Thanks for the reviews. :) As promised, here is the pivotal Jack chapter. I hope it was worth the wait! I'm going to try to get an update of "Not Anymore" posted some time in the next few days -- I'm beginning to remember why I vowed never to write two fics at once after "Hide And Seek" and "Going Back"! The only reason I've been giving this one more attention is that most of you seem more interested and eager to read it...
Oh, and for anyone who hasn't already, go over to DarkUFO's spoiler section and check out the comment Damon Lindelof made about the season finale in the latest issue of The Official Lost Magazine! I have no idea what it means yet but I'm happy to speculate! ;)
Chapter 11.
"Jack! Jack!" a voice hissed from somewhere beside him, and Jack jerked awake, rolling over to find himself face to face with a frantic Juliet.
"Juliet, what're…?" he asked, blinking at her in confusion, surprised to see her inside his tent.
"You need to come with me – it's Kate," she insisted, and for a moment, he wondered if he was having a nightmare, until he glanced over at her side of the bed and saw that it was empty.
"What's going on, Juliet? Where is she?" he asked, sitting bolt upright, his heart in his throat as he thought of everything that could have happened to her.
But she was already scrambling back the flap, hurrying in the direction of the tree line.
She didn't slow down until they reached the path into the jungle, and then, he saw her – Kate – lying on her side in the sand, her eyes closed, her dark curls fanning out around her, and for one brief, heart-stopping moment, he was sure that he'd lost her.
"What happened?" he demanded when Juliet just stood there, shell-shocked, her face almost as pale as Kate's. "What were you doing out here?"
"She just… collapsed. She was fine and then…" she stammered as he dropped to his knees beside Kate's still form, pressing his ear to her lips, grateful when he felt her exhale.
It wasn't until he let out the breath he was holding himself that he realised how hot she was. "She's burning up," he muttered, half to Juliet, half to himself, as he set his palm against her cheek, then her forehead, lifting her so that she was cradled against him.
"Kate? Kate, can you hear me?" he asked, hoping to draw out some kind of response, but she remained limp, senseless, her head lolling against his shoulder and settling there.
How long had she been sick? He didn't know. Things had been so tense between them that he hadn't noticed if she was quieter or more than lethargic than usual.
"Jack… Jack, there's something you should know," Juliet said when she recovered, her voice losing confidence when his eyes locked on hers, waiting for her to give him an explanation. "She's pregnant."
He felt as if someone had pulled the earth out from under him. Pregnant? How could she be pregnant?
"No, that's not possible," he told her, shaking his head, his mouth going dry as he glanced back down at Kate. "We haven't… Not since we lost the baby." There was that time in the tent, but they hadn't gone through with it. She couldn't be pregnant. At least, if she was, there was no way that he could be the father…
"She didn't lose the baby, Jack," Juliet told him softly, "She lied to you – we both did," and it took him a moment to realise what she was saying.
She wasn't pregnant again. She was pregnant still, which meant…
"So what's wrong with her?" he pressed, his heart racing as he did the math. She was eight weeks before. She had to be at least twice that now.
Pushing up her shirt, he studied her distended abdomen – something that she clearly hadn't wanted him to see. At a guess, he would have put her around the middle of her second trimester, and they'd buried Sun long before that.
"I don't know," Juliet told him, tears springing to his eyes, but all he could feel was a kind of muted rage. How could she do this to him? Either of them? How could they act like he wanted didn't matter?
"What do you mean you don't know?" he spat. "Isn't this what Ben brought you here for? To fix this?" All the stories she'd fed him, about Kate and what she was going through... She seemed to have an answer for everything except the one thing that really counted.
"Her symptoms aren't the same as the other women's," she explained, her voice rising in desperation as he turned away from her in disgust. "Jack, I've never seen anything like this. She shouldn't even be alive."
"So why is she?" he asked, a dull edge creeping into his tone as patted her cheeks, giving her shoulders a gentle shake, trying again in vain to get her to wake up. The symptoms might not be the same, but the outcome would be. She was dying. She had to be.
"I've been treating her," Juliet went on, and he felt a tiny glimmer of hope, until she added, "I found a way to alter her immune system – to keep her white blood cells from dropping – but there were… side effects…"
"I'd say this is a pretty serious side effect," he retorted, fixing her with a sharp look as he covered the rise in Kate's belly with his palm. He couldn't feel anything.
