that out mid-stomping. I adore that Janet is feisty and she'll tell you all about it in her way. Fear her.]
SG-3 were all walking wounded, but she had to stop herself from the dismissal of their injuries as insignificant simply because they were burn wounds and not mysterious bug bites that dropped her people unceremoniously in the middle of the floor during a routine post-mission check up.
[plot plot plotty plot plot; some of it original fic plot that I need to tell you, some stuff I've extrapolated, and some demonstration that Janet's focus is still divided.]
Just because it was a known entity didn’t mean it was inconsequential: Johnson’s glancing chest wound may have hit bone; she’d have to remove the dead skin before she could see if his ribs had been scorched, and he’d probably need a skin graft, too, which would take weeks of recovery.
Figures, he said he was fine.
It was the big guys you had to watch out for, she thought; the ones who believed they could handle it, whose trust you had to earn before they would tell you when something felt off. The type who would volunteer to let you study their symbiote but not tell you the kind of pain it caused them until you were hours into your experiments. That kind of patient (she couldn’t tell if it was a trait particular to marines and Jaffa or if it was an individual characteristic) took a lot of talking to, a lot of time: you had to invest some attention in those tough guys so that they understood how much more useful information was than stoicism.
[so now you know it’s Teal’c, and we have more plot and a little more explanation of why Janet is hurt by Jack’s insinuation that she isn’t paying enough attention to T, although at this point in the series, it made perfect sense for Jack to he’d need to, there was also these hints that Teal’c spent a lot of his downtime very focused on letting Janet learn as much about him and Junior, and there is canon to show he didn’t put himself at just any human’s mercy like that. Sweet, if you ask me. This fic became all about Janet and Teal'c's canon relationship in my head: it's such a complex thing for all it's built of tiny little moments.]
So that they thought to mention it, even if they only made it halfway through a sentence like “Doctor Fraiser, I do not believe—“ before they lose consciousness in your infirmary. Then it’s all guessing at anaphylaxis, trying epinephrine and hoping to God he responds to it. That’ll teach me to always go for the civilians first, she thought while prepping Johnson to move to the burn unit at the topside hospital. I should institute a new policy that the quiet ones are always first, and that their COs stay the hell out of my way.
She was halfway through the five stitches Makepeace needed in his left hand (it had collided with some Jaffa armor at close range, she was stoically informed) when a nurse interrupted to tell her Teal’c’s brain activity was increasing, and Colonel O’Neill wanted her to know, ‘he looked like he was having pleasant dreams.’
She might have snorted at that, had she not had an open wound in front of her.
[So some resolution of tension: Teal’c is improving, Jack makes an apologetic overture as only he can (assuming that the nurses probably wouldn’t have interrupted her work with another patient unless Jack had specifically asked them to as well) and Janet starts feeling a little better. Also, I make more little references to ‘Vigil’ in the ‘we expect this kind of thing from Daniel, not Teal’c’ attitude. Although, I don't think Janet would make the assumption that Daniel as an individual was weak, so I let her see the civilian vs. warrior, and see Teal'c vs. everyone else, because the guy is a brick house and significantly more patient (har) than most. This, of course, is not good professional medical ethics, so she needs to get over her failure there as well as dissipate the anger in a realistic time frame.]
“Rough day, Doc?” Makepeace asked her as she ended her intimacy with his subdermal tissues and tied off the last suture. Grip the needle in the tongs, loop the loose end of the thread around it, pick it up again and tighten to the surface of the skin without pulling.
“Interesting.” She clipped the threads and added some butterfly closures for good measure, even though it was his left hand. This was a marine, after all. “Never a dull moment.” The off-key screech of metal wheels accompanied her pushing off his table to move her little black stool to the next bed and the next marine with battle wounds, but she mustered a smile for the boy worried about his friend as she thought to herself, yup, this place is always interesting, and reassured him that Johnson would be fine.
The remaining members of SG-3 got through their post-op physicals with nothing more pressing than a few second-degree burns needing treatment, but it was still hours before she could make it back to her long-term infirmary to quickly check on Teal’c.
