Chapter 13

"I must say, Dr. Burke –"

"Carlson." Juliet said firmly. "Burke was my ex-husband's name, and frankly, I think I held on to it far longer than I should have."

Weber nodded, no doubt thinking of how Addison had acted much the same way after her divorce had been finalized. "All right, Dr. Carlson, all I was going to tell you was that considering your reputation and the praise you're getting from most of our staff, your salary demands is more than reasonable."

"I know that you're going to have a hard time believing this, especially given your job, but money has never meant as much to be as helping people." Juliet told him. "What I value is freedom and the ability to give good news. This deal will allow me to have both."

Richard Weber had understandably been a little worked up when Addison Montgomery had told her that she would be working on reduced hours. He knew how badly she wanted to be a mother, and he'd never wanted to stand in the way of his attending's personal lives, but given everything that had been hitting the hospital the last several months, it couldn't have come at a worse time.

Fortunately, Addison had managed to come up with a more than adequate replacement. Juliet Burke, nee Carlson had been one of the top fertility specialists in the country until she had disappeared under the wing of Mittelos Bioscience almost five years ago. Addison had said that there had been criminal misuse of her research, which had made her gun-shy about raising her profile again. But considering that she had managed to do something miraculous in helping Addison become pregnant, it was clear that they could definitely use her aboard at Seattle Grace.

Jack Shephard, who seemed to deserve some kind of award for how much he'd helped the hospital the past year, had apparently been instrumental in helping the two make contact. While initially surprised that Juliet had agreed to work here, he didn't hesitate to sing her praises, saying that the two had worked together a few years back, and that she had an excellent bedside manner. His only surprise had been that she wanted to leave her family again.

"The reason I asked for the signing bonus wasn't so much for me, "she told him. "I want my sister and my nephew to relocate from Miami with me. They've been through hell the last couple of years, and I wouldn't feel right about leaving them behind again."

"They're willing to pick up their lives that easily?" Weber asked.

Juliet hesitated. She did that a lot. "Jack and Addison told me that I could count on your discretion," she said slowly.

"Of course," Weber told her.

"When I did my first procedure, I tested it on Rachel," she told him. "I was on shaky grounds ethically, but frankly that wasn't at the peak of my concern. All my sister ever wanted was to have a baby, and I cared less about keeping my license than I did about making her happy. When it worked, I was going to resign from my job, but my husband…" She trailed off. "You have to have known what Edmund was like."

"Only by reputation." Weber actually knew from more than a few meetings what an officious prick he was. After he'd died in a hit and run, a sick joke had floated around certain circles for awhile as to whether the bus was all right after running into Edmund Burke.

"I got into bed with Mittelos not long after, mainly because they offered me freedom. I'm not going to go into detail, but that's exactly what I didn't get," she said firmly. "It's a nightmare from which I'm only now beginning to awake."

Those were harsh words coming from anybody, especially about a medical research firm. Weber vaguely remembered that they had an office in Portland. Was that why it had taken so much persuasion to get Juliet to sign on?

"I've spent the last couple of years focusing on more important things," Juliet told him. "I realize given the work ethic connected with Seattle Grace that may not make me the ideal candidate for working here."

"It does make you stand out, but not necessarily in a bad way," Weber admitted. "I can't professionally advocate for it, but I can privately admire it."

"Rachel and I have spent too much time apart. It's in our interest for the two of us to stay together, and that's part of the reason I was willing to come. They're in the process of settling things there, and hopefully in a few weeks they'll be able to follow me out here." Juliet gave a more genuine smile. "The other reason is to be close to my friends."

"I saw you when we were operating on Carole Littleton last year," Weber admitted. "I see you have some connection with Jack and the other Oceanics."

"And if you're fortunate, in a little while, I might end up sharing all of the details," Juliet told him. "For now however, you're just going to have to accept that I've worked with Jack in the past, and that I've been close with most of the other survivors. My boyfriend was in favor of my relocating because it would make it easier to see the rest of his friends."

