Chapter 10

New York City

One Week Later

Considering all the effort Hurley had done to make sure they had gotten here, Sawyer was a little surprised at how nervous the big guy seemed to be now that they were actually here. Or maybe it wasn't much of a surprise. The big guy was a gentle soul who didn't like confrontations. Now he was about to have a big one.

"You're sure you want to be the guy who does this?" Sawyer asked. "Me and Jin could probably get in with a lot less effort. Lot less likely we'll be recognized than you will."

Hurley actually seemed to consider this for a few moments before shaking his head. "Thanks, dude. I'm good." he finally said.

"Maybe we should come in with you," Juliet put forth. "Strength in numbers."

"Thought about that," Hurley told them. "One member of the Oceanics showing up in this hospital might get noticed. Four of us - press would be on us faster than gulls on fish tacos by the time we got out. We want to control this, at least as long as we can."

He took a deep breath. "Stay patient, guys. Can't say how he'll react to seeing me again." He got out of the rental car, and walked towards the front door, glad that none of them had tried to make fun of how nervous he was at being in a mental hospital again.

"He's been her for weeks, and he still hasn't been willing to tell any of our doctors anything," Nurse O'Connor told him as she walked him to Walt's room. "Frankly, we wouldn't know that anything's wrong with him, if it weren't for the fact a lot of strange things have happened over the last couple of weeks."

"Anything in particular?" Hurley tried to sound casual, as if he wasn't more than a little terrified about what might be waiting for him.

"He's very particular about being touched," the nurse told him. "That's not unusual about many of our patients, but a couple of our younger residents who gave him his medicine don't want to go near his room now. And every so often, we've received word that the bodies of dead birds keep appearing inside the building."

"You don't think that's a little, you know, strange?"

The nurse shrugged - not an encouraging sign. "It's an old building. We've had a lot of wildlife get in on occasionally. It's weird they always seem to be near Isaac's room."

Hurley suddenly wished that Juliet hadn't told him what had happened outside Room 23 on Hydra Island. It just fit a little too well with what was happening now. "Aside from his grandmother, has he had any other visitors recently?"

Nurse O'Connor shook her head. "He said that his mother's dead, and that he doesn't care where his father is. His words, not mine."

Despite how he felt about Michael, Hurley couldn't help but wince at the last remark. Walt had more than a few reasons to hate his father, but to virtually disown him? That was cold, even for the survivors of Oceanic. "You didn't answer my question."

"There was one man. Tall, African-American. Claimed he was one of Isaac's guardians, but the young man told me not to let this guy anyone near him. He never came back. Said his name was Avedon or Abbott something like that."

This came as an even larger shock. Had Michael tried to visit his son under an assumed name. That might explain why Walt had been so quick to tell him to get the hell out. But Michael had never been that ashamed of his son to deny who he was. Did that mean that someone else had come in looking for him? A reporter? Hell, had an Other somehow tracked him down?

"Here we are," the nurse told him.

"Did you tell him who I was?" he asked.

"He said he didn't have a problem." That actually brought up another question that Hurley had been loathe to ask himself. Had Walt known he was going to be here before he came here?

The nurse opened the door. And there he was. He was a little taller than he had been on the island, and his hair was cut a lot shorter than it had been, but Walt looked almost the same as he did a year ago. Except the eyes. He looked a lot sadder than he had when Hurley had last seen him. A lot more lonely.

"Hey dude," Hurley said awkwardly.

"Hey Hurley," Walt's voice seemed to be a lot sadder than it had before. And there was a total lack of surprise in his voice.

No sense messing around. "You don't seem, like, surprised I'm here."

"I had a dream about you a couple days ago," the young boy said. "You were in a hospital waiting room, and you were afraid everybody knew your secrets."

Once again, he was reminded how confident he had seemed the first few weeks that he had been in on the island. How he seemed to know just about everything that they were all trying to keep secret. Well, they were well past keeping them now. "I'm sorry I didn't come out to see you sooner," Hurley said apologetically. "There's been a lot of stuff going on the last few months, but I never forgot about you. I've spent months trying to track you down."

