"When you make the shot," Kate says, watching him squint as he aims at the rope that is holding them aloft in the net.
He squeezes the trigger, and the rope breaks. In the split second of them falling to the ground, Jack twists to his left in an attempt not to land right on top of her. They land on their sides on the ground of the forest with a thump, and there is an unmistakable sound of something snapping, followed immediately by a yelp of pain from Kate.
Jack freezes for a moment and then realizes that her right arm is underneath him, having been wrapped around him after her own failed attempt at shooting the rope. "I'm so sorry," he apologizes as he moves off of her as best he can with the net still around them.
She pulls her knees up to her chest, her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from crying out in pain again and the color draining from her face. The doctor extricates himself from the net as quickly as possible and opens it up so that it is lying flat under her.
"Kate…" he touches the shoulder of her uninjured arm. "I need to examine it."
She inhales sharply before answering, "It's broken. You heard it too, Jack."
He studies her face, not sure how to comfort her when there is no way he can deny this even without examining her. She closes her eyes and gives a small nod, granting him permission to touch her. As gently as he can, he brushes his fingers against her wrist and slowly moves up to her elbow, glancing at her face every few seconds to make sure he is not making the pain worse.
"Can you sit up?" he asks. She slowly rolls onto her back as best she can with a backpack on and then sits up, careful to move her arm as little as possible. Now that her forearm is not pressed against the ground, he runs his hand along the outside of it, finding a particularly sensitive spot midway up. "Well, the good news is that it is not so broken that your bone its sticking through the skin," he says, bending her arm inward as gently as possible so that it is resting against her stomach.
"And the bad news is that there is nothing to make a cast with," she sighs.
"Let's head back to the hatch. There's got to be something there that I can at least stabilize it with," he offers her a hand and pulls her up. She sways slightly, the pain making her dizzy, and he places his hands on her shoulders to steady her. "You okay?"
"Yeah… we've only been hiking for what, an hour, right? I can make it," she insists.
"Let me take your pack," he steps around her and pulls the strap from her good arm, then carefully draws the pack from her injured arm. He takes a water bottle from her pack and holds it out, but she shakes her head. "Let me know when you need it," he says as he puts her backpack inside of his own.
She starts walking, gritting her teeth to keep from crying out as her arm gets jostled on their hike back. They walk in silence for almost half an hour before she stops and leans back against a tree, her left hand shaking as she reaches up to brush her hair from her face.
He opens their backpacks to get the water again, and her hand trembles as she reaches for the bottle. "You okay, Kate?"
"Fine," she says, frowning at the water bottle as she realizes she can't open it. She sighs and shoves the bottle back at him, "Not thirsty."
"You need to drink something," he calls out as she takes off again. As he rushes after her, he sees her stumble over a tree root, barely catching up to her in time to grab her good arm and keep her from falling.
"I just need a break," she avoids his gaze, finding another tree to lean against and sliding down to sit.
Jack crouches down in front of her, and when she finally looks up at him, he finds that it takes her a while to focus on him. "I can't imagine how much pain you must be in."
She closes her eyes, and after a long moment, finally admits, "It's making my head spin."
The doctor looks away from her, "You know that time you drugged me because I wasn't taking care of myself?"
Her eyes open, and he can clearly see the confusion on her face, "Yeah…"
"Don't hate me, Kate," he wraps one arm around her back and the other under her legs before lifting her up.
"Jack," she protests, trying to squirm out of his grip. When she jostles her arm in the process, she whimpers as another wave of pain hits and settles against his chest.
"Just relax," he says as he starts off toward the hatch again. Not five minutes into their journey, he feels her go limp against him as she succumbs to the pain, and he hastens his pace, though he is not sure that he will be able to do much more for her once they reach the hatch.
Twenty minutes later he steps through the door. He walks right past Sawyer reading on the couch in the living room area and into the kitchen, where he sets her down on the table.
Sawyer, who was on button duty, follows him, "What the hell happened to her, Doc?"
"Kate," he calls softly as he touches her cheek.
She slowly blinks her eyes open, moving her arms as she wakes and crying out in pain as she realizes her mistake.
"What happened?" Sawyer asks again.
Jack examines her forearm and finds that it has started to swell and there is a bruise clearly forming around the fracture. He steps past Sawyer and heads to the sink, "Broken arm."
"The Others?"
"No. We got caught in one of Rousseau's nets. I shot the rope holding us up. Her arm broke when we fell," he fills a towel with cold water, wringing it out before stepping back over to Kate. He tries to wrap it around her arm as gently as possible, but she winces and groans in pain as the slightest movement. "I know it hurts, Kate. But I'm going to have to try to set it. And unfortunately it's not going to be pleasant."
"Can't you give her some pain meds?" Sawyer frowns at the doctor for making her suffer.