Weber knew that James Ford was Juliet's significant other. "This will give you something else in common with Jack."

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Juliet said, with a smaller grin.

"You and he are probably the only doctors in my entire hospital who aren't leaping into bed with somebody else on the staff." Weber replied.

Juliet couldn't help but chuckle at this. "Jack's been remarkably restrained about the gossip, but really I'm amazed it hasn't caused more headaches for you than it already has."

"It's been a mess, I'll admit." Weber told her. "We're slowly getting a handle on all our other problems, but this" He shook his head. "I try not to pay attention to the gossip or I'd get nothing done. But from what I have heard, a lot of the doctors here have been becoming more monogamous recently."

"That's not exactly going to be something you want to add to your outgoing prospectus," Juliet pointed out.

"I'll settle for just improving our medical reputation," Weber got to his feet. "Hopefully, you'll be able to improve that."

Jack and Addison were waiting outside when she finished signing her contract.

"I'd say welcome to the Seattle Grace family, but given the problems that you're no doubt already aware of, I'm actually afraid to consider how literally it could be taken," Addison replied.

Juliet looked a little alarmed at this. "Please tell me your residents haven't resorted to screwing patients," she said to Jack.

"I hope not," Addison admitted, "but some of them have pretty much been sleeping with everyone else."

Jack looked a little sheepish. "There's gossip, and then there's the stuff that is borderline malpractice," he told her.

"You're not still thinking about Sarah, are you?" Juliet asked.

Addison already knew this part of the story. "I'll admit it's on the border of some of the more egregious violations, but at least you didn't start your relationship with her until after she got out of the hospital."

Jack shook his head. "I'm kind of surprised Karev never called me on it before."

"Alex has had other things on his mind," Addison had her own reasons for not wanting to dwell on Karev.

Three years of living with Ben Linus had given Juliet a great gift for being able to make abrupt shifts in conversation. "When's your next session?" she asked Addison.

"Two days," Addison told them. "You'd think after years of helping women become pregnant I'd be a little more at ease when I was the patient."

"I'd have been stunned if you weren't worried," Jack pointed out. "We know how badly you want this. It's okay to be a little rattled."

"How's Sloane dealing with it?" Juliet was a little stunned – but also amused – that Addison had chosen the man who'd broken up her marriage to be her baby daddy. Really, this was General Hospital squared.

"Honestly, I think he's more worked up than I am." Addison admitted. "He's made jokes about this being a second chance for him – maybe even a third by this point - and that's he finally using his sexual prowess for good, not evil, but I know he really wants to be a father. Even the idea of it is freaking him out a little. Not that he'd ever talk to me about it."

"And I'm guessing he's still not talking to Derek?" Though Derek had managed to make peace with just about everyone he wronged when he'd had his meltdown six weeks ago, he still hadn't even made an effort to talk to Mark. It was understandable – Derek had punched him in the face repeatedly, after all - and there was still no doubt a fair amount of animosity between the two. Nevertheless, Jack thought that there was still a lot of macho posturing going on. Considering how much of it he'd done in front of Sawyer, he really couldn't blame them.

"With those two, it's always one step forward, two steps back. Now I realize I'm a huge part of the problem, so my trying to talk to them probably will not go over particularly well, but seriously. Somebody needs to tell them they're acting like babies."

Jack considered this for a moment. "Maybe we can make this work by way of a game of telephone," he said slowly. "I'll have a conversation with Hurley later today. He'll talk with Callie, and she might be able to persuade Mark to talk it out with Derek."

"That's a little convoluted, even for here." Addison gently suggested. "Do you think it'll work?"

"Might be the easiest way to get the lines of communications open," Juliet told him. "Besides, Hurley's always been the diplomatic type. He probably could get the two of them at a summit by themselves."

Addison noticed the easy communication between Juliet and Jack. Both had told her they had a history, and something was telling her that it was deeper than the story they were telling everybody else. Well, except maybe for Stevens. "You are going to tell me how it is you really got to know all the other survivors," she asked bluntly.