That got Walt's attention for the first time. "You were the one who sent that man?"

"Which one?"

"About a month ago, the nurse told me that a man named Matthew Abaddon came to see me. He told the nurse that he'd been sent by a powerful man to help me."

That got Hurley's attention in all the wrong way. He definitely didn't know a man named Abaddon, but he knew of a couple of powerful men who might have an interest in anyone who came back from the island. "Why didn't you let him in?" he asked carefully.'

"It's hard to explain," Now Walt seemed a little shaky. "I could tell, even from where he was standing outside the door, that there was something wrong about him. Like there was something that was inside him that he was missing."

Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all. "I didn't ever send anyone to see you," he assured the young boy. "I had made up my mind that whatever happened, I would be the one who talked to you. Face to face."

For the first time since he had showed up, Walt gave a slight smile. "Ever since you and the other people came back to civilizations, I was wondering if you would ever try to find me."

Now Hurley was the one who had to frown a little. "Of course, dude. You were my friend. The only reason it took so long for me to get here was because you didn't exactly leave a forwarding address when you left."

The moment he finished saying that, he knew that it had been exactly the wrong thing to say. Walt might not have known what exactly his dad had done in order to get them off the island, but it would've taken a much younger and far less intuitive child to know that it hadn't involved some sort of betrayal. "My father told me what he did. That's why I haven't seen or heard from him in nearly six months."

Hurley hadn't needed Walt to tell him that, or to confirm that might have been the key element in pushing Michael to attempt to kill himself. But that was the last thing the kid needed to hear right now. "You haven't even told your grandma yet, have you?" he asked.

"My father didn't say a word." Walt hesitated. "He told Grandma she shouldn't tell him or anyone else that we were back. I thought she'd start asking me when you guys made your big return to civilization, but right then, she was more focused on be trying to get into school. Considering what Grandma had to deal with, she's done the best she could."

Hurley had never thought he would ask this question, but he figured he owed to him. "How much of what brought you here is because of.." He trailed off. "What you have."

Now Walt looked a little reserved. "What are you talking about?"

"You know that Juliet came back with us."

Walt had a blank look on his face. "Who?"

"It's a long story, and we can go into the details later, but for awhile, she was one of them." Now, for the first time since he'd come back, Walt looked a little scared. "I know what you're thinking, and it took me a long time to trust her, too. But we probably wouldn't have been able to get off the island without her help."

Walt considered this for a moment. "Did she have anything to do with being taken?"

"Only in the sense that she was one of them. She never really fit in with them, but some of them trusted her." Hurley realized something. "Way to get me off topic, dude. You were the one I was talking about."

Walt looked a little more like the boy he was. "I didn't want to talk about it. I still haven't told my dad about it. The only one who seemed to know about it was..." Now he seemed hesitant. "Mr. Locke."

That was a little bit of a stunner, raising all sorts of feelings in Hurley. He had never gotten along with John Locke - and given what he had been doing the weeks before they had been rescued, he wasn't sure he ever would've been - but he couldn't deny that Locke had been closer to him that just about anybody on the island. Had he known Walt's secret somehow? He had always thought the island was a special place, and he'd always treated Walt like he was an equal rather than a child.

But even if he'd known all that, Locke had never been the type to treat people particularly well. After Walt had been taken, he had spent all the time in the Swan pushing that button. He hadn't done so much as lift a finger to help them try and rescue him. Maybe if he hadn't been so obsessed with the hatch, he would've been able to help them, and Ana Lucia and Libby would still be alive.

He shook his head. None of this was important now. He had come on a mission, and he was going to do it.

"I don't really care if you're, you know, special or not," Hurley said honestly. "What I do know is that you were my friend on the island, and I want to be one again. Which is why we're here."

For the first time since he'd entered the room, Walt looked hopeful. "How many of you came?"

