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of impending doom.
     
    Returned to the SGC by a whisker past 0800, he looked with sour disfavor at his paperwork-cluttered desk.
    Homework. It’s like homework. I’m too damned old for homework
.
    He had till 1100. Three whole hours. That was a little time up his sleeve. And there were sick people in the infirmary, after all. It was his duty, wasn’t it, to go cheer them up?
    And if it wasn’t before it’s going to be now.
    “Hey, here’s trouble,” said Janet Fraiser as he sauntered through the infirmary doors. “Something I can do for you, sir?”
    Hands shoved in his pockets he waggled his eyebrows at her. “Ask not what you can do for your colonel, ask what your colonel can do for you.”
    “Ah.” She clipped the pen she’d been using onto the clipboard in her other hand, put that on top of the medical gizmo she was playing with and tipped her head a little to one side. He knew that look. It said:
Don’t try playing me, buster. I know all your moves
.
    She didn’t. But she did know most of them… a fact that sometimes he relied on, sometimes he resented… and all the time knew he couldn’t escape.
    “Just dropped in to say hi to your patients,” he said. “If that’s all right with you.”
    She grinned. “Boy, those reports have really got you cornered, haven’t they?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied loftily. “You must have me mixed up with some other dilatory colonel.”
    Still grinning, she waved a hand in the direction of the base wards. “Visit away, sir. With luck you’ll scare a few of them back onto their feet.”
    She did that a lot. Called him
sir
. When they both knew she had the drop on him, day and night. She followed his orders when it suited her medical agenda to do so and blithely countermanded him whenever that suited her better. She was a pint-sized autocrat, a dictator in four-inch heels. She was the best damned doctor the base would ever have and she could countermand him every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
    The trick was not letting her work that out.
    With a last smirk he headed for the sick people, only to be stopped by her gentle voice. “Colonel… I’ll be in my office when you’re done, if you want to talk.”
    Damn the woman. She
always
knew when he had a bug up his butt, she had some kind of radar, and it never failed. But he had no intention of talking to her about this one, about Cromwell or David Dixon or sleeping dogs stirring out of their dreams. So why in hell did he give her the chance to see something was bugging him?
    Damned if he knew. And double-damned if he was going to let her ferret out the truth. And anyway, there was nothing to ferret out. David Dixon used to work with Frank Cromwell. Big deal. So what? A lot of people used to work with Frank Cromwell. He’d been in the military a whole lot of years.
    What do you want? You want me to forgive you? Is that it?
    Yeah. I guess I do
.
    He threw Fraiser a smile over his shoulder. “Thanks, Doc. I’m fine.”
     
    Ariel Lee was pretty depressed, which was hardly surprising. He sat with her for a while remembering Jake Andrews, who’d been her friend since basic training.
    “I was going to be a bridesmaid at his wedding,” she said, her eyes bright in the base’s harsh fluorescent lighting. “Me in baby-pink satin, there’s a laugh.” Her fingers twisted in the sheets. “I haven’t seen Mandy, yet. She was hysterical on the phone. I don’t know what to tell her when I do see her. God, Colonel. What do I tell her?”
    “You tell her the truth,” he said softly. “That Jake was a hero. That he loved her. That a lot of people are sorry he’s dead.”
    A tear slipped onto her cheek. “He hated lying to her. It really tore him up inside. He was even thinking of…” She sniffed. “You know.”
    Oh, yeah. He knew. He remembered what it felt like, telling lies to his family. Keeping terrible secrets. Shutting them out of his life. Bad enough when the