Jack and Juliet exchanged another one of those glances that Addison couldn't read that she nevertheless recognized – she and Derek had exchanged similar glances when they were married. It was one of those inside jokes that people who have known each other for a long time tend to trade.

"Yes," Juliet finally said. "I'll tell you up front it's not a happy story, and it makes the saga of Seattle Grace seem positively simple by comparison. But I'll tell you."

Addison nodded. "There anything else you need me to show you to help you settle in?"

Juliet seemed a little more restrained. "Actually, there is. I was wondering if I could talk to Isabel Stevens."

This time Addison looked at Jack. Stevens was responding fairly well to her treatments, and her mood had gotten a lot better since her surgery, but aside from Jack and George, everyone else was still tiptoeing around her and Karev. Everyone knew how long the odds were, and they were acting like they were terrified of saying the wrong thing around her. It was kind of offensive.

Jack didn't seem to have a problem with this. "Your timings pretty good. Her next cycle of chemo isn't scheduled for another two days. I'll take you there now."

There was no way that a person could honestly enter a cancer ward, look at one of the patients, and say: "You're looking good." Both Jack and Juliet knew this firsthand, Juliet on a more personal level. Nevertheless, given everything she was going through at the time, Izzie Stevens didn't look that bad. Yes, she was very pale, she had a tube attached to her nose, and she was wearing the kerchief across her head that almost all women who were undergoing radiation did to hid the fact their heads were now shaven, but given some of the things they had seen, she seemed to be holding up pretty well. And she actually managed a smile when the two of them entered the room.

"Hey, Jack."

Juliet couldn't help but exchange a meaningful look at him. "So she's calling you Jack now," she said.

"I was part of the diagnostic team," he reminded her. "Considering everything we've been through the last couple of months, I think we're way past Dr. Shephard."

"Also, considering who my neurosurgeon was, there would probably be a lot of confusion," Izzie seemed to notice her guest. "I'm sorry, have we met before? You look familiar, but considering I'm still recovering from a hole in my head, I can't remember."

Her mood was cheerful. "Were you on the team when Carole Littleton was operated on?' Juliet asked.

Izzie started to shake her head, and then remembered there were tubes attached to it. "No, I was working on other cases. Were you one of the survivors from the plane crash? Because that I would remember, even given everything else."

Now that she'd gotten here, Juliet still wasn't comfortable giving away all her secrets. Old habits. "My name is Dr. Juliet Carlson. I'm a friend of Jack's from sometime back."

Izzie frowned a little at this. "What's your specialty?"

"I'm an OB-GYN. Addison recommended the place."

"She did… tell you what's been going on here the last couple of years?'

Juliet actually smiled at this. "Between Jack and her, I've gotten a pretty good idea of the problems Seattle Grace has been going through the last few months?"

"And you still want to work here?" Izzie looked at Jack. "I've never heard of rats trying to board a sinking ship."

Jack found himself chuckling despite himself. "You're being a little extreme."

"Jack, less than six months ago, you basically accused me and my friends of boring holes in the deck." She raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're getting soft just because I have meds pumping through my veins."

Jack tried not to grimace at this. "Well, I can't blame you for being a little behind on gossip. Addison's probably going to be on maternity leave fairly soon."

Izzie looked puzzled, then angry. "I swear, if Alex decided to jump her bones after everything we've been through, I will pour my chemo down his throat myself …"

Now Juliet chuckled. "I've spent the last three months basically getting Addison in condition to have a child. She was very clear that she wasn't going to break any more relationships."

Finally, Izzie seemed able to put two and two together. "OB-GYN. You're a fertility specialist. Crap," Now she did shake her head. "I'm sorry. "

"It's okay. I understand better than you think."

"Of course you do." Izzie didn't seem able to meet her eyes.

"My sister Rachel was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago."

Now Izzie looked her dead in the eye. "Is she…"

"She'll be coming up here to live with me in a few weeks. She's been in remission for four years." Juliet walked closer to Izzie. "It's one of the reasons I wanted to see you."

