Hours later, Kate was still in theater, and no one had come out to tell him what, if anything, was happening. Jack was pacing the corridor helplessly, and by now, Charlie had called Sayid and Sun, deciding that they were best of to calm him down together. Charlie had explained to them what was happening, seeing as Jack had gone into a trance, blocking out all attempts to comfort him. Charlie didn't even think he knew that the others had arrived.
"How could I have been so stupid?" Jack said aloud to himself, breaking out of his trance, and hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.
"It was just the shock talking, Jack." Sun reasoned. It wasn't until she responded that Jack realised he was speaking out loud.
However, Jack continued pacing as if he hadn't heard Sun's comment. "She doesn't even know that I was happy about it...she left before I could tell her. Now I might not get to tell her at all." He said sadly, but with a hint of frustration.
"Hey, think positive, man." Charlie encouraged.
"Think positive?" Jack said adburdly. "Positive? Look what I've done to her!" He gestured towards the doors that Kate had been taken through. "A doctor just told me there's only a small chance of Kate surviving, let alone both of them. It's pretty hard to think happy thoughts right now!" Jack explained. All he could think about was the idea of Kate lying there, dead, and the image of her coming out of observation covered in blood...you may as well have made those wounds with your own hands...
"Come on, Jack," Sayid continued. "This is Kate we're talking about. She's been through more than any of us put together. She's not about to quit over this. She's a fighter." He said her name as if she were some kind of legend. A phoenix even, who could never really die.
"Even if she does pull through, we'll probably lose the baby." He said grimly. Our first and probably last chance for a child and I've ruined it. He didn't want to lose the baby, he wanted to watch his child grow up. He wanted to be a father; to play with them, teach them things, hear their first words, watching them crawl, and eventually walk from one smiling parent to the other.
"Don't worry, Jack, they'll be OK." Charlie said, he had lost count of the amount of times they had said it between them now.
Jack punched the wall in response. "Why didn't I tell her how I really felt?" He said through clenched teeth. Leaning back against the wall beside the chairs the others sat on, he slid down it until he was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up by his chest, and resting his head in his hands.
"How did you really feel?" Sayid asked him.
He looked down at his fist. It was bleeding slightly from the contact with the wall, and he could feel a sting of pain as he flexed it, but somehow that made him feel better. "I felt...happy - really happy. I should have hugged her and kissed her and told her how excited I was." He continued talking, not sure whether the others were actually listening or not, but he didn't care, he needed to say this to someone, something, even if it was the air infront of him. "That's why I was so concerned about money and being able to provide for them. I just don't want my kids to end up with a father like mine, who was useless." He started to get choked up again, and looked determinedly away from the others. "But any minute now, I might not be a Dad. I might not be right now - and it's all my fault."
Once again, Sun said that first thing one would say in this situation. "Jack, it's not your fault, it could have happened to anyone."
"It is my fault." He said quietly, staring off into space, and they could all see the layer of tears brimming his eyes. "If I hadn't have been such a jerk she wouldn't have stormed out, and she wouldn't have been caught in that accident." This time, he actually used his sleeve to wipe over his eyes. "If she dies...if they die...it'll be my fault."
"Dr Shephard? Jack?"
Jack's head snapped up from the wall. He had been leaning back in the same position for hours, and had leaned his neck as far back as it would go so that if he opened his eyes, he would have been looking at the ceiling. For the past two hours he had been repeating the same thing over and over again in his head. Please, let them be ok, let her be ok, don't take her away from me. A few times he had said it aloud without realising it, but the others had said nothing, unsure of what to say to him.
He looked up to see the same doctor, Damon, standing beside him with a clipboard in his hand. He got to his feet as quickly as he could. "Is she all right?" He asked.
"I'm sorry to say that during the operation, Kate slipped into a coma." Damon told him.
"A coma?" He repeated as if the word were nonsense to him. "Shes going to come out of it though, right?" The others all watched him, unsure whether he was going to burst into tears or hit someone. He had seen too many cases where they had seen patients fall into comas and never wake up.
"When she wakes up, there's no reason at all why she shouldn't make a full recovery in time."
"So she's OK?" He asked, just to be sure. She's alive!
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
Jack placed his hands over his face, wiping away the anxiety from the past few hours. She was Ok, she was alive. "And the baby?" He asked. He begged silently that the baby was alive. He had had to tell patients too many times that their unborn child had not survived surgury, and he didn't think that he could do that with Kate. He didn't think he could handle that crushed look on her face to know that she had lost another child.
"Thanks to you telling us, the baby also survived. If we hadn't known, and operated anyway, we would have lost them both no doubt." Damon said. "In theory, you saved their lives." They're both alive...
"Thank god." Jack said, grinning and wanting to shout out loud. "Thank you, thank you so much." He said to Damon.
"Only doing my job." He said.
"You've just made my life worth living again." Jack told him with such relief that anyone could see that this man was truly happy for one reason or another.
