Chapter Sixteen

It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
Gimme Shelter
The Rolling Stones

 “Jesus Mom, what the hell did he do to you?”

Nick had been just about to toss his Mother’s fresh clothes onto the bed in the infirmary when those words come through the exam room door.  No thought just action, he burst through it to find his Mother naked head to toe and his lovely Annie inspecting her.

“Oh! Nicholas!” Calla cried out shrilly and tried to cover her thin aging body with her arms and hands. “What are you doing? Get out of here.”

While she managed to cover all of the important parts the long bruise which ran hip to hip wasn’t hidden from his view. “Who?”  If she said Ares he was going to storm into the control room where he and Jack O’Neill were discussing matters and throw the old bastard through the plate glass window!

“Get out,” Annie hissed at him and handed Calla a sheet to cover herself.

“Answer me first.”  He took two steps back to show he intended to leave if he just got an answer.

“Your Father, all right?” Calla asked as she held up the sheet as though it were some type of magickal shield.  “Please, Nicholas, you have no right to be in here.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled and cleared his throat as he reached the open door. “Sorry, Mom. I heard what Annie said and…”

“And your Grandfather is in perfect order, you know don’t you?”  She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I appreciate your concern but please leave.  We’ll talk about Ares when we get home.”

“When Dad finds out…”

Calla glanced at Annie and then hurried toward her Son with a very unsteady gait while she tried to keep the sheet around her. “Does he have to?  Listen to me, you’ve come to like and even respect your Grandfather over these last five years and it’s only because you thought…a certain danger…had been taken away.”

“Certain danger?” Nick mocked. “Geez you can really understate things, can’t you Mom?”

“You left me with him, you trusted me to him and you were right and so was Daniel.  Ares hasn’t hurt me, Nicholas. He hasn’t tried to do anything that isn’t Fatherly.”

“Yeah, well his definition of what a Father can and can’t do is sort of broad, don’t you think?” Nick scoffed and rolled his eyes.  He felt like an idiot. All those times that Ares was the only one looking after Mom and they all felt safe leaving her with him, if they’d know then what he knew now they never would have given Ares that chance.

“He’s done nothing which you, my dear Son, would consider unfatherly.” Calla said softly.  “I like being able to be near him without someone thinking about what might be going on underneath. I need my family and he is my Father, don’t take this away from me, please Nicholas.”

No matter how you sliced it the old bastard was family, she was right about that. “Just tell me when you did it and why.” Nick turned around to look down at her. She had a strange color about her almost as though all of the blood had rushed suddenly into her face and then drained away just as quickly leaving behind a faint crimson hue.

Calla licked her lips as her head began to pound. She was so thirsty all of a sudden and it was almost hard to concentrate on answering him. “Shortly after I returned from the Underworld and because I couldn’t leave him that way. It wasn’t right.”  She took his hands. “Please, he means me no harm.”

“You always say that and you’re almost always wrong.” He complained and then kissed her cheek not liking the pitch in her voice or that redness in her face.  She was right there had been a very pleasant peace among Daniel, Nicholas and Ares the last five years and it was only because they thought his dick didn’t work. If he’d been behaving himself all that time… “I’ll think about it, Mom. But Dad’s going to find out sooner or later, you know he will.” Nick opened the door. “Chill out or you’re gonna bust a blood vessel or something, all right?” He and walked out. It was his last statement more than his Mother’s wishes that stopped him from going any further with this.

Calla looked up at Annie with a small smile. “Sorry about that.”  Her headache was now ten times worse than it had been and the world around her seemed to shift and then to spin as she grew dizzy.  Calla reached back for the examination bed behind her and missed as she crashed to the floor.

“Mom,” Annie rushed to her side. “You ok?”  Where was the big oaf when you could use him? She thought as she gave the door a cursory glance.

“I should like to sheep for a week,” she said softly and let Annie held her to the bed.  “I should like never to see those people again.”

Sheep? Did she say sheep? “Me too.” Annie agreed and began her examination and was unhappy with the results. Calla’s blood pressure was far too high and her heart rate was abnormally slow. “You got a headache?” It was clear from the little fall that Calla was dizzy. 

“Yes, sh’reble.” Calla tried to hold her hand to her head but it only flopped around uncontrollably.

