A Fight With Furniture

Summary: Random acts of kindness.

Author’s note: Finding myself having lost a fight with a dresser of my own, I wondered what might happen to Sam in a similar situation. A thorough waste of cyberspace, but thanks anyway for reading it. Also, this is one of my very early stories. Please don’t judge me too harshly on it. J

‘God, I really need to use the bathroom,’ was all Sam could think as she saw the first bits of sunlight filtering through her living room window. She hadn’t moved in eight hours, dozing on and off, lying flat on the floor.

She’d been trying to move a dresser into a corner. She took the drawers out, made it as light as she could, but its odd destination forced her to twist as she pushed. Finally, lacking adequate leverage, she decided to try pushing with her legs. She lay down on the floor, put her hands over her head and placed them on the wall, braced her feet up on the dresser, and pushed.

Sam started to get up, but a shooting pain in her spine stopped her in her tracks. ‘Damn,’ she thought. ‘Guess I must’ve been overexerting myself a little. I must deserve this.’ She laid her head back down, but tried to sit up again after a few minutes, and again a bit later, but she finally just gave up and fell asleep.

Now it was 0600 hours, she needed to get to the base, and a stupid dresser had incapacitated her. Great. Just great.

As she started to rehearse what she would tell the General about missing the debriefing for SG-1’s last mission, she heard a knock on her front door. It wasn’t like she could get up to answer it.

Knowing her CO had an emergency key to her house, Sam yelled, “Colonel? I could use some help in here!” She tried to ignore her disgust at the thought of O’Neill seeing her so helpless, but she really had to use the bathroom.

“Just get in here, Sir!” she shouted back, pleadingly. He opened the door, looking rather concerned.

“Here, Sir,” she replied meekly. She could just imagine all the smart-ass comments he would start rambling off the minute he saw her. She would never hear the end of this.

“Where? Oh…” she heard. She’d closed her eyes and gave one more gallant effort to get up as he walked over.

‘What no ‘boy, you really did it this time, Carter’ or ‘Carter, did you lose a fight with your furniture?’ Just ‘Oh?’’ she wondered.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Suddenly feeling very exposed and uncomfortable, she struggled again to move. A strong hand gripped her shoulder and eased her back to the floor.

“Relax,” the Colonel said. He slipped his hand under her shoulder, placed the other under her opposite hip, and quickly twisted her torso. Surprised, Sam let out a quick yelp and sat up like a shot. She winced as she suddenly realized that she was no longer on the floor… and as she realized why she was no longer on the floor. She looked back at O’Neill and started to open her mouth.

“Sara used to try and move furniture around herself, too,” he said. “It’ll be sore for a while,” he added as an afterthought.

“Oh,” she replied. Jack stood up and started toward the front door. “Uh, Colonel…” He stopped for a second and turned back toward her. “What were you doing here anyway, Sir?”

He just smiled at her. “Carter, next time, try picking on a dresser your own size,” he said, unable to contain the quip any longer. He turned again and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

As Sam moved her eyes from the door, she noticed the bag of donuts he had left on her end table and remembered how she had offhandedly mentioned to him that she didn’t have any food in the house.