"Jin and Sawyer are here. So is Juliet, but she's more than willing to stay out of this is you want." Hurley explained. "The rest of us are in Seattle. You saw the news the last couple weeks?"

Walt nodded. "They finally arrested Kate again, didn't they?"

Hurley's face fell a little. "We're doing our best to make sure she doesn't stay there long, but it may be awhile." He tried to be more cheerful. "But everybody else is doing pretty well. Jin and Sun had a daughter. Sayid got married. Claire's mother came out of a coma. And Jack - he smiles a lot more these days. Things are a lot better now. And - we want you to be better, too."

Walt looked at him with his young-old eyes. "You know, I was the one who burned the first raft my father built."

The remark was so out of left field Hurley took several seconds to recover from it. "Why?"

"I spent my whole life moving around. I liked being on the island. I liked staying in the same place."

Hurley considered this. "So why'd you leave on the second raft?"

"The day before we launched, I had one of my feelings that something really terrible was going to happen. I didn't know what it was, only that it had something to do with the hatch. When I saw that, I got off the island as fast as I possibly could."

"Can't say your instincts were wrong." Hurley considered this. "Then again..."

"A lot of bad stuff happened after they took me. It's been bad ever since. For the longest time, all I wanted to do was go back." Hurley could now see that despite having spent less time on the island then the rest of the survivors, Walt was just as haunted, if not more so. "But there's no going back. That's part of the reason I committed myself. To make sure there was no chance I could."

"I don't think you could anyway," Hurley said. "But really, why would you want to? I'm glad that I met all of you, I really am, but half the time I was on that island, I was always afraid." It was the truth, he realized. "I'm not afraid any more. I think it's because I have all of you. And that's why I want to help."

"You're here to save me?"

"I wouldn't put it like that," Hurley told him. "But I know what it's like to be in one of these places. And I know from past experience how much they suck."

Walt looked at him. "The nightmares won't stop. I've been here for three months, and the nightmares won't stop."

"They will eventually. And even if they don't, its easier to talk about them with friends than with doctors." This part Hurley believed sincerely.

Walt looked like he wanted to believe him. "How would I leave?"

"Didn't you commit yourself voluntarily?" Hurley asked.

"Yeah, but they won't just let me out now."

"They will if your grandma agrees to sign you out."

"And how can I let her do that?"

"That's going to be the toughest part," Hurley took a deep breath. "You have to tell her the truth."

Walt considered this for a long couple of minutes. "Did you tell your parents?"

"I did." Hurley told him. "Wasn't easy. But they believe me and they support me. Your grandmother will do both."

Walt looked at him. "Will you be there?"

"Of course. Like I said, that's why I came."

SEATTLE GRACE

Jack had been avoiding psychiatrists like the plague for as long as he could remember. He knew that he wasn't alone in this - every surgeon and resident in Seattle Grace thought that psych was crap - but he had more reason to avoid them most. Admittedly, he had more people to talk to than everybody else, but he knew that everybody in his field considered it a sign of weakness to even talk about seeing one.

Nevertheless, he now had no choice in the matter. If Walt was going to move out here - and even given what Hurley had promised, he still thought that was a very big 'if' - he needed to talk to someone in psych.'

Perhaps not surprisingly, given everything that she had been through, Izzie Stevens had guided him to the shrink who she thought would probably be the most likely to be of assistance.

"Dr Skoda?" Jack asked, after knocking on the man's door.

"Yes. Oh, Dr. Shephard, the hospital's new media darling."

"I don't ask for attention, and I do my damnedest to avoid it if I can."

"I'm sorry. I've never been particularly good at being friendly."

"That's okay. Until fairly recently, neither was I."

Skoda looked a little surprised at that. "So, I'm guessing you're here because you need a favor."

"'I was going to say I needed your help, but that's as good a way to put it as any."

Now Skoda's face was genuinely amazed. "I'm sorry, it's just I've been at this hospital for five years, and no surgeon comes to psych unless they're court mandated."

