Chapter 5

OCEANSIDE WELLNESS

"I'm sorry it literally takes a gun to my head for me to come visit you again," Addison said to Naomi and Sam.

"Seriously, this is hardly the time to apologize," Sam said. "Although is the fact that you're making light of your trauma a good sign?"

"Given the way people like us often make light of mortality, probably not," Addison admitted. "Or maybe I've moved on to a different phase. I can't tell anymore."

"Well, it is clear that the friends you've made in Seattle are at least as good as us," Naomi said. "I can't imagine any other hospital where they'd be able to give you as much rope as you've been refusing to grab on to."

"Is that a dig about us not talking enough before it came to this?" Addison asked.

"Now I'm not sure."

Naomi and Sam Wilder had been Addison and Derek's closest friends when they were in med school. Like the Shepherds, they'd married not long out of it, and like the Shepherds, their marriage had ended in divorce. The similarities ended there. For one thing, the Wilders had a daughter, Maya and that daughter may have been one of the things that kept them together when their marriage passed its expiration date. There had been no explosion that had ended their marriage, no affairs, no fighting. The two still worked together at the practice they'd founded, and whatever stress there was at Oceanside was not because of their past relationship. They still worked together well as colleagues and parents. Addison still believed that the two of them were still in love, but neither could admit it to each other. She kept quiet about because, given how she'd handled her own separation, she was in no position to give advice on marriage, and considering she hadn't been a real relationship in nearly two years, she couldn't exactly give advice on love either.

Around the time Jack Shepherd had first shown up at Seattle Grace, she had been on the verge of resigning and moving to LA. She'd seen her friends a few weeks before then, and given the state of everything at the hospital, there hadn't been a real reason to stay. She thought she was standing in the way of Derek finally being happy and honestly, the visit had helped her realize how much she'd missed her old friends. There hadn't been one unifying incident that stopped her from handing in her two weeks' notice – the closest thing had been Burke's resignation around that time. She knew the problems the hospital was having, and she didn't want to hurt its reputation anymore.

Then she'd confided in Jack about wanting a child, and he had introduced her to Juliet. Addison was not the kind of woman to make instant bonds, but the moment she'd met the woman, the two had connected in a way beyond their common profession. She had known instinctively that Juliet and Jack were not telling the full truth about how they knew each other or of Juliet's connection to the Oceanic survivors. Paradoxically, that had only drawn her closer to Juliet. After more than a year working in a hospital where everybody knew everyone's secrets, it was refreshing to be dealing with someone who wasn't inclined to share everything about their lives at a moment's notice. She had respected Jack for the same reason: as much as the man wore his heart on his sleeve, he also kept many of his cards close to his vest. It also helped he was the only male member of the staff who never so much as flirted with Addison, though the moment Kate had broken into Seattle during Carole Littleton's surgery, it became crystal clear as to why.

Indeed, it was then that Jack knew the other reason she'd liked him so much. He had been the only attending at the hospital who had looked at her the same way he did every male attending: a doctor first. It was probably the reason she'd confided in him in a way she never would have with Derek or Mark or really anyone else at the hospital. Indeed, that was one of the things that Juliet had in common: they always looked you in the eye with respect and sincerity. Most other doctors could do that, of course, but she'd known a lot who were experts at faking it.

Juliet had made her dream a reality. Even though she hadn't asked for anything, Addison had wanted to help her be closer to her friends on the other side of the country. Juliet could have asked for the same conditions Addison had when she'd come to work here; instead, she'd been willing to settle for less as long as she could spend more time with her sister and nephew. In her entire career in medicine, Addison had only met one other surgeon who'd been willing to do the same and he was the one who'd introduced her to Juliet.

Addison knew this wasn't a coincidence but considering everything the two had given her, she thought it would be unworthy of her to ask. Besides, not long after she was dealing with morning sickness, maternity leave and finally a son, so she didn't care. Nor did she even object that much when she finally returned to the hospital several months earlier and somehow everybody in the hospital now seemed to know Jack and Juliet's secrets except her. Well, her and Yang but Yang hadn't cared before and didn't really seem to mind now.

