Chapter 6

Considering everything that Jack had had on his plate from the moment Carole Littleton had opted for surgery, he had not gone to much trouble to contact the other Oceanics. Instead, he had made a single phone call to the person who he counted on to make sure that everyone else would know about it: Hurley.

Hurley hadn't known enough of the medical jargon to know exactly what kind of surgery was being performed, but he knew enough from ER that no brain surgery was minor. So he had told Jack not to worry that much on his end and that he would get the rest of the group together. He had only asked one other question that Jack hadn't been able to answer immediately.

"You still know how to reach him?" Jack asked. "I thought he'd gone quiet ever since we were rescued."

"He and his family have been keeping in touch with me ever since we got back to civilization," Hurley told him. "Hasn't been easy, but considering without his wife, we'd still be on the island, I figured we owed it to him."

Jack knew that Charles Widmore had a vested disapproval in his son-in-law - hell, he probably arranged for him to end up on the island in the first place - and that Desmond and Penny had gone to ground to make sure he never found them. For him to show up in one of the most publicity hungry settings was a huge risk, one that Jack would just as soon he not take. On the other hand- "You think that he can make it here in time?"

"Don't know for sure," Hurley admitted. "But he saved Claire's life on more than one occasion. I think he deserves to y'know, make the decision for himself."

"All right then," Jack told them. "In the meantime, call everybody else, and get them up here quick. I'm not sure how quickly the neurosurgery team is going to operate, but my guess is, they'll want to do it as quickly as possible. Claire's going to need as much support as we can give her."

"Dude, I'll take care of it. And as soon as I finish assembling everybody else, I'll be on the next train up." No one needed to mention how much the survivors hated even the idea of flying these days.

Jack then spent the next hour doing a press conference for the hospital explaining the nature of the surgery that the other Dr. Shepherd was about to perform on Claire's mother. He was not entirely surprised that more than half of the questions that the reporters asked him had nothing to do with the radical brain surgery that Derek was about to perform, but rather about him, and more details about what it had been like stranded on an island with her daughter for 100 days.

He was rather grateful that Dr. Weber had decided to do the press conference with him, and was more than willing to try and guide the questions back to the radical surgery that they were going to perform.. Weber was clearly much more gifted in the art of massaging the media better than he did, and after enough questions about the procedure, he declared the press conference over.

"You handled yourself well up there," Weber told him when they were all finished.

"I've had more experience with the press than I would've cared to," Jack responded

"You sure you want to keep doing this? Derek's the one actually doing the procedure; there's no reason that he should have to avoid all of this."

Jack had thought about this for a bit. "Only until Claire and the rest of my friends get here," he told him. "Then, with your permission, I'd like to spend the rest of my time with them. They'll need somebody to explain the nuts and bolts of what's going to happen, and obviously, I'm the best qualified among them."

"You know I can't let them in the observation room when the surgery is taking place," Weber reminded him. "I can let you and Claire in, but that's as far as the regulations allow."

Jack knew that even letting the patient's daughter into the observation deck was a major breech in protocol, and the fact that he was being allowed it at all was a lot of latitude even for a doctor who'd only been at Seattle Grace for less than eight months. He knew that this was more due to his celebrity status then anything else, and this was one of the rare occasions that he hadn't minded leaning on that more than usual.

"I appreciate all the courtesy that you've been allowing us," he told his boss.

"Don't thank us yet, Jack." Weber reminded him. "All we've done so far is agree to perform this surgery. The rest is up to Derek."

Jack's tension must have shown. "I just wish that there was something more that I could do."

"You were in the right place at the right time." Weber told him. "Maybe that will be enough to help save this woman's life. I'm not a particularly religious man, but if I were, I might consider this a sign."

"I'm not that kind of person," Jack admitted, "but in this case, maybe I'll consider it."

For the first time in a while, Jack allowed himself to think of John Locke. If he had been there, no doubt he would've thought that this was fate acting out. But then, of course, Locke wasn't here. He had stayed behind on the island, sure that it was his destiny, sure that he had been brought there for a reason.

He shook it off. John wasn't there. Fate and destiny had nothing to do with anything any more. Science had diagnosed Carole Littleton's aneurysm. And that same science was the only thing that could save her.