"That's really a shame." Jack said honestly. "Half the staff here could benefit from a lot of analysis. I probably could do with some." Understatement of the year.

"I'm guessing you didn't come to schedule a session though."

"It's more for a consult than anything else," Jack admitted. "A friend of mine from the plane is in New York seeing someone who needs professional help."

He gave Skoda the details, but fudged Walt's identity as much as he could, as well as the exact nature of the problems he was facing.

"So this is a major case of PTSD?"

"That's a fairly accurate description." Another understatement. "His mother passed away about two years ago, so there's little hope for help from that direction. I'd try and pass on more medical details, but for what I can tell they traveled internationally a lot. Records are probably all over the world."

"Why do you want to transfer him here?"

"Hurley, Mr. Reyes, is a good friend, and he and Walt were fairly close." No need to tell him where.. yet. "And as anyone can see just my looking at the news, Hurley's very good to his friends. " Time to let this go a little further. "Hurley spent some time in a mental institution himself, and as good a place as Bellevue is, he always thinks that there's a better place for them."

"And this place is this hospital." Jack didn't blame Skoda for thinking this way.

"This place is with his friends. And if we have to transfer him to Seattle so that they can be together, Hurley's willing to do it." This part, at least was true.

"You have a lot more compassion than a lot of the people in this hospital." Skoda told him.

"Not a lot of surgeons willing to go out on a limb for their friends?"

"Not a lot of them have friends. They might go so far as to call them colleagues. And some of them might be willing to sleep with each other. But actual friends? There aren't a lot of them in this hospital, much less outside it."

Jack knew that from past experience, surgeons could be intensely lonely people. His father was probably the worst possible example that a person could use, but outside of the hospital, he hadn't had a lot of friends. He would've been inclined to argue, but he'd had, if anything, fewer friends. Jack had a lot of trouble just filling out his wedding party. It was somewhat telling that he'd had to crash on an island in the middle of the Pacific to finally get a group of really good friends. However, he didn't particularly want to recommend to people like Cristina and Meredith that the only way they were going to actually expand their narrow circle of friends was to get on an airplane and pray for turbulence. And he had no intention of spreading that particular tidbit to another relative stranger.

"Well, I have to give the credit to Hurley," he said instead. "No matter where the man is, he never has an enemy in the world. It was true before the plane crash, it was true afterwards."

"So I've gathered." Skoda actually seemed a little embarrassed. "I saw him on television, when he won the lottery three years ago. He seemed like one of the least ego-driven person I've seen, and that's saying something considering where he's from. If he's your main point of reference for this, I'm willing to give his friend the benefit of the doubt."

"Thanks," Jack told him sincerely.

"When will he be arriving?"

"My guess is two or three days at the most," Jack bit his tongue. "There's something else they're going to have to handle. Something that's going to involve something far more complicated."

For all his talk about wanting to deal with Michael, Hurley hadn't been able to see the man in person yet. James figured that he had made some kind of promise to Walt that he wasn't going to do anything to punish him. Then again, considering everything that Michael had done to save his son, having him virtually disown him was probably a worse punishment than anything the Others could've done to him.

Nevertheless, they had to deal with him somehow. So while Hurley and Juliet were talking with Mrs. Dawson about how to transfer Walt out of the hospital, he had given him the information that the private investigator had managed to find of Michael's last location. Somehow, James wasn't that surprised that he was staying within walking distance of a bar. Considering everything that he'd been through, he was a little surprised that Michael wasn't a full-blown alcoholic by now. Or maybe he was. A year and a half could do a lot of things to destroy a man.

"You sure you want to be here for this, Jin?" James asked again. "I know you and Mike were friends, but that was a long time ago. Lot of water under the bridge now."

Jin considered this for a moment. "I'm a father now," he told James. "Before the island, I didn't understand what a father would do protect his child. I think I do now." He looked at James. "Maybe some day you will too."

Had Hugo ratted him out to the others about Clementine? No. Jin would've been more direct about it. Then again, he had always been good at keeping a poker face. James might have asked him directly about it, but just then he saw Michael come out of the bar.

