Chapter 4

Jack had transferred to Seattle Grace to get away from the publicity that followed the Oceanics who had relocated to LA. Jin and Sun and Sawyer had admitted there had been some press after them outside of the media glare, but nowhere as much as what Hurley and Sayid had gone through staying in California. (Admittedly Hurley had been more of a target before the crash, so he had been more used to it) Even after Jack had returned to LA for the housewarming party, he had been fortunate enough to slip under the radar. He had almost begun to think that maybe he had found a certain amount of anonymity in one of the most well known hospitals in the country.

Unfortunately, after being on the island for three months, he had forgotten the problems with the slow news cycle. 2006 was not an election year - at least, not a major one. And eventually the major networks and the internet servers got tired of doing stories related of the usual Congressional gridlock and preparations for the Academy Awards. Add to this the fact that January was traditionally the quietest month of the year when it came to dealing with news, and it was probably inevitable that someone would start looking for human interest stories. And you couldn't get more human interest than the anniversary of the safe return of forty passengers from one of the biggest airplane crashes in history.

So on January 3, all of the Oceanics began getting harangued by the media as everybody began trying to find or talk with some of the survivors of Flight 815. And the fact of the matter was there were so many different angles, that every network had a different set of questions. CBS wondered if the plane crash could have had any ties to the Paik syndicate, the father of one of the survivors, and rumored to be one of the most notorious crime lords in Asia. Fox considered the possibility that Sayid Jarrah, high on the U.S. militaries watchlist for crimes after the first Gulf War, might have been responsible for bringing the plane down. NBC pointed out that many of the passengers on the flight, most notably James Ford and fugitive Kate Austen, had been involved in many criminal enterprises, and both spent time tracking down law enforcement officials who had been pursuing them. And CNN filled an endless amount of time, trying to prove how a plane that had been found in the Sunda Trench with all 324 passengers on board, could somehow come up with forty survivors more than a month after the wreckage had been found.

All of the Oceanics gave Jack the heads up that something like this was probably going to hit him, probably sooner rather later. Jack had managed to work at Seattle Grace for more than four months without even bringing up why he had transferred from St. Sebastian. Richard Webber had known about the circumstances, of course, but he had used his discretion in not telling the staff, because frankly, it wasn't relevant to anything. But even as he watched his friends give interviews on most of the media outlets, Jack had entertained the naive hope that he might manage to emerge from this undisturbed.

That notion flew to pieces on one of the most innocuous of notes, when a diligent reporter at Good Morning America, doing a piece for the medical segment about a clinical trial involving Dr. Derek Shepherd had found out because of a clerical error that Jack Shephard was also working there. He had passed it onto his producer, who in turn passed it on to a news reporter who had been thinking of retiring that year, and had decided to hold out for one more story. Unfortunately, this elder statesman was still not nearly as good when it came to dealing with social media, and the information leaked to a competitor. Within two hours, every media outlet in the country knew where the man who had been the spokesman for the survivors of Oceanic 815 was working.

So, at 7:55 A.M, the next day, when Jack was driving into the hospital, his cover had been blown in the most horrible way, when it seemed that every major media outlet in the country (and a couple from Australia) had converged around Seattle Grace. Which would've been bad anywhere, but they all assembled in the ambulance bay. And that meant that half the staff, and most of the residents came to the hospital, and had been deluged by a cacophony of questions about him as they walked into the hospital

"Does everybody at this hospital come her with a ridiculous amount of baggage?" Alex asked Christina by the time the five of them had gotten together by the ER.

"Why? Is there some dark, deep secret that you still haven't told us, Karev?" Christina needled.

"Hey, we're not talking about me. We're talking about Dr. 'I-Survived The Worst Plane Crash in History and I Didn't Tell Anyone About it"

"That's a mouthful. Doesn't roll off the tongue the way 'McDreamy' and McSteamy' do." As seemed to be the case, everybody looked at George as if he had grown a second head. "Hey, just saying. You've gotta come up with a better nickname."

"George has a point, though," Meredith said. "If I'd gone through something like that, and come out the other side, I'd tattoo it to my head."

"Like the fact that you broke up with McDreamy five months ago, and are still sneaking off to schtup him in the closet?" Alex asked.

