AN: Hello all! I'm back with another long chapter! I know I'm becoming a bit of a broken record, but I owe you all such a huge thank you for your continued support of this story - those of you that have stuck around through these long chapters and some of my slower updates has meant so much. Writing this has reignited my passion for writing and I'm so happy I can share it with you all. I know some of the drama and angst can get a little heavy at times but it's been such a fun challenge to write it and will be worth it in the end! An enormous thank you is owed to AlwaysLOST12, Whitney, Sandyba, Mary, M, Jessie, and each of the guests who left such thoughtful and kind notes - you don't have to spend your time commenting on my work but you do and I appreciate it greatly. As always, I hope you enjoy :)
Chapter Fourteen
The clap of Jack's dress shoes resounded off the cars around them in the parking garage behind the courthouse as he approached Kate's legal team standing beside a black SUV. They stood in a tight ring, their voices lowered against the cavernous echo of the parking structure, as they discussed their last day in court before the prosecution would deliver their closing statements the next day. When Jack spoke, his voice harsh and aggressive, six black suits turned to look at him.
"What the fuck was that, Mark?"
Mark Gifford's steel blue eyes didn't register shock at seeing him, but rather resignation. His colleagues around him, two supporting counsel and several members of his paralegal staff, bristled in surprise.
"Dr. Shephard," Andrew Franklin, one of Gifford's supporting counsel, took a half step towards Jack in warning, his voice that of speaking to a child on the verge of a temper tantrum in the middle of the grocery store. A short bespectacled paralegal to his left clutched a stack of file folders to her chest, her eyes wide, watching Jack.
"That was not what we planned," Jack's anger was at a ferocious boil, permeating his skin and he locked eyes with the other man, ignoring the alarmed faces in the group. He squeezed his hand into a fist at his side.
"Mr. Gifford," the paralegal spoke up, her voice uncertain as her eyes darted around them. "I don't think we should -"
"You owe me an explanation," Jack continued, unwavering, his focus narrow and absolute.
"Dr. Shephard..." Andrew tried again, his voice more urgent now, putting a hand on Jack's upper arm to get his attention but he shrugged him off, never taking his eyes off of Gifford.
"Jack -" Gifford said, holding a hand up towards him, working to capture some amount of control. His eyes remained steadily linked with Jack.
"You and I both know we can't have this conversation in the open," he said calmly and Jack clenched his jaw, exhaling sharply in frustration, knowing that he was right. Even then he could hear the distant voices threading through the parked cars around them, knowing they wouldn't be in isolation for long as the courthouse continued to empty at the end of the day.
Gifford finally looked away from Jack and addressed his colleagues; his voice was even timbered but urgent and concise.
"Andrew, go back out through the courthouse and make your way to the front steps. Tell NBC, Fox, CNN - whoever you can find - that we plan on making a brief statement and taking a few questions. That should get enough of their attention to buy us a few minutes before they make their way in here to find us. Take Laura and Daniel with you - get the biggest pool of reporters out there as you can. I'll be no more than ten minutes behind you."
Andrew nodded and splintered from the group, Gifford's third in command and the anxious paralegal following closely.
"Natalie, I need you and Manuel to take the files back to the office," Gifford went on, addressing the remaining assistant attorneys. "If anyone stops you on your way, let them know I'll be addressing the press in front of the courthouse in ten minutes. Prepare the conference room and let Jennifer know we will be there in an hour to go over our closing."
Natalie and Manuel nodded in unison, both of them taking the handles of heavily stacked mobile file carts, one in each hand, and pulling them along as they made their way through the sea of cars in the garage.
"Get in the car," Gifford then said to Jack, his tone entirely devoid of any remaining pleasantries. Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and pulled open the driver side door to climb into the hulking black SUV.
Jack followed suit and, shutting the passenger door behind him, felt the crushing sound of the car's silence as he shut out the noisy activity and fumes of the garage. The slick black leather seats and tinted windows formed a shroud around them and Jack felt momentarily out of place and out of control, as he had on the witness stand that day. The heat of his anger flared beneath his heart.
"You need to start explaining yourself," Jack demanded. "Right now."
"Do you watch the evening news, Jack?"
"Excuse me?" Jack asked, blinking back his frustration.
"The ten o'clock is best but the six o'clock is a close second."
"I'm not here to talk about the weather report, Mark," Jack said hotly. "I need you to explain why you wasted my time this weekend preparing for testimony I never got to give, since you decided to throw our plan out the window."
Jack had spent a long and frustrating Sunday sitting at a large conference table at the offices of Gifford Fredericks & Kettering, the one his legal aides no doubt scurried back to now. Surrounded by discarded water bottles, half eaten salads and sandwiches from their working lunch, scattered legal pads, and an incomprehensible amount of paper, Jack answered variations of the same questions for almost ten hours. They questioned him as the defense and then pivoted to prosecution, all in an effort to prepare him for his looming testimony. Over the course of those stiff and exhausting hours, they established a strategy to present Jack to the jury and leverage his experience and reputation to elevate his opinions as fact. Gifford and his team had spent more time preparing Jack's testimony strategy than they had for any other witness during the trial. Once the decision had been made that Kate would not testify herself, Jack became their strategy's pinnacle witness and the one they were going to rely on as the final act of their defense. Kate had been asked and encouraged by her team to attend the testimony preparation meeting - her close relationship with Jack made her a valuable asset in structuring their strategy - but she refused.
Jack watched Mark's profile and waited for him to speak, his impatience flickering across his nerves like so much lightning on the horizon, signaling an approaching storm.
"Start talking Mark or so help me god," Jack's anger flashed again.
"Do you know how many nights in a row that you have been featured on the evening news as the star witness in the Kate Austen trial?"