Granted it had been more than eighteen months since he had last laid eyes on him, but James would've had some trouble recognizing Michael anyway. He looked a lot older than a year and a half should have inflicted in the course of a normal man's life. The fringe of a beard that he had managed to maintain even on the island was longer and more unkempt, and there were flecks of gray in it. His hair was a lot longer and uncombed. His eyes were bloodshot, and from the looks of him, he was already well into the bag. His clothes were even messier. He bore the look of a man that even Christian Shephard would've never gotten into a drinking contest with. He looked exactly like Hurley had described - a man who was only a few feet away from dying.

Jin looked equally shocked by what he was seeing. Nevertheless, he recovered a lot quicker than James had. By the time Michael had wandered just a few feet down the street, he had gotten out of the car, and was walking towards him.

Michael stopped dead in his tracks for several seconds. He blinked several times, clearly unsure of what he was seeing. Then he did something that not even James had expected that he would do upon seeing the man he had built a raft with.

He started running away.

James had time to wonder if Michael had been so out of things since he had returned to civilization that he somehow thought Jin was dead, or that he had been drinking so much recently that he had thought the DTs were somehow causing him to hallucinate his former friends. Or maybe he thought that the island had somehow followed him all the way back to New York.

Then Jin started running after Mike, and he started to worry. The last thing that they needed to do right now was draw attention to themselves.

Reluctantly, James got out of the car, and started chasing after his friend. "Mike! Wait!" he shouted.

But Michael kept running. He didn't seem to care where he was going, or even if he drew a crowd. Then again, this was New York. Maybe no one would notice.

Considering how terrible he looked, Michael was in pretty good shape. He managed to lead Jin and James for nearly four blocks without apparently breaking a sweat. For a moment, James actually thought they might lose him.

Then Michael did something very strange. He ran into an alley. Neither Jin nor James knew the city that well, so he figured that maybe he was going to stand and fight.

Then James got around the corner, and saw something not even he would've expected. Jin was standing about ten feet away from Michael. There was a small revolver on the ground. Since neither of them had been carrying, it had to be his. And Michael was pointing at it.

"Go ahead," he told Jin. "Pick it up. I know you know how to use one."

Jin looked utterly flummoxed, and for once, James was betting that it wasn't because he didn't understand what Michael was saying.

"Michael?" In his shock, Jin seemed to be reverting back to the man he was on the island.

"Please, Jin." For the first time, he could tell that there were tears running down Michael's cheeks. And James, who had spent his entire adult life on the other side of the law, realized what was going on.

And clearly so did Jin. "No. I won't."

The desperation coming off the African-American would have been obvious to a complete stranger. He turned his gaze towards him. "Then you. Come on. You've been wanting to do this ever since I betrayed you guys. You knew how to do it. Please, Sawyer."

For the first time in a long life, James really, truly hated the sound of the man whose name he'd inherited. Anthony Cooper would've had no problem doing this. Hell, if what he'd said had been true, he'd pushed his own son out an eight-story window. But the Sawyer who could've done what Michael wanted had died on the island. And maybe it wasn't til just now that he realized that this was a good thing.

He turned to Michael, and picked up the gun. Even as he did, he saw something that sickened him: the hope that had appeared in Mike's eyes. The hope that died when he threw the gun in a dumpster. "Sorry, Hoss. I've seen far too many people die. You ain't gonna be another."

Michael looked utterly lost. For a few horrible seconds, James thought that man was going to go dumpster diving, and finish what he'd been trying to do ever since he got back to New York. Instead, he collapsed on the ground, full out weeping.

"It's all gone to hell. I've thrown everything away. I don't deserve to live." That seemed all he had left in him now.

