Once a Hero
A/N: This is a re-write of a very old fic I wrote and didn't finish. Huge thanks to DimpleCurlAeternaGirl for the beta! It's a lot of fun to write and a little more traditional Jate than Five Minutes to Midnight, which also has Suliet and entire host of other things going on: time travel, future Jate and Suliet kids etc. This, on the other hand will be a Jack gets to live and be reunited with Kate after Season 6 fic. Hope you guys enjoy and please drop me a line to let me know what you think and then I'll post more if you like it!
Chapter 1: The Island Was Just Returning The Favour
As a rule, Dr. Robert Hamill was not a superstitions person. He was never one of those kids who insisted on bringing their lucky pencils to an exam or one of those doctors with their lucky scrub hats, stethoscopes, or orange peels. Hell, he'd seen it all from old gym socks to rabbits' feet.
Robert Hamill was also not a man of faith. He liked to think that his four year bachelor degree, followed by four years of medical school, and five year general surgery residency was a product of his own free will rather than divine intervention.
Hamill was an optimist. He liked the idea of random chance. To him, it was a nice thought that his choice of a cinnamon-raisin bagel and a coffee with two creams and one sugar for breakfast this morning was his choice, simply because he was late for work and the cafeteria had really good bagels and mediocre coffee. No force had predetermined that on the 16,142th day of his life cafeteria bagels would be on the menu.
Another thing Hamill did not much care for was coincidence, even when he didn't quite recognize it as such. Reflecting on it later, he would never forget the evening of December 21, 2007 when everything he believed or, at least, he thought he believed, was tilted messily on its side.
He should have known it was going to be a strange day when his wife's cat (he refused to take ownership of the thing) appeared on their doorstep after being missing for the past six months. He woke up to a disgruntled, mewling sound and opened his door to find the damn tabby blinking irritably up at him. Okay. Maybe it wasn't that uncommon for cats to just reappear out of nowhere, but this was L.A., a population of 4 million people. He was shocked it wasn't decorating the side of a freeway somewhere. The whole fiasco had ended up being a positive for him. His wife was so elated by Snickers' miraculous return that she hadn't bothered to threaten him with sleeping on the couch if he stayed late at work. His new position as Chief of Surgery at St. Sebastian Hospital had not done much for his marriage. He could use the reprieve, especially when he realized there was no way he was making it home before midnight.
Robert had spent the past fifteen minutes debating on whether he should advise his wife about work when the high-pitched chirp of his pager made the decision for him. He palmed the thing off the top of his polished oak desk and checked the number: the ER. He rolled his eyes and pushed his chair back to stand up. He could just call, but with the day he'd been having the likelihood of this being something he could handle over the phone was essentially zero.
"Another surgical consult?" He asked the grim-faced triage nurse sitting behind the plexiglass window of the patient registration desk. He yawned and fiddled with the instant message function on his Blackberry.
"Not so much," she croaked in a gravelly voice that was ripened with age. "In all my years I've never…you'll have to see for yourself."
Hamill shrugged, trying to remember which one of his residents was doing their emerge rotation. Fisher, he thought. Most ER stories usually involved people with weird things stuck up their asses and his students never tired of paging him down for show and tell. He started to head in the direction of the exam rooms when she caught his arm and pointed toward the waiting room. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Collin Fisher was junior, but he knew his stuff. Hamill wondered what had spooked his student enough to have him paged directly to the waiting room.
"TB again?" He craned his neck back toward the nurse and cringed. She shook her head and made a 'hurry-up' gesture with her hands. Hamill sighed. The last time he had been called to the waiting room it had been a case of suspected tuberculosis. Suspected being the key word. The CDC had spent almost eight straight weeks trying to bury him in paperwork over what ended up being a bad case of pneumonia.
He dropped his Blackberry back into the breast pocket of his scrubs and rounded the corner where a small crowd had gathered.
"What's happening?"
"Dr. Hamill," Collin, his surgical resident waved him over. "One of the other patients noticed him."
Hamill blinked in the direction the man was pointing. His eyes scanned an empty row of seats until they fell over the image of a man bundled in a down-lined parka with a fringe of beige fur around the hood. He was slumped at the waist and listed to his left side against a wall that barely kept him from toppling over completely.
