"Thirty-three year old male, collision with an SUV left him in impaled on a rebar. Couldn't extricate in the scene, blood loss through chest and lower extremities," It was rather bizarre how quickly you got used to hearing terminology. Lexie was still dealing with it three months in.

"Passenger in the SUV, 29 year old female, glass cuts through the arms and legs, one big piece in the chest, and she's at least in her second trimester," the other paramedic told her.

"Page Shephard and Montgomery," Dr. Yang was telling her intern. "How many more people in the crash? " They had heard it was a multi-car pileup.

"At least one other ambo behind us. There were two other cars there."

Yang rattled off the usual rounds of initials and acronyms that meant the difference between life and death for most of these patients. Frankly, Lexie was a little surprised Dr. Bailey wasn't down here already. The word had gotten out about the mass trauma five minutes ago, and there was still no sign of the chief resident

"Why do they always leave the instrument in?" Yang was muttering. "Grey, we need to x-ray the patient."

Lexie blinked. There was at least a foot of rebar sticking out of the man's chest. "Um, how exactly do we -"

"Very carefully. Now get to it." She didn't bother to give further instructions, and she had a good reason not too, another ambulance was pulling up. Lexie had been working for Dr. Yang long enough to know that she had a habit of plucking the most dangerous surgery.

Just then, Jack Shephard showed up - they had managed to get it right the first time, something that they still screwed up on occasion. "Please tell me this guy is under, Dr. Grey," he asked quickly.

"Pulse is thready, but it's there," she told him, before mentally stumbling. "How the hell do we x-ray the patient?"

"Tell radiology to clear their biggest machine, we're going to need all the spare room that they've got." Jack tried to assure her. "Stevens?"

Izzie was currently doing her rotation with spinal this month. This had led to more than a few moments of awkwardness because O'Malley had become one of Jack's most trusted interns since he had arrived at Seattle Grace. And though he tried to declare neutrality, it was clear that he viewed Izzie as the main reason George was now seeing a divorce attorney.

"Yes, Dr. Shephard?" Izzie said hopefully.

"Get up to surgery: tell them we're going to need the best cauterization tool they have, along with the biggest forceps. This is going to be a bitch to get out. And call the blood bank. We're going to need at least four pints."

Stevens headed up. "You really think the blood loss is going to be that severe?"

"We won't know until we see the film, but I'm betting that bars cutting off a couple of vessels. Second we move it..." He trailed off. "Let's hope that I'm wrong."

He wasn't. When they finally got the film, it looked like the rebar was not only slicing open a major artery, it looked like it was puncturing the L5 vertebrae. Getting the thing out was going to be a real bitch, and even afterwards, they were going to need hours of work in order to repair it. "Hope you didn't have any more plans for the next shift, Dr. Grey, I'm guessing that this is going to take at least five hours.. Especially, if this guy is ever going to have a chance of walking again."

Lexie wasn't an expert on spinal surgeries by any means, but based on what she had seen on the films, the damage to the spine and surrounding area was severe. The chances of the patient even surviving this surgery weren't that good, never mind leaving the hospital bed. "You really think that it's possible?"

It was hard to tell with the surgical masks on, but Lexie could see that Dr. Shephard had one of those far away looks he sometimes got. 'I've done a lot more with less." He shrugged it off. "Anyway, we won't know until we get started. Dr. Grey, I need you to position yourself on top of the rebar, and above all keep it steady until I say otherwise."

Lexie was never certain whether this kind of thing was reward or punishment - or perhaps some combination of the two. Nevertheless, she knew that if this thing moved before Dr. Shephard was ready, the patient might die of blood loss right there. So she got over it and held it, hoping that her bladder would hold out.

According to the clock, it was thirty-five minutes of working around the rebar before Jack realized that he'd done as much as he could without having to touch the rebar. Taking a deep breath, he turned to Lexie: "All right, I don't think that we have any choice. We're going to have to pull it out. You got a tight grip?"

Lexie nodded. Jack positioned himself near the bar, and put his hands around the top of it. "On three: one, two, three"

It took nearly two minutes of yanking before the piece of metal finally was yanked loose. They had no sooner got it out when a blood vessel seems to burst, and the machines around them went crazy. "Shit!" Jack called Stevens over to the table. "We need to close off this leak fast! Get ready to use the laser where I tell you!"