[I did try to look up SG-3’s names and responsibilities, but I don’t actually have copies of the show, so I couldn’t go back. Makepeace and the marines are therefore from SciFi’s website and Johnson is my memory of the guy that went darkside in the Land of Light episode. Also, as a little aside, I enjoyed letting Janet have a connection with other teams, especially since this is early season 1, and she wouldn’t have developed the friendships with SG-1 that might set them apart later, and she's starting to focus on them properly now, and do the work that's in front of her instead of dwelling on a therapeutic slap upside the head to Jack.]
O’Neill stood to attention as she entered, and it occurred to her to say ‘at ease’, but she thought he might as well squirm a little more as not (it’d serve him right), so she held her tongue, although she did let him shadow her to Teal’c’s bedside, walking quietly and picking up the chart hanging off the end of the bed with a practiced arc of her shoulder.
“It’s low, isn’t it? His heart rate?” Daniel asked, looking for all the world like he was younger than the marine she’d just treated.
[‘Cause even though things are going well, just the way she said they would, everybody has had a lot of time to worry and it's a reminder that even though the doctors think everything is going according to expectations, doesn't mean friends and family feel that way. Also, SG-1 is pretty savvy and Daniel would ask a really smart question like that, not ‘hey, the man with the golden brown skin looks pale.’ So she's still dealing out the reassurances. Also, that’s the first and last reference to Daniel looking young as RW is allergic to ‘youngwoobie!Daniel’ and twitches if you use a word like ‘boyish’, even in a season 1 fic. How I love my beta. Hee!]
“Well,” Janet answered him quietly, “his resting heart rate is lower than a human’s, so I can only guess that his sleeping heart rate would be lower still; if it’s possible to say such a thing, it doesn’t appear to be abnormal.”
“Apart from the fact that a Jaffa is sleeping.”
“I’ve spent enough time working with Teal’c to have every faith in his ability to close his eyes for a moment and wake up healed with no help from me.” Which is possibly the most unique doctor-patient relationship of her life, she mused, and possibly the first doctor-Jaffa relationship of its kind ever. She supposed waiting and seeing, guesswork and improvisation were going to be her best techniques when blazing trails like that.
[Hope that wasn't too blatantly stated, but in my brain, this realization is what makes this fic interesting: that the relationship is unique and wonderful and maybe Janet shouldn't let an unintentional insult make her question her ability to deal with all of it (poor woman did seem to look overwhelmed a lot of the time in the early seasons.) Also there's a personality contrast in the way that Daniel and Jack talk to Janet here, where season 1 Daniel is tactful and inclusive and paying a whole lot of attention and Jack is confrontational and angry and probably mis-directing the frustration. And Sam is... well, waiting for orders really, and staying out of Janet's way, which is no small thing.]
“Doc?” The Colonel asked, then indicated the patient in question with a chin jut. “Looks like Sleeping Beauty is coming out of it.”
“Hey, Teal’c.” Daniel smiled, shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head . Sam jumped off the next bed where she’d been sitting to close ranks. Janet privately thought that particular habit of military teams made her feel claustrophobic; she knew, though, that they wouldn’t hold his hand, wouldn’t try to comfort him after she left the way a child or lover or anyone not on a military base might, or maybe anyone might with a patient other than Teal’c, so she’d allow them all to tower over her in solidarity until they got in her way.
[Me playing with the tactile nature of doctors, and how people have different behaviors at a sick bed: take Sha’re, in Forever and a Day, she held Daniel’s hand, rested her head by it, petted him, or take Jack sitting on the next bed over and standing when Sam wakes in Grace, which is the perfect soldier response in my head; and compare that with Jacob the soldier but also Dad saying goodbye in Death Knell, where he sits on Sam’s bed at her hip. Also, Janet is a little woman, and SG-1 is really very tall.]
“This could take a minute, Daniel, he might not be ready to speak right away.”
“Doctor Fraiser.” Or not. His voice sounded gravelly. She’d have to check his airway, make sure it wasn’t still swollen from the allergic reaction.
[I enjoyed the weirdness of explaining unexplained symptoms from someone else’s fic. It didn’t seem to be something Hathor was focusing on, but the idea that stings from a bug might have a delayed anaphylactic response, especially in the member of the team with a dramatically different physiology, was a neat one. I actually like the idea that it was Junior who had the biggest response to whatever venom was in the sting, and that’s why there was a short reaction delay that let Teal'c get to the infirmary, but then once he started reacting, he reacted quickly. Then he slept, because once the cause of the reaction was removed and Janet stabilized them, they both had to sleep, see? Even though he's Jaffa? It’s logical in my head.]