"Jesus," Hamill swore and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why isn't this man inside?"
"Stretcher's on the way," Collin assured. "But that's not the strange part," Collin side-stepped the gurney that one of the paramedics, working in triage, was helping a nurse wheel in. The grim-faced nurse was attempting crowd control. A patient, half-dead in the waiting room was never good for morale.
Hamill pulled gloves out of the box mounted on the wall. He knelt to help them lift the man onto the stretcher, grabbing him around the waist while the paramedic hooked his hands under the man's armpits.
"We'll move on three," the paramedic said. "One…two…and…three." They guided the man onto the gurney with a fluid motion.
Hamill stared down at his hands. The blue nitrile gloves were stained red with fresh blood.
"I've got blood," he muttered, and leaned over the stretcher, tugging at the parka. Another nurse was already working the hood back. It had been flush against the man's face, concealing his fever brightened skin.
"Where we going?" she asked.
"Trauma One. Now!" Hamill barked. "Stab wound, lower right quadrant,"
Hamill wrestled the clips of the overstuffed coat, fighting with them before he could even get to the zipper, let alone get it down. He didn't look up but frowned as the fabric finally gave way to a faded blue t-shirt, sticky from the blood had started to coagulate in a messy streak down the right side. He leaned in to get a better look, doing his best to examine the wound and walk with the gurney at the same time. The staff had wasted no time, but he waited until they were parked in the resuscitation bay before he started to palpate the area.
The man moaned loudly and Hamill jerked his head up, gasped, then cursed at the sight.
"Jack?" he muttered.
Collin nodded. "One of the nurses recognized him. Nobody saw who brought him in…I mean I doubt he could have made it himself in this condition…and there was a note."
Hamill's brow furrowed. "A note?"
A high-pitched beep filled the air before Collin could elaborate.
"His O2 stats are at 89%," Glen, the paramedic, announced as he reached for an oxygen mask hanging on the wall and jabbed at the 'alarm silence' button on the monitor.
"Alright, get him on a non-rebreather." Hamill paused to look around the room. "How's his pressure?"
"90/70 and his heart rate is clipping along at 120." Collin announced as he watched the nurses assigned to the resuscitation bay bustle into the room.
"Okay, we can work with that. For labs I want trauma set with type, screen, and cross match two units. Also, add on some blood cultures. Let's bolus him a couple of liters of Ringers wide open and for antibiotics we'll do Pip-Tazo 4.5g IV q6h. Someone call the OR to prep for an ex-lap."
"Jack?" Hamill squeezed the man's shoulder as he did his best to coax his arm out from where it was still tangled in the coat. He bit his lip and silently wondered if he should have tried harder. He barely knew Jack and by reputation only. At the time, he had laughed at the irony that they should meet after Jack pulled a women and her eight-year-old son out of a burning vehicle— a hero twice over. He should have recognized it back then. He shouldn't have ignored the vague sense that something was off when he left three voicemails without so much as a response after Jack had been so insistent on staying involved with the woman's care. But this was why Robert was a surgeon and not a psychiatrist. Things became clearer when the woman finally did wake up and pretty much spelled it out for him that Jack was suicidal.
It had been four weeks since he had seen the man and Robert still berated himself for not trying harder. He had let Jack walk out of his department drunk and screaming for his dead father because he still thought of Jack as a physician, not a patient. He had gotten so busy in his role as Chief of Surgery that he hadn't even called anyone to check up on him. Hamill was new at this and they were strangers, barely even colleagues. Jack had sounded impressive on paper, someone Hamill wouldn't mind having a beer with after work, but in real life Jack just seemed sad and broken.
"Look, you're at the hospital," he stated, letting his eyes roam over Jack's exposed arms, automatically checking them for needle marks. Where had the man come from? A bar? Did some skittish teenager find him a back ally and drop him off at the hospital? How had he gotten stabbed? Over drugs? He leaned in, sniffing the air around the man. There was no apparent scent of alcohol.
"Add a serum and urine tox to the list," he muttered to the nurse. He cringed as her expression changed, suddenly disapproving, as though Jack wasn't worth their time anymore.
