Part Five
It continued to rain for the remainder of the day and most of the night, putting a damper on anyone's plans to move back to the beach now that the danger seemed to have passed. Jack made rounds through the crowd continuously and kept the peace as tempers began to fray, pointing out that they were all warm and dry, had plenty of food, and because of the rain had earned themselves a day in which they did not have to do any chores. The last part always encouraged a few appreciative laughs. Jack looked up more than once to see Hurley engaging in conversation with knots of two or three people at a time, often with varying reactions. Given that Jack had asked him Hurley not to panic people by mentioning the Others until they had more to offer than speculation, Jack thought that he was doing a fine job.
Whenever Jack paused in circling the caves, it was inevitably so that he could look towards the heavy, shimmering curtains of rain that were falling down over the caves' entrances. The objects beyond were obliterated into nothing more than shadows and blurs. The forms that Jack was expecting to step through the curtain-the one that he was hoping for-never appeared, even though it was raining so hard by then that he couldn't imagine how hunting was possible.
'If he hurts her,' Jack caught himself thinking over and over again. 'God help him, if he hurts her…' He couldn't come up with an action suitably violent enough to end that sentence yet, but thought that with the proper time and motivation he would be able to arrive at something. When the next morning dawned bright and clear and still with no sign of either Kate or Locke, Jack was sure of it. He grit his teeth and reminded himself that Kate was an adult, and probably a dangerous one at that. It was too early to panic yet.
Without the rain, there was nothing left to prevent a group exodus back to the beach. Sayid came up as Jack was watching the preparations for the trip. Jack glanced over. "Hey, Sayid. Haven't gotten a chance to talk to you much over the past few days."
Sayid looked over at Shannon, who had finished her own breakfast and was sitting on Boone's old suitcase so that she could give Vincent his. As Jack watched, she carefully pulled a piece of fish apart in her hands and removed every bone with a deliberation that Jack had seen her apply to few other things that did not directly benefit herself. When the fish had been prepared to her satisfaction, Shannon put it on the ground in front of the eagerly awaiting Vincent. Sayid smiled as he watched her. Jack was glad of it.
"I was rather preoccupied, yes," Sayid said. He glanced over at Jack. "Though not so much that I have not noticed how much of a stir Hurley has begun to cause."
"I was meaning to get your opinion on that," Jack said. "The longer we stay divided between two camps, the more danger that we're in. I know you were more determined that anyone else to stay on the beach back when the caves were first discovered, but…" Jack shrugged and made a helpless gesture. "That was over a month ago. Our best hope is on that raft now, and it doesn't matter where we sleep at night in order for that to work."
"We could have been attacked at several points on the path yesterday," Sayid said in a noncommittal voice after letting so long a pause go by that Jack had begun to wonder if he was planning on answering at all. In spite of the neutrality of his tone, Jack felt as if a victory had occurred. "There are also rumors circulating that you do not believe we are finished with the Others quite yet." Jack startled, and Sayid went on, "Hurley is a good administrator. People listen to him. He has not directly spilled your secret yet, but he is also not subtle."
"And what do you believe, Sayid?" Jack asked quietly.
"Ethan was real," Sayid said. "But that still does not mean that there is a conspiracy waiting to swoop down on us at any moment." He paused for a long moment, his eyebrows drawing together as he collected his thoughts. "Danielle…her mind is damaged so much that I do not believe she has any hope of coming back again. She says that she is the only one who has survived her exile. That does meant hat this is true, or that she is the only one who has been driven mad by solitude."
"Is that the best that I'm going to get?" Jack asked.
"I'm listening," Sayid said. "Until I hear more than theories and conjecture, however, I cannot change my mind."
"Thank you." Jack watched as Sayid made his way over to where Shannon was still sitting. She had finished feeding Vincent and was burying the bones in the dirt, pushing the dog's head away when he tried to nose at them. Shannon dusted the remaining fish flakes from her hands and gave Sayid a hopeful, almost shy smile as he drew close to her. Sayid picked up Shannon's suitcase for her, while she picked up Boone's and gathered Vincent's leash from where she had been letting it trail in the dirt.
Jack watched them leave the caves together before he muttered beneath his breath, "I was not meant to be a politician."
