Chapter 13 - Still
11-12/05

The sound of the whistle cut through the night; a warning and a cry for help and the piercing of peace. Jack stumbled on, puncturing the calm air with the shrill noise, and his heaving breath, and the trample and crushing of the foliage around him. He was so desperate to hear voices, or see fire, or just any sign of human life and camp and all the things he knew should be here somewhere. He needed someone to tell him, to reassure him, instead of he trying to convince himself over and over.

Someone to tell him she'd be okay.

It was funny, how much once a new reality emerges, the old one seems unbelievable, unimaginable. Like the world turning from summer to winter, and New York going from sunshine days to seeing his breath in the air, and an ice rink erected in Central Park. How once winter had hit, it seemed unreal that only weeks previous he could have walked around in cargo shorts and short sleeved T-shirts and craved the smooth thrill of vanilla ice cream slipping down his throat. How, bundled in gloves and scarf and a great overcoat and trying to keep grip on the icy pavement, so recently he had been tearing off layers and crawling with sweat on his morning run. Unimaginable. And vice versa in summer, the heat that dripped from the sun like oil, and his mind unable to think of snow nor Christmas, nor all things distant from the moment.

And now… now, that ordered life in New York, and the single life, and more cash in the bank than he had time to spend; it felt like a film, or someone else's life that he had been faking at. To be able to use truly sterile equipment, to give the gold standard drug or treatment; so foreign a concept, as Jack scrambled over tree roots, and held tight on to Kate's limp form, and tried desperately to recall what he had left in his meagre makeshift meds cabinet. A few miniatures to sterilise the wound, needle and thread to stitch the ragged ends of artery and muscle and skin back together, and a small sharp knife to cut to find and remove the bullet. God, he shuddered at the thought of cutting into her. The idea of a weapon slicing into that delicate skin… the skin he was supposed to protect and hold and stroke lovingly, not delve sharp blades into and promote further damage. And then remove shrapnel, sew and mend endless layers of tissue… and begin to pray.

Hard to imagine, but equally hard to discard, now; the new reality of events which had taken over. Jack could no longer picture a world where his next concern was not preparing himself for surgery; couldn't imagine Kate just well and being her usual stubborn, hardy self. But more than anything, and the reality he feared and dreaded the most; he couldn't imagine his life without her in it. Couldn't imagine one day going back to his apartment alone, cooking French toast for one, waking in the morning without the hidden thrill of knowing she would be somewhere close. That maybe he could see her today, maybe they would have one of those conversations he convinced himself meant nothing more than just good friends. Maybe he'd see her smile, and know that one day that smile would be too much for him and he'd let himself give in. Maybe there were just too many maybes. But a world without any maybes… a world too certain and too organised, morning surgery, lunch, afternoon surgery or golf… a day without her smile and all those secrets he longed to know and all the tiny details of her life, that Jack needed to find out. Unimaginable.

He couldn't imagine waking up, and knowing she would never be there again.

And so Jack pushed on, a lone figure making trails in this island with all its buried secrets and hidden woes, mingling with his own. Pushed past bushes and fruit trees and his own terror, that voice whispering inside him that threatened the worse, locked and lost in battle against the one that spoke of all the positive clinical facts, and how Kate was strong and wouldn't let go. He stroked her hair from her face, gazed deep into unseeing eyes, and felt the soft hush of breath against his cheek, a weak skip of a pulse somewhere beneath flaccid skin. He whispered all those things he wished he'd told her weeks ago, just in case he didn't get the chance to speak them again. He ran and whistled and whispered sweet nothings, and hoped they somehow wished the pain and trauma away; and led her to somewhere where there was peace… peace, and no pain, but still life.

He pictured Kate doing the most mundane of things… things Jack had taken for granted back in civilisation, that somehow he couldn't entirely equate with her, this girl he knew only outside and only living to survive. Filling a car with gas; driving a car even; somehow unimaginable, somehow foreign. He still saw her in the same clothes she wore now, with tousled hair and sun kissed freckles. Answering a phone; for some reason, he could see the smile she would crack, how she would wedge the receiver between ear and shoulder. Writing something down as she spoke, or stirring a pot, or kneeling beside a child and praising a picture… a little girl with dark curls, and green eyes. And Jack could see himself, sliding the screen door, pressing a kiss to both sets of chocolate curls, scooping the toddler up in his arms, and catching Kate's eye…

And then suddenly there was light, a shout, flickering firelight from torches; and he could stop piercing the sheltered night with sharp trills. Jack stumbled towards them, that image of a family life he would in all likelihood never know, fading; his heart a roar of thunder against his rib cage. The room faded, with all that foreign electricity, and the smell of lemon grass from the stove… his briefcase went, and the smart clothes, and Kate herself faded into the black. But that child remained in his mind, that tiny entity of them both… a child he knew didn't exist. But as Jack fell towards light, and reality, and some vague hope his heart began to cling to; that child wrapped tiny arms around his neck, and in his wildest dreams whispered that Mommy was going to be okay.

And he was terrified. Terrified she would be wrong, terrified of his own failings… terrified that if he screwed this up, that child might never become a living, breathing thing. So very scared to enter this new reality of stopping the running, and truly trying to engage his brain to do that which he knew best; and equally scared to remain where he was.

His first thought, as he lay her down, was how this was the first time in as long as he could remember that he had seen her still. Kate wasn't still. It was a foreign a concept as Jack being lazy, or Sawyer getting emotional. Kate moved. Even when she was sleeping, she moved. Jack could remember going to check on her a few times over the first few nights on the island, and how she never looked at peace. Kate twisted and turned her way through life, and dreams, and sleep. Her brow had been knotted in things he could neither see nor hear; her breath, catching in invisible fear. Kate moved, and ran, and put herself in any situation that involved going somewhere, doing something, anything to save herself from having time to think. Time to think, and time to remember things he knew she'd rather forget.

But she was stry inch of damage back together again.

His hands didn't stop shaking, but Jack somehow found a vein, hooked up the IV line, passed the bag to Hurley to hold up and taped the needle to Kate's skin. She was so ghostly pale.

"No problem." His eyes snapped to Sawyer's, but the usual animosity had vanished from them both. There was nothing but shared wishes and shreds of hope. And Jack knew why he needed Sawyer there; because if there was anyone who'd fight for Kate's life half as much as Jack would, it was Sawyer.

It was too quiet, Jack realised. There was no beep of a monitor or calm voice of an assisting surgeon to guide him blinded through a procedure. There was no Howie Day playing over to help him relax as he worked. There was nothing to distract him as he untied the saturated tourniquet, those strips of shirt such a deep scarlet… nothing to reassure him as that slow trickle of blood started once again, like he knew it would. But, worst of all, and much worse than that… nothing and no-one to let him know it was okay, as he took that knife that wasn't good enough for her, in that makeshift theatre when she deserved the best, and through the tears which threatened, slid the blade down into that pure white skin.

Red, and white, and the glint of the blade in the daylight that threatened.

And Kate. Still.