James didn't know what to say. A small - very small -part of him thought that if this what Michael really thought, maybe he'd be doing him a favor. Then he thought back to the days when they had discovered the tail section survivors, and he'd seemed almost certain to die from an infection. Admittedly, his memories of the event were very hazy, but he did have a memory of telling Mike to leave him behind, when it seemed he couldn't go any further. Instead, the man had helped build him a stretcher, and they had carried him. Even though he had been half crazy about losing his son, Michael had refused to leave Sawyer behind.

Now, Michael was infected, only there was no medicine in the world that could cure him. Now it was his chance to return the favor. Too bad he wasn't sure he had the medicine that could do it.

Then Jin knelt down by him. "You haven't lost everything. Walt is still here."

"He doesn't want anything to do with me. I - I ruined his life."

"You did what you thought was right." Jin looked at him. "A father will do anything to protect his child."

Even though he was only a father technically, James was starting to think Jin was righter than he knew.

"I killed two innocent people. I killed Libby." Michael was still shaking. "I have to deal with this every day, and I can't carry it."

Unfortunately, this was something the old Sawyer had been an expert on, not that long ago. Possibly Jin was too, given their last stand with the Others. But this time, he thought he could make things a little better.

"I killed three people, too. And I didn't have anywhere near as good a reason as you did."

"There were other ways I could've gotten him out of the hatch!"

"You'd been carrying the world on your shoulders for three weeks," James pointed out. "You were desperate. Desperate men do desperate things. Trust me on this."

For the first time, Michael looked up. "You're not here for revenge."

"Shit, Hoss, I got over that a long time ago. Trust me when I tell you, revenge doesn't give you anything."

Michael stopped crying. "Then why are you here?"

James remembered the first time Michael had asked him that question, right before the Others had intercepted the raft. He hadn't time to answer it then. This time he did, even though the circumstances were completely different. 'Cause I want to help a friend in need. And cause I know how shitty things can get when a son grows up without his parents." He put his hand on Mike's shoulder - the first time he'd touched him before they had gone on that futile raid on the Others. "You did everything you could to protect your kid. You shouldn't have to pay for it."

Jin looked at Michael. "It's not too late, Michael. You have work to do."

Michael thought this over. "Your English is a lot better now."

"I've had lots of time to practice." Jin took a deep breath. "Everybody's been worried about you. You deserve to be happy. So does Walt."

"I pretty much fucked that up. I don't even know where he is anymore."

This wasn't going to be easy. "He's been in a mental hospital for the last few months.," James said slowly. Before Michael could start crying again, he interrupted: "This isn't all your fault. Others did a hell of a number on his head. Hell, given everything that happened, all of us could've used some time getting looked at."

Michael looked up. "You said, he's been in a hospital."

"Hurley's talking with your mother. She's going to check him out in the next few days." Jin told him.

"You mean I can see him?" Hope had entered Michael's voice for the first time in the conversation.

"That's going to be up to him," James told him. "But before we go any further, there's a couple of things you're going to have to understand."

Michael looked at them for a few moments. "I'm not going to fuck things up for you guys."

"If you'd wanted to do that, you'd have done it a year ago." Jin pointed out.

"We're kind of amazed you've managed to stay under the radar as long as you have." James added. "But we weren't lying about being here to help. That meant both of you."

"How're you going to do that?"

They laid out the idea that Hurley and the rest had come up with back in Seattle. It didn't take as long as they thought it would. When they were finished, they expected Michael to object. Surprisingly, he only had one. "Won't this rain a lot more shit on you guys?"

"We had to deal with enough issues when Freckles decided to resurface," James pointed out. "By comparison, you and Walt stick to your story, there won't be any big headaches.

This was the first real lie James had told Michael. Bur even he wasn't completely sure what Hurley had planned as soon as they found a way to help Walt.

"All I ever wanted to do was protect my son," he reminded them. "No matter what. I can't defend my actions any other way."

"You're not going to court Michael," Jin told him. "We're not letting anyone go to jail. Not Kate. Not you."

That much was true. They'd been judged, time and again, on the island. Compared to that, anything else would be a cakewalk.

But then, they both knew that if the island had been a test, Michael might well have failed already. Maybe Mike knew that, too.