"What pain meds? They're all gone, Sawyer. And the Tylenol that I did have wouldn't have touched her pain."
The Southerner sits down on the bench and takes her good hand in his. She squeezes his hand as Jack continues to manipulate her arm. After almost a full minute, Sawyer says, "The heroin."
"What?" Jack stops working and looks at him.
"The heroin. It's related to those painkillers you use in the hospital, right? Could it help her?"
"I'm fine," she weakly protests, her eyes still closed against the pain.
The two men step away from the table. "It's risky, Sawyer. It could be laced with other drugs. And I have no idea how much to give her, and too much could be fatal," Jack says softly.
"Well, I know someone who might be able to help," the blonde man says before he heads out of the hatch and down to the beach to get his stash.
Jack has not had much success in easing her pain or finding something to stabilize her arm with when Charlie comes running into the hatch twenty minutes later. "Sawyer said Kate's hurt," he pants, three Virgin Mary figurines in his hands.
"Yeah, her arm's broken."
"You're really going to give her heroin?" Charlie asks, looking over at Kate.
"We have no other pain medications left, Charlie."
He nods and hands over the statues, "Well, here you go."
Jack breaks one of them on the counter and a bag of light brown power comes out. He picks it up and studies it for a minute, wondering if he can really bring himself to do this.
"I, uh… I think I ought to go."
"I need your help, Charlie. I don't know how to inject it."
"My help? I just snort it, Jack."
"You're my best chance of doing this and not killing her," Jack stares at the younger man.
The singer sighs, "Okay, I might know how people inject it. But I've never done it before."
As the British man starts rummaging through the drawers for the supplies that they will need, the doctor asks, "Where did Sawyer go?"
"I don't know. Just mumbled something about bamboo and took off into the woods after insisting that I bring the drugs to you," he says as he pours a small amount of heroin out of the bag and onto a spoon. Then he adds some water to the powder and heads to the stove to heat the mixture up with the burner. "You got a syringe?"
Jack pulls one out of the cabinet where he has stored the medical supplies. Once the powder is dissolved, he draws some of the liquid up into the syringe. "How much do I give?"
"I've really got no clue, mate."
Jack looks over at the woman on the table, "I'm going to need you to watch her breathing."
"You want me to stare at her chest?" Charlie frowns. "Man, Sawyer's gonna be mad he missed this."
"Just watch her breathing, let me know if it slows down or if she stops breathing. Can you do that?" At the younger man's nod, he steps over to the table. "Kate?" he places his hand on her cheek and her eyes open slowly, taking a moment to focus on him. "I'm going to give you something for the pain. You let me know if it makes you feel weird, okay?"
"It's supposed to make you feel weird, Jack," Charlie states as he sits down at the table to watch her.
Jack moves around to her other side, twisting her good arm around so that he can find a vein at the inside of her elbow. He hesitates for a moment, trying not to imagine the consequences if he messes this up, and the alarm for the button sounds, making all of them flinch.
"I got it," Sawyer calls as he comes back in, setting a couple bamboo rods down and heading to the computer.
Jack takes a deep breath as he turns his focus back to his patient and then plunges the needle into her vein. He slowly pushes a quarter of a milliliter inside of her body and then pulls the needle out. "Keep a close eye on her," he says, stepping away for a moment to put the needle down and contemplate how he wants to immobilize her arm now that she is hopefully sedated.
The beeping stops, and Sawyer comes back into the room. "I had an idea, Doc. The island doesn't exactly have the supplies you need in order to make a proper cast, right?"
"No, and even if it did, I don't really know how to make a cast."
"Well, what if we wrap her arm in bamboo. We can tie it together like we did for the raft. She won't be able to move it, and it should heal okay, right?"
Jack studies the pieces of bamboo for a couple moments. "That's actually a pretty good idea, Sawyer."
"I ain't doing this for you, Doc. Now, how big do you need the pieces?"
They approach the table with one of the bamboo sticks. Jack notes that she is still breathing steadily, if a little slower than before, and her eyes are closed, the pained expression no longer on her face. "I think they need to go from the middle of her palm up to just past her elbow. Maybe make a couple shorter pieces for those that will be where her thumb sticks out."
"You got it."
"I'm going to try to make sure the bone is aligned as best a possible and wrap it up so that her wrist is about the same width all along her arm. If it isn't, we're not going to be able to tie it tight enough or she'll be able to move it within the makeshift cast."
"Alright then," Sawyer says, setting to work on cutting the bamboo down.
Jack soaks a couple more wash clothes and small towels in cold water and then returns to Kate's side. He carefully lifts her arm up to remove the towel that he had previously wrapped around it; when her eyes remain closed and she gives no indicator of pain, his eyes move to her chest, watching it rise and fall slowly to assure himself that she is still alive and that the heroin had worked.
"She's still breathing, Jack," Charlie assures him. "Can I help with anything?"
