I'm surprised that so few of you guessed this next part. Makes me kinda happy though, hopefully I'm doing a good job with the plot! Thanks for your reviews, and as always, keep them coming! I appreciate them very much!

Chapter Fifteen

It's Not a One Way Street

"I haven't seen much of you lately, Dr. Shephard," Kate said coyly upon her arrival to Sam's hospital room. Jack had been reviewing the man's chart again, concerned that something would suddenly change and prevent him from receiving a liver.

"Just… busy, I guess," he said vaguely, wondering why Kate was in such a good mood. Dr. Holland had just placed Sam on the UNOS list, and since he was still getting treatment for the liver tumors and they seemed to be under control, it looked like it would be a long time before he would have any hope for a transplant.

It was true he hadn't seen much of Kate or Sam lately, but he thought it was for the best. Shaken by the fact Kate wasn't a match, Jack had dedicated himself to finding a liver for Sam. If they knew the time he was taking, the things he was pushing aside—hopefully for their benefit—neither Sam nor Kate would accept it. Both thought that if any special attention was paid to them, they were being a bother.

But that wasn't how Jack thought of it at all—they were the first people in a long time that he'd sincerely cared for. Why shouldn't he do everything possible to ensure they'd be around for a long time?

If Sam died, Jack doubted, even with a new job and a stable income, that Kate would stay in L.A. She wasn't the type to stick around in a place that hadn't done much good for her. If Sam was gone, so was she.

So there was more on the line than just wanting Sam to live. He wanted Kate, too.

"Yeah, now that ya fixed me you can't even stop by and say hi?" Sam said, an ornery look crossing his features. "I know there's all this talk about bedside manner…"

"Alright, alright," Jack said lightly, letting a smile slip past his lips. "What do you want me to do? Bring you lunch? Cut up your food, take you to the bathroom?"

Noticing the glare Sam shot Jack, Kate laughed. It was nice to see both of the men let loose. Jack was entirely too serious about life in general, she thought.

Ignoring his comments, Sam asked, "Have you heard anything else from Dr. Holland? About UNOS?"

Jack shook his head, but didn't have the heart to tell him he was in bad condition, but not bad enough. There were so many people on the list with a higher priority than him…

"It's only been two days, Sam. You might have to show a little more patience," he joked, then turned serious. "I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything though, but you should probably check in with Dr. Holland about this, not me. I'm just the spine guy."

Sam nodded and the two made small talk while Jack examined him. Kate watched from the corner, her arms folded across her chest.

"Stand up," Jack said, raising his eyebrows when Sam swung his legs over the edge of the bed and settled on his feet quickly.

"I'm impressed," he said, then checked the incision and redressed the wound. "How's the pain?"

"Dull most of the time. But I have this nice little drug pusher when I need more," he joked, and grabbed the button he could push to dispense more pain medication into his IV.

"Well, everything still looks fine. We'll see about discharging you in the next few days. You're healing pretty well."

Sam gave him a firm nod before Jack escorted Kate out of the room, his hand on the small of her back.

Once out in the hallway, Jack's mood was no longer light.

"I'm worried about him being on that list," he sighed. "The last thing we want is him being on chemo for the next two years while we wait for a liver. I've been working on this nonstop, Kate. I have to find a way to make this happen faster."

She rolled her eyes. She was worried about Sam too, but what more did Jack think he could do? "You don't have to pull strings or bend the rules, or anything that could get you into trouble, Jack," she hissed, aware of Sam's hyper hearing.

"I'm not gonna lose my license or steal a liver from someone else who deserves it just as much as Sam does. But there has to be a way to get him higher up…"

"Doesn't him getting a liver depend on quite a few things? Like how long he's been on the list, yeah, but stuff like the distance from the available organ to the patient in need, and how organs match up?"

"Well, yeah," Jack huffed. He didn't want to be egotistical, but he assumed he knew more about this sort of thing than Kate.

"So we can hope, right? We can hope that he gets lucky and gets something fast, and that it works. You're making it sound like he's already dead."

"I'm sorry… I'm not trying to sound morbid, but I want to be realistic and find any chance that he has. Wouldn't you rather this was over with?"

Kate half-smiled. Jack's concern for her father was touching, however annoyed she might be. "There's no point in him getting a liver fast if it's not the right one, or everything isn't done just right. That could be worse than being on the list for two years."

She wanted to shift the focus off of Sam for just one minute of her afternoon. He followed her everywhere—at work, at home when she was reading in bed, when she was on the phone with a client. It was nice to think about something else every once in awhile.