Izzie turned serious. "Look, I'm trying really hard to be optimistic and cheerful in the face of this. But I'm a doctor. You're a doctor. And we know that for every miraculous recovery, there are just as many people who die in their own filth. We know that remission is just another term for 'until the cancer comes back'. I'm trying to think for the future, but I know that I really may be measuring my life out in weeks and months rather than decades."

"I felt the same way when Rachel was sick. I can't help but think how awful it is for your friends." She looked around. "Where is Alex?"

"Trying to catch up on all of the rounds he's been missing the last few weeks. " Izzie looked sad. "He's spent so much of the last month by my side. I had to beg him. Basically told him that at least one of us needs to try and keep up with their education. "

"The guy must really love you," Jack admitted. "It's taken a considerable effort on my part just to get him to remember to sleep and eat."

Juliet nodded. "I know how hard it is to think of the future beyond your next cycle of chemo. But at some point, you have to at least try to find hope. That's actually another reason I'm here. I know better than most what some of the protocols are for women in your situation are. So, if you really are interested in having a child, I think I can help in that regard."

Izzie looked genuinely dumbstruck for a moment. "I knew that Dr. Weber told Alex to save some of his sperm for exactly this kind of scenario. But given the severity of the cancer, combined with the treatment, I figured I'd be lucky if I had any viable eggs left when this is done."

Juliet looked at Jack, who gave the most imperceptible of nods. "When my sister was diagnosed, it was pretty severe. And after a year of treatment, the doctors all told Rachel that she was never going to be able to have a child. "She knelt beside her. "At the time I had mainly been working in research, and I'd had some success that was potentially groundbreaking, but it was still years away from testing on humans. I threw caution and potentially my career to the winds, and decided to use it on Rachel. " She took a deep breath. "My nephew will be starting kindergarten this year."

Izzie looked genuinely amazed, then a little troubled. "How much have Jack and Addison told you about what I did?"

Both had hinted that Stevens and the rest of the interns had done something that could potentially have closed Seattle Grace's doors, but had not gone into detail. "They know that you did something that caused a lot of trouble."

"And the Titanic was just a minor accident." Izzie held up her hand. "I won't tell you exactly what I did, even though it's yet another of this hospitals worst kept secrets. The bottom line is I violated every rule imaginable to help someone I loved. Only for me, there was no happy ending."

"Here's something you don't know. What I did didn't exactly lead to happiness either. I was separated from my sister and the rest of my friends. I didn't see my nephew get born. And I went through more emotional hell for three years than I care to count."

Izzie was confused again. "How – why?"

Time to go for the plunge. "Ethan was a friend of mine."

It took several seconds for the penny to drop. "Y-you were on the island?"

She gave a small smile. "Technically, I was an Other."

Izzie looked genuinely elated for the first time since Juliet had shown up. "But I thought they were all evil."

"Some of them were." The smile disappeared. "That didn't stop me from being friends with some of them. Or from wanting to get the hell of that island."

"But you must know some of the secrets that that place was holding," It might have been an illusion, but it looked like Izzie had some of her color back for the first time in awhile. "What was that thing in the jungle? Was there really a radio tower on that island? How did you forgive them for killing Ethan?"

"Easy, easy." Jack was actually broadly grinning himself. "You do want to wait for Alex to get back, remember?"

Izzie now looked at Juliet. "I guess I see why you've been trying to stay under the radar." She sounded a bit calmer now. "Have you told anyone else at the hospital about this?"

"You're the first person at Seattle Grace who knows that part," Juliet assured her. "And for the moment, at least, I'm going to try and keep the circle relatively small. We're still trying to dodge publicity for this particular part of the rescue."

Izzie nodded. "I get it. I do. Jack was very effective at keeping it quiet, which in a place where it seems like everybody knows everybody else's business." She looked at Jack again. "Have you told anybody else the details, besides me and Alex?"

