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“Daniel, be careful!” Sam shouts.
“I’m fine, Sam!” he calls back down.
And he is, as long as he doesn’t look down. In truth, Daniel hates heights. He gets dizzy and the world spins under his feet, and he’s fallen more than once. But sending someone else up wasn’t an option. All their digital equipment is on the fritz due to the ion storm in the upper atmosphere, and as it is, he’s the only one who can read this particular dialect. He just has to get up there, copy it down, and then they’re home free.
“Come on, Daniel. I feel like I’m getting green down here. You won’t like me when I’m angry,” Jack yells.
Daniel ignores the Lou Ferrigno references and focuses on the last leg of the climb. Below him he hears Teal’c admonishing Jack that the ionosphere does not, in fact, ionize people.
“Well, shoot. I wanted to be bulletproof,” Jack complains.
Finally, Daniel is close enough to see the inscriptions clearly and he leans against the rocky escarpment while he fishes around in his vest for pencil and paper. The lettering resembles ancient Tifinagh, something he did not expect. Other motifs and architectural ruins showed more of West African influence.
“You done up there yet? I wanna get back before Siler eats all the chocolate pudding. It’s Thursday!” Jack yells.
“Just another minute. This is fascinating. These inscriptions are going to take me a while to translate but-”
“Look out!” Teal’c shouts.
Daniel instantly looks down and the land seems to fall away from him, like the ground is opening up. Teal’c, Jack, and Sam all fire at a large boar-like creature that’s charging at them from the tree line. Daniel exhales and tries to breathe through his nose. There’s no attack, everything is fine. He’s just got a couple more lines of script to copy down and then he can climb back down onto solid ground.
He turns his head back to the wall and his stomach flips. It feels like the wall is jello and his feet are slipping. He looks down, but his boots aren’t moving.
“Daniel, what’s wrong?” Sam calls.
“Uh, nothing. I’m fine. I’ve just got a couple more lines and I’ll be down,” Daniel answers.
“Yeah, you don’t look fine,” Jack observes.
“Just give me a minute. I got a little disoriented. I’m fine.”
“Like hell you’re fine. Get down before you fall. We’ll send someone back for photos when the ion storm has died down,” Jack yells.
Daniel is so close, though. He takes a couple of steadying breaths and starts transcribing again.
“Dammit, Daniel. That’s an order. Get down!” Jack shouts.
Daniel ignores him, he only needs a couple more seconds. “Done! I’m done. I’m coming down.” Carefully, he stows the pen and paper in his pockets and begins his descent.
Daniel moves his left foot, the rocks feel like they’re spinning, and then he loses his grip.
*****
“Daniel! Daniel, wake up!”
Daniel blinks hard and groans. “Wh- where-”
“Where are you!?” Jack asks. “The ground, Daniel! You’re on the ground. I told you to come down, I didn’t say fall to your death.”
Daniel turns his head to look around, still unsure of his surroundings, and Sam gently holds his neck still.
“Easy, you took a pretty bad fall. I wanna do a quick field assessment before we try to get you back to the gate,” Sam explains.
Daniel figures that they must be on a mission but for the life of him he can’t remember which one. Tentatively, Daniel tries moving his arms and legs. It turns out to be a terrible choice.
“Aaaaahhh!” Daniel screams. His entire right side feels like it’s been crushed. Fire lances through his ribs and down his right leg. His shoulder throbs horribly but it’s less concerning than everything else.
“She said ‘easy,’ Daniel. So just lie there,” Jack says in his authoritative voice. Honestly, though, it doesn’t matter how Jack asks because Daniel isn’t going to make that mistake again.
Jack, Teal’c, and Sam begin the process of removing Daniel’s tactical gear and outer layers. He does his best to grit his teeth but there are still more than a few muttered apologies before it’s said and done.
“Alright, well I can already see that your shoulder is dislocated. Let’s see what else we’ve got under here,” Sam says, pulling Daniel’s shirt out of his waistband.
Daniel tries to breathe through the pain but everything hurts. Sam prods his ribs one at a time and it feels like her fingers are poking him directly in his lungs. He gasps, breathing in small sips of air that feel like red hot needles in his chest.
“No breaks, probably a couple hairline fractures but nothing that’s in danger of puncturing a lung,” she announces.
Daniel nods, his eyes fixed on the pink and purple swirls of the ion storm above him.
“What else hurts?”
“Right leg. I think it’s broken,” Daniel grits out.
Sam nods and Daniel tries to focus on the lights. As soon as she starts palpating his thigh, he screws his eyes closed and arches away. It’s agony from his hip to his foot, and after a moment he tips his head to the side and vomits. She keeps going, quickly working her way down his leg to his ankle and then stops.
“Sorry, Daniel,” she says, putting her hand on his. “It looks like you broke your femur, possibly in multiple places. We can’t risk moving you without splinting it or it could damage your femoral artery and you would bleed out before we ever reached the gate.”
“Great,” Daniel mumbles, still dizzy from pain.
“I’m on it,” Jack says and heads towards the forest for what Daniel assumes are supplies for a splint.
“I’m gonna go ahead and try to reduce your shoulder. It’ll make the haul back to the gate a lot less terrible,” Sam explains. She and Teal’c position themselves on either side of him and she counts to three before she starts pulling his arm out from his side and away from his body.
Daniel groans through gritted teeth and Teal’c presses a firm hand against his left shoulder, effectively pinning him to the ground.
“Almost there,” Sam encourages.
Daniel very much does not feel like they’re almost anywhere but before he can formulate a sentence to tell her as much, there’s a sudden pop and his shoulder slides back into place. It hurts for a second and then there’s relief.
