Day 5
"Trouble in Paradise"

She liked sitting by the fountain, watching people pass by. A thousand lives, being carried out right in front of her. A constant stream of people flowed along the sidewalk. But an aperture in the flow gave her a view to the other side of the narrow way, where a man stood. Watching her. He smiled, and on his lips she read him call her, "Cherry."

She stood, and blinked as people passed in front of her. He was gone. Cherry sat again, dumbstruck.

"Oh, dad." She whispered sadly, setting her face in her hands.

Cherry was not heard from until mid day. Kate was beginning to worry Jack had misplaced the responsibility of keeping an eye on her, since she was not doing a very good job.

It did not take her a very long walk to catch up with her. She was sitting on a log a way down the beach from camp.

"Mind if I sit?" She asked cheerfully. Cherry looked up at her, and Kate read the worry in her eyes and on her face, before she smiled.

"I'd be offended if you didn't."

"How are you?"

"A little confused, a little worried. But other than that, I'm A OK." Cherry said with a grin. Kate opened her mouth to ask another question, but Cherry answered it. "Yes I am eating and yes I'm staying hydrated. You tell Jack that, and tell him to quit worrying about my health."

Kate eyed her warily. Cherry smiled.

"That one was pretty much a given."

Kate grinned and looked away. She had to admit, Jack was somewhat of a predictable man when it came to doting on those around him.

"It's my sanity he should be worried about." Kate furrowed her brow at this unexpected statement. "Kate, I think I'm going crazy. I see crazy things, and I know they're crazy, but that doesn't change the fact that I see them, I see them real in front of me. And I hear crazy things. Things that aren't really being said out loud. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

"I don't know what to do. Please, tell me what to do." Cherry begged her.

"I'm in no position to be giving advice on someone else's crisis. I just know that you should tell Jack about it. Maybe it's a medical condition and he can do something to help."

"No one can help me." She whispered painfully. Kate just looked at her with sad eyes. But, Cherry disdainfully shoved herself up off the log and trudged to find Jack, anyway.

She had to ask a few people, and walk around a bit, all the while concentrating hard on her own voice repeating his name over and over, to drown out all the other voices that begrudgingly hadn't gone away, but she found him. Bent over someone, looking into their eyes to diagnose their ailment. Cherry smiled. He gave them some remedy and sent them away. Cherry was about to let him know of her presence when another came scurrying up from somewhere. She looked in startled confusion as to his origin, but came up empty handed. Jack suddenly noticed her.

"Hey, Sam, what's up?"

"Oh, nothing really," She lied, watching him clean the scratch on the young man's arm, "I'll come back later when you're not so busy."

"Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast. Something's wrong?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I'll talk to you about it later." She maintained, suddenly believing coming to Jack with her 'going crazy' theory was not such a good idea.

"Get back here." He demanded good naturedly, and quickly finished tending to his patient before turning to Cherry. "What is it?"

"Well, you see…I have multiple defects. I know what I saw in the jungle, those snakes, they weren't real. But I know I've seen things that were real. Like the boulder, and what I saw in Sawyer."

"What, what did you see in Sawyer?"

"I watched his life, like a movie, play in his eyes." Cherry laughed at herself, and the blank expression on Jack's face. "See, crazy, I know. But that's not all. I'm hearing things now, too. I hear what people are thinking, in my mind."

"Sam, I know we've all been under a lot of stress-"

"Jack, you're not listening to me! I-" Cherry was, in turn, interrupted this time. But not by Jack. A woman's shriek from close by pierced the air. Before Cherry's mind could even process what was happening, Jack was running toward the sound. Cherry followed him quickly. A scene unfolded before her eyes.

A man was lying on his back, on the ground, trembling, seemingly having a heart attack. A woman held his head in her lap, stroking his face and crying. Jack gently eased her out of the way and asked calm questions to the frantic woman.

Cherry stood back, a look of utter pain encompassing her features. The chaos that rattled in her ears was deafening. She clamped her hands over her ears, as if it would drown out the sounds of the woman's hysteric shrieks and questions that echoed in her head.

Jack had someone retrieve a bag from the caves for him, and now held a bottle of pills in his hand. Cherry read the label, and the chaos in her mind ceased. A horrible feeling weighted her like lead, and her throat felt closed. She put her hands to her neck and gasped.

"Stop!" Cherry's shrill voice quieted the woman's questions. "Don't give him that antibiotic! He's allergic. He'll have a reaction and his throat will swell shut!" She informed him quickly, kneeling next to him. Jack looked in confusion from her to the woman. He asked her if it was true. She didn't seem to hear him. She just cried for him to help and wailed for her husband, who was grunting in pain, squeezing his eyes shut. Jack asked her again, but she would not answer. So, he shook pills from the bottle.

"Jack, no! He'll die if you give him those pills!"

"What if you're wrong? He'll die if I don't!" Jack replied fervently, his eyes intensely boring into her.

"I'm not wrong." She whispered, but Jack's confused expression quickly set in determination, and he gave the man the pills. Cherry breathed a sigh of defeat, and set her eyes shut, listening to the sounds of pain from the man. But, when the sounds began to cease, the scuffling of his shoes on the rock became quieter and nonexistent, Cherry's eyes opened again. Jack checked his vitals, and smiled at the woman who was frantically looking between the men before her. She laughed in relief. Cherry looked quizzically at the scene. She wasn't wrong. She knew it. There was something so wrong about giving that man those pills. Something that shouldn't happen. Jack turned to her with a half smile.

"You were."

"Yeah, I guess I was." She said softly, still in disbelief, but smiled. So she was wrong. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe the things that were happening to her would stop. The man wouldn't die of allergic reaction or heart attack.

