CHAPTER 47: All In The Family
Kate awoke the following morning sprawled across Jack's chest. She knew that he was already awake because she could feel him playing with her hair, curling the ends in his fingers as he always did. He did it to Kaia's hair as well, because it was so much like hers. She wondered how much he had done it when she was away, and he knew for himself that he had done it whenever he had his little girl close to him. After all, she and Curtis had been his rock when Kate wasn't there, just as Kate and Curtis had been his rock when Kaia wasn't there.
She lay there comfortably, warm and safe, knowing that her children were sleeping safely in the next room. Finally, after a long and exhausting week, their family was conforming back to some kind of normality. She smiled at that thought, wondering when she had come to think of their life as being normal.
"Morning." Jack told her softly, placing a kiss on top of her head.
"Hey." She said, lifting her face and kissing him properly.
"Sleep well?" He asked casually, and she grinned cheekily.
"Well, you did give me a very good reason to sleep well." She reminded him, and they both laughed, kissing again. "I love you, Jack." She told him with a smile.
"I love you too." He replied. "More than anything in the world."
She smiled, and settled back on his chest. "What time is it?" She asked, not wanting to move her head from his chest again. She liked the familiar sound of his heartbeat.
Jack looked over his shoulder at the clock on the bedside table. "A little after 8." He told her.
"Kids awake?" She asked.
"Haven't heard anything from them." He told her.
"Kaia probably needs the sleep." Kate realised.
"We'll let her sleep as long as she wants." He nodded. "If she wakes up too late and won't sleep tonight we'll take her down to the jungle gym and tire her out." Kate gave a soft laugh.
"I'm glad that she's back." She said quietly. "I don't know what I would have done if she..." Kate trailed off, unable to think about the possibility, let alone say it.
"Hey, don't even think about that sort of thing." Jack told her in a soft, yet firm voice, trailing his hand up and down her bare back. "She's fine, and nothing's going to change that. Don't think about what might have happened." He said, and she nodded. "She's safe now."
"I wonder what happened when she was with Sarah." Kate said quietly, tracing circles on Jack's chest. "What do you think Sarah wanted to do with her?"
Jack sighed, remembering what Sarah had said to her about being a mother on the roof. "She wanted Kaia to be our daughter." He revealed, and Kate looked up at him. "Mine and hers." He saw the heartbroken look in Kate's eyes of someone wanting her daughter as their own. "But I told her that it could never happen." He assured her. "We created her, you carried her and gave birth to her and raised her. You're the only person in the world that I'd ever let Kaia call her mother." He said, and Kate smiled, cuddling up to him again.
"I bet she was scared, being up high." Kate realised.
"Terrified." Jack nodded.
"It's like a huge weight has gone." She said, "knowing that she's just in the next room."
"I'll say." He said with a soft laugh, one of relief. "For once I haven't woken up with that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that one of my family's in harms reach."
"We're all fine now." Kate smiled.
"All six of us." He nodded. "Six...wow...I'm still getting used to that number." He admitted.
"You're getting used to it?" Kate asked incredulously. "You're not going to have to carry them. I thought it was hard at the end of the other two pregnancies...this is a whole new ball game." She reminded him.
"Well, it will be shorter, if that's any help." He reasoned. "Twins are rarely full term pregnancies."
"As long as they're healthy, I don't mind when they come." She backtracked with a smile. "If I had it my way I'd be able to hold them in my arms tomorrow."
"If you had it your way you'd be able to give birth painlessly." He laughed.
"Ah, my first birth with pain relief." She mused dreamily, and Jack laughed. "I don't know what you're laughing at, mister, you're going to be there too."
"Of course I am." He told her, as if he couldn't bare to think of the alternative. "I was there for Kai and Curt's births. I'm not missing these two come into the world as well." He said, placing his hand over her bare stomach.
"At least you won't have to deliver these ones." Kate joked, and Jack laughed again. That was something he was grateful for, at least because it was twins and twin pregnancies were rarely full term. What would he have done in the middle of the jungle with two premature babies, with no proper medical care, and none of the equipment that could be needed to keep them alive?
"MOM! DAD!"
They both heard Kaia's call, and scrambled out of bed quickly, grabbing bath robes on their way to cover themselves. Going into the next room, they saw Kaia sitting up in bed, Curtis now awake in the bed on the other side of the room, and Kaia was looking panicky.
"Kaia, baby, what's wrong?" Kate asked as she went to sit on the bed beside her, and Jack kneeled at their side.
"Where am I?" She asked, in a frightened voice.
Jack remembered that she hadn't actually spent a night sleeping in the hotel yet, as Sarah had taken her the night of the party. Kaia had fallen asleep in the hospital yesterday, and not woken up when they brought her back, and put her in the bed.
"You're at the hotel, honey." Jack told her, putting his hand on her back. "Remember the hotel?"
She nodded. "Not at the hop-sickle?" She asked, and Kate frowned, before realising that she meant 'hospital'.
"No, baby, not at the hospital." Kate told her with a gentle smile, smoothing her wild curly hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed in days - and it probably hadn't. Kate realised now that there was dirt on her face as well, and was clearly in need of a good bath.
"Mommy better now then?" She asked.
Kate nodded, "Yeah, I'm better now." She smiled.
"Daddy said that you were with the doctors 'cause you were poorly." Kaia told Kate, and Kate nodded.
"I was. But they made me better."
"Am I still going to have brothers or sisters?" She asked hopefully.