“Teal’c. Feeling better? You gave us a scare.”
“Indeed.”
“Good. Open your mouth for a moment, please?” Looks fine, she diagnosed, recovering from possibly the first documented allergic reaction ever in a Jaffa. Skin wasn’t warm, though he closed his eyes for long moments when she pressed her hand over his forehead and temple. Fatigue. “Okay, call me if anything feels out of the ordinary, and you all can have a few moments, but then I want Teal’c to kel no’reem if possible. In silence.”
Her mock glare was met with a sheepish grin from Captain Carter, an outright smile from Daniel, and a quiet, ‘Yes, Ma’am,” from Colonel O’Neill at the foot of the bed, which, along with a half smirk, told her he already knew he was forgiven for the earlier comments.
[Don’t you just love Janet? She’s all relieved liek whoa that Teal’c is okay but she’s still doing her job: and interspersed with the noting of appearance is the understanding of just how out of her hands a lot of this was. Relief. R-O-L-A-I-D-S. And really, we have achieved snarky forgiveness at this point. All that is still required is the final hat tip to the original fic, and the repeating line that no one could cope with Teal'c dying which I couldn't in all good conscience ignore as a remixer. Waffled on that point, though.]
Can’t fault a team for getting antsy about one of their own lying unconscious on a bed, really, and Janet figured that she’d be angrier if they hadn’t shown such concern. She shuffled her way back to the foot of the bed to let Sam see for herself that her teammate was in fact holding his own eyes open, and was marking the time on Teal’c’s chart when he croaked out her name again.
“Yes, Teal’c?” she answered. “Did you need anything?”
“Only to say, that I am most grateful to be alive, Doctor Fraiser.”
She gripped his ankle for a moment, which was all she could reach, really, as she tried to figure out how to answer that kind of comment. “We’re all glad that you’re okay, Teal’c,” she said finally. “Don’t know what we would have done without you.”
[Aaaand, the last line is putting some of Hathor’s (the author’s) lines in Janet’s mouth, which felt appropriate for a remix.
So, to be clear: the following things were from ‘Vigil’: Teal’c dropping to the floor in the infirmary after being bitten by some off-world bugs (premise), Jack snarking at Janet when she leaves Teal’c stable but unconscious to treat another team coming from a firefight (characters and motivations, plot), some of the lines including Teal’c’s last one, although many had to be adapted.
What I changed:
1. The POV: Janet was a passing character in ‘Vigil’, just stopping by and the brunt of some of Jack’s snarking, but she was gone by the time the fic began; I followed her down the hall and let her fume while they waited.
2. The length of the fic: I think mine is 3-4 times longer, while still a ficlet, really.
3. The tone and emotion: in ‘Vigil’ it’s SG-1 worrying over a teammate in the infirmary, and in mine it’s Janet genuinely furious.
4. Also, the original was multiple POVs, all first person and present tense and mine is more traditional third person simple past tense. With bizarre cuts to simple medical procedures.
Hopefully this works as a stand alone fic, but also is recognizably and respectfully built on ‘Vigil’ Also? I am thrilled that Hathor liked it. Cheers.]
Please and thanks for comments on the fic, the commentary, remixing in general, or whatever. List of remix recs with author credits to come.
The author's names for the
remixredux have been released, but rather than repost just the fic, I thought I would comment on remixing with this ultra-shiny DVD commentary edition.The original fic is Bedside Vigil by
hathy_col = Hathor. It's short, early seasons team fic. It's also stuff she wrote years ago (I'm actually impressed that she wrote something this interesting at 13. I'm not sure I could've done it), but SG-1 was our only overlapping fandom even though she hadn't written in it for years. I have to thank Shaye fourteenlines for the boost of confidence about remixing an older fic with a new spin and different take, because I was worried that Hathor would be bored with a fic from her distant past fandoms. My remix is on the remix site here: Title: Bedside Manners (remix of Bedside Vigil).
Rating/pairing/spoilers: PG, gen, set early early season 1.
Warnings: none.
