Day 3
"House of Cards"

After many 'just forget about it's', and 'it's nothing's', Cherry managed to wave off her conversation with Kate the day before. She wasn't sure if the suspicious woman really bought her act, so Cherry tried very hard to avoid her, and continued her quest to relieve herself the worry of living with strangers.

She'd thanked Boone, and watched him walk away with a raised brow and a smirk when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She reluctantly tore her eyes from the rescinding man and her eyes fell upon another. Though his eyes were not as enchanting as the former, those dimples could not be beat.

"Don't I get to be interviewed now?"

"What are you talking about, interview?"

"Oh please, you know what I mean. I see what you're doing. Pretty smart, if I do say so myself. We shouldn't live on an island full of strangers. You can never tell a dangerous person just by lookin at 'em."

"That's exactly what I thought." Cherry agreed, and the faintest thought that maybe he wasn't as bad as everyone thought sprung into her mind.

"You can get to know me real well. I got a tent up yonder we can go and talk."

Scratch that. "No thanks." She replied after a moment of furrowing her brow at him. "I already know you more than I'd like to." She grimaced slightly at his innuendo.

Sawyer's jaw dropped in a mixture of shock and feigned anger. "Don't tell me you believe all the island gossip. Don't you want to get to know your rescuer a little better?"

Cherry had scoffed and opened her mouth to make a witty comment right back at him, when a breeze so cold washed over her. The same breeze ruffled Sawyer's hair, but he seemed to take no heed of its freezing temperature. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated her gaze on the blue eyes of the man standing in front of her, whom had now become a bit wary of her silent staring. It seemed as if her entire field of vision was filled by those blue orbs, and through them, in the reflection of them, she saw a scene play before her, tinted sky blue.

He was young. Leaning his back against a wall somewhere. His head hung, tears falling onto his shirt as he carefully wrote a letter with a ballpoint pen onto notebook paper. It began: Dear Mr. Sawyer…

He was still growing. A younger, more carefree version of the Sawyer she knew now. Smiling that dimpled smile at a woman at a bar somewhere. She held up her wedding ring, but he just grinned and brought her hand to his lips.

He was older. His face pained as he dropped the briefcase on the floor and left the house of the family he had been planning to ruin. The pain and resoluteness in his eyes as he left that house told her everything. She understood all these memories she saw in him. Somehow, it was as if she had lived his life with him. There, in the shadows, she'd seen and known all his thoughts and secrets.

Her balance was gone, and she saw Sawyer's face disappear from her vision and then there was only the sky. Her back hit something softly, and Sawyer was there again for a moment. Until her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Cherry! Wha?…Jack! Somebody get the doctor!" Sawyer shouted as he lowered her slowly to the ground and attempted rouse the unconscious woman. In a flash, Jack was by her side as well. He lifted her eyelids and felt her pulse.

"She passed out." He concluded, mostly to himself, sounding relieved that she did not have a more serious condition. But Sawyer was not relieved by Jack's relaxation to Cherry's situation. No, in fact, he was all the more worried. The look in her eyes as she stared at him, before she crumpled to the ground, told him something was wrong. And the fact that Jack couldn't see it, in all his medical expertise, frightened him even more. Because if Jack can't fix it, who could?

Her mother was good at making her forget her worries. But this time it was different. They stayed at a nearby motel as the test were processed. Her mother chatted idly and lightly as Cherry toweled off her hair, not really listening. She felt numb. Like it wasn't really real. She prayed it was a dream. When she should've been thinking about what was going to happen in the future, when she should've been listening to her mother talk about her options, she was praying it was all a bad, bad dream.

But the pain in her arm from the needles and IV's reminded her just how real it was.

"Cherry?" Her mother called. Cherry snapped her gaze to her.

"Huh? What? Sorry, I was kind of zoned for a sec."

"I just asked what you wanted for supper. Does Chinese sound alright?"

"Yeah, Chinese is fine, mom." Cherry acquiesced politely, and a moment later, as her mother was looking over the take-out menu, "And don't call me that."

Her mother just looked at her a moment before looking down again. The phone rang. Both women stared at it for a second before Cherry walked to it and slowly picked it up to her ear.

He didn't speak. He didn't have to. Cherry knew what he would say. She knew it was him before he knew she had answered the phone. A flurry of emotions washed over her, and her knuckles turned white on the receiver. Pity and sadness prevailed. She recognized it easily, for the first time she was diagnosed, she was consumed with grief. But she had not felt any pity this time. Only exhaustion. And hopelessness.

No, it was he that pitied her.