Not all the Oceanics had come to lend their support to Claire and her mother, but more than half of the survivors had. Some of them - Hurley, the Kwons, Sayid and Nadia - now lived in the LA area, and had all come up together. In fact, as things turned out, they ended up arriving in Seattle nearly half a day before the Littletons did. They had tried to stay under the radar, but when you were as big a celebrity as Hugo Reyes was, it was very difficult to be incognito, and the press hadn't even had to try that hard to find a hotel clerk that was willing to sell out whatever confidentiality arrangement they had with their clientele. The paparazzi descended on them even before they had a chance to get to the hospital, which meant that it had been a bitch getting down to Seattle Grace.

It was then that Hugo demonstrated the advantage of not living like a multi-millionaire. He rented one of the cheaper SUVs that they had and managed to sneak most of their party there before most of the media had realized who they were supposed to be chasing. Then, with some additional help from Jack, they had managed to get in through one of the subbasements, and into the hospital. There they found that Jack wasn't the only familiar face.

"How on Earth did you manage to sneak in?" Sayid asked Sawyer.

"It's all thanks to Blondie here," Sawyer pointed to Juliet. "Most of those sons of bitches are so busy looking for us, they seem to have forgotten that she was even involved, or that she happened to have an M.D. after her name."

"I classified this as a business trip. Technically speaking, I'm here to visit a colleague of mine," Juliet said with a trace of her old smugness. " It's just a coincidence that I brought my boyfriend with me, and that an old friend of his happens to be here as well."

"Don't tell me you billed your hospital for this," Sun said with a small amount of wit.

"Why? I paid for our airfare and rental car," Sawyer told her. "But enough about that. Where the hell are the Littleton family?"

Sawyer must have been more worried then he let on - he hadn't used any of his nicknames for Claire or Aaron. "Their plane landed in Seattle less than two hours ago," Jack told them. "They're getting a Medivac chopper to fly them the rest of the way."

Hurley looked a little concerned. "Dude, you sure that's the best way for them to get here?"

"You really want them coming through the mosh pit that is our ambulance bay right now?" Jack pointed out "Airspace is clear, and we'll be able to handle the media a lot better as long as they don't have to come in that way."

"Did you get any reports on Miss Littleton's condition when her plane landed?" Juliet, still calm in a crisis, asked.

"Right now, every thing seems to be going okay. But we're going to have to run a series of test ASAP when she gets in." Jack told them. "I'll do my best to keep you guys updated, but you're going to have a lot of waiting. This isn't going to be fun."

"Waiting around with no idea what's going to happen next. Gee, that sounds familiar." Sawyer smirked. "Actually, I'm a little surprised you're not running the whole thing by now."

"The neurosurgeon who's going to be operating on Claire's mother is one of the best in the country, if not the world. The hospital we're standing in right now was ranked number three in the country in the last major survey. Honestly, if I were to try and interfere with them, Derek Shepherd would just kick my ass out. I can do a lot more good for Claire right here."

Sun and Sawyer both looked at Jack a little strangely at first, before Sun spoke first. "You really have come a long way, Jack."

"I guess that's what they call personal growth." Now everyone was looking at Sawyer. "What? I'm not the only one who sees a shrink "

Just then, Lexi Grey and George O'Malley, the two interns that Jack had requested shadow him over the course of the day, showed up. "Dr. Shephard, the Littletons chopper is less than two minutes out."

"All right. I want you to make sure Miss Littleton's room is ready, and make sure that all the CAT scans are ready ASAP. " Jack looked around. "I assume you've read the briefings and you know who these people are; I want you to keep them and Claire when she gets here with constant updates." He turned back to George. "O'Malley, you're with me."

George nodded and came with him. "You do know that I'm still not in the same grade level as Meredith or Alex," he reminded him.

"Everything you've demonstrated has made it clear that's a technicality more than anything else," Jack told him. "Any student can do stitches or take a test. You have the gifts of a healer, George. Don't let one failed exam make you think otherwise."

Lexie Grey knew that, among her other qualifications, one of the reasons that Jack had picked her to do help him handle the holdover with the other survivors of the plane crash was her photographic memory. He had given her a briefing folder yesterday night, and she had managed to match names with the faces of the more than two dozen survivors who had shown up to support their friend. She had thought that she was prepared for anything.