Word count: 1700
Authors notes on the fic: Thank you to
janedavitt for beta, particularly since she's also written Janet, and rydra_wong for alpha, beta, general cheerleading and ego boosting. They are my heroes, and I didn't get to thank them on the webpage as we started out anonymous.DVD commentary: AKA How I stopped worrying and learned to love my job. Follow the lj cut below. Might want to read the story uninterrupted through the link above first, though.
~~~
SG-3 could probably tell she was angry by the way her heels clicked curtly down the bare concrete floor and reverberated through the halls, but Janet knew, from years of late nights, every-others, on-call pages and midnight emergencies too numerous to count, that a doctor’s needs should be dwarfed by a patient’s.
[Opening line. It started out a ranting run-on sentence, but both my betas had me tighten it up. So from this line, a reader might glean that this is going to be a Janet fic, that she’ll be doing multiple doctory things (and you might worry that I’ll be shoving that down your throat), that she’s on her way to see SG-3, which might imply that she had just seen SG-1 (since this is an SG-1 fanfic) and that she is pissed off. If one were really astute, one might surmise that SG-1 had somehow contributed to pissing Janet off, and hopefully be curious enough to read on.]
An angry doctor made for a nervous patient, made for snapping and cursory attention and unnecessary pain and mistakes. Her anger would cause this, would do harm, and she knew it, even as she mentally drove the spikes of her pumps through the thinly painted arrow on the floor directing her around the corner to her triage infirmary.
[Pissed off!Janet And on her way to triage, which is probably important stuff, and she’s worried about her focus. Not good.]
Because Janet had buttons, and some of them, once pushed, created an anger that couldn’t be quenched, not even by her not inconsiderable will; had to burn itself out, and that meant dwelling, for the space of a hallway at least, on Colonel O’Neill and his uncanny ability to find her weaknesses within months of working together and yet fail to understand the inherent stupidity of pissing her off when he needed her help.
[Oooooh! Feisty girl! *displays kink* Also, Jack, you bastard! and the setting = early season 1. That was my call, I don’t think it was specified in ‘Vigil’. Everybody is just getting to know each other and the trust is building, but not comfortable like the same doctor you’ve been seeing for 7 years would be. Also, Jack can be rude and irreverent, and Janet can be feisty and stubborn; mix and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.]
“I’m not telling you this for my own amusement, Colonel,” she’d said, her voice calm and dangerously controlled. “There is nothing to do now but wait.”
“Doc, all I’m saying is the standard party line won’t cut it.” She knew he could be stubborn, knew he was worried, but now he was heedlessly alienating the one who wielded the needles.
Which was ironic.
[I'm punny with the ‘alienating’ bit, but I’m also hiding/hinting who the patient is. Also, this is the first direct allusion to the fic I’m remixing; in a bit from Jack’s POV, he wittily comments that they came straight to the infirmary from the gateroom like good little trained monkeys and went through the “whole rigamarole” just like they were supposed to, so I’m extrapolating here to assume that he’s giving Janet grief without really meaning to about why she isn’t doing more or why. At one point the word ‘rigamarole’ was used by Jack in a deliberate hat-tilt to ‘vigil’, but it didn’t make it to beta-draft. Better to jump right into him winding her up and assume the reader knows how tactless Jack can be, especially when he’s worried. I originally had Janet significantly more angry at this point without really knowing what Jack could’ve said, I found myself curious (after RW made me curious) about what words had just been exchanged, so I had to ramp down the danger warnings a bit, because it didn’t seem like Jack wouldn’t be that tactless accidentally, I don’t think.]
And interrupted, as it turned out, by an unscheduled off-world activation announcement followed immediately by a call for a medical team to the gateroom; turned out SG-3, the marine combat unit, had had a run-in with some staff weapon blasts. A fact that Colonel O’Neill had found to be unimportant, resulting in an insult Janet had found to be the last straw.
[Here it is, the single line that spawned this fic: "Janet gave us the usual rigmarole, then left us for SG-3, who had had a battle with the Goa-uld, or something unimportant like that." which was Jack’s POV at the time. From that throwaway line I jumped to Janet’s POV and walked the story down the hall, away from our regularly scheduled heroes… and out of the first person. Because I just can’t write in the first person, I get all twitchy. Some people can do it and do it well; I am not in that club.]