Jack weakly brushed away Robert's hand, squirming on the stretcher. His eyes were half-open, but unfocused.
"Easy Jack, we're trying to help you." Hamill's fingers snagged on the coat again. He huffed and grabbed a pair of trauma shears from the medical tray to cut the damn thing off. Jack's t-shirt was harder to deal with, layers of skin began to slough off with it as they started to peel it away. It was as though the man had been in the sun for a very long time and his skin was burned to a crisp.
"Jesus, anyone got a temp on him yet?" He called out, frowning.
"104.3."
"Shit. Get him…" He didn't have time to force the rest of the words out as Jack rolled on his good side and started to tremble.
"Hey," Hamill directed his attention toward Jack and side-stepped the nurse trying to attach ECG leads to his exposed chest.
"Do you know where you are, Jack? Can you tell us what happened?"
"I…didn't know you were working today," he slurred, arcing his head toward the sound of the voice. Another shiver reverberated through him. He barely seemed awake.
"My resident called me down," Hamill explained, humouring him. "Can you tell us what happened to you?"
Jack's eyes opened a little wider, revealing just how glassy they were.
"I gave your Mom the tickets. If you don't have anybody else, maybe you could take Aunt Claire. I'm sure she'd love to get out of the house." He started to push himself up on his elbows. Hamill gently blocked him with his arm.
"Jack," he said calmly. "You're very sick. You need to lay back down and let us take care of you."
"I'm…gonna…be…late for…the c…concert." Jack grunted disjointedly and propelled himself forward with all his strength. Thankfully, it wasn't very much, but it didn't stop him from trying.
"You're not gonna get an IV in him like that," Glen remarked, skeptically.
"Jack!" He wriggled in an erratic motion that almost sent Robert flying.
"I…I have to be there…can't let him down again." Jack grumbled irritably, he was almost off the stretcher when one of the ER nurses had the good sense to stick him with a pre-filled syringe of Haldol and Ativan. Jack whimpered as he fell backward onto the pillow.
Hamill looked incredulous, but she shrugged. "You think we've never dealt with a rowdy patient before?" She asked nonchalantly.
"All right, that's enough all of you!" Hamill seethed. "I know what this looks like but Dr. Shephard is a distinguished staff member at this hospital and you are all going to treat him with respect. Within that respect is the notion of doctor-patient confidentiality. Everyone remember what that means? For those of you who forgot I'll make it simple: I don't want to hear any gossip about Jack's condition here or so help me god, your resignation letter better be on my desk by 9:00 AM Monday morning."
They all stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
Robert glared back coolly.
The nurse who had sedated Jack looked as though she was about to cry.
"Understand?" he barked once he was sure he had everyone's undivided attention.
He was met by a chorus of "yes's" and "yes sir's".
"All right then." He bowed his head. "Then let's get to work here. He's probably septic and I don't know what kind of internal damage he's got going on. He needs IV access to get those fluids running and antibiotics on board. Let's also get the man a gram of Tylenol and somebody call up to see if OR is ready for us yet. If they aren't, tell them I said to hurry the hell up because I have a sick patient who needs an exploratory laparotomy."
"See, Dr. Hamill can be downright formidable when something gets him going." Collin explained to a young-blonde-haired nursing student who was observing the scene from the door way. She smiled shyly at him.
Robert fixed his junior resident with a glare. "Got something to contribute, Fisher?"
"Ah…No sir…" Collin started, but then he considered this for a moment. "I mean yes, sir!" He dug his hand into his lab coat pocket and rooted it around until he produced a crumpled scrap of paper. "Um…this was taped to Jack's…I mean Dr. Shephard's body."
Hamill blinked, taking the paper from the man's outstretched hand.
"Taped to him?" He repeated, his eyebrows furrowing.
"Yes, sir." Collin affirmed.
Robert Hamill sighed and smoothed his thumbs over the paper, pressing out the wrinkles so that he could squint down at the messy scrawl before him. He wondered if his theory about some skittish teenager dropping the man off was correct. At least they had the decency to leave a note.
To: Doctor's in the St. Sebastian Emergency Room
He blinked. At least it was specific.