Jack raised his eyebrows incredulously, a laugh bubbling somewhere in the bottom of his chest at the absurdity of this situation, Gifford's attitude, and his own humiliation that had grown and mutated over the last three months, at some point becoming like his own shadow: constant and inescapable.
"What the fuck difference does that make?"
"I'll tell you," Gifford continued, unperturbed. "Five nights in a row, at six o'clock and again at ten o'clock, every red blooded, cable-serviced household in this country heard the name Dr. Jack Shephard; the brilliant surgeon who saved forty people from certain death on a desert island who was about to take the stand to save one more."
"Oh please," Jack said in disgust. "I don't care about a bullshit puff piece narrative picked up by some small-time news outlets. I thought you didn't either."
"We aren't talking about 'small time' news outlets, Jack. We're talking about every major metropolitan station from here to Manhattan," Gifford's voice was rising to meet Jack's and he turned in his driver's seat to meet his eyes. "That is millions of households. And in case you've forgotten, we don't have a sequestered jury for this case; that was refused to us. The twelve men and women in that room go home every night and turn on their TVs and watch the news. Sure, they're not supposed to, but we have to bet on the side of human nature and assume that is exactly what they're doing. And we have to act accordingly."
"Are you really telling me that you think a few minutes of some news story means more to those people than my first-hand account, my experience?" Jack challenged, his tone sharp.
"Jack, you're not seeing the scope, the severity of this situation. Let me explain to you what's going on out there in the media," Gifford said, his tone grave. "The people you lived with on that island for almost two months, the people you cared for and protected? Well, they've been talking since you got home. To a lot of people about a lot of things. About their harrowing experiences, their opinions about this case, about Kate, and about all the rest. But you know what their favorite story is to tell? The story of the successful surgeon who, while saving everyone's lives, happened to fall in love with the mysterious and beautiful Kate Austen."
"That's such a load of shit," Jack scoffed and rolled his eyes, but his heart throttled in his chest all the same.
"I wish to Christ it was, Jack. Pick up a People magazine next time you're buying your groceries and you'll see what I'm talking about. Star-crossed lovers. A picture has been painted in the lexicon that is extremely damaging to our case. It's everywhere and I can't ignore it. "
Jack's jaw twitched and he looked out the windshield, fighting the urge to shift in his seat, heat rising again against the tight collar of his pressed dress shirt.
"That's why they fought us so hard on sequestration," Gifford continued darkly. "A well prepared, highly intelligent witness like yourself can do irreversible harm to a prosecutor's case; like a silver bullet. They saw what was going on with the press and planned on this jury going home every night, watching the news, reading the newspaper, and seeing your face everywhere, hearing the stories of your heroism and prestigious record on repeat. They wanted those people to look at you in that courtroom and see the infallible, perfect hero that they've been told about. Because once they got after you - revealed your history and pulled out all the dirty laundry - it would be that much more impactful. You know as well as I do that the prosecution had all the same information I did and was primed to use it against us. It would help them cast doubt into the minds of that jury about just how trustworthy you could possibly be. They would create a stain on your pristine white record so large the jury couldn't ignore it. I would have done the same thing."
"So you decided to beat them to the punch, is that it?" Jack's stomach soured at remembering the weight of the courtroom's attention as he struggled to answer the questions hurled at him, relentless and hell-bent attempts at cracking and damaging his composure. Attempts that succeeded. "All that shit about my father? And Sawyer? Was that really necessary?"
"Jack, don't sit there and feign naivete," Gifford fired back. "If I had let you get on the stand today and questioned you about your impressive career and illustrious achievements, the lives you've saved and the men and women who are walking today because of you, as soon as you said a word about Kate, all that jury was going to see was a man trying to save the woman he loves, not a rational pillar of society whose judgement can be relied on. Especially not after the prosecution was done with you. Nothing undermines a man's credibility more than being in love."
Jack's heart shrank in his chest and he suddenly felt small, exposed, and defenseless. But his anger quickly surged to overshadow his sense of defeat.
"Right, so because some gossip rag spins some bullshit about my feelings for Kate, you throw out our entire plan," Jack said scornfully. "And I get to walk in there and get totally blindsided."
"I don't work for you, Jack," Mark's temper flashed and his eyes were flat, inflexible. "I had to make an important strategic decision about how to best protect my client. Your insecurities are not my concern."
"Oh, this is about strategy now?" Jack's voice reverberated off the close space within the car, his throat tight with rage and his hand clenched into a painful fist. "Because, from where I'm sitting, it looks like you were gambling with Kate's life because you watch too much television."
"Jack, in my line of work, saving a life isn't a closed door procedure. I don't work in a sterile environment. I have to rely on the judgement and understanding of others, people that are not legally trained, people that don't understand their own bias or prejudices. You look at a person and you see a human body; we all have the same blueprint and the same wiring. You go in, you fix the problem, and walk away. The variables in your line of work are tangible. But here, I have to appeal to a group of strangers' emotional side, their compassion, and their sympathy. Kate is standing trial for grave crimes - the things she did will have a lasting impact on the families of the victims. That is a steep hill to climb, Jack. But people like Kate, they get into bad situations by no fault of their own and things spiral beyond their realm of control. Kate isn't a bad person. I really believe that. But Kate has made a series of bad decisions that lead to people getting hurt, people dying. And the average person can't comprehend that."
Gifford was quiet for a moment, his words hanging around them like a fog. The distant squeal of tires against the concrete parking structure could be heard while Jack's mind barely tread the water of his thoughts. Mark continued.