“Colonel O’Neill.” She’d emphasized her thoughts on the matter by snapping off her gloves. “I’ll thank you not to question my commitment to a patient in my own infirmary when he is stable, apparently recovering, and likely to wake up on his own in a few hours as we have discussed ad nauseam. Moreover, and I’ll tell you this for your own safety, questioning my competence is not the way to get on my good side.”
[That competence thing? That would be me. That would be me Mary-Suing Janet and I can see that you are shocked. Shocked! I can only apologize.]
Pull the palm of one glove to slide the first hand free with a snap, then slip a finger under the cuff of the second glove and flip it inside out to remove gloves without contaminating your hands. Discard in an appropriate biohazard container.
Walk down the hall, turn right. Try to maintain a professional façade. Don’t continue the argument in your head.
[There are several reasons that I liked the simple textbook medical stuffs: one, they really aren’t too squicky, unless you have a horrible fear of latex gloves for some reason, two, it works as a centering chant and three, Janet is Pissed Off, and I like her regaining focus on exactly what she is doing. All while making a statement in a satisfyingly feisty 5-year-old behavior way; same with the heels, only she tries to cut that out mid-stomping. I adore that Janet is feisty and she'll tell you all about it in her way. Fear her.]
SG-3 were all walking wounded, but she had to stop herself from the dismissal of their injuries as insignificant simply because they were burn wounds and not mysterious bug bites that dropped her people unceremoniously in the middle of the floor during a routine post-mission check up.
[plot plot plotty plot plot; some of it original fic plot that I need to tell you, some stuff I've extrapolated, and some demonstration that Janet's focus is still divided.]
Just because it was a known entity didn’t mean it was inconsequential: Johnson’s glancing chest wound may have hit bone; she’d have to remove the dead skin before she could see if his ribs had been scorched, and he’d probably need a skin graft, too, which would take weeks of recovery.
Figures, he said he was fine.
It was the big guys you had to watch out for, she thought; the ones who believed they could handle it, whose trust you had to earn before they would tell you when something felt off. The type who would volunteer to let you study their symbiote but not tell you the kind of pain it caused them until you were hours into your experiments. That kind of patient (she couldn’t tell if it was a trait particular to marines and Jaffa or if it was an individual characteristic) took a lot of talking to, a lot of time: you had to invest some attention in those tough guys so that they understood how much more useful information was than stoicism.
[so now you know it’s Teal’c, and we have more plot and a little more explanation of why Janet is hurt by Jack’s insinuation that she isn’t paying enough attention to T, although at this point in the series, it made perfect sense for Jack to he’d need to, there was also these hints that Teal’c spent a lot of his downtime very focused on letting Janet learn as much about him and Junior, and there is canon to show he didn’t put himself at just any human’s mercy like that. Sweet, if you ask me. This fic became all about Janet and Teal'c's canon relationship in my head: it's such a complex thing for all it's built of tiny little moments.]
So that they thought to mention it, even if they only made it halfway through a sentence like “Doctor Fraiser, I do not believe—“ before they lose consciousness in your infirmary. Then it’s all guessing at anaphylaxis, trying epinephrine and hoping to God he responds to it. That’ll teach me to always go for the civilians first, she thought while prepping Johnson to move to the burn unit at the topside hospital. I should institute a new policy that the quiet ones are always first, and that their COs stay the hell out of my way.
She was halfway through the five stitches Makepeace needed in his left hand (it had collided with some Jaffa armor at close range, she was stoically informed) when a nurse interrupted to tell her Teal’c’s brain activity was increasing, and Colonel O’Neill wanted her to know, ‘he looked like he was having pleasant dreams.’
She might have snorted at that, had she not had an open wound in front of her.
[So some resolution of tension: Teal’c is improving, Jack makes an apologetic overture as only he can (assuming that the nurses probably wouldn’t have interrupted her work with another patient unless Jack had specifically asked them to as well) and Janet starts feeling a little better. Also, I make more little references to ‘Vigil’ in the ‘we expect this kind of thing from Daniel, not Teal’c’ attitude. Although, I don't think Janet would make the assumption that Daniel as an individual was weak, so I let her see the civilian vs. warrior, and see Teal'c vs. everyone else, because the guy is a brick house and significantly more patient (har) than most. This, of course, is not good professional medical ethics, so she needs to get over her failure there as well as dissipate the anger in a realistic time frame.]