Then one week later, a strange man had grabbed her and put a gun to her head. She was terrified, like every woman is when something even close to this happens but the fact that the man showed no interest in her at all as a person was not encouraging. Then he had taken a radio and said something that made less sense: "I have Montgomery? What floor are they on?"

She had no idea what was happening. Then she'd been told if she moved or said anything, she would be shot in the head. "Please don't hurt me."

The man had something that caused ice to fill her blood. "That's not up to me."

Then she had been pulled into the elevator where Jack had been a conversation was waiting. They had demanded unless he told them 'where they were', she would be shot.

"That's what terrified me the most, even now," Addison had told Violet an hour ago. "The gun to my head, the fact of being shot, all that was horrifying enough. But that was nothing compared to something far more banal. My identity, everything I worked for, everything I'd done, was meaningless. I might as well have been a stick figure to this man. He was not going to hesitate before killing me, and it didn't even matter who I was. I was going to be killed only because I had come to work that day. My entire value as a human being had been reduced to leverage, and I was never going to know why."

Violet had been quiet for a moment. "As a surgeon, you're all too familiar with how far too many people die for random reasons," she said slowly. "People get on cars and trains that crash. Children are killed by stray bullets."

"A man walks down the street and is crushed by a piece of rebar," Addison continued. "But that's not the same thing. It may have been random that I had a gun to my head, but I was still chosen by this man. And yes, I'm aware that things like this happen far too often – I've been in enough ERs to know that a person can be killed when they don't give their wallet up fast enough."

"But it's another when you're the victim of it." Violet paused. "Is that the reason you came here?"

Addison knew what Violet was asked. She could have deflected, but she decided not to. "I'm honestly not sure," she admitted. "There's an entire wing devoted to psychiatry at my hospital, and I came all the way to LA to talk with a therapist I met for three days two years ago. That does seem a bit random in itself."

"There's a term for this in our profession. The geographical escape," Violet reminded her.

"I know that very well. I did a version of it when I came to Seattle in the first place," Addison hesitated. "But honestly, I don't think that's the case. I don't think this so much about location as it is…shame."

Addison had sat up. "I came back to work without talking to anybody. The day I came back, the head of psychology offered to talk with me if I needed too. She came to me three separate times in the next month as it became clear to everybody except me that I clearly needed help. Each time, I got more and more hostile."

"We don't take these things personally."

"I think I did," Addison sighed. "You may not be aware of this – or perhaps you're too polite to say so – but the stigma that many people hold against your profession is held doubly by doctors not in your field."

"I learned that my first week in residency," Violet said.

"Yeah, well it's exponentially worse where I work," Addison said. "All of the residents and quite a few of the attendings – I was no exception before this, trust me – could all benefit from a few sessions. They'd all sooner experience a tracheotomy with no anesthesia than spend five minutes in a room with a therapist."

"And you were afraid of what your colleagues would think," Violet assumed.

"My introduction to Meredith Grey was to call her 'the bitch who was screwing my husband'; it's safe to say I never worried what people thought of me," Addison waved that off. "No, I think I came here for therapy because I was never sure that if I did so in Seattle, I could believe that cliché you tend to say whether you want to or not. 'This is a safe space.'"

"And you don't feel safe there now." Violet concluded.

"That is the heart of it," Addison admitted. "I considered moving here two years ago, finding a residence in a hospital here; hell, maybe even going into private practice in a building much like this. But I made a choice to stay in Seattle. It was the right choice then; I wouldn't have Stan without it. And while the geographic escape worked for me once, there's no guarantee it will be again. I need to make up my mind on that, and while I might be able to stay in Seattle, I don't know if I can keep my old job. I need to keep a clear head about this and there's no way I can do that at Seattle Grace right now."

"So that's why you're here." Violet said.

"Actually, there's at least one other reason."

LGLGLG

"Addison, the man himself told you this was random," Sam said.

"That's the thing. I may have chosen at random, but the man wasn't in that hospital on pure chance," Addison said. "Whatever these people wanted, it had something to do with Jack and whatever happened after the plane crashed. Apparently, half the hospital has at least a passing idea of what that was."