Signs three and four; slurred speech and impediment of motor skills. Annie soothed Calla’s brow and leaned forward while trying not to raise her alarm. “I want you to lay right there and don’t move, ok?” Annie said seriously. “I’ll be right back.” Rushing into the infirmary’s pharmacy she passed a nurse. “Get Doctor Jackson in here right now and get her down to CT stat, I want her in that machine in the next five minutes!” Annie ordered and pushed the bottles aside until her frantic hand finally landed on what she was seeking; a bottle of tPA--Tissue plasminogen activator--  the miracle clot-busting drug.  Earlier Annie had drawn two vials of Callas’ Ichor and she needed to know if there was anything strange in there before she delivered the drug. Dashing out of the pharmacy she ran into the lab where Sam was hunched over a microscope.

“What’s going on?” Sam said taking in the harried look on Annie’s face.

“Where are the samples I left?” She began tossing papers around the room.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Sam reached out and grabbed Annie’s hands before she could completely destroy the stack of research. “What is happening?  The printouts are still in the machine.”

Annie ran for the printer and grabbed up the readout. “Mom’s having a stroke.”  Her eyes scanned the sheet.

“What?!”

“Go keep an eye on her for a minute while I go through this. She’s in CT.”

Sam ran out of the room quick as the wind toward the CT room but Calla wasn’t in the CT room, a tech had made the last minute decision to give her an MRI instead which he thought would give them better results. Sam got there just as they finished loading her onto the machine.  “What’s going on?” She asked the tech. “I thought she was supposed to go for a CT Scan.”

“We’ll know more in just a minute, Colonel Carter.” The tech leaned into the microphone, “If you can hear me Mrs…Qu….Mrs. Jackson, I want to lie perfectly still. Please don’t move at all.”  Calla didn’t show any signs of responding to him. He pushed the button on the control panel and the bed slid backward into the donut like medical device.  It began to whirr and then to rotate and then the strangest thing he ever saw started to happen just as the images of her battered brain began to show on his screen. The woman on the bed levitated. “What the hell?”

Sam didn’t know if that was a result of the machine or Calla expressing her displeasure with the test but, “Magnet Resonance Imaging, right?”

“You know that, ma’am.” The tech said puzzled.

“Shut it down.”

“What?”

“Shut it down!” Sam demanded and stood up.

“Excuse me, Colonel but you’re not a medical doctor and Doctor Jackson said to…”

“Doctor Jackson said to take her to CT! I’ll do it myself!” Sam reached out for the control panel but the tech beat her to it. All the while Calla drifted upward toward the ceiling of the machine.

“All right.”

The whirring stopped and Calla settled back on the bed of the MRI.  “Get her into CT.” Sam said as she exhaled a deep breath.  Xerinium, the damn planet was full of it and she knew what those insane women had done to Nick. What if Calla had it in her?  If that was what was making her float toward the top of the MRI well they probably just did way more harm than good. Annie suspected that already and that was why she ordered the CT Scan instead of the MRI.

Calla was rushed a little ways down the hall with a nurse at her side taking her blood pressure and shaking her head. They loaded her into the CT machine which was similar to the MRI but instead of magnets it would use X-rays to scan Calla’s body and tell them what was happening with her.  It didn’t take more than ten minutes to conduct but would take longer to read and translate.  In the meantime Calla was loaded onto a rolling scanner bed which displayed all of her vitals on an attached monitor.

“Holy crap,” Sam moaned as she looked at the blood pressure reading; 220/120.  Calla’s pulse rate continued to be erratic but to her it seemed it was starting to fall which meant her heart couldn’t keep up with the added pressure being placed upon it.  Alarms went off all over the place as doctors and nurses stormed into the CT room with crash-carts at the ready.

Daniel, who’d been running around from room to room looking for her, dashed into the CT room and stopped short when he saw all the activity around Calla. He soon felt his body being propelled forward as Ares pushed him out of the way and Nick followed him. The alarm lights on the monitors flashed red and the little line that was keeping track of her heart beat spiked and fell dramatically.

“ANNIE!” Sam shouted out. “Get in here! Annie!”

In the corner Hades quietly appeared.