Dots appeared before her, and her eyes rolled back in her head. The death grip on the receiver loosened, until it slipped through her fingers onto the ground, and she teetered over backward, barely missing the bed and crashing with a loud thump to the floor. Her mother screamed. Dr. Jacobs shouted through the phone to them. But neither could hear.

She opened her eyes to be greeted with the blue tarp of a tent above her. Her brow furrowed involuntarily in confusion. How had she gotten here? She sat up with a grunt, and looked around her as the recollection came. She must have looked immensely worried, because Jack held her shoulders in his hands and asked with much concern if she was okay.

"Oh, yeah, I feel fine I suppose. If not a little confused."

"You were on the beach talking to Sawyer and passed out."

"Yeah, I know that part. But I don't know why. I've passed out once before in my life, and here I am, twice in two days."

"Well, nourishment on the island is a little hard to come by. Are you sure you've been eating well enough and drinking lots of water?" Cherry nodded fervently. "Stress and another particular incident coupled with some other condition may cause blackouts in those who aren't normally prone to them." His brown eyes bored into her. He'd only just met her, and he was so concerned for her. It was mystifying, the depth of his kindness. "Did something happen on the beach?" He asked warily, evidently with a suspicion that Sawyer had done something to her.

Cherry thought before answering. Should she tell him that she saw something in Sawyer's eyes? He'd probably think she was insane.

"No. I was talking to Sawyer, and I just suddenly lost all my balance."

It was clear Jack did not believe her, but he did not contest, either. He simply went on to ask about another possibility. "Do you have some other condition I should know about?"

Once again, Cherry paused. Most of the time, people that learned of her condition for the first time were put off. Afraid to be around her. Afraid they'd infect her or break her. But, he was a doctor. Maybe he could help. Maybe he could tell her what was wrong with her.

That was what she had thought about all the doctors.

Cherry bit her nails. Her mother's arm wrapped around her as they sat, once again, in an exam room, on that annoyingly loud paper that covered the seat so you wouldn't contaminate it. Cherry started as the doctor entered, a stack of X ray sheets in his hand.

"Hello Samantha." He said with a smile, but she did not return it, or say anything at all. Cherry's mother spoke for her, instead.

"Hello Dr. Jacobs."

"Mrs. Harker." He greeted her, and stuck a few of the X rays onto the board so they could look at them together. Cherry stared absentmindedly at the pictures of her insides. There was her arms, her legs, her torso, and her head. Dr. Jacobs had begun babbling some doctor talk. All of which Cherry understood, unfortunately, from having heard it so many times. Cherry sighed. He was beating around the bush. And from the apologetic look in his eyes, his point was not going to be favorable.

"Where is it this time?" She breathed tiredly.

"No." She stared Jack in the eye and answered calmly.

Cherry meandered back to her place in camp. She passed by Eva, who was grunting and struggling to stand. Cherry sat down on her blanket for a moment, before noticing her. She jumped up and helped the older woman stand.

"Sorry, Eve. You got it?"

"Yeah, thanks sweetheart." Eva considered her for a moment. "Something on your mind?"

"Besides the fact that we're stranded on a desert island with virtually no hope of rescue?" She began cynically. "Yeah, actually there is."

Eva sat down again, with much less difficulty than rising. Cherry sat in front of her, their cross legged knees touching.

"You see, I sometimes know too much about people. I don't want to know these things, but I just do."

"People's secrets are often the only things that tell you the truth about them."

"I don't want to know the truth about them. I want to be pleasantly oblivious just like everybody else."

"Maybe you can use the information you have for some good. Maybe their secrets are painful to keep. If no one else knows, no one else could know how to help."

"How could I possibly help them?"

"That's what you have to figure out, dear."

Orlando's Hot Chick - You're on my msn list now! Get on sometime and we'll talk about Legolas and Jack and Sawyer and all that good stuff!

Skyblue266 - Fear not, there will be some heavy Jack/Kate interaction. And in LOST hope, there will be, too. I'm a J/K girl, what can I say? I can't really help it.

Eclypse - Well, I read somewhere that in the season finale, Sayid 'ATTEMPTS' to murder Locke, so I'm thinking maybe he just shoots him and he doesn't really die. I'm hoping, anyway, because without Locke, I'm afraid the castaways wouldn't really get food, and then they'd die.
Also, aHaiku for Boone:

You had pretty eyes
And slept with your step sister
But I love you still

Piper45 - you're not slow. It will be explained in time.

Flute Marcher - We all miss Boone, it's okay to manifest your grief into art. Heck, Eclypse even wrote a eulogy and had a memorial service for him.

A Wandering Minstrel - Cherry will get her hug, believe me. She's trying to persuade me about the chocolate part, but I'm unconvinced.

Austin B.