Meredith considered this for a few moments, and then did what she always did when the subject was her sex life: change the subject. "Izzie, you did a rotation with him for two weeks; did he even hint at this?"

"The guy must be the greatest poker player in the world. He didn't even hint at it." Izzie had been quiet because she'd been playing those same two weeks in her head over and over, looking for even the smallest hint that the attending she'd been shadowing had been hiding this from her. Hell, from all of them.

"Did this place turn into TMZ while I wasn't paying attention?" Even though, technically speaking, they were all at least on the same level of her by now, everybody jumped as Miranda Bailey approached them. "Are you all stringers for a major supermarket tabloid?"

"Come on, Dr. Bailey, you know there's more to this-"

"Answer the damn question! Are you reporters or is this a hospital?"

They knew better than to keep the Nazi waiting for an answer. "This is a hospital."

"And I know for goddamn sure that you all have more pressing matters to deal than to wonder what our most recent attending did before he came to Seattle Grace! So you have until the count of three to get back to whatever patients or paperwork or interns you have to deal with!"

The five of them knew better than to fuck around; everybody had jumped back to work before Bailey had finished "one". However, had they bothered to wait around after the smoke had cleared, they might have noticed that the chief resident had stayed behind. Because about a minute later, Jack Shephard managed to clear the gauntlet of reporters, looking like he was halfway to a nervous breakdown.

Half the staff would've been equally shocked to see a look of sympathy - an expression that many of the interns didn't think Miranda Bailey was capable of - appear on her face. "You could've paged me. I could've gotten you an easier way in."

Jack was used to seeing a lot of expressions on Miranda's face over the last few months, but he never had paged her as the touchy-feely type. It was one of the reasons he had so much respect for her. So when she asked but didn't ask about the secret he'd been hiding ever since he'd started working here, he felt compelled to confide in her. "I've been through a lot of this shit for the past year. It's best to just try and deal with it head on." He shrugged. "I figured if I just did it now, they'd get the hell out."

"You up to facing patients today? My guess is, from here on out, they're going to think twice before wanting to see you."

"Best thing for me now, is to keep working." Jack told her. "I'll make sure I'm not holding a scalpel today, but I can consult without much of a problem."

As they walked away from the door he added; "I should probably have a talk with the Chief. Tell him, maybe the best thing to is hold a press conference. Get this out of the way before it gets any messier."

"Did he know about this before he hired you?" Miranda asked.

"He has access to the Internet. I can't imagine my name didn't come up in connection with the phrase 'plane crash' when he checked my resume." Jack shook his head. "If he didn't, this is a hell of a way to find out."

"Gotta hand it to you, keeping this close to the vest four full months in this gossip center." Miranda said.

"Tell me about it, I was here three days, I knew who everybody was sleeping with and why." Jack gave a smile. "Miranda, it ever feel like everyone in the world is having sex except for you?"

A strange look passed Dr. Bailey's face. "I'm married with a baby, remember?" She shrugged. "So, I guess the answer's yes."

"I came to Seattle Grace because of it's reputation, and the people who worked here. Didn't think I was going to land in the middle of an 80's sex-comedy."

"Feels that way a lot of the time." Bailey had noticed that Jack was doing a lot of deflecting to keep from talking about what had happened to him after surviving the plane crash, never mind apparently coming back from the dead. But she wasn't going to press him on it. She wasn't that in the mood for gossip, and she knew that the grilling he had just taken from the press was going to be nothing compared to the residents of this hospital.

"You've been remarkably patient. Which frankly, isn't something that most of the doctors at this hospital would be given the circumstances." Jack said suddenly. "I think that entitles you to ask me a question."

Miranda didn't slow down, and the expression on her face didn't change. Nevertheless, it was clear that she was surprised to hear this coming from him. "It's your business."

"Come on, Miranda, you're telling me that you're not the least bit curious to know what it was like being stranded in the South Pacific on a deserted island for almost a hundred days." Jack made a gesture towards the entourage which showed no sign of thinning. "You're certainly more deserving of an answer than they are."

"You're serious about this?" she asked.