Sun was helping Claire tend to Aaron while Charlie packed up their things, so absent anything else to do Jack went over to see if he could help. While Sun was holding out the sling that Charlie had made so that carrying Aaron about the island would be easier, Claire for her part seemed reluctant to release the baby from her arms even for an instant. She held him up to her face and cooed at him as he cooed back and made clumsy grabs for her hair.
"Good morning, Jack," Claire said when she saw him drawing close. She looked happier and more relaxed than Jack had seen her for several days.
"Morning," Jack answered. He helped Sun settle the sling over Claire's shoulder and place Aaron inside. She smiled at him before moving away to pack up her own belongings, but not so quickly that Jack could not see that she did not appear nearly so happy as Claire did. "I didn't hear him crying last night. Don't tell me that he's already sleeping all the way through."
Even after Aaron was settled, Claire continually reached down so that her baby could grab at her fingers. She laughed at Jack's statement. "Oh, no. I look forward to that day for Charlie and me both." Claire gestured over to Charlie, who was folding up the clothes that they had brought with them and placing them into a duffel bag. "Since he's been helping me so much, you know?" Claire waited for Jack to nod before she continued. "Aaron ate normally and slept normally, though."
"Good. That's great to hear." Jack waggled his fingers at Aaron, and Aaron blew a bubble. "And how are you doing, Claire?" She looked up at him. "You've been under a lot of strain, and I know that motherhood is a new experience for you/"
"Oh." Claire's expression was embarrassed as she looked back down. Jack saw a pink flush beginning to crawl up her cheeks and the back of her neck. "Charlie and Sun have been helping me a lot. I think it's going to be better now." Still looking down at Aaron, Claire added softly, "It feels strange to let him out of my sight now."
Jack put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently before letting go. "Don't hesitate to come to me if you have any problems or questions."
"I will." Claire tucked a few strands of hair behind her ears and fidgeted for a moment before she said, "So there's a rumor going around that you want to take the beach camp apart for good."
Jack sighed and tilted his head back so that he could view the cave ceiling. A soft laugh rolled past his lips. "Hurley is not subtle?"
Claire grinned. "Yeah, not so much. But he's still making a good case for you." She paused to make cooing noises at Aaron until he smiled at her. Jack, who knew that Claire was looking for a chance to gather her thoughts for a moment, waited without speaking. "I have to think of Aaron now, don't I? And there are more people living up here than down at the beach these days." Claire looked back up at him finally. "I still have a lot of things down there at the beach that I have to pack up, but I'll probably be back up here in the next few days."
Jack grinned and felt his mood growing better by the second. "That's great." Claire peeled away from him in order to join the crowd of bodies exiting the caves for the hike back to the beach. Jack, falling towards the back of the pack, soon found himself walking side by side with Sun. In the sunlight, the evidence of her insomnia was even more obvious than it had been in the shadows of the caves. Though they did not speak for several minutes, Jack caught her glancing through the trees and in the direction of the shore more than once. "Did you sleep well?"
"No," Sun confessed, shaking her head so that her hair swirled over her shoulders. She was still looking off in the direction of the ocean. Her eyes were clear and solemn when she looked back at him. "Though if you will forgive me for saying, you don't look like you did, either."
Jack snorted, chagrined. "Fine, guilty. Just promise me that you'll take care of yourself."
Sun gave him an arch look that almost made him smile. "I will be fine, Jack. I give you my promise." She hesitated for a moment before she added, "Thank you for asking." Sun returned to staring out at the blue glimpses of ocean that were becoming visible through the trees. "Have you ever been worried about someone before?"
Jack thought of Kate, off in who knew what kind of danger…and he thought of Sawyer. He frowned for a moment, trying to figure out the path that thought must have taken in order to reach the front of his mind, when he heard a series of shouts begin to float up the column as it reached the beach. One of the words that Jack heard being called over and over again was his own name. He glanced towards Sun and saw that all of the blood had already drained from her face. "Come on," Jack snapped, not waiting for a response before he took off down the path. Only the sound of Sun's shoes clattering on the path behind him let him know that she was following.