Which is why she had been very surprised to see a tall man with brown hair appear on the main floor of the hospital, and tentatively approach the receptionist. "Excuse me, I'm looking for Carole Littleton's room.", he said with a heavy Scottish accent.

"Name,"

"Hume. Desmond Hume."

The receptionist looked on the screen in front of her. "Are you friend or family?"

Desmond looked a little puzzled, and so did Lexie - as far as she knew, there was no one of that name associated with the Oceanic survivors.

It therefore came as something of a shock when James Ford emerged from Carole's room, saw Desmond, walked slowly across the room, and hugged him. "Holy crap, Scotty, didn't think you'd show."

"You know how much Charlie meant. That goes for the people he left behind."

Ford looked around. "Wife around?"

"She's at the harbor. Figured it was safer for her to stay there for the moment."

At that point, Claire, who had only settled with her mother in her room ten minutes earlier, emerged to see what the fuss was about. When she saw Desmond, the shadow that had clouded her face ever since she got here lifted a little. Lexie, who was frankly still baffled by the conversation that had passed, was even more astounded when Claire walked over to him, and embraced Desmond with even more fierceness than the bigger James had.

Clearly the man was some kind of personal friend of the Oceanics, and judging by the name, they were talking about Charlie Pace, the guitarist for DriveShaft who had perished before the rescue. But the rest was somewhat baffling. Did the other Doctor Shephard know what this was about? Had he invited him?

"Look, it's getting kinda crowded in Miss Littleton's room, so maybe we should take this somewhere else before we do anything more exhausting?" Ford was saying.

"Yeah, you're right." Claire turned to Lexie. "Is there some kind of common area where we can get caught up before they have to take my mother in?" she asked.

Lexie considered this for a couple of moments, then said: "There's a conference room just beyond the main desk," she told them. "I, um, don't mean to be a pain, but I don't know if Mr. Hume was on the VIP list?"

"We weren't a hundred percent he'd be able to make it in time," Jack Shephard, mercifully had reappeared. "Mr. Hume and his family spend most of their time overseas, and I didn't think that they'd be able to get here in the window available. But he's more than welcome to be here."

"All right." Lexie told them.

Jack moved right over. "Derek's at the MRI. I need you to get Miss Littleton over there right now. We need to know what exactly we're up against."

This, at least, Lexie was more comfortable with. "Gotcha." She started heading out, Dr. Shephard right behind her. "If you don't mind me asking, how exactly does Mr. Hume fit into all this?"

"He's a personal friend of mine." An odd smile appeared on Jack's face. "I knew him in another life."

Hurley, who had always seemed comfortable even when stranded on a tropical island, seemed a lot more ill at ease than he had in all the time that they had known him. Considering that all of the focus was on Claire and her mother, he didn't want to seem like he was taking attention away from his friend. But eventually, it became clear to Juliet that something was bothering him, and she sat next to him.

"Something bothering you, Hugo?" she asked.

"I just really hate hospitals," was all that he would say for a few minutes. "Didn't your file on me tell you this?"

Juliet had the good grace to be quiet for a moment. "It just had names and dates. It never told us what it was about."

Hurley considered this. "Eight years ago, I was at a party. I stepped on this deck that was already packed with people." He took a deep breath. "It broke, and it fell, and, two people died."

The young man was so cheerful all the time, Juliet was actually astounded to see how close he was to tears he was. Not for the first time, she realized how much Ben Linus had done to rob them of their humanity. She had known about this incident from Hugo's files, but that had just been words on a page.

"After that, I just sort of - went catatonic for awhile. Mom put me in Santa Rosa, and I was there for nearly ten months before I got better." Hugo looked pretty shaky. "I've never really been comfortable in one since."

Juliet considered this for a few moments. "I was a fertility doctor when I came to the island. Telling a woman she was pregnant was supposed to be the happiest day in their life. Then Ben brought me to the island to solve their problems. And I couldn't, and I watched nine women die in three years." She looked around. "It took a lot of work for me to be comfortable in a hospital again."

Neither one of them was talking about Claire, but they didn't have to. She had been symbolic of a lot to both of them, so if her mother was in bad shape, it struck both of them as an incredibly bad omen. They also knew Jack wouldn't be rushing this along as quickly as he was if the circumstances weren't so dire.

"This is bad, right?" Hurley said slowly. "I mean, all surgery on your brain sucks, but this is , like, a lot more important, so it's gotta be like, twice as dangerous, right?"