"I needed you to think we were still proceeding with our plan so your responses, your anger, would be real. Would be human. The jury had to see that a man like you, that they've been told over and over again is a hero with an unshakable habit for saving lives, can fall from grace. Can do terrible things, can hurt people, but think it was the right thing to do. If they could see that in you, the man who has been flying into their living rooms every night for a week on his angel wings, then maybe, just maybe, they could understand how someone like Kate might fall from grace, too. After all, hers is a much shorter distance to fall than yours."
Jack felt his breathing slow until it seemed to stop. All the images conjured during the trial began to flood his mind's eye at once; the things Kate warned him about from her past, that he was going to learn about, were even more devastating than he imagined. He recalled the night he did what he promised himself he wouldn't do - when he drove downtown and knocked on her door uninvited. Only twelve short hours before her trial began, in her unremarkable and lonely apartment downtown, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest and warned him. Her eyes were dull and she was thin, thinner than he remembered her being on the island, and her skin had the grey undertone of someone who slept little and ate even less. His heart twisted painfully when he remembered taking a step towards her and seeing her instinctively take a step backwards, out of his reach.
"My job is to prove that Kate did what she thought was right, what she had to do, to protect someone she cared deeply about. I didn't need you to testify to her character, Jack. I had Claire and Sun and Charlie and many others for that. I needed someone to set the moral standard for the jury, someone so beyond reproach that, in comparison, Kate's actions could be seen as comprehensible. I had to make an example out of you. I needed you to be the compass of good."
Jack turned his face away from Gifford and trained his eyes on an exit sign two rows beyond where they sat, hanging near an elevator bay. The elevator doors swung open and shut, transporting people in and out of the cloistered space they sat in and he remembered with a sharp twist of his gut what Kate had said to him that night only a few weeks ago: that people like her didn't fit into a life like his. That they were never supposed to meet in the first place.
Kate pulled her knees up to her chest, sitting in a chair at the small round table on Sawyer's deck. The cushion beneath her held the chill of the evening and the crisp sensation against the soles of her feet briefly reminded her where she was, how she came to be there.
Her cheeks were dry, the skin around her eyes taut with the memory of her tears from moments ago before she escaped through the kitchen doors to where she sat. She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them against her tighter.
She heard Sawyer before she saw him and felt the immediate gratitude and dread of his presence simultaneously. Her heart was sore and so tired. She wanted to go home but she didn't really know where that was, or if she would be welcome there when she arrived.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Sawyer settle into the chair next to her and he sighed into position. The night sky had descended into a foggy black, hazy with the incessant glow of life from the city below, the stars only faintly visible.
Kate swallowed weakly against her tight throat, hoping that she could conjure something to say to Sawyer that could rewind the last few hours and give her a chance to get it right. How she had always wanted to go back and make things right.
"I used to hang around the courthouse," he said suddenly and Kate instinctively looked over at him. He was sitting low in his chair, head tilted back and eyes looking up toward the opaque night sky above. He continued delicately, as if for her sake and his own. "Since I wasn't subpoenaed for testimony, I didn't have much access to the inner circle. I suppose I wasn't the type of character that would do much good for your case so they didn't pester me much. Back in those days, I didn't have a whole lot to do. The money from Oceanic kept me pretty entertained for the most part, and the whole 'I survived a plane crash' story got a lot of mileage with the ladies. That was really all I needed - just a cold beer in my hand and a pretty young thing on my arm. That did me just fine," he said, his voice almost wistful. Kate caught a small nostalgic smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
"But after a while, reading the headlines about your case didn't really satisfy my curiosity. So, I'd head down to the courthouse in the afternoon and wait for them to call it a day on your trial. I'd hang back, keep an eye out for someone who might feel charitable with their time and want to tell me about that day's proceedings. Since they weren't allowin' cameras in the courtroom, it was packed with reporters so it was a bit of a gamble. See, the reporters always had the most accurate and detailed information, but they were the most likely to recognize me. And then they were the ones tryin' to get the scoop out of me, instead of the other way around. But the lookie-loos on the other hand, they would tell me about it like they were watchin' a soap opera. Which, in some ways, was better. They'd tell me who cried on the stand and who kept it cool. They would tell me how the jury seemed to be reacting and what they thought of the judge."
Kate watched Sawyer closely but he kept his eyes out and above him, as if watching his memory of those days projected onto the sky.
"Now, there was one lady in particular. She wasn't like the others," he continued, crossing his arms over his chest comfortably. "See, there's this little bar just down the block from the courthouse. I started heading over there a little early to get a seat at the bar and wait for folks to trickle in once they'd called it a day in your trial. I'd scope things out a bit and see if I could find someone to strike up a conversation with. One day, early on, I'm sitting at the end of the bar, and this little lady sits down next to me. And she's got this bright red hair - terrible dye job - and it's sorta frizzy and all over the place. She has a pair of those shitty readers you find at the drugstore on her head, another pair on her face, and a third one hanging from those little necklaces people have to keep track of their glasses. She's maybe, I don't know, fifty-five or so. She orders a gin martini and pulls out this notebook that had to have at least fifty pages of notes in it. Now, I'm not tryin' to be nosy, but keep in mind I'm there huntin' for information. So imagine my surprise when my eye happens to wander over one of the pages in her little notebook and I see your name."
Sawyer shifted in his chair, the small smile on his face a bit wider now, and he glanced sideways at Kate who sat in silence, rapt.
"I took a gamble and struck up conversation, played dumb and asked her if she knew what all the fuss around the courthouse was all about. Turns out, my little comrade is a pulp fiction novelist - the kinda books you find at the drugstore two aisles over from where they sell those cheap little readers she loved so much. She traveled all the way from Ohio to watch your trial as research for her next book and would stand in line outside the courthouse every morning to get a seat in the audience. She got lucky most days and snagged a good seat. I tell her I'm just passing through town on a job and need a little entertainment after my shift, so me and my new friend Mary Anne get into a little routine. We start meeting at the bar in the afternoons and she'd give me all the juicy details. She'd tell me all about the tragic tale of Katherine Anne Austen, on trial for terrible crimes, crimes of passion, crimes of great moral conundrum, and in return I'd give her a few tidbits about one of my past lives."