A crowd was beginning to gather by the time that Jack burst out into the open air of the beach, blocking his view, but he had already heard the murmurs traveling up and down the column as he raced past it. "Jin…Sawyer…Jin…"
Sawyer.
Jack's heart clenched in his chest for a moment, nearly doubling him over. There was a dark part of his brain that was sure he was going to see nothing more than a pair of bodies bobbing against the shoreline.
No, but until Jack saw Sawyer's legs still scissoring weakly through the sand he was sure that he had been half right. Jin trudged over the beach with his head hanging down to a level roughly the same as his shoulder blades and came to a halt several yards off. It did not look as if he laid Sawyer down in the sand nearly so much as his arms just refused to carry him any further. Jin's voice cracked and rasped as he called something to them, and even at a distance Jack could see that he and Sawyer were both wearing dark sunburns.
Sawyer lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the sun. It wasn't until he saw that motion that Jack felt his insides settle back to where each was supposed to be. He raced across the beach and fell into a kneeling position beside Sawyer's body, throwing up a spray of sand. Jack was dimly aware of Sun and Jin standing a few paces off, trying to speak over one another in swift Korean. They were clutching at one another's hands as if they would never let go again.
There were two dark patches on Sawyer's black shirt, one on his shoulder and the other on this side, even though the rest of him was as dry as bone. Jack took a deep breath and felt the cold calm that always occurred when he had a scalpel in his hand settling over him. People were pushing close on the sand behind him, blocking his light, so he called out, "Sayid, I need you to move these people back." Jack began to undo the buttons on Sawyer's shirt.
At the sound of Jack's voice, Sawyer's eyelids first fluttered, then raised up a crack. "Hey, Doc," he muttered.
"Hey, Sawyer," Jack answered. He peeled Sawyer's shirt back and could not stop himself from wincing when he saw how much damage had been done. "Looks like you guys had a hell of a trip." Behind him, Sayid was ordering people to stand back and give him room, while Jin said something to Sun that made her gasp. Tuning them all out again, Jack slid two of his fingers into the crook of Sawyer's neck to take his pulse. He made a shushing sound as Sawyer winced and tried to push Jack's hand away from the sunburn.
"I lost the gun," Sawyer said in a voice so low that Jack had to lean forward and strain in order to hear him. "Lost the letters…the kid…just let it all go to hell and back."
"Don't worry about that right now." The pulse beneath Jack's fingers was steady, but more rapid than he had hoped for. "In fact, just be quiet for a while, all right? Save your energy." Jack tilted Sawyer's body to the side so that he could get a better look at the wound on his ribs, drawing a harsh expletive from Sawyer as his injured shoulder was briefly asked to bear weight. Jack again drew his breath in sharply through his teeth.
"Sun," he called. When there was no answer, Jack looked up to see her engaged in a deep conversation with Jin. She had put one of her hands over her mouth. "Sun!" She flinched before turning towards him, and Jack saw that her face had gone the color of milk. "Whatever it is, it can wait. What I need for you to do right now is run back to the caves and get my medicine bag for me. Make sure that the sewing kit and the pocket knife with the pearl handle are both inside. Then I need you to go through the snack cart and collect all of the alcohol that we didn't use on Boone-it should be in the lowest drawer-and a bottle that says 'Keflex' on the label. It should be in the top. Got all of that?" Jack waited for Sun's nod before he ordered, "Repeat it back to me."
"The sewing kit, the knife with the pearl handle, the alcohol, and the antibiotics," Sun said firmly. Though she glanced towards Jin every few seconds, her face was calm and her eyes were clear.
"Perfect. Go." Jack didn't wait to see Sun take off at a sprint before he turned back to look at Sawyer's injuries. He probed at the obvious wound in Sawyer's shoulder, earning another litany of obscenities and a surprisingly strong hand grabbing for his wrist. "I know, I know," Jack said, pulling Sawyer's hand away and setting it back by his side. "But you have to stay as still as you can."
"That's a hell of a lot easier for you to say than it is for me to do, Jack," Sawyer said through gritted teeth. He sounded more awake now, though he was still deathly pale beneath the sunburn. Jack wondered how much blood he had already lost. He slid his fingers into the crook so that he could feel the pulse there again, steady and sure and not likely to stop soon.