It took only a moment for those in the room to feel the chill he brought with him and to look up at him standing there looking down at Calla.

“No,” Daniel said strongly. “You’re not going to take her.”

It was Nick’s turn to shout as loud as he could, rattling the observation windows as he bellowed; “ANNIE!”

“Heat ‘em up!” Sam called out as she motioned for the defibrillator.

There wasn’t much room in there with the medical staff hurrying to do their thing but Ares wound his way to the head of the scanner bed and put his hands on her still head. Nick was at the foot of the bed and had his feet in her hands. Each of them telling her to fight, to hang on, not to let go and most important of all how much they loved her.

On the monitor the blood pressure level reached 230/140 and her pulse dropped to near 0.  Daniel knew he was going to lose her, right here right now; she was going to slip away from him.  The line which had been following along with her struggling heart suddenly went flat and a long steady beep rang out in the room.

“Paddles!” Sam called out.

Hades silently took off his gloves and began to reach out for her.

No way…no fuckin’ way.

Daniel charged across the room to stand between the God of Death and the dying woman on the scanner bed. “Fight, Kitty.” He reached down for her hand as Sam came in with the paddles and the damn buzzer kept letting out its long annoying sound.

“Don’t!” Annie shouted from the doorway as she ran inside. “Don’t hit her with those!”

Sam pulled back just as she laid the metal paddles on Calla’s skin. “What?”

“Just don’t,” Annie said exhaustedly and rushed to inject Calla with the clot-buster. “She’s filled with Xerinium. If you hit with those things you might as well just send her to the electric chair.” She leaned over Calla and started doing chest compressions and counting them off as she went; “One, two, three, four five. Breathe.” She tilted Calla’s head back, pinched her nose shut and blew a breath into her lungs. Across from Annie a tech rushed in and threw up the newly developed film of Calla’s CT Scan. She looked at it with a keen eye while continuing on with another round of CPR and then handing the job of resuscitating Calla over to Sam so she could examine the results of the scan closely. She had to know what type of stroke Calla suffered before she knew how to treat her.

“It’s time, Daniel.” Hades said in as soft a voice as he could. “Move aside.”

Daniel looked down at her with the red lights flashing and the alarm letting out its endless whine. “Fuck you.” He took up her hand and held it to his already tear stained cheek. “Come on, Kitty, don’t leave me.” He brushed her fingers across his lips. “Stay with me.” He begged in a soft whisper as he gazed down at the woman on the bed through a cascade of tears. She was so pale and so fragile. Worst of all there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. “Please, Cal, stay with me. I love you, what will I ever do without you? Stay with me, baby.”

The flat line on the monitor gave out one single; beep.

Sam continued compressions. “One, two, three, four, five. Breathe.” 

“That’s it, baby, come on, I know you can do it. Fight. Stay with me.”

Ares soothed her brow. “You can do it, Calla.” He encouraged. “Don’t let Hades win.”

Beep.

“You got it, Mom.” Nick coached as he held her feet in his hands and tried to hold back the tears.

Beep.

The dying in skin in Daniel’s hands emitted a strange energy almost as though he’d stuck their fingers in a low-voltage outlet. Suddenly the flow reversed its course and she was pulling in energy from him. Drawing from him. “Take all you want, Cal, I got plenty, take it.”  Daniel blubbered. The monitors came on again showing a pulse, blood pressure, heart rate, brainwave function and level of oxygen in her Ichor.  On the bed Calla started to stiffen and thrash about and the monitors went crazy again.

“Hold her down,” Annie said and pinned Calla’s shoulders to the mattress. “She’s having a seizure.”

Out of the corner of his blue eye Daniel saw Hades looking on with much interest. “Get away from her.”

“You guys get away too, ok?” Annie ordered. “We need room to work here. Come on, get out!”

Although they didn’t really want to the three men stepped away from the aging thrashing woman on the bed only to walk in Hades’ direction trying to make sure that he too stayed away from her. “You can’t hold me back forever.” Hades said without much pleasure, taking his Queen to the Underworld wasn’t on his top ten list of Things To Do.

“I can try.” Daniel returned.

