Originally they were going to get one of the baby monitors with the little camera so they could watch him but Boone said that could lead to an unhealthy obsession of watching your baby from another room and Jack had agreed, sound only was better and made more sense. But here Jack was staring at some red dots, just in case they moved, and he had a feeling that wasn't so healthy either.
If he went to check on Noah then he could put his mind at rest and he wouldn't have to stare at the red dots anymore and then maybe he could get some sleep. That wasn't obsessive, that was sensible. So he slipped out of bed and headed across the hall to the nursery.
Noah was sleeping soundly and breathing rhythmically so there was really no cause for concern. Jack lightly put a his hand to Noah's chest and felt his heartbeat. Normal. See, nothing wrong at all. He felt his forehead to check his temperature. Nothing amiss there. So everything was okay. And yet Jack couldn't quite steel himself to leave the room quite yet. He leaned over the crib and gave Noah a once over with his eyes. Nothing out of place, nothing potentially hazardous, nothing to worry about at all. Just a sleeping baby which Jack should be happy to see. And he was. And yet he didn't seem to be leaving the room.
He leaned against the railing at the foot of the crib and gazed at Noah. Jack still couldn't quite believe that this baby was his, that he was a father. It was such an amazing thing, being a parent, having a little person in the world that was all yours, someone to love and care about and look after. But it also came back to the responsibility thing again. Jack never really liked being responsible for other people, despite what everyone seemed to think about him. He never asked for everyone to follow him around on the island, to come to him when they needed help, to expect him to settle disputes and come up with escape plans and work out where their next meal was coming from and why the hell they should push some stupid button that Jack didn't really think they should push in the first place. Sure, he grew into the role, but that didn't change the fact that he never appointed himself king of the island, everyone else just seemed to assume he didn't mind the role. And Jack guessed someone had to do it but some days he would have quite liked to have been just another islander.
But all that was nothing compared to this. Fatherhood. Talk about strange and foreign lands. The island from hell wasn't half this scary. Jack knew he couldn't take it if anything happened to Noah, he knew he'd break and he didn't think anyone could put him back together again, not even Boone. And he knew at the back of his mind that there was much more to his divorce from Sarah than just her losing the baby but along with that nagging feeling was the nagging feeling that if anything did go wrong with Noah then he wasn't one hundred percent that he could stick it out with Boone. Not that he didn't love Boone with everything he had, and not that he could imagine any kind of life without Boone, but he was well aware that everyone had a breaking point, a maximum amount that they could stand to lose and once you pass that point then nothing else counts for anything.
"If you wake him up I'm going to kick your ass."
Jack turned around to see Boone sleepily leaning against the door frame, reminding him of that night at Sabrina's house.
"I'm not going to wake him up," Jack assured him.
"Is he okay?" Boone asked, making a move into the room and over to where Jack was standing.
Jack turned back to look at Noah. "Yeah, he's fine," he reported. "I think he's fine. I can't find anything wrong with him."
Boone smiled a little. "Did you ever think that you can't find anything wrong with him because nothing is wrong with him?"
"Only fleetingly," Jack admitted.
"Come on, let's go back to bed," Boone suggested.
"I can't sleep, I think I'm just gonna watch him," Jack replied.
"Okay, there's so many things wrong with that I don't know where to start," Boone began. "It's stalker-ish, it's obsessive, it's an infringement of his personal space and you're seriously gonna wake him up. And that's just for starters."
"I am not going to wake him up," Jack insisted. "You're going to wake him up by coming in here and talking to me."
Boone looked like he considered been offended but thought better of it. He knew getting into an argument really would wake Noah up and then it would be his fault. He was probably storing it up so he could use it against Jack later. He really learnt a thing or two from Shannon about how to get your own way.
"Are you staying in here because you're scared something's going to happen if you're not here?" Boone asked.
Jack looked at him, a little annoyed, which he realised just made Boone know he was right. "It's not a problem unless you make it into a problem, Boone," he said, turning back to Noah.
"I think it's sweet," Boone stated, which wasn't quite what Jack was expecting. "Just remember, you're responsible for this baby but you're not solely responsible, okay?"
Jack smiled a little and turned to look at him. "Thank you."
Boone shrugged. "Just doing my job," he said. "And now I'm going back to bed cos I'm smart enough to sleep when he's asleep." He kissed Jack on the cheek. "Goodnight."
"Night," Jack said with a smile as he watched Boone leave the room. He then turned back to Noah. He put a hand on his chest to check his heartbeat again. Still normal, still beating, still doing exactly what it should be doing.
Boone was right, he should really relax about this whole situation a little more. They were a team and if something did happen, Jack wasn't to blame. Well, he knew that he wouldn't really be to blame anyway even if he was a single parent, but when bad things did happen it rarely felt like that. But he wasn't a single parent. And there was no one he'd rather raise a child with that Boone. And he didn't remember ever thinking that when he was with Sarah.