"Ad, you've had more than two years to ask these questions. Why do you want to know now?" Naomi asked. "Don't tell me it's simply about being left out."

Addison took a deep breath. "We've had our share of crises the past three years. This job is full of risks. But when was the last time you ever heard of hospital being taken hostage? And whatever was going on wasn't terrorism in the way that we've come to understand the last few years."

Sam and Naomi exchanged glances. "When the plane came back to civilization, there was some debate here about what exactly the survivors were hiding," Naomi said carefully. "I won't tell you how wild the theories got, but nobody here thinks that they're telling the truth."

"I know you're not conspiracy buffs, and I don't think most of your friends are either," Addison said carefully.

"We're all doctors," Sam told them. "A plane crashes anywhere; I don't care if it's a mountain or the desert or the ocean. There are occasions when more people come back than the ones who came from your plane crash, but no one walks away from it completely uninjured. Forty-one people came back from that. Not one of them had so much as a broken finger. None of them had any visible scars. Maybe some of the ones who didn't come back died from wounds that got infected, but they were the healthiest looking crash survivors I've ever seen."

Addison considered this for a moment. "They'd had been missing for over a hundred days," she pointed out carefully. "The wounds could have healed by that point."

"Set that aside," Naomi said. "How do you survive a hundred days on a deserted island, and nobody gets an injury afterwards? None of these people were wilderness experts. There were no signs of malnutrition or parching from thirst. Even allowing that they were able to find food and water, which is logical, how'd they catch and kill it? They were out in the elements for more than three months and none of them had so much as a sunburn."

"So what are you saying? The plane crash never happened?" Addison said doubtfully.

"That's the most reasonable part of our problems. Or did you forget that a month before all of them turned up in Hawaii, they found Oceanic 815 on the bottom of the trench in the Pacific – with all 324 bodies accounted for," Sam reminded them. "I'm kind of stunned that when Richard Weber interviewed Jack Shephard, the first question that he didn't ask was: 'How did you survive?' If anything, you've been very lax in not asking until now."

"Way to blame the victim," Naomi muttered.

"No, he's got a point," Addison acknowledged. "My only excuse is that nobody in the entire hospital even bothered to ask Jack the question until more than a year after the fact. And honestly, I don't think any of us would have gotten any more than the party line. It's been nearly three years since they came back, and even though every so often a new survivor pops up, they've never deviated from their basic story and the mainstream media doesn't bother to question it."

"But right now, half the hospital does seem to know the truth," Sam pressed. "Which, given what you told us about how everybody is in everybody's business, makes it all the more remarkable that the story still hasn't broken."

"Not even when the attack took place," Naomi asked.

Addison shook her head. "No one even seemed to make a connection to the fact that Jack works there. Neither do a lot of the staff. But some do, and I need to know."

"Do Mark and Derek know what's going on?" Naomi asked.

Addison thought. "The only ones who know everything are three residents, one of whom has been dating Hugo Reyes for the past year and a half. Everyone else in the know knows bits and pieces, but nobody else knows the whole truth except them. Karev and Stevens both said they wanted to talk to me at least twice since I came back to work. In impolite language, I told them to go to hell."

"I'm guessing they heard worse from Mark before he had his morning coffee," Sam said with a smile. "I can't imagine either took it personally."

"That's not the only reason." Addison sighed. "Two years ago, Stevens got her diagnosis. I'm not sure why considering that only a couple of months earlier, Jack pretty much told her she should have been kicked out of the program and possibly into a cell, but for some reason not only did he support her and Karev during that whole process, but he also basically confided everything that happened to him and his friends while they were on the island to them. I know there's no really ethical or moral quandary here, but it just seemed wrong to ask them about something that they learned about when it was a real question that Izzie was going to live or die."

Addison had told them about Stevens' cancer, but not Jack's role. "You…don't think he told her because he thought she might die, do you?" Naomi asked carefully.

"If he had really thought that he wouldn't have done so if Alex was in the room. According to them, it was close to the opposite. He told them so she'd have more of an incentive to live," Addison told them.

"Okay, then better to get it straight from the horse's mouth." Naomi agreed. "When are you going to talk to him?"