"You promise not to tell anyone else; I'll answer anything about it you want to know," he told her. "Your word's good enough for me."

She thought it over for a few seconds, not sure whether or not this was some kind of trick. Then she decided, the hell with it. "All right. It must have been a tremendous strain being stranded for so long. Did anybody get hurt when you were on the island?"

"We lost more than a few people." Jack was neutral even now.

"Anyone you feel responsible for?"

Jack hesitated, then plunged. "I felt responsible for everyone who died. Not just on the island, but every patient that I've ever lost. Maybe that makes me a bad doctor."

"On the contrary, I'd say that makes you a great doctor. Maybe better than a lot of the ones I've met. Never doubt that, Jack."

Considering that Bailey handed out compliments like a person could throw barrels, Jack knew this meant a lot. " I'm going to my office for a couple of hours. Do me a favor. Keep the residents away til then."

"They're not going to let this go just because you say so."

"They will if you tell them emphatically enough."

FLORENCE, ITALY

If Jack was the most uncomfortable member of the Oceanic survivors with the publicity that had been at the center of renewed media interest, Sayid was a close second. Admittedly, he had a much better reason for his distrust of the press, and the rest of the world, than any of the others. But the fact was that he wasn't particularly wild about having to go through a rehash of everything that he had been accused of in Iraq.

There were several well known commentators who, with the renewal of the interest in the Oceanic story, along with the struggles of the American occupation of his home country who thought that he should be tried for war crimes. The voices on the right said that he was a symbol of America's failings the first time in the Gulf; the voices on the left thought that if they had been willing to try some of Sayid's friends, they should be willing to try someone whose crimes were much worse. Sayid almost expected one of the news channels to announce a poll on this, which would've been mildly ironic since the media had called him a hero in the early days after their reappearance. Not only that, the FBI, including a couple of agents who he would've been just as happy never to hear from again, had been making appearances on other media outlets, saying things that dealt with issues that all of them would've been happy never to deal with again.

He had a pretty good idea what might be coming when Hugo and Sun had both called him about CNN calling them for interviews. So, right after celebrating New Years, he had told Nadia that it might be in their interest to celebrate their first anniversary a week earlier than usual. By now, his wife had gotten used to the surge of publicity that had been following them, and was more than willing to get out of the country for a few weeks. She had understood why her husband didn't want to go to London or Paris, so she'd been more than willing to settle for a tour of Italy. He had ignored the option to use the Golden Tickets Oceanic had given them as part of the settlement, and taken a less public airline.

But even in Florence, they couldn't escape it completely. Sayid had found as much out when he had come up to their hotel room, and found that one of the Italian news channels was running an interview with the Kwons, who they had found after a couple of days of looking. He found it ironic that their now perfect English was now being dubbed into very loud Italian.

Still, despite all that, no one had recognized either he or his wife in Italy, something that he had hoped would continue as they had went out for dinner. Unfortunately, the restaurant that they had chosen had been overcrowded, and they had been forced to wait in an area that was surrounded by bitter cold.

"How much longer do you think it'll be?" Nadia asked, when he came back from his second visit with the maitre'd.

"He assured us that it would be no more than ten minutes, but he gave us those assurances the last time," He sighed. "Perhaps we should consider dining somewhere else."

"I'm not in any particular hurry," she told them. "Besides, I actually like the cold."

"Yeah, you can't exactly allow time to interfere with anything. It'll only come back to bite you."

Sayid looked up, half expecting to see a reporter of some kind. But the young man who greeted them didn't have the look of a paparazzi. "How long have you been waiting for a table?"

"I'm not waiting for one. I'm waiting for my date." The man, who looked to be in his mid-twenties, with a neat haircut and a full beard, looked at his watch again. "She's already twenty minutes late, and I'm beginning to think I've been stood up."

Sayid was suspicious by nature, and this story didn't sound particularly original. "How long have you known her?"

"Actually, this is our second date. Frankly, I'm a little amazed she agreed to it after the first." He looked around. "I'm sorry. I'm Daniel Faraday."

"Sayid." No need to make this job much easier for him. "And what exactly do you do?"

"I'm a classical pianist. I'm actually here for a Chopin concert."

"An odd choice, given the country we're in."