Sayid, satisfied that the crowd was going to hang back without need of him standing guard over them, drifted close enough so that he and Jack could exchange glances. Sayid's face became very still when he caught sight of Sawyer's wounds, obviously the work of gunfire. "It would be very difficult for Sawyer to inflict those wounds upon himself accidentally," Sayid said in a low voice. "I would even say that it is impossible."
"I know," Jack said, watching the trees for Sun's return. Meanwhile, he probed with gentle fingers along Sawyer's side, examining the bullet that by some miracle seemed to have struck his ribs and stayed there rather than piercing any of the organs beyond.
"I can hear both of you, you know, and, no, I did not shoot myself with my own goddamned-fuck!" Sawyer tried to twist away as Jack found the bullet. Sayid put his hand on Sawyer's uninjured shoulder and pushed him back down, ignoring the middle finger that he was shown in response.
"Thanks," Jack said to Sayid. More loudly, to Sawyer, he added, "You got lucky. It's broken two of your ribs, but that's as deep as it went."
"Yeah, I feel real lucky." Beneath the burn, Sawyer's face had gone the color of unbleached linen. His eyes began to roll backwards in his head.
"Sawyer!" Jack called once, and then again, louder, when he got no response. He snapped his fingers in front of Sawyer's eyes until they focused again. "Stay with me a little while longer."
"I didn't hit my head," Sawyer grunted, closing his eyes. He fixed Jack with a bleary glare when Jack began snapping his fingers in front of his face again.
"Then humor me. I still don't want you passing out," Jack said. He examined both of Sawyer's wounds, even lifting Sawyer's shoulder to look at the exit wound on the other side, but saw no sign of infection yet. The salt water was probably to thank for that. A wave of relief rolled from the crown of his head and all the way down to his toes.
"You're the boss." Sawyer sounded more exhausted and beaten down than Jack had ever heard before. He tilted his head back into the sand, closing his eyes. Only the slow curling motions that his fingers were making through the sand let Jack know that he hadn't passed out, anyway.
Jack squeezed at Sawyer's good shoulder and watched as the movements of Sawyer's fingers hitched for a second. "Okay," he said, noticing for the first time that Jin was still standing quietly to one side and waiting to be noticed again. Right, he needed to remember that he had two patients here. Jack looked around. "Shannon!" he called.
She took a step forward, trailing Vincent's leash in her hand. "Yeah?" Shannon asked, staring at Sawyer's bared chest, which Jack realized for the first time was caked with dried blood. Jack had taken one look upon beginning his examination, determined that very little of it was fresh, and had not thought of it again.
"I need you to do a couple of things for me, all right?" Jack waited for Shannon's nod before he continued. "Start a fire and get some water boiling on it. Once you've done that, start Jin alternating between water and some of the fruit juice that Sun has been experimenting with." Shannon nodded, her face pale but calm, and handed Vincent's leash off to the strange young woman who carried the dive bag with her everywhere that she went. The woman looked taken back to be trusted with something that Shannon valued so highly, but she still leaned down and ruffled Vincent's ears. "Small sips, though. Don't let him gulp at it. Got all of that?"
Shannon's lips moved as if she was reciting it to herself in order to commit it to memory. She nodded. "Yeah. I can do that."
"Good girl." Jack turned back to Sayid. "Can you help me get him back to his shelter?"
Sayid nodded and knelt by Sawyer's side, sliding his arm beneath Sawyer's shoulders. Sawyer opened his eyes long enough to mutter something indistinct about not being 'their goddamned rage doll', but he wasn't fighting very hard. Jack and Sayid both ignored him.
"Boiling water?" Sayid asked in a low voice, though surely he already knew the answer.
"Yes." Jack and Sawyer both grunted, one from effort and the other from pain, as Sawyer was levered back to his feet. Sawyer hung his head between his shoulder blades and panted. Though he was still terribly worried for her, Jack was glad that Kate was not there to see them. Guilty memories of the last time that he and Sayid had carried Sawyer suspended between them like this buffeted him with a nearly physical force. "Come on. I don't want to take that bullet out on the beach."
End Part Five