"Today, if I can." Addison said. "He and his friends are in LA right now."

Sam and Naomi exchanged glances. "And it's just a coincidence they're here this week?" Sam said warily.

"No, the coincidence is I'm here this week," Addison told them. "The core group of friends, half of them live here in LA, the other half in Seattle. For the past two years, every weekend they all meet in one place or the other."

"That really takes the wind out of the idea that you can't make time to see us more often," Naomi said gently.

"The thought has crossed my mind more than once the last few weeks," Addison admitted. "How about I make it up to you and see if they'll be willing to answer some of your questions?"

Both her friends practically did a double take. "You'd introduce us?" Sam asked.

"Honestly, I'm kind of surprised you haven't run into the ones here just walking down the street," Addison confessed. "They may care about their privacy, but it wouldn't take much effort to find out where they worked. Hell, one couple has a child not much older than Stan and one of them has an infant son. I'm almost stunned they haven't brought their kids in just for a checkup."

"Did you tell them about our practice?" Naomi asked.

"Not directly, but I gave Juliet your card to give to them when they visited," Addison told them. "Then again, maybe I shouldn't be surprised. They are private people about this, and maybe they thought because you went to med school with us, that…"

"…we might share similar gossip habits," Sam finished. "That's actually less insulting than it sounds. I'm not sure I could have gotten through a checkup with any of them without slipping a few questions."

"I might have asked one of them for their autograph, which probably isn't much less embarrassing," Naomi acknowledged. "Do you think they'd be willing to talk with us?"

"They won't share all their secrets at once," Addison admitted. "But if they meet you and I tell them how close we are, they might be willing to meet with you again on their own. The rest would be up to them."

Sam and Naomi exchanged another glance. "You call whichever one you're the most comfortable with," Naomi finally said. "If they're open to it, there's we've got to talk to first."

"Exactly," Sam said. "She'd never forgive us if she missed the chance to get his autograph."

REYES RESIDENCE

"She really came all the way just to talk to a therapist," Michael said carefully. "Was her insurance that bad?"

"She probably doesn't want any more gossip about her," Kate told him. "Given the sieve that place is and everything you guys have told me she's been through, I'm amazed she's doing it at all."

"Haven't you learned anything the past two years?" Juliet said wryly. "You can't order the soup of the day in the cafeteria without radiology knowing about it by the night shift. The whole reason I agreed to my husband's little con was because I agree with him that she's been through enough the past month."

"And if we know anything about you, it's how much you enjoy playing the martyr," Sayid's tone was playful rather than aggressive.

"I've been working there nearly three years; I don't think anyone in that hospital understands nuance," Jack said with a similar smile. "There seem to be three things you can be on the staff of Seattle Grace; rock star, pariah or part of the crowd."

"And which are you, Doc?" James said with a smile.

"I spent most of the first year as an extra, then the next several months as pariah, at least to the residents and most of the interns" Jack said seriously. "Barring a plane crashing into the hospital, and me being able to pull people out of the wreckage, I'm probably never going to ever work up to rock star."

"It's a hospital, Jack; pulling people out of wreckage is probably part of the internship," Juliet reminded him.

Callie winced. "Meredith nearly died two years ago because she failed that course, remember?"

Even all this time later, everyone wanted to be sensitive of Callie's failed marriage, and they all knew her well enough to know that it had started to curdle not long after the ferry crash.

In his roundabout fashion, Hurley seemed to change the subject but didn't really. "John, you said that Jacob was like some weird puppet-master with most of us?"

"I don't think I'd use that term exactly, but I can't deny the underlying truth to it," Locke admitted.

"You think there's a chance that one of things he did from his little cave is make sure that none of us ever talked to anybody about our issues?" Hurley said slowly.

"You mean, maybe instead of writing a letter to the man who killed my parents, I should have seen a grief counselor and spent the rest of my childhood in therapy?" James' sarcasm was slightly muted for a change.

"You have to admit, you probably would have been a lot better off if you had," Kate pointed out. "I sure as hell would have if I'd been able to talk to somebody about what was going on at home. Hell, I talk to the right person, maybe…" She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.