"I've dropped bits and pieces here and there, but it's like I said. You two are going to get the whole story." Jack shrugged. "It's not that I don't trust most of the people here, it's just…"

"You don't have to tell me about not wanting your dirty laundry aired in public," Izzie assured him. "As someone who's been on both sides of it, I completely understand discretion, or lack of it."

"Thank you for that," Juliet told her.

"But you know, considering that you're now the fourth person from the crash whose either moved here or is associated with this hospital," Izzie reminded them, "someone's going to put the pieces together if they try hard enough. Alex and I will be discreet, but a lot of people work at this hospital who aren't."

This could've been a subtle dig at a lot of other people, but both Jack and Juliet knew that it was just a matter of numbers. Seattle Grace employed over two thousand people, a lot of whom wouldn't be bound by doctor-patient confidentiality. They were trying to make plans to deal with it, but there was a good chance they might be blown out of the water inadvertently.

"Let us worry about that," Jack told her, with the confidence that had gotten him through so many crises on the island and off. "In the meantime, I'll be back in awhile to continue the island adventures."

"Will you be able to fill in some more of the gaps?" Izzie was looking at Juliet.

Juliet smiled. "There were a lot of things on the island that were kept secret even from us," she told her sincerely. "But I'll tell you what I do know. I imagine Jack will be even more curious to hear my stories then you are."

"That's a safe bet," Jack acknowledged.

"What is the prognosis?" Juliet asked as soon as they were out of the ward.

"Well, she's been responding a lot better to treatment than anybody thought," Jack told her. "And generally her mood's a lot better than half the patients in the ward. But it's going to be a long hard road, even if she does make a recovery."

"She's probably putting up more of a brave face for you and Karev," she responded. "She never told me whether she was interested in having children later."

"In her defense, you did drop a lot of bombs on her at once," he countered. "And it still takes two to swing dance. My guess is she'll want to hear Alex's opinion first."

"So who have you told, besides her?"

"Always direct," Jack said. "I've given Miranda a fair amount of the details about the early days without going into the strange stuff. And I told Derek a bit about how I happened to meet Desmond before the surgery. I imagine Hurley's told some of the story to Miranda and Callie as well. How much did you end up telling Addison?"

"I told her how I was recruited by Richard, and how my research was ineffectively used." Juliet told her. "I told her that I worked with you on a couple of cases, and how I met James. Beyond that, I've kept things as vague as I possibly can.

"Until twenty minutes ago." Jack reminded her. "Why did you really tell Stevens that you were on the island? It can't just be because there's a real chance that she'll be dead soon."

Juliet stopped walking. "Why does Stevens think she deserves to die?"

Once again, Jack was reminded at how good an observer Juliet had always been, even when she didn't have a file in front of her. "Stevens got romantically involved with a patient who had a failing heart about a year and a half back," he told her bluntly. "From what I understand, it kept getting more and more intense the closer he got to dying. Finally, when a donor heart looked like it was about to go to someone else, she got the wire on his L-VAT. He got the donor heart, but had some kind of reaction to the anti-rejection meds. He was dead a week later."

Juliet knew about discretion and the rules regarding hospital policy. She knew that this wasn't something that would be made public. Still, it pissed her off that no one had mentioned it to her. "How the hell did Stevens keep her job?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Jack shook his head. "Considering all of the gossip that goes on here, I'm amazed it's managed to stay in the hospital. The guy was one of Miranda's favorite patients, but the Dr. Bailey I know would have cut this off at the knees. We know better than most how to keep a secret, but this… We've basically lost two cardiac surgeons as a result."

"Well, I can see why you've been giving her so much hell the last few months," Juliet replied. "Frankly, I'm amazed you decided to forgive her. The Jack Shephard I know was always a bit, shall we say, self-righteous."

"I guess I've matured since I got back," Jack admitted. "I may have been something of a prick, but even I didn't want her to die because of some misplaced sense of guilt." He paused. "And you still haven't answered my question."

"I know what it's like to have someone you care about with a fatal illness. She may have done a bad thing, but she still deserves to have a reason to live. And this does seem to be working so far." Juliet looked at Jack. "Do you really think she'll live long enough to learn the whole story?"

