A/N - Voila! The only Jack-centric chapter in Picket Fences. So, right off the bat, you know he isn't dead... yet...
mwa ha ha!
It took Jack a minute to get over the shock. He hadn't been knocked out, but all the same, he felt disoriented and out-of-place. He opened his eyes to see that the car had been going so fast that the metal of the hood had been smashed in, only a couple of inches away from his head. The huge trunk of the tree they'd driven in was pulled up from its roots, so that it was half in the ground, half leaning across the crashed car. The windshield was smashed and shattered. He dazedly marveled at the fact that he was still alive.
It didn't change the fact that he was afraid to look to his left. It was like he was frozen, looking forward and nowhere else. If Kate was dead… If Kate was dead, he'd want to be dead too. The thought stunned him. But before he could gather the courage to turn his head to look at her, Kate began to scream.
Her voice was shrill, and it made him shiver involuntarily. It wasn't even her real voice that made this unearthly, mourning sound. He realized that she was shrieking out a name – his name. That scared him even more.
In a flash, he had pulled himself forward and had her by the shoulders. Kate was draped across the dashboard as if she'd been trying to crawl over the steering wheel. She was facedown, the wheel digging into her stomach, her arms trapped beneath her.
He didn't know what to do. For the first time, he didn't know what to do with this injured person, this girl who had miraculously not been thrown out of the windshield. Jack was afraid to move her; he knew a person should never move an injured person until an EMT came. That was rule number one. But he also knew that he could not and would not just leave her like that, and he couldn't calm her when she was at the very front of the car, her head just hitting the glass of the windshield.
"Kate, Kate!" he shouted over her wails. "Kate, I'm right here. I'm okay. Katherine! You're going to be all right. Come on, Kate."
She couldn't hear him, he realized, and this discovery made him feel like a weight had just dropped in his stomach. She wasn't really here; she was in hysterics. He pulled her as carefully as he could, pulled her over the dashboard and onto her seat. She screamed louder, her breath coming in panic-stricken gasps. Without thinking, he was next to her in the driver's seat, his arms around her, her bleeding head on his shoulder.
Her screams gradually turned to sobs, and this was even worse. What frightened Jack most was her eyes. Though she cried like he'd never heard anyone cry before, no tears formed. In fact, her normally bright eyes were clouded and blank. It was like... it was like she was already dead.
"Kate," he cried out frantically. "I'm here. Calm down. Kate, can you hear me?"
He realized that there was someone at the window, a woman, who looked pale and sick. "I called 911, they're on their way. Are you okay?" she told him in a tight, scared voice. The woman's eyes kept flicking to Kate in his arms, conscious but in complete shock.
"No," Jack said helplessly. "No, we're not."
To his immeasurable relief, she began to quiet herself. After five minutes, she was still gasping almost asthmatically, but only whimpering softly. Jack hated to see her like this. This was not Kate. Kate didn't whimper. He knew she would be disgusted if she could really hear herself.
As the first raindrops began to fall against the smashed windows, Jack buried his face in her hair that was sticky with blood and waited for the sound of a siren.
"Is there any family we should call for Katherine?" a nurse asked.
"I'm her family." Jack said quietly. He sat in a chair in the hospital room. He was next to Kate, who lay still on her bed. Her blank eyes were closed now, and she was as white as the starched sheets that were pulled up to her waist. There was a gash across her forehead, just up to her hairline that had just been stitched up. Two of her ribs was cracked where she'd hit the steering wheel. There were tubes coming out of her nose – the doctors had been concerned about her irregular breathing.
A miracle, a miracle she survived. The doctors kept saying. Both of you. You barely have a scratch on you. You're very lucky. Jack didn't feel very lucky. Kate had been unconscious since a few minutes after she'd been put into the ambulance. All the tests the doctors had taken on her had not shown what she would be like when she woke up. Confusion, memory loss, post-traumatic stress…
Jack grasped her limp hand, the one without needles poking out of it. Silent minutes passed, and he didn't notice.
"Mr. Shepherd? Have you been examined?" A woman asked from behind.
"No. I'm fine." Jack answered firmly without lifting his head.
"You were in a severe car crash. You need to be examined."
He couldn't bear to tear his eyes from Kate, but he was finally pulled from the room.
He didn't feel it when the cut on his own head was sewn up or when the glass was taken out of the slashes across his arms. He only flinched slightly when the doctor relocated the shoulder he hadn't noticed was out of its socket. He refused the sling and the neck brace. As he walked back to Kate's room, he also passed the waiting room. He would never have recognized Claire if she hadn't tearfully called out his name.
She was in his sore arms before he'd managed to open his mouth in surprise. She pulled away.
"I'm sorry! Did I hurt you? How's Kate? They won't let me see her. Oh, my God." Her legs shook and she sat down again, her head in her hands. Jack leaned against the wall for support. He hadn't realized how weak he felt.
"I don't know." Jack whispered. "I don't know how she is."
"I'm so sorry. It's my –"
"If you say it's you're fault, Claire, I'll kill you." Jack said painfully. "We crashed because she was driving to Starbucks. To get away from me. Because I told her she should go on anti-depressants, and then decided to lecture her on how to live her life. But I couldn't just let her go. I had to follow her and piss her off even more. Her life is ruined, and I had the fucking nerve to tell her. As if she didn't already know." He slid to the floor, choking on his words. "And she thinks I want to fix her, like I wanted to fix Sarah. But…" he took a shaky breath. "I just want Kate… I just don't want her to hate herself. She hates herself."
Claire was crying, tears falling to the coffee-stained carpet. She didn't say a word. There wasn't anything that she could say. She looked at Jack, and he knew she understood.
He got up slowly, purple dots blurring his vision for a moment, and left. As he walked out of the room, he brushed his hand against Claire's. And she knew she had helped.
Jack collapsed back into his chair. He wearily leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair and rested his chin in his hand. Kate. I wish you knew how beautiful you are. He closed his eyes.
"Jack."
Her voice was barely audible, but his eyes flew open in surprise.
"Kate!" he cried out.
The slightest bit of color rose in her sickly cheeks, and her sleepy eyes were half-open and resting lucidly on him. Her lips were the slightest bit parted. He grabbed both her hands and she squeezed them weakly.
"Kate. Oh, my God." Jack breathed. "How do you feel? When's you're birthday?"
"When's my…"
"It's a memory test."
She breathed shallowly before answering. "December 6th."
He smiled, exuberant, and she smiled faintly back. "I didn't know if you'd be okay. I didn't know…how are you feeling?"
"It really hurts to breathe and my head is pounding." She put her bruised hand to her face and felt the tubes, confused.
"You broke two ribs. The tubes are just there to help. You're going to be okay. You're going to be fine." Jack assured her.
She tried to smile again. "Better than handcuffs." She managed to whisper, recalling her last hospital visit, after she had had a mental breakdown in prison. Her eyes fluttered closed and then snapped open again, trying in vain to remain focused on him.
Though he could see the exhaustion written across her face, Jack could also see that Kate's eyes were alive again. This was what really convinced him that she was going to survive. In the car, at the scene of that horrible accident just a few hours ago, he had been sure that he had been looking into the eyes of a dead girl. Now, though they were worn-out and bloodshot, he could see the dullness was gone. Kate was back.
Jack remembered to press the button that summoned a nurse so Kate could be examined again, but she had resumed sleeping by the time someone came.
It didn't matter. Jack was told that Kate would be fine. It was a miracle, they said. It was a miracle.