This is Dr. Jack Shephard. (In case you don't recognize him because I know he had a really awful beard at one point.) I hope he is not in too much trouble with you guys. I know he did some pretty un-Jack-like things recently, but he seems to be pretty close to being Jack again now. (Hence no beard.)
He got hurt trying to do what he always does, save people, so I was hoping that you guys might be able to save him for once. He's really sick, he even threw-up on me as I was bringing him here!
Please help him. He needs to get better and have a ton of kids with Kate (Austen).
Speaking of Kate, can you get her for him? She'll totally be able to make him be "Island Jack" again. (That's a good thing…kinda like Jack who used to work for you guys before the crash only less high-strung and more confident. Sometimes he'll even play golf!) You can contact her at 310-425-2534 and she lives at 42 Panorama Crest.
She may not believe you that he's really back in L.A. so just tell her that "The Island was just returning the favour." Yeah, I know it sounds trippy, but she'll understand.
Please take really good care of Jack and don't be too hard of him because of his whole mid-life crisis thing. He's a great doctor, so if you guys can give him his job back…I'm sure he'd really appreciate it. He LOVES saving people!
He's a hero.
Later dudes,
H.R.
Dr. Hamill frowned as he raised his eyes from letter.
"That's pretty messed up huh?" Collin started to say but his neck whipped around as he heard a yell. Robert glanced over at Jack. He wasn't trying to get off the stretcher anymore, but the sedative had barely touched him. He seemed to have tolerated the IVs that were threaded into the crook of his elbows, but now he was squirming and screaming bloody murder as one of the nurses tried to put a catheter in him.
"Have you called Kate yet?" He asked quietly as he adjusted the curtains around the bed and turned his back to the scene.
Collin's eyebrows furrowed. "No, we were considering calling LAPD but…" he hesitated.
Hamill shook his head. He wasn't sure what to think, but he was determined to get to the bottom of the situation. "Call Kate Austen. 310-425-2534." He read off the paper.
Collin shrugged. "Alright, but I doubt she's even a real…"
"Now!" Hamill cut him off, fixing him with an intense glare.
Collin showed him his palms in surrender. "Okay," he agreed and pointed to the nursing station. "I'll go do it."
Kate wasn't coping well. She had started taking it out on the cheerful Mom's Family Calendar she hadn't bother to take off the fridge. Instead, she had started crossing out the number of days they had been back with a red Sharpie. It was the very same one she had confiscated, months ago, from Aaron after he had managed to scribble "I Luv u Momy" in sloppy, misshapen scrawl along the molding at the entrance to her bedroom. When she had confronted him about it, he had explained that wanted her to be happy because she was "sad a lot." It was just after Jack had left. Kate hadn't bothered to paint over it, she wasn't even sure if she owned a can of white paint, but sometimes, in the middle of the night, she wished she had—especially now that she had lost both of them.
The first day back they had parted their separate ways. Carole was waiting for them at LAX, clutching her handbag and looking too shocked to be relieved. Claire refused to accept her hug. Kate was almost glad that Aaron wasn't there as she did her best to explain why Claire "wasn't well." She had felt like she had failed all over again. Aaron was in Carole's custody now and the older woman seemed unwilling to allow visitation. "It will only confuse him more." She had said, especially now that Claire was back.
As soon as they landed, Sawyer had disappeared in search of the nearest bar. Miles followed along like a lost puppy. Neither of them had spoken two words to her since Fiji. She didn't mind. They were all too damn numb.
Frank and Richard did stick around for a little while. Frank had run into a pilot friend he knew from his school days and was amiably chatting while Richard observed, uncertain of what to do. He finally settled on telling Kate what a hero Jack had been and she ran from him, shaking her head and spending a good three hours hunched over in a stall in the lady's room puking her guts up. She barely remembered the taxi ride home.
Her second day back felt similar to the first. She had curled up on her couch wearing one of Jack's old dress shirts he hadn't bothered to come back for. She hugged Aaron's toy whale close to her chest.
By day six Kate had managed to pull herself off of the couch long enough to answer the damn phone when it rang. It was Sawyer, drunk-dialing her from some bar to tell her how sorry he was….about everything. His tone was dark and wobbly. It made her think of all those Friday night phone calls from Jack and she broke down and threw Aaron's toy whale across the room. She unplugged all the phones in the house after that. She just wasn't strong enough to do it all again.