Kate felt a shiver run down her arms, either in reaction to the cooling night air or the uneasy feeling of so many people, strangers, hearing and seeing the frighteningly private details of her past, most while she sat defenseless in the center of the room: the object of their total disgust and horror and examination.
"I'll tell you what, though," Sawyer went on. "Mary Anne was sharp as a tack. She was piecing together a larger story, fitting together other details that weren't brought up in court but that she was reading about in the gossip rags, online chat rooms, and the like. Quite the little sleuth."
"Did you ever tell you the truth about who you are?" Kate asked, her mind fumbling to picture this version of Sawyer just at the edges of this time in her life. Someone who wasn't involved, couldn't be, yet still went to no small lengths to be there.
"Didn't have to. Mary Anne had me figured out, but she didn't tell me till damn near the last day of the trial," Sawyer shook his head, still in awe. "One day near the end, I got to the bar a little later than usual but found it was still mostly empty which was strange. At first I just thought they'd run long in court that day. But eventually, when folks started showing up, I was hearing people talking about a press conference your legal team just gave in front of the courthouse. There was no denyin' that people were riled up about it and Mary Anne was late. I was sweatin' - I couldn't get a read on the crowd and I started to worry Mary Anne was bailing on me. I almost left to go lookin' for her around the courthouse when she finally shows up. But when she gets there, she's just as riled up as the rest of them and doesn't say a word to me. Instead, she immediately takes out her notebook and starts scribbling furiously, won't let me get a word in edgewise. She was like a pig in shit, I swear I hadn't seen her that excited about anything for the whole trial. I must have watched her workin' in that damn notebook for twenty minutes. Just when I thought I was going to wring her neck, she closed her notebook and gulped down her martini. That's when I finally got it out of her. Turns out the defense saved their best for last and finally called their star witness to testify. Jack spent damn near the entire day on the stand and, to hear Mary Anne tell it, it was Gettysburg revisited. She gave me all the gory details, told me about how your defense attorney went to work on Jack, tearing the poor bastard to shreds. She said she couldn't tell who the jury felt worse for; him or you."
Kate's heart hammered in her chest and her alcohol-filled stomach churned. The pressure grew in her head like a filling balloon, overwhelmed with the images spinning together like cotton candy at a county fair. She felt her heart tilting and rocking on the turbulence of her own imagination - knowing she didn't remember those moments made her capsizing heart ache.
"Out of nowhere, Mary Anne turns to me and asks: 'Did you have Shannon's inhaler all along?'" Sawyer's voice was a mix of bemusement and incredulity. He shook his head slowly.
"She already knew who I was. Probably had the whole time. I guess she was using me just as much as I was using her."
Kate swallowed against her dry throat, Sawyer's words rippling across her mind. She shifted in her seat nervously, suddenly painfully aware of her presence in Sawyer's home as an interruption, a blemish on the course of his new life; someone he couldn't escape.
"Mary Anne grew up in Arkansas," Sawyer continued, matter of fact. "She was the youngest of five girls, raised by God-fearing parents in a blue collar neighborhood. She didn't go to college and she married the first man who asked her on a date. She has been on the bestseller list eight times," Sawyer said casually. "I pre-ordered her new book. It's about a beautiful and misunderstood runaway who finally meets her fate in the City of Angels."
Kate let her eyes scan the backyard, considering the night she was sharing with Sawyer, a man she hardly knew in a past life and surely didn't know now. Just as the darkness transformed the area around her, the haze of her mind curved and warped the moment of time she sat in. Her fingers were cold as they gripped and twisted the hem of her tshirt.
"So, you got everything you needed from Mary Anne in the end," Kate said quietly, her attempt at good humor tasting stale in her mouth.
"Well, not quite everything," he said, looking down at his hands. "I tried giving you a call a few times in the beginning. You didn't pick up or return my calls."
"I don't think you weren't alone in that," Kate sighed.
"Yeah…" he acknowledged and finally looked over to her, a sly smile spreading across his face. "But I live for a challenge."
She couldn't help but return his smile, but felt the edges of her mind slowly turn, souring and curling inward like a piece of fruit left on the counter too long. The feeling was like returning to a childhood home that felt comfortable, surrounded by the formative years of sense memory, but separated by lifetimes of growing up. Although she couldn't remember it, she knew that there remained a part of her that had been left to rot in a dark, isolated space in her mind while she segregated herself from the rest of the world and the rest of her life.
"One day, early in your trial, I was killing time, hanging around before heading over to the bar to meet Mary Anne, and I bummed a cigarette off a guy at the end of the alley that ran behind the courthouse. We start shootin' the shit and I come to find out that he's a good ol' Alabama boy, like me. Grew up just down the interstate from me and my folks. So I casually let it slip that I happened to know the defendant in this big flashy case they got goin' on in the courthouse and my new friend says, no shit, guess who I've been driving around all week? Wouldn't ya know it, this guy was the driver responsible for chauffeuring you back and forth between court and your apartment every day."
Sawyer shakes his head again, in awe of his own luck and shrugs his shoulders. "I didn't even have to bribe the guy, I just let him talk. Eventually, he mentioned the building you lived in and I was able to figure out the rest. That Friday night, I showed up with a pizza and a bottle of tequila and wouldn't leave until you let me in. You were pissed. You read me my rights - you didn't want me there, I had no right to track you down, the whole song and dance - but every Friday after that for the rest of the trial I was there like clockwork. Once you figured out I wasn't gonna take no for an answer, you would tolerate it. And, from the looks of it, I may have been the only one keeping you fed and liquored up so I like to think I was doing you a favor."