"It's an interesting thought and not entirely without merit," Locke said carefully. "But speaking strictly for myself, I think there's nothing to it. Because there were at least two occasions well before I ended up on the path to the island – even before I ended up in a wheelchair – where I was getting treatment, and I considered it worthless."

There were still some details about John's life they didn't know about.

"After Cooper and my mother conned me out of my kidney, I was alternately angry and obsessed. I spent months driving to his neighborhood at all hours, parking outside his house trying to work up the courage to ask why. My days weren't much better; I was hostile to everyone at work, until finally I screamed at a robber and ended up losing my job and getting sent to court-ordered anger management."

"I'm guessing you didn't use this as an opportunity for self-growth," Jack said neutrally.

Locke didn't take offense. "The opposite. I thought all the grievances that everyone shared were petty compared to mine. Some of them were by comparison, but that didn't make them any less agonizing to them. I can hardly call those sessions a waste of time – that's where I first met Helen – but neither of us walked away from them with the skills we needed to go forward."

"But you stopped being angry," Sun said.

"It had nothing to do with the sessions. Even if it had, I still hadn't learned the hardest part. To let go." Locke sighed. "I thought I lost her forever."

He gathered himself. "Several years later, after I lost Helen and quite a bit more, I did see a psychiatrist and was officially diagnosed with clinical depression. I tried going to therapy for a while; I even went on medication. But too much had happened in my life for me to believe that help was possible. After a while, I stopped going and my insurance canceled the benefits. " Locke paused. "A week later, Peter Talbot came to see me about Cooper; all of you know how that ended."

James, surprisingly, broke the silence. "The bastard ruined my life, but he was there and gone," he said slowly. "Every time you tried to find peace, he seemed determined to destroy it. I get why you wanted him dead. The fact you couldn't do it yourself…" He sighed. "You were a better man than me."

"A better man wouldn't have needed to force someone to do that for his own selfish ends," Locke said. "But thank you for saying so, James." He changed the subject. "The point, Hugo, is that even if we're given the means to help save ourselves, we still have the courage to use them. The same way that you were able to find a way out from Santa Rosa."

Hurley seemed to be blushing. "Maybe. But you know, it cuts both ways. The fact that I thought that the numbers were cursed, you must admit, that's not exactly rational thought."

"You were right, though," Locke pointed out. "Not the way you thought, but still."

"Yeah, but when I went to Santa Rosa, one of the doctors who'd been in therapy with me more than once recognized me." Hurley confessed. "I could have taken that as an opportunity to tell him what was bothering me. Instead, I used him to let me have a chance to talk to Leonard." He lowered his eyes. "And given what happened, I'm not sure it worked out well for either of us."

"No change since then?" Jack asked, almost as if were trying to give a diagnosis.

"After I left, he went right back to the numbers," Hurley said sadly. "When I came back, Dr. Brooks actually asked if I had any explanation. I told him the truth; that I was as shocked when it happened as everyone else."

Just then, Jack's phone rang. He looked at it. "Could you give me a minute?" No one minded, not even Kate.

"I'm thinking about seeing one myself," Sayid told them.

Michael asked. "About the island or…you know, before?"

"The latter," Sayid said with no self-consciousness. "Whatever I did on the island was directly related to who I was before. And honestly, I did far worse things in Iraq than I ever did there."

Sayid had shared very little about his past in the Republican Guard and nobody had ever pressed him on it the same way they had the minutiae of everyone's lives.

"Jack and I could put you in touch with some people," Callie said gently. "There are therapists who specialize in trauma patients as well as those who serve in the military."

"Any in your hospital?" Sayid asked.

Juliet shook her head. "I don't think so, but I have faith in our head of psychiatry."

"The closest we have is one that deals with amputees. She'll definitely know someone too," Callie added.

"I appreciate it."

Callie hesitated. "Is this just us, or are you willing to let us let in the rest of the staff? They will have a wider reach than our hospital."

Sayid thought about it. "Keep it between us for now. No offense, but by your own definition, the track record of your hospital is a mixed bag when it comes to therapists."