On day seven she had officially gone three days without food and almost 72 hours without sleep. She was surprised that she had managed to sleep at all for the first few nights back. Eventually, the initial shock and exhaustion started to wane, giving way to the nightmares that lay underneath. Even they were not so bad at first. She saw Sun, and Jin, and the rest of them. They all looked so happy, except Jack. When he came and sat on the couch beside her, he looked disapproving. He appeared younger. The frown lines around his mouth weren't as deep, but his eyes where hard and wary. In her mind she could hear him scolding her for taking on bad habits and his problems, but she never really listened. All that she wanted was him.
It was impossible to tell at which point she just gave up. She was beyond caring. Everything blended together making it hard to tell where she was any more. She didn't hear the doorbell when it rang. She could sort of see the sound pulsing behind closed lids, but she made no motion to do anything about it. It didn't register to her that there was something she should do, not even as the door creaked open and footsteps echoed throughout the house.
The next time Kate awoke she was on her back and appeared to be moving but was too tired to work out how. Everything was bright and faces hung above her, seeming to swirl like stars in the sky.
"We'll move on three. Make sure the stretcher slides into place, the locking mechanism sticks sometimes…one…two…and three, nice and easy now."
No. It was supposed to be five. Jack said count to five. A fleeting thought skittered around in her brain, but she couldn't make sense of why it even came to mind.
Her world suddenly dimmed and seemed to tilt on an angle as sounds whizzed around her making her shudder.
"BP's 90/50. Think we can get her to drink something or should I put an IV in?"
"Does she look like she's well enough to drink something?" another voice snapped.
"Look ma'am, unless you're family I'm going to have to ask you to…"
"I found her. I'm going with her," the first voice asserted firmly.
The sounds seemed to settle after a moment, replaced with a constant mechanical hum that made her feel like she was back on the plane all over again. Maybe she was and she just couldn't get her eyes wide open enough to see it. Sawyer was probably still sitting behind her with that haunted, murderous look in his eyes that he couldn't seem to rein in. Miles to his left staring blankly out at the ocean, Richard in the cockpit with Frank, while she sat by Claire, watching her twitch uncomfortably as she slept. It had been easier once they had landed in Fiji. The plane back to L.A. was commercial and there were more passengers to be distracted by than the five people she had been through hell and back together with.
"She's gonna have to lose the shirt…there's blood." Someone sounded apprehensive, shaking her from her muddled thoughts.
"If you even think about…"
"Look, we just want to get a look at her shoulder. We'll get a blanket and cover her up first and we'll only undo what we have to."
Kate felt them undoing the buttons of Jack's dress shirt, the pale blue one that she had somehow claimed as a sleeping shirt. She whimpered as they tried to peel it off her, feeling like someone was taking Jack away all over again.
"Kate?"
She started to squirm.
"Just try and relax. I know it hurts, but these men are trying to help," a voice tried to sooth her.
"So, can anyone hazard a guess as to how she got shot?" A male voice wondered.
She understood enough that she should have been able to supply something useful, but she too felt exhausted and cold to care.
"It's stitched up so someone must have seen to it at some point. She could certainly do with having a doc look at it though, there's definitely pus and the area is erythematous. Probably infected."
Kate closed her eyes. It was hard to focus on what they were saying. Her eyes didn't really want to stay open and she felt marginally better when she kept them closed. The hands lingering above her seemed unrelenting. She wanted to swat them away but felt too weak to even acknowledge that she had hands of her own. She knew she must because she could feel a gentle pressure radiating through one of them, as though someone was continually squeezing, trying to ground her, but it wasn't enough. She was too tired to play their game. It felt so much better to let herself drift to the point she didn't feel anything anymore, just a haze of swirling colours that seemed to wrap her in a sleepy cocoon. Somewhere through it she could see Jack. He didn't appear as angry as he had before, just tired, he was always so tired. Maybe when he got some rest they could play golf again…she could beat him at golf again. A smile played on her lips as she drifted into a dreamless sleep.