Stevens had never used a laser in her entire life, but she knew that if she stopped to explain, their patient would die in the interim. So very delicately, she began to zap the vessel that had been ruptured. Dr. Shephard in the meantime started barking orders to Lexie and the nurses to keep positioning themselves around the vessel, knowing that if he kept bleeding so profusely, the side effects could be lead to paralysis no matter what any of them.

"Makes me wish I played video games more," Izzie muttered to herself. It was a long five minutes before she finally got the vessel cauterized, and another three minutes after that before the blares of the electronics finally started reading normally again.

"Well, we got the bar out. Now, let's see if we can get him back to normal."

The patient's name was Kevin Ramsey. The surgery on him had been a bastard, but he'd managed to come out of it alive, which considering what a mess he'd been in was nothing short of remarkable. Now, of course, came the after care, a part where, even before he had been in the plane crash, he had never been the most subtle of caretakers.

So, when Jack had come in with his group of interns, he had decided to do it with a certain level of subtlety and had asked if everyone except he and Dr. Stevens could have the room to talk with him

"The rebar punctured your L5 vertebrae, and there was a fair amount of blood loss before we managed to completely repair. Now, the good news is the damage was fixable and we managed to get most of it under control. But given the combination of factors, the chances are fairly good that the paralysis that you are undergoing may turn out to be permanent."

Ramsey seemed to take this a lot better than many of the other patients did. "Is there anything you can do to fix it?" he asked.

"There is the possibility that the pressure on your spinal column may ease on its own. We'll know more in the next twenty-four hours."

"And if it doesn't?"

Jack considered this. "There are a couple of procedures that we maybe able to perform. But I have to warn you in advance that they may be incredibly risky."

"I can't feel my legs and I have a catheter up my ass. How much worse could things get?" Ramsey seemed to be determined to push this.

"You're alive, Mr. Ramsey, and you're not in a great deal of pain." Jack told him with equal bluntness. "Right now, everything that you've experienced can be managed. I can't guarantee that if you go back into the OR, those things will stay the same."

Ramsey seemed to be considering this for several seconds. Then, for the first time, he looked at Izzie Stevens. "You've been awfully quiet. What do you think?"

"Mr. Ramsey, I realize you don't want to be in this position. And if you really want us to be more aggressive in our approach, we will be. But technically speaking, this is the best approach to take if you want to live. I know things feel very dark now, but there are ways you can get through this."

"I don't want to talk to a fucking shrink. I want to walk again. If you're not prepared to do that, maybe I should get a second opinion." Ramsey was turning sullen, and Jack decided that it was best that they let him be alone for now.

He knew things hadn't gone well, but he was a little surprised that Stevens waited until they were halfway down the hall to tell him. "Has anyone ever told you that your bedside manner leaves something to be desired?"

"More than a few people, Dr. Stevens." Jack decided not to mention who those people were. He decided to try and illustrate things a little. "You know that awesome surgery that everybody thinks landed me here?" he told Izzie.

"The surgery you performed on that woman in a car wreck four years ago," Stevens told him.

"I went into Sar- that woman's room, and told her, right before I was going to operate that even given by best work, there was almost no chance that she was going to walk again. Minute I get outside the door, my father tells me that even there's a ninety-nine percent chance that the patient is going to be monumentally screwed, you should hold out that one percent chance they're going to be okay. When I told him that was 'false hope', he told me: 'Yes, but it's still hope.'"

"Well, I don't pretend to know the situation, but I tend to agree with your father."

Stevens never should've said that. "Really? Because I know about the type of medicine you practice. I'll admit I've done some things that were shaky ethically, but at least I never cut the L-VAT on a patient so that he could get a transplant."

This was clearly an old wound, and the look of devastation on Izzie's face reminded him in a painful way of Kate. "There were extenuating circumstances," she struggled to get out.

"You must really be loved at this hospital to still be in the program. If you had done that at St. Sebastian, your ass would've been out on the street after the transplant." Jack didn't know why he was doing this anymore. "Why did you want to work with me in the first place? Do you have some real desire to be a spinal surgeon, or did you just want a fresh start with the only doctor here who didn't know your deep dark secret?"

Why the hell was he saying these things? It was true that he was right morally, but considering his own history, his hands weren't that much cleaner than hers.

Stevens took a few seconds to respond, clearly to regain control of herself. "Maybe it would be better if I transferred to the next surgeon on call for the rest of my rotation," she said slowly.