"She was okay when I examined her an hour ago, Jack," Juliet insisted, as if to assure him that none of this was her fault. As if she hadn't held him in the jungle while he cried for something that he was never really in danger of losing. Not until now. "The fever was going down—"
"We need to take her back," he told her, cutting her off. He wasn't going to stand by and watch it happen. He couldn't.
Still supporting Kate with one hand, he slipped the other one under her knees, lifting her up against him, surprised at how much heavier she'd become. While the fact that she'd put on weight hadn't escaped his notice, he figured that it was because she was depressed. Juliet had warned him that she might be different, because of the baby: it had never occurred to him that theses change might be due to its continued existence.
"Jack, it's the middle of the night!" she complained, scurrying alongside him as he started for the jungle, as fast as he could without increasing the risk to Kate and the baby. "Don't you think it would be better for her if we let her rest?"
"I think we need to find out what we're dealing with," he argued, refusing to spend the night in limbo, waiting to see whether her condition would improve, or just get worse.
He was grateful when she didn't seem to see the sense in pushing the point once his mind was made up, falling into step behind him as he wove his way through the jungle.
A few times he almost took a wrong turn in his haste, heading towards the caves, or the hatch, or any number of dead ends, but she helped guide him back on track, holding the doors open so that he could pass through once they reached their destination.
He hadn't been to the medical station since the day she'd told them that Kate was pregnant, but it seemed darker now, bleaker and more depressing, the source of endless bad news. The last time he'd set foot there it was to hear that he was losing her, and tonight wasn't shaping up to be any different.
Inside the examination room, he eased her down on the bed, smoothing the damp curls back from her face. She still hadn't moved, or made a sound, and he worried that she never would: that he would never hear her voice again, or see her smile, or understand why she felt like she couldn't tell him the truth.
"I'm going to need you to open her mouth for me. I want to take her temperature again," Juliet said, returning to his side with a thermometer in one hand, a stethoscope around her throat, more confident, and less timid, now that she was back in her own environment.
Cupping Kate's chin in his palm, he parted her lips with his thumb, his chest tightening as he watched the red line settle at 108. Most fevers were between 103 and 106 degrees. It was no wonder that she was so out of it: he couldn't remember ever seeing one that high.
"I'm not sure how to explain it, but aside from the fever, there's nothing actually wrong with her. Everything else is normal," Juliet confessed, sliding the stethoscope from around her neck and setting it down on the tray once she finished checking her vitals. "Her heart rate's good, her blood pressure is a little high, but nothing to be concerned about. She's not sick, Jack. Not in the way that she should be. If we can cool her down, get her strength up…"
His knees gave out on hearing these words, and he sank onto the stool by the bed, throwing his head back as he basked in his relief.
"What about the baby?" he asked once the news that Kate's death wasn't written in stone had finished sinking in, and he remembered his fear when he couldn't feel it moving. Losing it once was hard enough. He couldn't go through that again. It couldn't all be for nothing… "Is it okay too?"
"Just give me a second and we'll find out," Juliet replied with an encouraging smile, but he noticed that she was careful not to answer one way or the other as she hooked up the monitor.
"Whatever happens, I just want you to remember that she did well to get this far," she said as she applied the gel, and he knew she was preparing him for the worst, but as she set the wand against Kate's skin, the room was filled with the steady pulse of a heartbeat.
"That's good – strong," she announced, her expression lighting up with surprise, and as she moved it to get a clearer picture, Jack could make out the curve of its head, its arms and legs, and the string of pearls that made up its spine. It looked like it was asleep, but as he watched, he saw it shift, adjusting its position as if it were trying to get comfortable. He wondered if Kate could feel it.
"Would you like me to tell you what it is?" Juliet asked him, and he felt a little thrill of excitement. It didn't matter – not after everything they'd been through to make sure that it was alive and healthy – but somehow the idea that his child had a gender, the beginnings of an identity, made it seem more real.
"Does Kate know?" he checked, since he'd never had the chance to discuss it with her. If she wanted to wait to find out, then he would to.
"Yeah, she does," she agreed, and he nodded, eager to hear more good news.
"It's a girl," she told him, and he felt his own face breaking into a grin, to match hers. "That's your daughter, Jack."
Next chapter: Jack and Kate talk about what Kate did, and the baby... ;)