But a strangled cry and a shriek of terror brought everyone's attention again to the man on the ground. He was clutching his throat and wheezing, his face turning red quickly, and veins from his face growing large. Jack hesitated over him in panic.

Cherry's mouth hung open. She'd seen this happen already. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, a tear dropping onto the ground by her feet. She knew how this would end.

Cherry had leaned her back against a large rock when an exhaustion so overwhelming grasped her. She hadn't left cave town yet. Jack told her to stay put so he could deal with one crisis before sorting out things with her. She was thinking hard, concentrating, training herself to shut out the voices that always droned in the back of her mind when a different voice was heard. Clearer, and she knew it was real. She looked up to see the woman standing before her. The one who was there when the man collapsed.

"How did you know?" She began frankly, her face still stained with wet tears. Cherry didn't have to ask what she was talking about.

"I just knew."

"How?" She demanded, her patience wearing thin. Cherry didn't blame her. And she wasn't going to lie to her or give her any more vague answers. She deserved the truth. Or what Cherry believed to be true, anyway.

"Well," She began, unsure of where to start. But, start she did. And she told her the whole story. She told her crazy story to a woman whose name she didn't even know. Afterwards, Cherry decided it wasn't the best idea in the world, but she had been overcome with sympathy for the woman. She felt her sadness, in the very deepest reaches of her soul, she felt the pain that emanated from the woman.

The sun was setting when Jack left the grave. He helped bury the man he could've saved, and let Claire comfort his wife. This guilt was, unfortunately, not unknown to him. To lose someone whose life had been put in your hands, to disappoint someone who trusted you with the life of a loved one. To feel a person's soul slip away, just out of your reach. If he'd just listened to Cherry.

Cherry.

He thought about her as he walked to the main caves. She couldn't honestly believe she could read people's minds. All of a sudden, out of the blue, she can know things and hear things. He didn't understand. Yeah, it was strange, the things she knew, but it could all have a rational explanation. He'd just have to work it out with her. He was tired. He was hurt, defensive, and before he could begin by asking her opinion of the phenomenon, she spoke as he walked up to her.

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"No. Don't do that. You can't comfort me if you don't know how it feels. And don't try to pretend that you do." He warned, jaw clenched.

"But, Jack, I do. I can feel it. You feel so responsible. But it wasn't your fault. I don't blame you for not believing me, you did what any good doctor would have done. You would've saved his life, too, but he had a one in a million condition that his wife was too traumatized to let you know about. Please don't beat yourself up over this. You tried, you did your best, and it wasn't your fault. Let it go."

"Do you really think you feel what I feel? Do you really think you're psychic?" He asked contemptuously. Cherry smiled humorlessly at his misdirected malice before it drained from her face and she began her theory gravely.

"This place exists on a different wavelength than the rest of the world."

"What are you talking about?"

"It makes sense. Before, none of this ever happened to me. And all of a sudden, I hear them, I see things. Their pasts, their futures, it all exists in them. They carry it all around them on this wavelength. Now the shock of the crash is worn off, I'm realizing I'm in tune with it. Something is off with my brain that I can translate this wavelength. I can pick up the signals the people are unwittingly putting out onto it. Full complete thoughts from somewhere completely other than myself are so clear. They're like movies of someone else's lives played in my head. Sometimes it's just a feeling, sometimes I see it, sometimes I hear it. Sometimes I'm there."

Jack was stunned into silence. He'd have thought she was kidding, but for the deathly serious look in her intense green eyes. "Sam, what you're saying is impossible. There's no such thing as ESP, or mind reading."

"Or polar bears on a tropical island, I get it. Things happen here, on this island. Things that don't happen in the rest of the world. If there are invisible monsters in the jungle like people say, why is it so impossible that my brain is reading a different wavelength that carries around people's thoughts?"

"You've thought this through a lot." Jack stated after a pause.

"Didn't sleep last night." Cherry shrugged with a shy smile.

She'd gotten relatively good at blocking out the chaotic roar of 44 people's thoughts in her own mind by the next morning. Though it was harder when she was closer to them. So, she usually kept her distance. But, certain necessities rendered complete isolation impossible. She walked a straight line for water and food, through the people. Her temples began to ache by the time she reached the cooler, which was all the way across camp. The effort she was putting into blocking out the thoughts, coupled with the thoughts that trickled through, gave her quite the throbbing headache.

She snatched her share of sustenance and, as she was making her way back off to her solitary spot down the beach, she noticed how the people parted for her. They walked away as she passed by. Her pace unintentionally slowed as she looked around in confusion. Why were they afraid of her? Curiosity got the better of her, and she walked slowly as she let in their thoughts, and attempted to pick out one to read clearly. She smiled sullenly then, and looked straight ahead as she walked away from the people, whom she knew were staring at her warily and whispering to each other.

She heard Jack coming before he was even in earshot.

"Sit down, doctor." She said, when he was a few paces away. He complied.

"The people are talking. Apparently, they're all convinced you're psychic. It's got them in a regular upheaval. They seem…a little scared of you, actually."

"Everyone has secrets." She said absently, running her fingers over her lip, and staring out to sea.

I loved tonight's episode when the baby would calm down every time he heard Sawyer's voice. THough i must say, his voice has the opposite effect on me. Every time he speaks, I just get all hot and bothered. LOL. And now that I know Sayid was in Aus. to find Nadia, I'm confused as to why he was all over Shannon... And that Locke hit Sayid when he was doing his transciever thing! I always suspected he did it, and i'm glad they clarified that for us. I'm also glad Locke did not die. An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

Thanks everybody! Love you, and I mean it!

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