"Oh, I play some Rossini, Verdi, and Leoncavallo, but Chopin's always been my bread-and-butter. One of the first pieces I ever learned was the Fantasie in C Sharp Minor, and I always feel most at home when I'm playing it." Daniel paused. "Have we met before?"

Sayid was only surprised that it had taken Daniel this long to recognize him. He was considering his next move, when suddenly the musician looked ahead. "Excuse me, she's finally here."

He moved forward to an attractive red-haired woman around his age. "Sorry, I'm late. The conference I was attending ran over, and I needed to go back to my apartment to change."

"And you didn't bother to call?" Daniel sounded more amused than irritated.

"Hey, Leakey is to me what Paganini is to you." She seemed amused as well. "I thought you said that you didn't have any friends in Florence."

"Oh, we just met a couple of minutes ago. Charlotte, this is Sayid. Sayid, this is Charlotte Lewis."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, though it no doubt means my wife and I won't be getting a table any time soon," Sayid gave a small smile.

Daniel thought for a few moments, then walked up to the maitre'd. He only talked to him for a few seconds before the headwaiter walked up to Sayid and told him that he and his wife's table was now available.

"How on earth did you do that?" Nadia asked, with a small amount of amusement.

"I've been eating at this restaurant for the last week, and tipping rather generously," Daniel told them. "I told them if they were going to be so blatant about refusing to seat someone from the Middle East, they could forget about me or anyone else from my company from eating here ever again."

Sayid had been used to the almost casual prejudice many people in the world had against him because of where he was - he'd even encountered some on the island, where you'd have thought that they could all start with a clean slate. Faraday had been the first stranger he'd met who been willing to forego that kind of attitude, and even arguing for him. Perhaps it was because, like him, Daniel was essentially a stranger in a strange land, but very few people would've made even this subtle a gesture. Whatever the reason, he decided to take a chance and invited the two of them to have dinner with he and his wife.

He had expected the musician to say no - after all, he probably wanted to spent time forging a relationship with this woman. Sayid was surprised when neither he nor Charlotte objected and agreed to share a table with him.

The evening had the potential to turn into a disaster, but Sayid was pleasantly surprised to find that he - and apparently everyone else - were having a good time. If Daniel or Charlotte had recognized him, neither made any mention of it during the meal, and though neither he nor Nadia had much knowledge of classical music or anthropology - which, apparently, was what Daniel's date field of interest - both of them managed to explain their subject with such clarity that he didn't feel like a fool.

"I'm curious. How exactly did you get introduced to Charlotte in the first place?" Nadia asked. "I wouldn't think that either of you would travel in the same circles."

Daniel smiled a little at this. "I actually understand it better than you'd think. I really don't like to brag about it, but there was a time when I considered becoming a physicist."

"Really?" Sayid asked.

"At one point, I was on track to become one of the youngest fellows at Oxford." Again Daniel spoke with a self-effacing behavior that should've sounded elitist but he managed to make come across as charming. "But it my final year, I basically realized I wasn't enjoying myself. The pressure was just getting to be too great."

"From your studies?" Charlotte asked.

"No, my mother. When I was still a boy, I had a great deal of musical talent, but she insisted that my primary gift was my mind, and that I had to focus entirely on it. For a long time, I was willing to go along with it. But after more than five years, I finally got it through my head that nothing was ever going to please her. So I dropped out and decided to go back to my first love."

"Well, I've heard you play, and frankly, if your mother couldn't see how gifted you were, you're well done to be rid of her." Charlotte told him firmly.

Daniel gave a small smile. "For the first twenty years of my life, all I did was to try and win my mother's approval. Right now, I could honestly give a damn what she thinks of me." He changed the subject. "Though I am impressed that you managed to know what the right kind of wine to go with the mussels."

"In another life, I was once a sous chef," Sayid told Daniel. "I guess some gifts never quite leave you."

"You're probably right," Charlotte told them. "I haven't watched Star Trek in ten years, and I imagine I could still say a word or two in Klingon if I had to." They all shared a laugh at that. "But we've doing almost all the talking, and frankly, you've barely talked about yourselves. How long have you two known each other."