"No," Jack told her. "I was out of line. I realize there were other factors in play. But damn it, you've got to get a handle on this. I realize better than you know that its nearly impossible to separate yourself emotionally from these cases. "

"I know. It's just..." she trailed off. "A lot has been going to hell the last couple of months. I can't stay out of the gossip in the hospital, no matter how hard I try. Beginning to think I'm cursed."

"No such things, Stevens. Believe me, there's no such thing."

SANTA MONICA

When Hurley had heard that Jin and Sun were planning on moving to America, he had been sure to do everything to make sure that his friends didn't have to deal with any of the headaches that came with trying to relocate.

He had helped arrange for a private plane to fly them from South Korea to a private airstrip. He knew that could more than afford the trip themselves, but he knew damn well that flying over the Pacific more than a year after the Oceanic trip was something that neither had been looking forward to.

He knew how tough the LA house market was, so for the interim he had offered to put them up at his place. After what had unfolded just before they had been rescued, he no longer believed he was cursed. He then decided that since that since neither he nor the money was cursed, the best thing he could was to use it to help people. He would've offered to buy Jin and Sun a house outright, but he knew that they could afford it, and he figured that this was somehow a key part of their journey.

Ever since their return to civilization, the Oceanics had spread out all over the country. Nevertheless, they had all managed to keep in touch over the past year. Even Claire who had resettled back in Sydney had made a couple of flights back to LA on more than one occasion. But they tended to gather in groups of a half dozen or so, rarely as a whole.

So when the Kwons had finally managed to find a house that they liked, Hurley had called almost everybody from the island, and had asked them if they wanted to get together for a housewarming party. With the exception of Des and Penny, who were still hiding from Charles Widmore, and Claire, who had told Hurley that a medical problem had just come up, everyone had agreed to make it. The last call he had made had been to Jack, who had mainly communicated through calls the last couple of months, but he had told Hurley that he would take the next few days off to catch up with his friends.

As it was, he came next to last on the guest list (Sayid and Nadia came in a few minutes later). Hurley had never been the most observant guy, but he could tell Jack looked a lot more relaxed than the last time that he had seen him.

"I guess your new job's really keeping you busy," he said after giving Jack a fairly massive hug.

"It helps make me feel like my old self," he admitted to Hurley.

"You make any new friends?"

"Couple. Good thing is, everybody in a surgical rotation is so busy, they don't watch the news as much as regular people," Jack told him. "I've been in Seattle two months, and no one seems to have recognized me."

Hurley sensed that Jack was clearly tense about this, so he decided to bring them over to Jin and Sun instead, who had just emerged from putting their daughter down for a nap.

Jack was glad to see them. "I'm really happy you decided to go through with this," he told them.

"It's probably best for Ji Yeon," Jin said in measured English.

"Your English has gotten a lot better," Sayid told him.

"I had a good teacher," Jin told them. Sun smiled.

"May I-" Juliet seemed a lot shier than she had when they had been on the island.

Sun took out some of the picture they had of Ji Yeon. Jack could tell that Juliet was moved, which made a certain amount of sense- Sun had been her last patient when they had been on the island. "She has Jin's eyes," she told her.

"Ain't this just like a woman. Show her pictures of a baby, the strongest one becomes a mass of Jell-O," Sawyer told her

Juliet seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but for some reason, she held her tongue.

"Hey, Doc, been awhile." Sawyer shook Jack's hand. For the first time since they knew each other, Hurley could sense that there was no tension between them. "Come back from an island vacation, you don't write, you don't call?"

"Could say the same for you," Jack gave a small smile. "How've things been?"

Once again, Sawyer put on his poker face. But Hurley, who had gotten the measure of the con man on more than one occasion could tell that something was bothering him. He figured it was the obvious, that it had to do with Kate not being here. As it turned out, though, he couldn't have been more wrong.

"Big Boy, can I have a moment of your time?" he asked about an hour later.

"Sure, dude, what's up?"

Sawyer now actually looked a little embarrassed for the first time since he had known him. "Realize that by telling you this, our whole little circle's probably gonna know about it by the end of the party," he said slowly.

"I can keep a secret when I have to," Hurley pointed out.

"All right. Here goes." He took a deep breath. "I wasn't exactly a model citizen before the plane crash, either. Did some pretty shit things. Worst of them was, I spent six months in Iowa, conning a girl named Cassidy out of her life savings."

Hurley had known Sawyer had been in some trouble with the law when he talked to Kate. Still, actually hearing it from him first hand was a hell of a shock. "Holy crap, dude."