Kate watched him as he leaned his head back against the chair and took a deep breath. The evening air around them circulated the sounds of a quieting neighborhood and on the gentle breeze, Kate could smell Sawyer's cologne and her mind spun like a top. She wondered what her memory would be, if she possessed it, of the night they'd spent together. Would she look back at it as a regret, or a private moment of intimacy she shared with an unexpected friend, an ally who brought her pizza and provided his unsolicited support during her darkest hours?
"Is that when it happened?" she asked and he turned his head to look at her. "When we slept together?"
Sawyer's eyes flickered and his brows drew closer together. He took a deep breath and Kate felt the muscles around her chest tighten reflexively. He looked away from her again before he spoke and she could see the muscles of his jaw working as he conjured up his response.
"The jury had been deliberating for a week and still no verdict," he started slowly, his voice low, "The media was saying they were close, but no one knew for sure. I met up with Mary Anne a few times and she'd fill me in on what she was hearing around town - there was lots of talk about a mistrial, jury tampering, and on and on but that was just gossip. None of that really mattered. It was like we were standing on the railroad tracks waiting to hear the whistle. So, just like every other week before, I showed up with my pizza and my tequila."
Kate suddenly wanted to tell him to stop, not to unearth this painful memory, to maybe spare their hearts this burden. On top of everything she had forced them to carry already. But she also knew she had no right to back away from this, was responsible to bear the weight of all she had done, whether the memories would ever really return to her or not.
"People like us…" Sawyer began, his voice quiet, but he stopped. When Kate looked up at him again, she saw his face turned down, his eyes on his hands laced together in his lap. A shadow hung on his face that she couldn't quite identify and she recalled holding Sawyer's letter in her hands, the feeling of the wrinkled but cared for paper between her fingers, as she was entrusted with the tragedy of this man's life and her heart plummeted in her chest.
"We convince ourselves our lives don't matter," he went on, his voice low between them. "With all the things we've done - the people we've hurt - we tell ourselves we don't deserve a second chance, don't deserve mercy. Makes it easier to go on alone. But you... you didn't just think the jury felt that way - you did too. You were so convinced that it was over, that you were going away, it was like I could see you turning out the lights in your own mind, closing up shop. You and me… well, I think you were trying to put as much distance between yourself and the life you thought you were leaving behind."
"And what about you?" she asked gently.
"Me? Well..." Sawyer said and looked over to her solemnly. He sighed heavily and said, "You were breakin' my heart."
Kate felt a part of herself, a corner somewhere behind her heart, splinter and fracture sending the sharp debris of this horrible moment of sorrow ricocheting into the furthest reaches of her body.
"Sawyer…" she whispered, unsure of what to say but he shook his head, asking her not to say anything without a word. Instead, he went on.
"There was a part of me back then that thought there was a chance it would end up just you and me. That after it was all over, we'd hit the road, do some type of Bonnie and Clyde routine and travel the country, or somethin'. We used to talk about all the vacations we never took as kids, trying to decide which stops we would make on a cross country road trip. You wanted to see the Grand Canyon and I wanted to go to the Badlands. You wanted to visit the great lakes and I wanted to get some real fancy ski lessons in Aspen. And over the four weeks of your trial, it started to feel like we could do it, and it would be good. But with every week that went by, you disappeared a little bit more. It was like you were sinking away. And then when the verdict came in... You couldn't understand how they let you walk out of that courthouse with nothing more than some probation and court-ordered community service. You were angry; angry at the jury, at your lawyers, at anybody that would look you in the eye. See, you'd spent so much time walking away from your life, you didn't know how to stay in it."
A warm tear slipped down Kate's cheek and she felt something stir to life in the back of her mind: the claustrophobia of living on borrowed time, just around the corner from her own fate - a feeling she had run from for so long, that had brought her to the brink of her own extinction - awoke in her as if from a long, deep sleep.
"I think we knew it was wrong, even while it was happening," Sawyer's voice was flat and Kate blinked slowly. "You were settling some kind of score with yourself and I was trying to figure out what I was gonna make of my life. And for a moment, those two things were one and the same."
He finally turned his head back towards Kate and she could see in his dark eyes the memory replaying in his mind. In that moment, she felt the jagged fragments of her life scatter across an open plane and wondered if she would ever possess them all again; how she could ever possibly comprehend the depth of this man's compassion and fit him into the complicated puzzle that was her life.
"I closed on this place a few days later," he said with a small smile. "It was good timing, too. You needed something to swing a hammer at and I needed the help. And that routine worked for a while. Until it didn't anymore."
The ice at the bottom of Jack's glass reflected the harsh light of the televisions behind the bar where he sat. Dizzying sprays of color whipped across the room from the screens positioned in front of him and Jack lifted his glass to take the last sip of the cheap whiskey in his glass.
After climbing out of Mark's SUV somewhere in the bowels of a parking structure downtown, Jack drove west towards home after what may have been the longest day of his life. The rush hour traffic clogged the 10 Freeway and he trudged along with the masses in his attempt to get home, his mind playing an endless loop of the day that he desperately wished he could shed like a skin he had outgrown.
But after exiting the freeway, his muscle memory failed him and instead he embarked on a strange tour through West LA. His mind numb, he drove up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, through Brentwood and down to Venice, east into Culver City and then north towards West Hollywood. Finally, after making his way west again down Wilshire Boulevard, he found himself across the street from the dive bar that had become a second home to him and Cody during med school at UCLA.
