Thank you for the reviews. I was excited to get so much interest for such an out there idea! I'm sorry it took me a while to update, but I'm trying to keep everything as close to the official story as possible and I had no idea who the sixth member of the Oceanic 6 was! I finally settled on someone and then "Meet Kevin Johnson" aired and contradicted me, but if asked who I dislike more...! And for those of you who are wondering, Kate's backstory is the same as it is on the show -- including the fact that she was arrested by the marshal in Australia -- except that she's pregnant... ;)
Chapter 2.
Night had fallen more than an hour before and still no one had come for them.
Now that things had settled down, and a sombre stillness had descended over the beach, Jack could see that he was right in his initial assessment. Of the three hundred plus passengers on board Oceanic Flight 815, only eight of them had made it to the shore alive, though given the extent of their injuries, two of them didn't look like they would make it until help arrived.
The worst of these was a Korean man in his thirties, the husband (he assumed) of the only other woman to survive, but none of them had been successful in extracting so much as a name out of her since she didn't seem to speak a word of English. She seemed so out of it, almost hysterical as she knelt, sobbing, over her husband's still form that Jack doubted that she even knew what she was saying.
Aside from himself, the Korean woman, Kate, and the Iraqi, who Jack learned was called Sayid, only the heavyset man with the unflattering nickname 'Hurley' that he'd seen helping Sayid earlier, and a taciturn southerner who chose to identify himself only as Sawyer, remained.
Everyone else, including the half dozen staff, was either dead or dying despite the best efforts of those of them with even basic First Aid training to save them.
After hearing from Kate that he was a doctor, Sayid had helped Jack move over to the makeshift infirmary, but without the right tools, or even a sterile environment to work in, Jack wasn't confident that removing the shrapnel lodged in the Korean man's throat would do him more good than harm. While leaving it in exposed him to all sorts of infections that he didn't have the antibiotics to treat, it appeared to be the only thing holding the carotid artery together. Without it, Jack was afraid that he would bleed out within hours.
He didn't have the heart to try to break it to the wife, but if they stayed there much longer, it was lose-lose either way.
As soon as the sun began to go down, and twilight settled over the beach, Sayid started a signal fire, close enough to the wounded that he could still watch them, and they all gathered around it to wait.
Every so often, one of them would glance out at the horizon, scanning it for a helicopter or a passing ship or some other sign of hope, but it was as empty as it had been since the chaos of the crash subsided.
For the time being at least, it looked like they were on their own.
"Shouldn't someone, like, have rescued us by now?" Hurley asked when all other attempts at conversation failed, voicing what Jack was sure each of them must have been thinking. He looked around the circle, at each of them in turn, his face falling when moments passed without a response.
"I'm sure they're on their way," Sayid agreed in a flat tone, seeming to decide that someone had to say something to keep up morale, but as he watched him feed another branch into the flames, Jack didn't think he looked sure at all.
"I've got mangoes, if anyone's hungry," Kate piped up to break the despondent silence, appearing from somewhere outside glow with an armload of fruit balanced on top of her bump.
Jack had seen her gathering them earlier in the afternoon, when he was tending to the Korean man, but the thought had slipped his mind until then, and everyone else's it seemed; within seconds the mood had lifted: even Hurley perked up at the assurance that they wouldn't starve while waiting for the Coast Guard. The water content, however scant, could only help with the dehydration as well, at least until they could a more viable source of fresh water.
"It's not much," she confessed as she started distributing the fruit among them, handing two to the Korean woman along with a crudely fashioned spoon to mash one up for her husband, "but it's all I could find without going into the jungle."
Seeing how awkward her movements were as the one underneath rolled out of her grip, hitting the sand where she couldn't reach it, Jack struggled onto his good knee to help her, but she waved him away.
"It's fine, Jack. You keep it," she told him when he tried to hand it back to her, forcing a smile as she moved on to Sawyer.
The southerner cocked an eyebrow at this exchange, regarding them with a curious look, but didn't comment as he took the mango she held out to him. If he were anyone else, Jack might have asked him to explain the joke, but after hours of watching him do nothing except paw through the luggage that washed up on the beach, and smoke the cigarettes that he found, he had already come to the conclusion that he was just an ass.
Kate returned to her spot in the sand beside him once she finished passing them out, and watching her, noting for the first time how vulnerable she looked as she wiped the juice from her mouth with the back of her hand, trying to hide how hungry she was, Jack felt an involuntary pang of sympathy for her.
It couldn't be easy, being pregnant and alone on an island without food or water or adequate shelter, where she could go into labour at any moment, and yet she seemed determined to take care of him and everyone else. It made him want to take care of her; he couldn't believe that anyone – especially a man that she'd loved, judging by the tears he'd seen earlier – would abandon someone as good-natured and sweet as she was.
"Here," he said, holding his own uneaten mango out to her when she finished her own. It was a small gesture, but it was all he could think to do for her.
"Don't you want it?" she asked, throwing the scraps into the fire along with the others', her brows knitting together in surprise.
"I'm giving it to you, aren't I?" he assured her with an encouraging smile, extending his arm a little further, but rather than accept it, she wrapped her arms around herself.
"I can't take this, Jack," she complained when, on impulse, he peeled her fingers gently from her elbow and pressed it into her palm. Her hand was warm and soft, and more delicate than he would have imagined given how hard she worked; how restless she was. "You're hurt – you need to keep your strength up."
In truth, even if he wasn't determined to make sure that she had enough to eat, the pain in his leg was making him nauseous; he doubted that he would be able to stomach more than a few bites if he tried.
"So do you," he reminded her, and she shot him a guilty look as her eyes and her free hand drifted to her belly. He didn't believe that she wasn't still hungry, which meant that she wasn't the only one.
"Besides," he added with a grin when he saw that he'd found a way to get through to her: she was stubborn, but not stubborn enough to win at all costs, "it's not for you, it's for the baby, so you have to."
She nodded then, flashing him a tiny smile as she pulled the mango into her lap, cradling it in both hands. "Thanks," she told him in soft voice, breaking the skin with her thumbnail, and as he watched her make short work of it, just like she had the last one, Jack could tell that she was grateful, even if she would never admit it.
Just a little disclaimer: I know some of you will be unhappy that I decided to make Sawyer the sixth member of the Oceanic 6 but he's better for conflict. I can promise you though that this WILL NOT be a love triangle fic. Considering that he doesn't even seem all that interested in taking responsibility for his own child, I doubt he's going to fight Jack for the pregnant girl!
Next chapter: The survivors try to find food and water and Jack continues to worry about Kate... ;)