"Considering I still don't know the whole story, and I lived through it, I'd say that there's at least a chance of it. We both know that medicine is only going to take her so far. She needs hope, and I'm going to try and make sure she has as much as possible."

"When did you become such an optimist?" Juliet asked.

"You should know, Juliet," Jack replied. "You were there."

The group was planning together (sans James) to meet up tomorrow afternoon, but considering that they were all there, Jack and Juliet had dinner that night with Hurley and Claire. Things were going pretty well between Hurley and Callie (and she had been delighted to meet Juliet earlier that day), but she understood that, for all the ways Hurley had embraced her, there were still parts of his life that were always going to be a little more personal.

Jack was one of Callie's biggest booster (and was glad that Hugo was finally managing to find personal as well as professional contentment), but he was actually glad that Callie wasn't here for this.

"I was going to hold off on this until tomorrow," he began slowly. "Mainly because it dealt with something we had all discussed as a group. But I did some looking into what we discussed two weeks ago, and I may have some answers about Locke."

Claire spoke up first. "Was what James heard true?"

"In August of 2000, John Locke was admitted to Marina Del Rey Hospital with injuries from an eight-story fall," Jack told them. "Despite the best surgical work at the time, he was a paraplegic, and required the use of a wheelchair."

They all took this in. They knew that James had no reason to lie about this, and they knew what the evidence of their eyes had told them. But it was one thing to know this intellectually; it was another to accept the truth. John Locke had been paralyzed when he'd gotten on their plane, and he'd help Jack move wreckage from the crash, and been a big help in hunting for food. No wonder he had been so certain that the island had been a miraculous place.

"Holy crap," Hurley said first.

Juliet, who had been on the island the longest of them, felt a level of surprise herself. Even after hearing everything that Ben and the rest had told her, she'd nevertheless been inclined not to think the island was that special. Nine deaths in three years didn't exactly sound like a great track record. And it still didn't explain what had happened to Ben.

"So, why are you telling us now?" Hurley was saying. "You're not, like, thinking of hiding this from everybody else, are you?"

"Of course not," Jack said immediately. "I promised I'd find out about Locke, and I'm going to keep my word. We all learned what happens when you don't share information. The reason I'm bringing it up here, is because we have to discuss what we're going to tell the people in Seattle Grace about this."

"We've already started telling them about the island," Claire pointed out. "Why shouldn't we tell them about it?

"Because they're doctors," Juliet said. "And learning about a place like the island would probably shake them up considerably."

"Dude, you don't think they'd try to find the place?" Hurley sounded more alarmed about the idea then they'd thought.

Jack looked alarmed at the idea. "We still have no idea where it was. What are they going to do, book flights to the South Pacific and hope for a crash?" He shook his head. "But you know how this hospital leaks. No matter how careful we are, if things go wrong, and the wrong people get a hold of it."

"You mean Widmore?" Claire was still concerned about this.

"For starters. It could make everything that Sayid and James are trying to do go up in flames. Which could end up hurting Desmond and Penny, and Miles, and God knows who else. And that's just assuming they don't try to go after anyone here."

"So what are you saying?" Hurley asked.

"When you tell them about the island, leave the miraculous stuff out of it." He looked at Hurley. "How much have you told Callie about it?"

"Most of the human stuff. Little of the Jurassic Park stuff," Hurley admitted. "It's not that I don't think she'd believe me. It's mostly that I don't understand most of it myself, even now."

"Ignorance can be the best policy some time," Claire assured him. "You sure it's still a good idea to keep telling Karev and Stevens?"

"I made a promise." Jack said without thinking. "And they've been pretty solid about keeping quiet. It's been more than a month, and they have told any of this even to the other interns. Which for this hospital…"

"Is something of a miracle." Hurley looked at Juliet. "Dr. Montgomery, she's pretty cool about this, right?"