Given Meredith's long resistance and Owen Hunt's refusal to accept treatment until it came to a choice between that and his job, neither Callie nor Juliet could blame them.

Just then, Jack returned with a pensive look on his face. "Well, the other shoe finally dropped," he said slowly. "That was Addison. She wants to have a conversation with us."

No one in the group was upset, nor particularly surprised. "Given everything that happened to her, I'm rather shocked it took this long for her to ask," Sun admitted.

"In all honesty, I'm rather surprised she didn't demand it as a quid pro quo before she let you take on part of her duties at the hospital," Sayid confessed.

"To be fair, my wife did help knock her up when she didn't think it wasn't a possibility," James said only half-humorously. "If anything, Addison may have thought she still had a debt to repay."

"I can't exactly argue that" Sun acknowledged.

"I told you were going to die, Sun; I'm still pretty amazed you considered that good news," Juliet only partly joked.

"In any case, it's hard to argue that she doesn't deserve answers by now," Jack said. He might not blame himself for what happened to Addison, but it didn't stop him from feeling guilty anyway.

"Well, she's in town anyway," Hurley said with a shrug. "Do you want to invite her over for dinner?"

"That's the wrinkle," Jack said slowly. "Two of her friends from med school want to meet us too."

Juliet was the only other person who had a clue. "I know who she's talking about."

"Is Ben giving you files again?" Hurley said with a smile.

"Actually, they had one of mine." Juliet then explained how Naomi had verified her bona fides – and revealed that she'd been visited by Richard Alpert too.

Juliet had told them how she had danced around her absence from the medical community, but this was new information to all of them except Jack and James. It changed the inclinations of most of the people quite a bit.

"So they're like Dan and Charlotte in a way," Jin said slowly.

"Naomi was," Juliet reminded them. "Her ex-husband's another story. I'm not sure how much he was told about the visit from Mittelos; they were already separated."

"You said they have a daughter," Locke said slowly. "It's hard to imagine she wouldn't have at least told him about the offer, particularly given the strings they attached when they made the same one to you."

"That depends," Michael interjected. "How amicable was the divorce?"

Jack answered. "They run a private practice not that far from here, so whatever the problems were they don't seem to have been entirely irreconcilable."

"Besides they went to med school with Derek and Sloane, too," Callie pointed out. "You're willing to trust them, and I've no doubt they still do."

"It's not about the trustworthy part," Locke reminded Callie. "It's about how much we end up telling them all at once. Now granted I don't know the full details, but when you were talking to everybody at the hospital – even you, Callie – Jack and the rest related the story over a period of months."

"It was about a week with us," Hurley paused. "But mainly because there was so much to tell."

"Which presents us with another issue," Jack asked. "How much do we tell them?"

"That depends on a couple of things," Sayid said. "The first part is, how much will you take on and how much will be ours? These doctors do have what you Americans refer to as the home court advantage."

Juliet shook her head. "They're Addison's friends. Unless they truly intend to violate basic politeness, they're only going to talk to me and Jack or at the very least, wait until we're around."

No one was inclined to argue this point. While the Oceanics who lived in LA would occasionally get questioned when they visited Seattle, none of the doctors who knew even part of the story had ever called any of them out of the blue in the past year. No doubt part of this was because it was infinitely easier to get information straight from the locals, and part was because their schedules didn't allow for much free time. But even after the recent attempt a month ago on the hospital had led anybody to make phone calls to anyone in LA. Derek had not called Locke to ask more details about how he had gotten back from the hospital, and beyond a couple of thank yous, Miranda had been willing to hold off talking to Sayid outside of his visits.

"We could make them promise that they won't talk to you unless you're here," Hurley said. "Kind of think they won't object that much if it gets them the answers they want."

"That does bring us back to Jack's earlier point," Locke asked. "And considering you're the expert on this…"

"I've been thinking about that, too," Jack admitted. "With Alex and Izzie, I told them everything I saw and experienced, but it was seen through the filter of rationality more than mysticism."

"Even the monster?" Locke asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That was the good part of not seeing it until six weeks on the island. By that point, your threshold for reason had been lowered considerably. I know, I know," Jack said, waving off the obvious commentary. "Don't pretend that most of you weren't compartmentalizing too."