"Yeah, see if you can find anything around here to pin the cloth together. I don't want it moving around on her arm under the bamboo cast," the doctor requests as he beings wrapping her arm back up. Charlie finds some safety pins in one of the drawers and within fifteen minutes they have her arm wrapped tightly in the towels and the circumference around her arm relatively even along her forearm.
Sawyer is just finishing tying the bamboo sticks together. "Here you go, Doc," he says as he hands it over.
Jack positions it around her arm. "Can you take one of these rods off? It's a little too big," he asks.
The blonde loosens the knots holding the last rod on, "This actually gonna work, Jack?"
"It's not ideal, but we've got nothing better," he says, tightening the makeshift cast around her arm and tying the two ends together to keep it in place.
"Freckles ain't going to be happy about this when she wakes up."
Jack nods in agreement, "No, she isn't. But this is the best chance of getting her arm to heal normally."
"Well… glad I could help, mates. But if that's all, I told Claire I could watch Aaron for a while this afternoon so I better get going," Charlie says before heading to the door.
The other two men remain silent, both watching the sleeping woman in front of them. Finally, Sawyer says, "We should move her. Never know who will come in here, and she wouldn't want everyone seeing her like this." Before Jack can protest, he has stepped forward and put one hand under her back and the other under her knees. "You want to get her arm, Doc? We can put her in one of the bunks."
Once they have settled her on the lower bunk, Sawyer steps back from the bed. "Think I'm gonna go back to the beach. Don't know that I want to be around when she wakes up and finds out her arm is really broken."
"Thanks, Sawyer," Jack gives the other man a small smile.
"Like I said, I didn't do it for you. Plus it seems to me like the whole situation is your fault," he shrugs. "So now that she's going to hate you, maybe I've got a shot."
Jack stares after Sawyer for a long time, wishing that he could leave too. She really is going to hate him because this is all his fault - he had asked her to go on the hike with him, he had shot the rope that dropped them from the tree, and he had landed on her arm when they fell. He scrapes a hand down his face as he takes a seat beside the bed to watch her. "I'm sorry, Kate," he whispers, closing his eyes and hoping that he won't lose her for good.
~Lost~
"Jack," a soft voice calls, and he slowly blinks his eyes open to find her wide awake and staring at him.
"Are you in pain?" he asks.
She shakes her head slowly, "There's a dull throbbing in my arm, but it's not the same pain that it was earlier."
"If it hurts too much, let me know. I can give you more medicine," he offers, trying to avoid mentioning exactly what that medicine was.
"I know you used the heroin on me, Jack."
He lets out a sigh, "I just couldn't stand to see you in so much pain."
"I don't want any more of it. Please, Jack."
"Okay, no more heroin," he agrees, somewhat relieved that he doesn't have to worry about overdosing her again.
"My arm feels like it weighs a ton," she lifts it a couple inches off the mattress and then lowers it again.
"You'll get used to it after a while." He briefly thinks about throwing Sawyer under the bus and telling her that bamboo cast was his idea but ultimately decides that he deserves all the blame for her situation. "I'm so sorry about this, Kate."
"Not your fault," she tells him as she struggles to sit up without using her arm. She then stares down at the awkward way her arm is positioned since she can't bend it at all with the cast on, "How long do I have to wear this?"
"Couple months maybe."
"Great," she sighs in frustration.
"Whatever I can do to help you, Kate… just let me know. And I'm sure Sawyer would be willing to help too since you took care of him when he was shot. And Sun and Claire will help with the more personal things."
"So now I'm pretty much dependent on everyone else," she runs her good hand over her face.
"You act like that is the worst thing in the world."
"I've been on my own for over three years, Jack - it kind of is the worst thing."
He looks down at the floor, studying his shoes for a moment, then reaches out to place his good hand on hers, "You don't have to be on your own anymore, Kate."
She looks down at their hands, a slight frown on her face, "Jack…"
The alarm goes off, and neither one of them moves for almost a full minute. Finally Jack gets up to enter the numbers, and when he turns back from the computer, he finds that she has followed him out of the bedroom area.
"I, uh… I'm going to head back to the beach."
He hands her a bottle of water from the kitchen counter, "You should drink something first."
"You do realize I can't open this , right?" she says, not looking at him again.
He twists the top off for her and watches as she drinks half the bottle. "You hungry?"
"Not really," she sets the water bottle down and grabs her backpack from the ground, slinging it over her good shoulder.
"Let me walk you to the beach. It's getting dark out," he starts to follow her.
"I'll be fine. And if anyone tries to attack me on the walk back, I will just knock them out," she lifts up the cast slightly.
He sighs, "Kate, if I come down to the beach tomorrow and find that you've taken that off -"
"I'm not an idiot, Jack," she steps around him and out of the door to the hatch.