"Just to let you know, providing on her health when she wakes from the coma, it will be a few weeks at least until she can leave the hospital. And even then she will need constant care leading up to the birth." Damon added.
Jack didn't care what it took, Kate and his child were alive. "Don't worry, they've got me." I've just got to tell her that...I'm never going to make this mistake again. All he had to do was tell Kate how he really felt about everything.
"I'm glad to hear that." The doctor said with a smile. "She'll need you." Jack nodded, knowing that he needed her just as much. The question of it was whether or not Kate would let him take care of her, after all, she was a stubborn woman.
"Can I go in there?" Jack asked. "Please, I've just got to be with her when she wakes up."
"I think that sounds Ok." Damon said.
The others followed Jack and the doctor as they were led to the intensive care unit. Once they reached room 3, recognisable by the red plaque which reminded Jack disturbingly of the blood he had seen on Kate's face earlier, they stopped, and watched while he alone entered the room. He stood in the doorway of the room to see her lying in the bed, her arms draped over the blankets. She was still deathly pale, and the oxygen mask over her nose and mouth was making sure that she didn't stop breathing. Even though Jack had been in hospitals most of his life, it scared him a little to see the tubes coming out of her arms, some draining fluid and some inserting it. In fact, the one thing that assured him that she was alive was the regular beeping coming from a machine that he knew to be a heart moniter. What little colour there had been on her face earlier was gone. The doctor had said she was in a coma, but Jack thought he was staring at a dead body.
Welling up completely, and uncontrollably, Jack leaned against the doorframe, hiding his face from the three men who watched their helpless friend and leader. For a minute or so, he just stood their and cried, longer, and harder, then he had done since he was a small child. Nothing had brought so much pain to his heart in years. He was soon aware of a hand on his shoulder, and knew when the person spoke that it was Sayid.
Not thinking of anything but what he had done, Sayid and Jack embraced, as friends do, and he carried on crying.
"What have I done?" He sobbed. "Left, Look at her. She looks dead."
Sayid didn't need to look at her, he had already seen her lying there, lifeless. "Come on, Jack." He said. "You've got to stay strong. You've got to go in there, and talk to her, get her to wake up."
Jack pulled away from Sayid, and took a few obedient steps into the room. He seemed to stumble a little, like a lost child looking for safety, only to be met with the most curious and horrific sight imaginable. It was almost as if he wanted to stay away, so he could not see the damage that he had caused, but he knew in his heart that he needed to be at her side. No one could believe that they had to tell Jack, of all people, to be strong. He vaugely heard the doctor telling him that it was thought that whilst in a coma, patients could hear the voices around them, and this strengthened their will to wake from the come.
"If there's any change at all, please call someone." Damon said, before leaving Jack alone with Kate.
Going slowly over to the bedside, he half expected her to open her eyes, her beautiful eyes which would contrast so wonderfully to the dullness of the room, and smile at him. Then he looked down at her stomach, knowing now that their was a child alive inside, their child. How could he have wanted to get rid of it, even for a second? Any child coming from someone as beautiful as Kate is a gift. He thought, then mused on that more. My gift. I'm going to be a Dad. Even in his head, the words were filled with awe.
Here it was, his chance to prove to everyone that he wasn't going to turn into his father. He was going to be nothing but loving towards Kate, unlike his father had been. Christian Shephard wasn't the perfect husband and father. He also made it common knowledge that Jack was nothing more than a poison to him, a plague, something that he wanted removed from sight. He found it hard to believe that anyone could ever feel like that about their child, but earlier on, he had come very close to becoming his father. You did it, Jack, you passed the test.
Sitting down on a chair at Kate's bedside, he took her limp hand in his. It felt warm, which comforted him, not stone cold like the dead. No, she was very much alive. He squeezed her hand lightly, letting out the breath he didn't even realise he was holding, and then tentatively reached out towards her stomach. He took another breath, deeper this time, and carefully laid his hand on her stomach, as if just being near her was the most precious gift in the world. Until the baby was born, this was as close as he would get to his child.
He kept his hand on her abdomen, but looked up at her face. She didn't even look like she was in a coma, whatever that looked like. This close, he could see her chest gently rising and falling with slow, shallow breaths. It was more like she was just asleep. Yeah, Jack told himself, she's just asleep, and any minute now she's going to wake up, and tell you what a jerk you are, and you can apologize and tell her that you...that you love her.
He hadn't seriously told her that he was in love with her yet. He had played around with the phrase, they both had, saying that he loved things about her, and loved being with her, but it was taking him more guts to come out and say those three words on their own than he had planned on. He knew now that he had to tell her, and planned on telling her at the first chance he got, but first of all, she had to know that he was sorry.
"Come on Kate," He urged, oblivious to the four men watching. "You have to wake up." He looked down at her stomach, letting his fingers wander over the shape of her abdomen. "You have to wake up for this, for our baby."