Juliet thought about this for a long moment. "She managed to hide the fact that she was trying to have a baby from this hospital for nearly five months," she finally admitted. "Compared to that, telling her the details about what I was doing for Mittelos would probably be a walk in the park." She now looked at Jack. "Can you say the same thing about her ex-husband?"

This time Jack didn't hesitate. "Right now, he thinks he owes me his job and his fiancée, "he told her. "This is one chit I'm going to hold as long as possible. So we should be okay, right?"

It was hard to be sure. The hospital could be a sieve at times. But they'd held the truth from getting out for two and a half years. They could probably keep it up a bit longer.

"There's something else that I need to tell you," Hurley told them. "I did some looking into Locke's background. According to Desmond, he was the collections manager for a box factory in Tustin. " He paused. "One of the things my manager got before I got on the plane was a box factory in Tustin."

Jack knew that there had been some connections between before they had ended up on Oceanics – Desmond's was far more amazing than this – but still it shook him. "You're sure Locke worked there?"

"The guy in charge is a man named Randy Nations. Guy's a giant douche. He seemed to take a lot of pleasure in making fun of Locke." Hurley shook his head. "This is getting to be a small world, after all."

Jack shook his head, thinking back. "You know, I was thinking back the last couple of days about something Charlie said about Locke. They had a complicated relationship, too," he told Claire. "This was a couple of days after Ethan took you. Charlie was in a pretty dark place, for obvious reasons, and I was just starting to have questions about Locke."

"What did he tell you?" Even after all this time, Claire still got quiet when Charlie was mentioned.

"He said that he thought Locke was deranged. Before he got to know him. He told me that "if there was one person he was absolutely certain could save us all, it would be John Locke'. Even after everything he did, that still sticks with me."

"From what I remember, John pretty much got him off heroin." Hurley told him. "That's kind of why he took it so personally when Charlie found all those statues."

Jack remembered them to, and how'd he basically had to use one as the equivalent of a morphine drip on Libby. From what he'd learned from Claire, Charlie had basically thrown them in the ocean not long thereafter.

"One of the bigger ironies of this whole thing, if I'd known Locke in the real world, I might have been able to help him," he said, directing his words mainly to Juliet. "The level of his injuries, they're not quite the same as the one for the surgery that I performed on Sarah, but its pretty close. "

"Did he ever seek any kind of treatment for his condition?" Claire asked.

Jack shook his head. "He came in for a lot of physical therapy, but he never made any effort to do anything to treat his condition. That's what happens to a lot who have that kind of problem. "

"Jack, the man was broken psychologically years before he came to the island." Juliet reminded him. "You already blame yourself for a lot. Don't carry this, too."

Jack turned to Hurley. "Assuming that Anthony Cooper was his father, the only living relative I can find for him was his mother Emily."

Hurley seemed a little surprised at this. "The dude was like fifty when we met him."

"Forty-eight, actually. And according to this, Emily was sixteen when she gave birth to him. And according to his records, he was three months premature. "

Juliet was stunned at this. "More than half of all babies born that early die these days. I can't imagine what the record was like half a century ago."

"Two months in recovery before he was stable. And Emily immediately gave him up for adoption." Jack looked at her. "Right from the start, he must have felt unwanted. He was in and out of foster care until he turned eighteen. "

"Where's his mother live?" Hurley asked.

"Best I can find out, she's still in LA. Though I'm not sure what condition she'll be in." Jack went through another printout. "According to what I've been able to find, she's been in and out of institutions most of her adult life." He looked at Hurley. "Though the timing never matches up with when you were there, she was in Santa Rosa three times."

"Well, that's not so strange," Hurley said. "Place took a lot of people who had nowhere else to go. Do you have any idea where she is now?"

"No," Jack told them. "Only reason I was able to find this much is because there were hospital records. Still, maybe your PI could find her based on this."

"You won't get into any trouble because of this?" Hurley asked.

"As far as the world knows, John Locke is dead. I'm trying to get information of this to his next of kin. It's hardly a big sin." Jack looked at them. "Besides, considering everything I put the man through when we were on the island, I think I owe him this much at least."