Behind the men with their hearts in their throats the monitors began to quiet and the commotion died down.  They turned around to see her heartbeat had settled down and her blood pressure was rapidly returning to normal.  When they turned around again Hades was gone. The danger has passed. Daniel felt the strength go out of his legs as he realized how close he came to never seeing or holding her again. He stumbled out of the room and slid down the wall in the hallway where he put his forehead against his knees and started to weep.  This was the beginning of the end he just knew it. How much—how little—time was left?  How many bullets were there to dodge before one made killer contact?

Ares came out into the hallway and stood against the opposite wall with his back against it. He was pale as a ghost and breathing hard. Daniel hadn’t seen the Big Man cry too many times but he was bawling like a baby now and Ares didn’t seem to care who saw.

Nicholas stumbled out into the hall and the door to the infirmary was promptly shut behind him leaving him to look through the little observation window at the team of medical personnel working so feverishly to restore his Mother to health.

Suddenly the hallway was filled with Olympians and UPs. “What the hell is going on?” Poseidon spoke first.

The three men they looked to for answers all stared back at them with weepy eyes.  “She…she had a…stroke.” Daniel stuttered unable to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. She was a friggin’ Olympian! He wasn’t ever supposed to be able to say that she had a stroke or heart attack or cancer or anything like that!

“Nick?” Coley rushed to her Brother’s side and Nick put his arm around her as they stared through the window. “Is she gonna be all right?”

“I don’t know, Runt.” Nick whispered and held his twin Sister a little tighter. “That was bad.” As he peered in through the window at his Mother and his wife working on her he thought about Annie and how fragile life is.  One day it would be him sitting there watching his wife die and being utterly helpless to stop it. How would he handle it? What would he do when good old Uncle Hades showed up not for his Mother but for his wife?

Aiden, Amy and Athena gathered around Daniel.  Aiden had been in the middle of a very important chemistry exam when he felt there was something terribly wrong with his Mother. Amy had been on her way back to the dorm because tonight was her night to have a web chat with Mom and she was looking forward to hearing about her sudden trip to Sengul when she felt it deep in her head, a horrible pounding sensation that she couldn’t shake.  Athena had just been stepping out of the shower in her own dormitory when she suddenly fell to the floor her legs unable to hold her up.  They all came rushing here to the SGC to find out what was going on. Lilly and Brigid probably weren’t even aware there was something wrong with Calla.

“Dad?” Aiden asked.  “Don’t hold back, how bad is it?”

Daniel just shook his head and started to cry once more.  With heavy hearts they gathered around him, sinking to the floor to be next to him and put their arms around him and each other.  “She’s gonna make it,” Amy whispered. “Don’t cry, Daddy, she’s going to be all right.”

More than anything Daniel wanted to believe that.  “Can you do something? Can you help her?” He whispered as he clutched at straws.

Amy agreed she would try and went into the room where all the fussing had finally died down.  She explained to Annie what she wanted to attempt and Annie told her to go ahead. The others watched from the doorway as Amy laid her hands on Calla who now lay strapped to the scanner bed, the right side of her face paralyzed and hanging down obscurely. Although her eyes were closed the right eye was partially open as though she were staring off into a place that only she could see.  Like the eye the right side of her mouth also hung slightly open and long lines of drool came from it as she struggled to breathe. Amy tried with all her might to give her Mother the healing energy she so desperately needed but…, “It’s just draining out of her.” Amy said finally and looked up at them with sad eyes as she soothed a hand across her Mother’s brow.

“What if we all try?” Athena suggested. “You know like when the stones fell on her.”

They all looked at each other and agreed it was worth making the attempt but when the stones fell on her Brigid and Lilly had been in the healing circle. Amy and Aiden flew off to get the girls and returned swiftly.  All who had joined in the circle before did so again but the result was not what they hoped for. As Amy said, it was just draining out of her as though there wasn’t enough of her left to hold it inside.

All of them feeling the hopelessness of the situation and sensing they would have to say good-bye to their Mother, Daughter, Grandmother, or Queen a lot sooner than they should have they watched as she was wheeled out of the CT room finally and taken to a private room in the infirmary.

End of Chapter Sixteen of
Golden Years
by Moon Mistress
a/k/a Lisa Beth Darling
Go to
Chapter Seventeen