"She got the better of me, though. She turned me into the cops. Ended up doing some time in jail." Sawyer held up his hand. "Gets better, too. Before my time was up, she came to see me, told me I had a daughter named Clementine."

Hurley didn't want to think how much his eyes had come out of his head when he heard that. Sawyer had grown immensely in his time on the island, but he was probably the last person suited for parenthood. Instead, he glanced over at Juliet. "Does she know?"

"You knew the kind of files that the Others kept on all of us. But even their information had limits. Blondie knew what prison I was in, when and why, but she didn't know about that particular detail." Sawyer took a deep breath. "Told her about it about a month ago."

"How'd she take it?"

"Lot better than you are." Sawyer hesitated. "Sorry, Hugo, old habits. Anyway, couple weeks ago, we took a trip down to Albuquerque to see her, mainly so I could apologize, and try and set things right between him. She let me in the house for all of five minutes, before she kicked my ass to the curb."

Hurley wasn't entirely sure what to say - a rare occurrence for him. Finally, he told him: "I'm sorry, dude, I really am. But, um, why are you telling me all this?"

Sawyer took a breath. "For the first time in my life, I got all the money I need, and nothing useful to do with it. I tried getting them some cash a few years back, but considering where she was living, Cassidy clearly never got it. You had a lot of money before Oceanic crashed, and you clearly knew how to make it work for you. That's why I'm coming to you. I want to set up a trust for Clementine."

Hurley had never thought, even given everything that they had been through together, that Sawyer would ever come to him talking like he was better than him at something. And even though he knew how much this had to mean to him, his first reaction was still quintessentially Hugo Reyes: "Look, I can help you with that, God knows I have the people to talk to, but are you really sure this is how you want to have a relationship with your daughter?"

"Right now, Hugo, this is the only relationship I can have with her." Sawyer's eyes seemed far away. "Look, I want to be in Clementine's life. I don't think I realize that 'til I got back. And I know it would be good if she and Aaron and Ji Yeon could someday play together. But right now, I just don't see that happening. And unless I can find a way, this is the only way that I can take care of her. So come on Hugo, can you help me with this or not?"

Hurley didn't hesitate. "I'll talk to my guys about it. And Sawyer, I hope like hell you can get her to change her mind."

"So do I, Big Boy."

Just then, Sayid walked up to them. "You two seem unusually deep in thought. Anything serious?"

"It's kind of personal, dude." Hurley told Sayid. "Hopefully, someday soon, we'll be able to tell about it."

"I sure as hell hope so." Sawyer's voice turned playful. "So tell me something: when are you and the missus thinking about having a couple of rug rats?"

"I could say the same for you and Juliet," Hurley couldn't help but notice how much more relaxed Sayid was from the last few weeks.

Sawyer got a faraway look on his face. "Honestly, we haven't even had that conversation. Right now, Blondie's so wrapped up in her nephew that I don't think she's given it much of a thought."

"Well, she was on that island longer than the rest of us," Hurley told her. "Plus, you know, whole Other's fertility doctor thing. That could have taken a lot out of her."

"Maybe not as much as you'd think," Sawyer told them. "She actually wanted to talk to Doc about what she'd have to do in order to get back into private practice. Maybe working as an OB again."

"That's kinda awesome," Hurley told them. "Okay, when she tells the rest of us, try to act surprised, but Sun and Jin are gonna ask Juliet if she can be Ji Yeon's official godmother."

Both Sawyer and Sayid did something that Hurley had never seen either of them do on the island - they both laughed. "Well, I guess she is the most responsible of any of us," Sayid told them.

"Guns to our heads and all," Sawyer said. "Then again, she tell me that telling Sun she was going to have a baby was the best news she'd ever given in three years on the island."

Sayid turned solemn again. "Having to be at that man's beck and call for three years would've done a nightmare on that woman's psyche. I can't imagine the dreams she must have."

"That's pretty understanding, considering how much you know, you hated her when you first met," Hurley pointed out.

Sayid paused for a minute. "Juliet was always honest. I don't think I realized it until we were rescued. She was always honest about who she was and what she did. She never really was one of them. I guess I never realized it until we were off the island."

"You finally seeing a shrink?' Sawyer asked, only half in jest.

"My wife. She is the best part of me. And she's helped make me whole."

Sawyer smiled. "Know what you mean." Then he shrugged. "Think we've been getting a little too serious. I'd say its time we kick back a few. Where's the drinks?"

"Don't know what we have that's your kind of thing."

"Hell, as long as it doesn't have a Dharma label on it, I'm gonna be fine."