“Rough day, Doc?” Makepeace asked her as she ended her intimacy with his subdermal tissues and tied off the last suture. Grip the needle in the tongs, loop the loose end of the thread around it, pick it up again and tighten to the surface of the skin without pulling.
“Interesting.” She clipped the threads and added some butterfly closures for good measure, even though it was his left hand. This was a marine, after all. “Never a dull moment.” The off-key screech of metal wheels accompanied her pushing off his table to move her little black stool to the next bed and the next marine with battle wounds, but she mustered a smile for the boy worried about his friend as she thought to herself, yup, this place is always interesting, and reassured him that Johnson would be fine.
The remaining members of SG-3 got through their post-op physicals with nothing more pressing than a few second-degree burns needing treatment, but it was still hours before she could make it back to her long-term infirmary to quickly check on Teal’c.
[I did try to look up SG-3’s names and responsibilities, but I don’t actually have copies of the show, so I couldn’t go back. Makepeace and the marines are therefore from SciFi’s website and Johnson is my memory of the guy that went darkside in the Land of Light episode. Also, as a little aside, I enjoyed letting Janet have a connection with other teams, especially since this is early season 1, and she wouldn’t have developed the friendships with SG-1 that might set them apart later, and she's starting to focus on them properly now, and do the work that's in front of her instead of dwelling on a therapeutic slap upside the head to Jack.]
O’Neill stood to attention as she entered, and it occurred to her to say ‘at ease’, but she thought he might as well squirm a little more as not (it’d serve him right), so she held her tongue, although she did let him shadow her to Teal’c’s bedside, walking quietly and picking up the chart hanging off the end of the bed with a practiced arc of her shoulder.
“It’s low, isn’t it? His heart rate?” Daniel asked, looking for all the world like he was younger than the marine she’d just treated.
[‘Cause even though things are going well, just the way she said they would, everybody has had a lot of time to worry and it's a reminder that even though the doctors think everything is going according to expectations, doesn't mean friends and family feel that way. Also, SG-1 is pretty savvy and Daniel would ask a really smart question like that, not ‘hey, the man with the golden brown skin looks pale.’ So she's still dealing out the reassurances. Also, that’s the first and last reference to Daniel looking young as RW is allergic to ‘youngwoobie!Daniel’ and twitches if you use a word like ‘boyish’, even in a season 1 fic. How I love my beta. Hee!]
“Well,” Janet answered him quietly, “his resting heart rate is lower than a human’s, so I can only guess that his sleeping heart rate would be lower still; if it’s possible to say such a thing, it doesn’t appear to be abnormal.”
“Apart from the fact that a Jaffa is sleeping.”
“I’ve spent enough time working with Teal’c to have every faith in his ability to close his eyes for a moment and wake up healed with no help from me.” Which is possibly the most unique doctor-patient relationship of her life, she mused, and possibly the first doctor-Jaffa relationship of its kind ever. She supposed waiting and seeing, guesswork and improvisation were going to be her best techniques when blazing trails like that.
[Hope that wasn't too blatantly stated, but in my brain, this realization is what makes this fic interesting: that the relationship is unique and wonderful and maybe Janet shouldn't let an unintentional insult make her question her ability to deal with all of it (poor woman did seem to look overwhelmed a lot of the time in the early seasons.) Also there's a personality contrast in the way that Daniel and Jack talk to Janet here, where season 1 Daniel is tactful and inclusive and paying a whole lot of attention and Jack is confrontational and angry and probably mis-directing the frustration. And Sam is... well, waiting for orders really, and staying out of Janet's way, which is no small thing.]
“Doc?” The Colonel asked, then indicated the patient in question with a chin jut. “Looks like Sleeping Beauty is coming out of it.”
“Hey, Teal’c.” Daniel smiled, shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head . Sam jumped off the next bed where she’d been sitting to close ranks. Janet privately thought that particular habit of military teams made her feel claustrophobic; she knew, though, that they wouldn’t hold his hand, wouldn’t try to comfort him after she left the way a child or lover or anyone not on a military base might, or maybe anyone might with a patient other than Teal’c, so she’d allow them all to tower over her in solidarity until they got in her way.