Sam smiles brightly. “Alright, that’s one thing down. While Jack is getting stuff for the splint, I wanna do a quick neurological exam.”
Daniel knows the drill. He follows her finger with his eyes and squeezes her fingers but most of the stuff they would normally do — checking both arms or legs for coordination — is put off.
“That’s good enough for now, Daniel,” she declares. “Any head or neck injury we need to know about?”
Daniel isn’t 100% sure that he’s uninjured, but best he can tell there’s nothing. “I don’t think so?”
“But?” she prompts.
“But how did I end up unconscious? And why do I not remember where we are?” Daniel asks.
“It would seem to be that the shock of your landing momentarily stunned you. It may also be that you were rendered unconscious from the pain of injuries. You need not have hit your head for those things,” Teal’c explains.
Sam shrugs. “I mean I’m no medical doctor, but what Teal’c’s saying makes sense.”
Teal’c nods. “As for your location, you are currently on P3X-725, a currently uninhabited planet. You were transcribing-”
“Oh yeah, the Tifinagh inscription on the rock face. Man, climbing up there was a bad idea,” Daniel mutters.
“Y’think?” Jack asks, dropping a few sticks next to Daniel. “How’s the patient?”
“We reduced his shoulder and otherwise he’s lucid. So I think as long we can stabilize his leg we should be able to get him back to the gate safely,” Sam informs him.
“Great. We’ve already missed our first check in by an hour so the sooner we get back, the better,” Jack says.
“Agreed,” Teal’c says.
Daniel does his best to take deep breaths, despite the searing pain of his not-broken-but-maybe-fractured ribs. Teal’c leverages his superior strength and pins Daniel to the ground while Jack and Sam splint and wrap most of his leg. It’s every bit as agonizing as he expected and by the end he’s screaming again, dark spots clouding his vision.
“Breathe, Daniel!” Jack yells. “You gotta breathe!”
“Trying,” Daniel grits out. “Hurts.”
“Yeah, buddy. I know it does,” Jack concedes quietly, giving Daniel a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. Privately, Daniel wonders how bad he has to look for Jack to be so openly sympathetic.
Sam unrolls the mesh net from her IFAK and they carefully scoot Daniel onto it. On three they lift and head off in the direction of the gate. Daniel, despite the absolutely agonizing jostling, does his best to keep quiet. He knows they’re trying and he also knows that this whole stupid predicament is his fault.
But despite the pain, Daniel eventually settles into an uneasy sleep. His whole body hurts, the even side he didn’t land on, and as Daniel is rudely reminded, pain really saps a person’s energy.
*****
He wakes, his head throbbing so hard that his stomach rolls, and he leans over, spitting a few mouthfuls of bile in the leaf litter next to his head. Already hurting and exhausted from just vomiting, Daniel lets his head loll against the ground and blinks up at the night sky through the trees. They must have been walking for a long time because Daniel knows it was only mid-afternoon when he fell. Around him, the rest of the team is resting and eating a light meal.
“You alive over there?” Jack asks.
“Not really,” Daniel answers.
“Throw up any blood?”
Daniel turns his head, his neck is already excruciatingly stiff. “Doesn’t look like it. Just tasted like bile.”
Jack nods in the moonlight. “Good. You need to eat something.”
Just the thought of eating makes Daniel want to puke all over again, but he knows Jack’s right. “There’s a few bars in my vest if you still have it.”
Teal’c brings the vest over so that Daniel can use his good hand to find what he wants. But he soon discovers that he can’t open a wrapper with just one hand.
“I will assist you, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c states.
It’s a tad bit embarrassing that he’s asking Apophis’ former First Prime to help him eat a granola bar, but at least he hasn’t had to ask someone to help him take a crap yet so there are still as of yet unplumbed depths of humiliation.
The granola bar tastes so much better than he expected, which is a pretty good indicator that he was hungry, but knowing supplies are limited he resists the urge to ask for another.
“You thirsty?” Sam asks, hovering above him with a canteen. Daniel knows better than to refuse her because if Jack gets involved it’ll be more waterboarding and less drinking. Teal’c retreats to eat his own rations, and Sam carefully lifts the back of his head with one hand to help him drink without choking. As with the granola, he didn’t realize how much his body needed this until he got a little.
“Thanks, Sam,” Daniel says as she slowly lays his head back down in the leaves.
“We’re about two miles out from the gate. We should be able to get there in another hour to an hour and a half. It was rough terrain coming in so it’s pretty slow going with, you know-”
“With carrying my limp body? Yeah, I imagine,” Daniel finishes for her.
Sam laughs. “Something like that. We’re just trying not to jostle you too much.”
“I do appreciate that,” Daniel says.
She pats his good shoulder and goes to eat her rations and rest for a few minutes with the others. Daniel doesn’t mind them leaving him to lie there for a few moments; it’s not like he has much to say. “Sorry I fell off the cliff face that I ill-advisedly climbed,” isn’t much of a conversation starter and frankly everyone is so tired no one is going to want to talk.
Instead, he looks up again at the auroras and watches them swirl, bright pops of red, pink, purple, and blue dancing. It’s easy to wonder what sort of cultural effect this natural phenomenon had on the local population. Was it seen as an omen? A deity? Something else? Daniel wishes he could find more artifacts, see if maybe this was reflected in their religion, art, or even clothing.
But his musings are cut short as the team packs up and gets ready to head out. Daniel braces himself and pain flares as he’s lifted once more. He grits his teeth and manages to groan only a little. He knows that this set back is going to keep him stuck on base for quite some time, even after he’s allowed back in his office which could be a while. But he can’t imagine ever having lived without knowing the diversity of humanity across the galaxy. For all that he’s seen and learned, a broken leg is maybe not the worst price he could have paid.