"Fertility specialist, remember?" Juliet said with a small smile.

"I really shouldn't be around her, right now." Hurley told them. "Claire really doesn't need the bad luck."

Now Juliet looked puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

It was odd. Everything that had happened over the last couple of years, and Hurley still couldn't talk to anybody about his curse or about the numbers. He had thought that they had stopped chasing him, and mostly they had, but he hadn't helped but notice that Carole Littleton was staying in room 416. He was about to make a suggestion - he didn't know what - but then Dr. O'Malley reappeared.

"We just finished the most recent scans of Miss Littleton," he told them.

"How bad is it?" Hurley asked.

"Neurosurgery isn't my specialty, but Meredith and Dr. Shepherd think that we need to get Miss Littleton into the OR as soon as possible." O'Malley told them.

Juliet looked around. There were no nurses around the room. "So why haven't they gone in?"

"Miss Littleton said she wanted to talk to her daughter and the other Dr. Shephard alone." George told them, clearly as puzzled as they were but not for the same reasons.

Jack knew that every extra second that Carole spent talking with them could prove potentially fatal. He also knew that the doctors in Australia as well as Derek had to have told her just how dangerous this was, and yet Carole clearly had to talk to her daughter in order to say her goodbyes in case she didn't come out alive. He assumed that he was there just for her mother to say thank you.

"You don't have to lie to me about how risky this surgery is," Carole told him. "I've already survived a lot worse than that just coming here. The last year I've gotten with my daughter and my grandson have been more than a reward. Surviving this surgery would be gravy."

"Don't talk that way, Mum," Claire was saying. It was clearly taking all her energy just to hold back tears.

"That's not why I asked to talk to you, Dr. Shephard." Carole swallowed nervously "There's something that you're entitled to know. Something that I haven't even told Claire yet."

Now Jack was clearly puzzled.

"A long time ago, I had a relationship with a married man. I knew that he had a family, but I couldn't help myself, and neither could he." Carole took a deep breath. "Even though he lived in America, we were together for three years. Long enough for us to have a child together. Your aunt Lindsey never approved, wanted me to give you up for adoption, but I kept you, and I kept him. Then he stopped coming."

Suddenly, a horrible picture was coming together in Jack's head. But he needed to hear Miss Littleton confirm it for himself. "Who was he?"

"His name was Christian. He was your father." Carole looked at Claire. "Jack is your half-brother."

Jack risked a look at Claire. She looked incredibly stunned, but somehow she didn't seem surprised. Was that who his father had gone to see when he had headed to Australia on that last trip before he died? Was she the reason that he had ended up on Oceanic 815?

"W- why are you telling me this, Mum?" Claire was clearly trying to hold back tears.

"Because there's a very good chance I may die." Carole told her daughter. "And even if I survive, you deserve to know that you have family beside me in this world. Some kind of fate put the two of you on that plane together. Maybe it was so that the two of you could finally take care of each other."

At that moment, Derek entered the room. "Miss Littleton, we really need to get started."

"It's all right." Miss Littleton told her family. "I've said what I needed to say."

Jack would later on realize how much courage it had taken for her to do what she had just done. Yet for quite a while afterwards, a part of him would still end up hating her for bringing this subject up at a moment when all of them were at their most vulnerable.

After everything that he had gone through getting this surgery together, George had been certain that Dr. Shephard would be heading to the observation room to make sure every element of the surgery was under his eye. George liked this Dr. Shephard; he had taken him under his wing in a way that no other attending at this hospital had, but the fact remained the man was something of a control freak - not necessarily the worst quality for a surgeon.

Yet after a few moments, he didn't follow Derek and Meredith up into OR 3, which had been booked solid for the last fourteen hours. Instead, he walked towards Claire with what looked to be a dazed expression on his face. George didn't recognize it, and after a few moments, he realized why: he'd never seen a look like that on Jack's face in all the time he'd known him.

Another intern might have tried to tactfully remind Jack of the schedule, but with the empathy that so many of the other doctors mocked, he realized that his attending clearly needed a moment. He hadn't been in the room when Miss Littleton had been talking to her daughter, but it was pretty clear that the patient had dropped one hell of a bombshell.

Jack looked towards Claire. "Did you know?" was all he could manage to say.