He had been there for a few hours before Cody arrived. Even on a Tuesday, the bar was relatively busy and Jack was surprised to see his friend materialize in the seat next to him. With the music loud and the drinks stiff, Jack could have easily found someone to go home with, but that was the hallmark of another lifetime; a version of himself he no longer understood.
Cody didn't greet Jack but instead raised a hand to get the bartender's attention. Jack kept his eyes on the television across the bar and stayed silent.
The bartender made his way over to take their orders. Cody ordered a beer and Jack raised a finger for another whiskey.
"It's getting late, Jack," Cody said simply and crossed his arms on the bar.
"I haven't had a curfew since I was eighteen years old."
"Are you on the board tomorrow?"
"Cody, I don't need this right now."
The bartender returned with their drinks and Jack immediately lifted his fresh whiskey to his mouth for a sip.
"Oh really?" Cody chided. "You're the one sitting in a dive bar we haven't been to since college drinking six dollar whiskeys on a Tuesday."
Jack was silent again, his eyes trained on the glass of whiskey in his hand. He twisted it back and forth on the damp and sticky bar.
"What happened today?" Cody asked, his low voice a stark dichotomy to the loud pop music that filled the space around them. Jack's chest constricted and he took a deep breath. He'd been replaying the day over in his mind on an unforgiving loop for hours, still feeling the itch of his anxiety crawling over his skin. The image of Kate's small figure sitting behind the defense table floated to his mind again and he winced.
"I don't know," Jack sighed. "Her lawyer… he didn't follow our plan. I wasn't prepared. I don't know if what I said helped her or hurt her."
"What happens next?"
"Closing statements. Then the jury deliberates. And then that's it," Jack lifted his glass again, taking a drink of the cheap liquor. His stomach twisted with the onslaught of his own punishment, his own self-medication, and the rising tide of his fear of what was to come.
Cody was nodding slowly next to him. He took a thoughtful sip of his beer while they both watched the last seconds of the Lakers game playing out in front of and around them on the televisions scattered around the bar. The light and colors and sounds encircled them like the mirrors in a funhouse.
"And then what?" Cody asked.
"And then whatever's next, is next," Jack couldn't hide the exasperation in his voice, the frustration in the pit of his stomach combining with the whiskey to shorten the fuse on his temper substantially.
"Jack," Cody started, turning in his seat to look at him, but Jack didn't reciprocate. Instead, he tightened his jaw and swirled the melting ice in his glass. "I'm going to say this because I don't think anyone else will. You need to think about what you're going to do if things don't go the way you want them to. What happens then?"
"What happens then is we deal with it," Jack shot back, his tone sharp.
"For how long? Does this just become your life?"
"Does what just become my life?" Jack snapped, finally turning to look at Cody, his eyes boring into his friend fiercely, combatively. "I will help Kate as long as she needs my help. If that means that we have to keep fighting this, then so be it."
"This is about helping her?"
"What else would it be about? That's all I want to do, all I've ever wanted."
"That's bullshit, man," Cody said, taking a sip from his beer and watching the tv behind the bar. Jack shot a look over to him with irritation.
"Excuse me?"
"You don't want to help her," Cody said, indignantly. "You want to fix it, take care of things. But on your terms. She won't let you and that is driving you insane."
Jack laughed and shook his head, taking another sip of his whiskey. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about." Jack was tired and the alcohol was turning his mood and his empty stomach against him. The television behind the bar raced through a painfully bright commercial for a pickup truck.
"The fuck I don't," Cody shot back. "You're a surgeon, Jack. You literally fix things for a living. Entire teams of people are at your beck and call every day. You call the shots and everyone around you has to listen and follow orders. That's what you're used to and, when you aren't the one making decisions, you don't know how to function. Hell, we're all like that. That's what makes surgeons so impossible to deal with. We can't stand not being in control, not being able to fix what's broken."
"This isn't about me," Jack shook his head, blinking slowly against the dull ache blooming at the edges of his mind.
"It is and it isn't," Cody shrugged, his face awash with the changing colors of the television transitioning from coverage of the Lakers game and into the late evening news. "Sometimes helping someone isn't about doing anything. There are things, problems, that have no fixing. We see it every day at the hospital. Some things just happen to people, as shitty as that sounds. They need to go through it and make their way to the other side. And that process might turn them into the worst version of themselves for a while, so they can figure out who they are going to be. And sometimes the only way you can help is by taking a step back to let them go through it."
"I can't do that," Jack said simply. He felt empty and useless, but chained to the responsibility he felt towards a woman that existed miles away from him, who time and time again pushed against him with all her strength.
"Yeah, well," Cody scoffed, taking a sip from his beer. "It isn't up to you. She's showing you what she needs and you aren't listening."
The televisions around them came to life with the local news reporters, the blocky and sharp text of the closed captions announcing the top stories of the day. Jack's eyes watched the screen as it focused on a reporter delivering a detailed account of the day's events downtown, an image appearing on the right-hand side of the screen containing the chaos in front of the courthouse that morning. Her name flashed on the screen and Jack had to look away, back down to the murky liquid in his glass.
"Your life will go on, beyond this, no matter what happens. And you owe it to yourself - after all your hard work - to go after the life you deserve," Cody shrugged. "And maybe everything works out and she's a part of it. But maybe they don't and she isn't."
Kate listened to the settling sounds of Sawyer's home around her and pulled the sheet up over her chest. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled all the varied scents of him that surrounded her in his bed, his bedroom, and beyond.
Ultimately, it had been Sawyer who called it a night out on the deck. The combination of tequila and their heavy conversation had taken its toll on them both and Sawyer led her back into the house. She silently followed him down the hall and into his bedroom, Sawyer having mumbled something about sleeping on the couch. He gave her a tshirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in and she accepted them gratefully, her limbs dense with exhaustion and the weight of everything she had, and hadn't, been able to say.