[Me playing with the tactile nature of doctors, and how people have different behaviors at a sick bed: take Sha’re, in Forever and a Day, she held Daniel’s hand, rested her head by it, petted him, or take Jack sitting on the next bed over and standing when Sam wakes in Grace, which is the perfect soldier response in my head; and compare that with Jacob the soldier but also Dad saying goodbye in Death Knell, where he sits on Sam’s bed at her hip. Also, Janet is a little woman, and SG-1 is really very tall.]
“This could take a minute, Daniel, he might not be ready to speak right away.”
“Doctor Fraiser.” Or not. His voice sounded gravelly. She’d have to check his airway, make sure it wasn’t still swollen from the allergic reaction.
[I enjoyed the weirdness of explaining unexplained symptoms from someone else’s fic. It didn’t seem to be something Hathor was focusing on, but the idea that stings from a bug might have a delayed anaphylactic response, especially in the member of the team with a dramatically different physiology, was a neat one. I actually like the idea that it was Junior who had the biggest response to whatever venom was in the sting, and that’s why there was a short reaction delay that let Teal'c get to the infirmary, but then once he started reacting, he reacted quickly. Then he slept, because once the cause of the reaction was removed and Janet stabilized them, they both had to sleep, see? Even though he's Jaffa? It’s logical in my head.]
“Teal’c. Feeling better? You gave us a scare.”
“Indeed.”
“Good. Open your mouth for a moment, please?” Looks fine, she diagnosed, recovering from possibly the first documented allergic reaction ever in a Jaffa. Skin wasn’t warm, though he closed his eyes for long moments when she pressed her hand over his forehead and temple. Fatigue. “Okay, call me if anything feels out of the ordinary, and you all can have a few moments, but then I want Teal’c to kel no’reem if possible. In silence.”
Her mock glare was met with a sheepish grin from Captain Carter, an outright smile from Daniel, and a quiet, ‘Yes, Ma’am,” from Colonel O’Neill at the foot of the bed, which, along with a half smirk, told her he already knew he was forgiven for the earlier comments.
[Don’t you just love Janet? She’s all relieved liek whoa that Teal’c is okay but she’s still doing her job: and interspersed with the noting of appearance is the understanding of just how out of her hands a lot of this was. Relief. R-O-L-A-I-D-S. And really, we have achieved snarky forgiveness at this point. All that is still required is the final hat tip to the original fic, and the repeating line that no one could cope with Teal'c dying which I couldn't in all good conscience ignore as a remixer. Waffled on that point, though.]
Can’t fault a team for getting antsy about one of their own lying unconscious on a bed, really, and Janet figured that she’d be angrier if they hadn’t shown such concern. She shuffled her way back to the foot of the bed to let Sam see for herself that her teammate was in fact holding his own eyes open, and was marking the time on Teal’c’s chart when he croaked out her name again.
“Yes, Teal’c?” she answered. “Did you need anything?”
“Only to say, that I am most grateful to be alive, Doctor Fraiser.”
She gripped his ankle for a moment, which was all she could reach, really, as she tried to figure out how to answer that kind of comment. “We’re all glad that you’re okay, Teal’c,” she said finally. “Don’t know what we would have done without you.”
[Aaaand, the last line is putting some of Hathor’s (the author’s) lines in Janet’s mouth, which felt appropriate for a remix.
So, to be clear: the following things were from ‘Vigil’: Teal’c dropping to the floor in the infirmary after being bitten by some off-world bugs (premise), Jack snarking at Janet when she leaves Teal’c stable but unconscious to treat another team coming from a firefight (characters and motivations, plot), some of the lines including Teal’c’s last one, although many had to be adapted.
What I changed:
1. The POV: Janet was a passing character in ‘Vigil’, just stopping by and the brunt of some of Jack’s snarking, but she was gone by the time the fic began; I followed her down the hall and let her fume while they waited.
2. The length of the fic: I think mine is 3-4 times longer, while still a ficlet, really.
3. The tone and emotion: in ‘Vigil’ it’s SG-1 worrying over a teammate in the infirmary, and in mine it’s Janet genuinely furious.
4. Also, the original was multiple POVs, all first person and present tense and mine is more traditional third person simple past tense. With bizarre cuts to simple medical procedures.
Hopefully this works as a stand alone fic, but also is recognizably and respectfully built on ‘Vigil’ Also? I am thrilled that Hathor liked it. Cheers.]
Please and thanks for comments on the fic, the commentary, remixing in general, or whatever. List of remix recs with author credits to come.