"What Jack means is, by that point in the narrative it's easier to admit there was strange shit going on," James pointed out. "And as someone who's now working in the field, it's easier to hear about that kind of thing second hand than experience it."

Jack nodded. "I don't think we can do the same thing with Addison. She may not know the reason those people put a gun to her head, but she's not an idiot. They used her to get to me. And I know the backstory of everybody on staff at the hospital. I am the only person with something in their background that might have a reason for this kind of action."

For a change everyone looked at Callie. "Everybody in the hospital has been lying about something. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, only Jack has been part of a story that has its own online conspiracy sites."

"So she knows we're lying. And it's safe to assume that the Wilders have heard this regardless of whatever theories that they had before," Jack said.

"So to use a metaphor I really don't like using considering how we got to the island in the first place, I think we have to drop them in the deep end," Locke concluded.

"I really wish I could find a flaw in that logic," Jack admitted.

They all considered this. "Look on the bright side, Doc," James finally said. "We're in LA. This is the home of fantasies made real. Whatever we end up telling them might be more plausible than some of the stories they here from some of the patients they treat."

"Just be careful," Kate said with a small smile. "They talk to the wrong people; they might end up with a three-picture deal."

"You be careful, Freckles," James countered. "Given how Hollywood does business, that story might end up with you falling in love with the smoke monster."

"Dude don't even joke about that," Hurley said.

"They're planning to turn Twilight into a series of movies," James countered. "Wrong person hears about this; the monster will sparkle."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I realize I spent a lot of time before actually dealing with our favorite castaways – more than I intended, honestly – but I think I had to. Let me know if I went too far. For the record, I may be the only person in history who liked Private Practice more than Grey's Anatomy. It was certainly my favorite Shondaland show until For the People came along. Don't ask me to explain it; I know it's the donkey of the series as far as critics and viewers are concerned. Maybe it's just because all the characters were older and that I fundamentally liked almost everybody in the cast more before I watched it. Audra McDonald and Taye Diggs (Naomi and Sam, for the uninitiated) have been among my favorite actors for years; I've always admired Amy Brenneman and Tim Daly, and Paul Adelstein was such a mensch on this show, it kind of shocked me that he'd spent his career before (and since) playing pricks, if not outright villains. It probably doesn't need to be said, but this is an alternate Private Practice not in canon. (Which means, just like on Grey's, nobody's going to die unexpectedly.)

Addison was either going to have a session with Violet or Sheldon, the other therapist on the series played by Brian Benben (another actor I really liked before the series). I did think she was coming to LA partly because she did need to get some distance from what happened to her, and like she did in Grey's canon, she would go to her friends in LA before that. And honestly, given what happened, it would be a normal reaction to leave the hospital.

Yes, Sam and Naomi are apparently Lost fans in actual real life. That said, considering that I had Mark and Derek make virtually the same comments a couple of stories ago, I think it's just as realistic that doctors would pick up on some of the more obvious flaws in the stories. Like all Lost fans, they want fricking answers too.

Anyone whose seen Lost must have at least considered the question why none of the characters ever considered going to therapy. (Then again, considering how little they were willing to share their secrets on the series with anybody, maybe it's not a shock.) I figured Hurley, who had the biggest success with therapy would ask the question, and Locke, who basically had opportunities but kept ignoring them, had the best answer for why.

By this point in this series of stories, the Losties are unafraid of the truth leaking from anybody on staff at Seattle Grace, and given the connections that Addison has to Sam and Naomi, that probably extends to their friends. (As to whether anyone else at Oceanside Wellness learns the truth, I haven't decided yet.) Look in the second story in this series to learn the connection I'm talking about here between Naomi and Mittelos. I imagine they've been trying to ease people into this over the last couple of years. They're not going to be able to hear.

No, I don't like Twilight. And as I've established neither does Sawyer. Somehow, I have a feeling if he found one of the books in the wreckage, he would have used it on the signal fire after twenty pages. (Then again, he did read Judy Blume, so I may be misjudging his taste…as a reader, not as a writer.)

More secrets await. Read and review.