Claire Littleton looked like she was on the verge of tears herself, which given the circumstances was understandable. But what she said next was even more stunning than what George had thought.

"Four years ago" she began slowly, "right after the accident, a man came to the hospital where Mum was being treated. He told me that he was my father, and that he had stopped coming because my Aunt Lindsay disapproved. He told me that there were ways to take my mother off life support that weren't against the law. And I told him to go to hell. He never even told me his name, and I told him I didn't want to know it. I didn't know who he was until after we got rescued, and I saw his picture at his memorial."

Jack was clearly overcome when he heard all this. "My father... he never believed in that kind of stuff. He was adamantly opposed to physician assisted-" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"I spent years thinking that my father was dead," Claire told him, "and when he only comes by to tell me to - kill my mom-" She was clearly in a lot better control of herself then Jack was. "I never even told my mom that. How could I tell you?"

Jack took another deep breath. Once again, George really wished he wasn't always becoming privy to information the patients clearly didn't want them to know. There was a small, rather petty part that was a little relieved to know that the soap opera element that seemed to surround this hospital wasn't entirely limited to him. But it was rather tiny, and he managed to quash it.

Instead, he coughed gently, and said: "Dr. Shephard?"

It was a long several moments before Jack gathered himself - George could swear he heard Jack count to five - before he looked at him. Suddenly, he seemed to remember where he was, and he said quietly: "Dr. O'Malley, I assume I can count on your discretion?"

George really didn't like being asked to keep secrets. However, since he didn't know all the details, and he was pretty sure not even Christina or Izzie could figure this one out without a lot of help, he had no problem saying: "Of course."

"I'm going to go make sure there are no problems with your mother's surgery." Jack said slowly. He got to his feet, and walked towards the door, before turning to George again. "Would you please talk to the Chief and see what conditions are necessary to get family to observe?"

George considered this. "Patients aren't allowed-"

"I'm not talking about only the patient's. I'm talking about my sister."

Part of George wished he hadn't learned that. Then he saw the hopeful look on Claire's face, and was glad he had.

Kate hated hospitals. Her mother had managed to hide Wayne's abuse a lot better than some other battered wives, but Wayne had gotten - enthusiastic - more than once, and Diane had gone in half a dozen times at least. Each time, a social worker had come in, noticed the bruising, and had tried as gently as possible that it might not be the safest thing in the world for her or her daughter to return home. And each time, Diane had firmly told them that it was an accident, making the hole in Kate's heart a little bigger each time.

Hospitals caused more pain than they healed. And that had been long before she had returned to St. Louis when her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. That had been the last time she had ever seen her, and just as she had promised, the first thing she had done was scream for help. Kate didn't even know if her mother was alive any more. And a tiny part of her - the part that was no doubt part of her biological father - didn't really care any more.

And now, she was staring at another one- granted a much nicer one than the one in St Louis, but a hospital all the same. She didn't know the patient, but that didn't change the fact that she had to get in there. That didn't change the fact that it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to get into than the other hospitals she'd been to. She didn't see any signs of the U.S. Marshals or any other law enforcement agencies, but there were a shitload of reporters vans waiting outside. They might not be here to see if wanted fugitive Kate Austen would show up, but they all knew what she looked like, and the minute the cameras were turned on her, every policemen within twenty miles would converge on Seattle Grace.

There had to be a way into the hospital. The obvious person to contact would be Jack, but he was no doubt somehow involved in Claire's mother surgery. If anything happened that could prove distracting, she would never forgive herself. Claire probably would be willing to help, but she no doubt had enough to worry about as it was. Almost everybody she knew from the plane was in the building, and she did still have their numbers - but even though all of them had learned a lot about how to think in a crisis on the island, she wasn't sure how any of them would be able to get her into the building.

No, really, there was only one person she could count on to get her inside, and even then considering, one of the first things she done before getting here was break his heart, she knew that there was a risk in doing it.

Reluctantly, she started dialing.

Jack had looked awfully distracted when he had walked in, which was understandable considering the pressure that he was going to be under, but he had asked Juliet to help run relays between her and the OR. Considering her background, that made sense.

So James Ford was a little at loose ends when his cell started vibrating. And even though he hadn't heard from her since she disappeared, he somehow instinctively knew who it was before he read the text message.

"Son of a bitch."