Kate grinned at Jack, and then back at Kaia. "Yeah, you are." She said.
Kaia thought this over and then looked at Jack. "Daddy, can I have sisters? 'Cause I've already got one brother."
They laughed, and Curtis came over to sit beside Jack silently, who lifted him onto the bed beside Kaia and put his arms around his son while he fell back against him, still slightly tired. "Kaia, you don't get to choose what you have." Jack told her. "We won't find out for a long time yet."
"But Daaaaaadddddddyyyy." She said, looking up at him with wide eyes. "You said that I could have whatever I wanted.
Kate laughed, and Jack shook his head lightly. Ever since Kaia had been born she had Jack wrapped around her little finger. "That was when we were shopping, not talking about babies."
Kaia nodded, and then thought for a moment again. Jack had come to almost fear that expression on her face. Whenever she got it, she always asked an awkward question, one that either had no answer, where she always caught him out, or had an answer that he had no intention of telling her when she was five years old. "Daddy, you're a doctor too, aren't you?" Kaia checked, and Jack nodded. "Does that mean you know where babies come from? How did babies get inside Mommy's tummy? Did she swallow them?"
Kate laughed again, and looked at Jack expectantly. "Yes, Daddy," She said, putting on a high pitched voice to match Kaia's, "Where do babies come from?"
Jack gave her a mock glare, and then clapped his hands together in front of Curtis, who copied him. "Right, who wants breakfast?" He asked, changing the subject.
As they sat in the kitchen, eating breakfast, no one would have guessed that yesterday, Kaia had been suspended from a rooftop, and Kate had been in hospital hoping that her children were alive. It was like nothing had happened, like they had been rescued that morning, and were enjoying their first day back in civilisation together. Jack had phoned room service, which was still being paid courtesy of Oceanic, and ordered a huge stack of pancakes for them.
To try and distract Kaia further from the topic of where babies came from, he cut their pancakes into shapes while they waited. He made Kaia's and Curtis's into different animal shapes, well, the best he could anyway, yet left Kate's uncut.
When he set down her plate, she feigned a hurt look. "No animal shapes for me?" She asked in a cute voice.
"Don't need them. Yours are more special." He told her with a smile.
"How so?" She asked as he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
"Because I was going to cut them into hearts, but hearts can be broken." He traced a finger around the outside of the pancake, the circle shape. "Circles are much better. They go round and round, never changing, never ending, and never breaking…they're complete, and no matter how long it's there for, it isn't going to end." He ended with a kiss on her cheek. "Just like my love for you."
She smiled, and couldn't deny that it brought tears to her eyes from the sweetness. She gave him that soft grin as he sat down across from her at the table. Damn hormones, she thought, trying to blame the presence of tears on them, but knowing that the only reason they were there was because Jack was able to proclaim his love to her every day in a new way, never letting her feel worthless, or making her regret their relationship for a second.
After a few minutes of hungry eating and random talking between the family, Kate leaned over and pulled a twig out of Kaia's hair. How had a twig gotten there? This was what she was used to doing on the island, not the concrete jungle of Sydney.
"You need a bath." Kate announced.
Kaia's eyes filled with panic, and she looked at Kate with wide eyes, dropping the remainder of her pancake. "NO!" She protested. "No! I'm clean!"
Only, with a face that looked more tanned than usual with the amount of dirt, and the wild tangled hair, she most certainly wasn't clean. Yet Kaia would have rolled around in the mud and still announced herself as clean, and had done so on several occasions.
"No, you need a bath." Kate objected.
"Please, Mom, please." Kaia begged. "Don't make me have a bath!"
"Kaia, you're filthy." Kate pointed out. "You're having a bath." Kaia rolled her eyes and looked to Jack for help.
"No way, kiddo, Mom's word is final on this one." He told her, and Kaia groaned. "When you've had a bath, we'll do something fun."
"Something really fun?" She asked, slightly curious.
"Really really fun." Jack promised.
Won over, Kaia nodded and picked up her pancake again. "Okay, I'll have a bath."
Kate and Jack both pointed at each other simultaneously over Kaia's head, which she didn't see. With Kaia's bath times, it was like this all the time. Whoever was last the point, had to bathe Kaia. This time, however, they both got there at the same time. Silently, they started the battle over who would bathe her. Kate fluttered her eyelashes. Jack pulled out the guilt-trip face. Kate raised her eyebrow. Jack pouted. Kate pouted. Jack pleaded. Kate pouted again. Jack surrendered.
"Okay, I'll do it." Jack told her and raised his hands in defence. "But you can do tomorrow."
Kate sighed dramatically. "Sorry, Jack, no can do." She said with a grin. "I seem to remember being confined to bed rest not bath duty." She smiled sweetly. "I love you."
Jack attempted to run his fingers through Kaia's hair, getting them stuck in the knots about two inches down from the roots. "Yeah…love you too." He muttered, wondering what sort of a mess he had gotten himself into by surrendering.
An hour later, a clean Kaia emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a warm, soft towel that covered her nearly from head to toe. Kate looked up from the couch where she had been playing with Curtis and his toy animals, and saw the smug look on her daughters face, and wondered what on earth had happened in the bathroom. Her curiosity was answered within a few seconds as Kaia padded into the bedroom where her clothes were, and Jack came out of the bathroom, drenched from head to toe in bathwater.
Both Kate and Curtis watched them silently, and as soon as the father and daughter got into the bedroom, the mother and son collapsed in laughter.