Her mind wandered aimlessly, drifting back and forth across the wide spectrum of her life. She found herself floating between a state of anxiety and fear, born of all that she was beginning to understand of her past, and the eerily calming sensation of having finally identified in someone a connection of spirit, an understanding.
Kate gingerly turned onto her side and pulled her knees up towards her chest, the feeling of his smooth sheets against the bare skin of her legs pushing a dagger of guilt deep into her chest. Like a bolt of lightning, she was filled with bright, hot shame as her mind conjured images of Jack alone in their quiet home, his own mind tortured by the ways she was consistently pulling away from him. Her heart shuddered in her chest painfully.
And even as her tired eyes began to dip closed, she felt the healing salve of gratitude calm her weakened and fearful heart. She was thankful for the pain, the truth of her past that had begun to push into her mind. Like weeds that grow in the cracks of a sidewalk, they are frustrating and ugly - but a sign of life beneath nonetheless.
Jack tossed the thick trial manuscript onto the scattered pile at his feet and pinched the bridge of his nose firmly, his mind a chaotic tangle of the torrential and acute memories of the day he testified. His bruised heart struggled to differentiate between the pain of uncertainty he felt after walking out of the courtroom that day and what he felt in that moment, sitting on the edge of the guest room bed in the home he had come to share with Kate.
He abandoned the trial boxes on the floor of the guest room and trudged down the hall to their bedroom. The silence was deafening as he changed and got ready for bed. Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror he saw the shadows under his eyes, the sag of his shoulders, and felt a fresh wave of fatigue crash over him.
His tired body fell into bed with gratitude and dread, desperate for rest but plagued by his own tormented mind. How many opportunities he had missed over the last few short days to connect with Kate, the moments he had seen a brief light in her eyes, and all the ways she had distanced herself from him.
Jack felt completely paralyzed, cornered by his need for an answer, a fix, a way to heal the growing cavern that widened between them. Loosening his grip on their situation, inviting others in, was not a realm he operated in comfortably. And although he understood the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to Kate's treatment, he still bristled at the fact that he couldn't be a singular source of support for her. That he would very likely have to witness her explore areas of her past that were traumatic and difficult without any meaningful way to protect her, or shoulder any of that burden.
And even as his tired eyes began to dip closed, he felt the sheet of sorrow drape over him while his mind reconciled what was laying ahead of him: his wife, for whom he had traveled to the edge of his deepest most terrible self for, was never going to be the same.
Jack's eyes adjusted to a shimmering light, glowing blue beneath his eyes. He looked out across the water and saw Kate standing near the center of the pool, her dark hair suspended around her shoulders in tendrils. He floated towards her and as his hands found the curve of her waist, she looked up at him with a small, secret smile.
"I'm so glad you're here," she said and a drop of water trailed down her cheek. The heat of her skin in his hands clashed with the chill of the water around them. He could see the curve of the bruise around her eye, but as he blinked, it seemed to get lighter and slowly fade until it disappeared.
"I miss you," he said and she smiled wider, raising a hand to his face. The warmth of her hand traveled across his skin like a shockwave and he felt it reaching down his neck and across his chest. The rippling light from the water danced across her face and he felt the darkness of the night sky above them begin to press down and enclose them in this small aperture of remembered time. At the furthest boundary of his mind, he could understand that this was a moment he was somehow being allowed to experience again, but couldn't possibly preserve. When she leaned in to kiss him, he let his eyes fall closed and wrapped his arms around her tighter. Her lips were warm and soft and merciful to him.
He felt the chill around him dissipate and suddenly his arms were empty. He blinked his eyes open and had to adjust to a new darkness around him. Gone was the undulating light of the swimming pool, replaced with the dim, amber glow from a fireplace that crackled in the corner of the room, now miles away from the backyard he had been in a second ago.
Looking to his right, he saw a door that stood just slightly ajar and he walked towards it, his mind tracing his surroundings to understand that he had been there before, somehow. He pushed the door open slowly to reveal a large bedroom, a diagonal slant of light cast across the room as he entered. The narrow rectangle of light he had created reached across the room and fell onto the bed that stood directly in front of him.
Kneeling in the middle of the bed was Kate. Her curls fell around her bare shoulders and she held the bedsheet up in front of her body modestly. Jack's feet propelled him forward, the sounds of the crackling fire fading behind him as his mind narrowed to the singular point ahead of him.
"You found me," Kate said, the teasing lilt in her voice sending a chill down his spine. As he reached the edge of the bed, he could see the bare skin of her thighs and hips that the sheet she held to her body didn't cover. Like a signal flare, his mind connected with his surroundings: he was standing in the suite where they had celebrated their anniversary up the coast in Big Sur. The tall windows to his left would look out to the dark cliffside that hung above the roiling Pacific coastline.
He reached out to her and she let the sheet fall around her knees. In the narrow slice of light that fell across her, Jack's eyes drifted down her body, her fair skin illuminated as if from some source of heat within her. His fingertips grazed the edge of her hip and he watched them trail up her skin, so soft his nerves barely registered the contact as a tangible sensation. Up over her hip, into the curved valley of her waist, up further across her ribs and the gentle swell along the side of her breast, Jack moved his fingers until they reached the plateau of her shoulder. As his hand finally settled into the curve of her neck, he allowed his eyes to meet hers and he could see the source of her warmth glowing deep in her eyes. Her body pressed against his and the heat of her bare skin bled through his clothes and saturated him. He reached his other hand up to her neck and held her in place, looking down into her face intently.