Both of them knew that they could see the danger here, but so far neither Daniel nor Charlotte had given any sign of recognizing either of them. It wouldn't hurt to give them an expurgated version of the events. "Actually, I've known Sayid since we were children together," Nadia told them. "He used to push me into mud piles."

"I'm pretty sure that's a universal sign of affection in whatever culture you study," Charlotte told them sweetly. "So you're childhood sweethearts, and yet you only got married a year ago. A lot must have gotten in the way for you only to connect now."

"Life and love can be complicated, Charlotte," Sayid told her politely. "Perhaps you and Daniel will figure that out if you stay together long enough."

"We can only hope," Daniel told them. "But then again, I've never been much of a believer in destiny. If there's anything that I learned when I was studying at Oxford, is that there are always variables in any equation."

"Hardly the most romantic comparison you could make, Dan," Charlotte said playfully

Daniel shrugged. "Guess I'm more of a scientist then I thought."

The waiter came by with the check. "I may not believe much in the EU," Charlotte said, 'but that check would've been a lot scarier in lira."

Sayid reached for his wallet, but Dan raised his hand. "You were more than nice to share this meal with us, but I'd have completely failed my duties as a gentleman if I didn't pay for this meal."

"Where exactly are you going to give your next concert?" Nadia asked.

"Well, we're about to give one last performance in Florence," Daniel told them. "Next, we'll go to Milan for a stop at La Scala. After that, we're basically done with Italy. How much longer are you going to be in Italy?"

"Probably another week or so," Sayid told him.

"Well, last show's been sold out, and I'm not important enough to get extra tickets anyway." Dan thought for a moment. "We'll be headed to America sometime in the spring. The promoter's still trying to lock down the schedule, but I imagine at some point we'll be in LA."

The slightest bell of alarm went off in Sayid's head. He was beginning to wonder if he had mentioned to these strangers where he and his wife lived. "How would you get in contact with us?"

"Well, I figured I'd just give you the name of my orchestra, and you'd be considerate enough to give me your email address."

"You wouldn't be inviting Charlotte on this particular tour?" Nadia said, almost coquettishly.

"Maybe after we got to know each other a bit better," Charlotte smiled.

Sayid barely heard this, then he asked Daniel if he could talk to him privately.

"When were you going to admit you recognized me and my wife?"

To his credit, Dan didn't even try to keep up that small pretense. "I didn't know who you were at first. But after you spoke for a little while, I managed to put two and two together. Honestly, though, I figured you were traveling incognito for a reason, and I'm more than willing to respect that."

Suddenly Sayid realized how needlessly intense he'd been ever since he'd returned to civilization - if he wanted to be honest, much of his life. It was understandable given the circumstances of the last few weeks in particular - hell, what had happened to him in Paris was enough to make him distrustful of anyone offering kindness to him - but he had developed a fairly effective bullshit detector, and Daniel Faraday had never set it off. Hell, if anything, he'd been so honest that Sayid actually felt a little ashamed of himself. He'd managed to get much better at trusting people over the past year, and now something as innocuous as a discount on concert tickets - one far in the future - had him ready to snap. "My apologies, Daniel," he said slowly.

"It's quite alright," Dan said calmly. "I've seen how relentless the media can be when they're chasing people who haven't done anything to earn it. "

"I've given up watching the news."

"Can't say I blame you." Dan looked at Sayid. "I'd completely understand if you didn't want to give me your contact information."

"This is one of the more enjoyable evenings I've had in quite some time, and I'm more than interesting to hear you play." Sayid gave him his phone number. "We'll probably be back in Los Angeles in a few weeks. Let us know when your company reaches the states."

Daniel looked over at Charlotte. "Honestly, I'm not completely sure I'll be traveling with them just yet."

Sayid had always been good at reading other people's faces, normally to find weaknesses, but he hadn't quite been used to seeing the look that was on Dan's in quite some time. "Are you sure that you're in love with her?"

"I haven't felt this way about a woman in nearly eight years," Dan told him. "I'm not going to let the opportunity slip through my fingers again. You should know yourself, Sayid."

Despite the pleasant evening, Sayid honestly didn't think that he'd see either one of them again. When he did, he had been glad to be proven wrong.