"Please…" he whispered, his hands firm on her neck. His brows drew into a frown and he felt the cold fog of fear begin to reach around his heart, suddenly knowing he needed to get through to her here, somehow. "Stay with me, Kate."
She was smiling up at him still, his words not reaching her. She was stuck in the past existence of that moment and couldn't hear him now, as if a thick pane of glass separated them, suffocating his voice.
She lifted her face and brushed her lips against his. Her arms reached around his waist and an explosion of heat bloomed in his chest. He fought to keep his eyes open, hold his body rigid against her to stay in this moment, even as he felt a dark corner of his mind begin to open up like a cavern, pulling him down and away. He felt her lips part against his and his hands shook against the skin of her neck.
"Kate," he whispered against her, his voice strained and urgent, but her hands pushed against him, down his back, her fingers hooking into the space between the waistband of his jeans and his skin. The darkness in his mind expanded and he was falling backwards into it, the heat in his chest growing and fighting against his own restraint.
"I'm still there," she sighed into the kiss. Jack's mind swayed and dipped, pulled into the undertow of her. His eyes slipped closed and he leaned down into the kiss, tangling his fingers in her hair, gripping her tighter and tighter.
Her hands slipped away from his back and suddenly his arms were empty again, but his hand still felt the delicate touch of her hair. He opened his eyes slowly and leaned back, pulling away from Kate's sleeping form beneath him. His hand at the side of her face, her features illuminated by the quietly glowing television in their living room. He sat on the edge of their couch, her sleeping body curled up beneath a blanket. The house around them was dark but for the TV. Jack was still dressed in a suit and he instinctively glanced at his watch - it was after midnight.
Kate stirred and her eyes fluttered open. As she saw him above her, she smiled drowsily and reached a hand up to push her hair away from her face. She wore her engagement ring, but it wasn't yet accompanied by her wedding band.
"You're here," she sighed, relief in her voice.
"I'm sorry," he shook his head and moved his hand to her face, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheek. He felt his exhaustion, his muscles stiff with the physical exertion of a long day in surgery, but he was rooted to that spot next to her. She leaned into his touch and blinked tiredly.
"I'm sorry," he said again, his voice low and heavy with the recognition of all that lived in her, beneath her skin, woven into the fabric of her life. The pain she had suffered through, her moments of isolation and despair, existed under his thumb. She was there with him in those seconds, those minutes, of simplicity. But it hadn't always been that way. And his mind raced to collect this memory and engrave it on his soul, this fragment of time that only contained the two of them. Kate turned towards his hand and placed a gentle kiss in the center of his palm.
He leaned down, pulled toward her center of gravity. He kissed her on the forehead as the light around them began to fade. The darkness closed in on them again and before he could open his mouth to speak, to hold her there for a moment longer, her voice reached him, just barely audible over the static rising in his ears:
"I'm still there."
Her voice was engulfed by a drifting breeze that crept toward them, carrying with it the sound of an ebbing tide. The hiss and spray of an ocean reached his ears as Jack leaned back on his knees. He was crouched in cold sand, the cool air harsh against the sweat on his brow. Kate laid before him, her thin tshirt damp and the skin of her wrist in his hand overheated to the touch.
Jack took a deep, wavering breath. The ocean air filled his lungs and he exhaled slowly, trying to calm the tremor he felt in his fingers. He tilted his head back and looked up to the empty black sky above them, his nerves frayed like shattered glass.
He tried to steady his mind, push through the cobwebs that clouded his thoughts, in search for an answer. His thoughts raced from one side of his medical training to the other, imagining both the horrific things that he may be facing alongside the simple, rational explanations. The insistent pounding of his heart pushed relentlessly against his chest and he counted to five.
When he finally looked back down to Kate, he saw her brow weekly twitch into a frown and her eyelids squeeze together tightly for a moment. He leaned in closer as she seemed to come to life in front of him.
As her eyes slowly opened, Jack felt the enormous weight shift just ever so slightly on his shoulders, the momentary relief like taking a sip of water on the brink of dehydration. When her eyes focused and settled on him, a glimmer of gratitude skipped across his heart.
"Kate," her name from his mouth, like a prayer, spread a smile across his face. He instinctively reached for her face to gauge her temperature, her sweltering skin damp from the cold compresses he had been applying to her forehead for hours.
She watched him intently, her brow still furrowed tightly. His head swam, suddenly reaching the end of the road, unsure of where to go from here. The waves crashed behind him and he felt the encroaching veil of the end of this, whatever this was.
"You're okay," he said, his voice tight against a rush of sorrow that rapidly climbed his throat. He gently smoothed a damp curl away from her forehead. If only it would always be this simple, the ways in which he would need to care for her.
"I need you to stay here," he said and swallowed, his voice shaking. "I need you to stay awake," he corrected himself. He knew this was the beginning, or the end, and his sluggish mind struggled to find purchase on the tilting ground beneath him. She opened and closed her mouth, her energy completely drained. She weakly raised a hand and placed it on his forearm, her fingers loosely gripping him. Kate took a shallow breath and opened her mouth again, using the only energy she could gather to speak.
"I'm still… I'm still…" she whispered, her eyes sagging heavily and a tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, dropping into her already damp hair. Her hand slipped from his arm and her eyes fell closed. And with them, Jack fell again into his own mind, swallowed by the opaque and endless cavern of his own desperation; hopeless and disconnected and lost.
"Kate," her name tumbled from his lungs as his eyes struggled against sleep. Jack cautiously opened his eyes against the hazy early morning light that filtered into the room and he ran a hand over his face. His tshirt was damp with sweat and his shoulders and neck ached from his fraught night of sleep as he turned in bed.
He placed a hand on the cool, undisturbed pillow next to him and heard her voice echo across his mind, promising him over and over again that she was still there. But she wasn't.
TBC