"I seem to remember a certain bet being placed," she started, and saw a blush rise to his cheeks. She was thrilled she wasn't the one doing the blushing for once. "Before you did the operation… something about me having to 'give you a chance,' or something like that. Where's all that talk been lately?"

When Jack had brought up the idea, it sort of horrified her that he could put stakes on such a serious matter. But now that his part was over with, there was a sudden genius behind the bet. She didn't mind that he was so determined to find Sam a liver; it bothered her that he wasn't happy he could only fix one part of Sam.

And if she remembered anything he'd said before, back when he was confident, he told her he would make her happy if she gave him the chance. She remembered thinking she could do the same for him.

"That was… that was before," he said lamely, and laughed pathetically when Kate gave him a look that agreed.

"Before what?" she pushed, suddenly finding the nerve to drive him to all the uncomfortable levels he'd brought her to in the past. "Before you saved my father's life? Before you did what no one else would even try? Before you did all of these things that should only make me want to date you?"

Catching onto her plan, Jack let Sam slip out of his mind for a moment. "No, it's not any of that. I told you I would fix him, and I will. His liver is part of that. So I guess I don't think working out our dating schedule is the most important thing to concentrate on right now."

Kate nodded nonchalantly, ready to launch her plan. "So what if I told you that one of our authors is very interested in me?"

Without hesitation, Jack said, "I'd ask Marc about it."

"Oh, go ahead. Marc loves him, too."

Jack shook his head, tempted to laugh. "You're making this up to get me to take you out somewhere! You're trying to freak me out!"

He didn't have to admit that he was.

Kate laughed. "No I'm not. I'm just saying, you know, if you don't take the opportunity there might not be one anymore."

"I don't get you. One minute you refuse to have anything to do with me and think I'm easily 'distracted' and the next you're shoving some fictional guy in my face? What am I supposed to think?"

Kate rolled her eyes, a trait Jack found as endearing as any. "You're supposed to be jealous. And he's not fictional. You don't think other guys find me as interesting as you do?"

"No," he said indignantly, seeing that he was going to lose this battle and might as well go with Kate's wishes. "Fine, do you want to go to dinner on Friday?"

"Oh, you're melting my heart, Jack. I can tell you mean it so much," she said with fake bravado. "But it's a date."

She left Jack standing in the hallway, baffled by the sentence he never thought he'd hear her say. It's a date.

"Dr. Shephard, back for more I see?"

"You can call me Jack," he told the nurse, Trisha, for the tenth time.

"Sorry," she blushed. "Habit."

"So what's on the agenda for today?"

Trisha had worked at St. Sebastian's for more than a year; working closely with Jack, he'd always thought she'd had a bit of a crush on him. But he trusted her, and she was good at her job. And right now, he needed someone who would stay out of the hospital gossip circle.

Trisha flipped through Jack's chart. "Last time was the initial blood test and tissue-typing. Your antigens and Sam's were a very close match, but you already know that."

Jack nodded. When it turned out Kate couldn't donate to Sam, Jack knew that he would be a likely candidate because of his blood type and good medical history. But he didn't want to pull the cart before the horse and get either Sam's or Kate's hopes up.

"Then we did crossmatching yesterday. It was negative," she said. "Sam's sample didn't attack your white blood cells, so it's looking fairly likely that you'll be a good match for him, especially given your similar body types."

Jack wanted to roll his eyes, though he knew Trisha had just made a habit of filling her patients in on their testing—whether they were a doctor or a regular patient.

"You've cleared your schedule, right? Because you can't move for a few hours after the hepatic angiogram."

Jack nodded. He'd known that was what they'd scheduled for the day, but didn't look forward to it. He had a surprising dread of medical procedures. A dye would be injected into an artery and X-rays would be taken to show the mapping of the blood vessels in his liver. It wasn't that the procedure was all that frightening or invasive—Jack just didn't want to think about what might come after. He wasn't altogether sure why he was putting himself through this. It must be kind of crazy if he was trying to keep it a secret.

"Put this on," Trisha said, handing him a gown. "I'll go get Dr. Holland. Be right back."

Jack changed into the gown, thankful that Dr. Holland had agreed to do the testing on him without telling Sam. They weren't doing anything wrong, but he was sure that Sam would like to know whose samples were being mixed with his to determine a match.

Half an hour later, after he'd returned from X-ray and been through the procedure, Dr. Holland appeared in the doorway of his outpatient room. He'd have to rest there for a few hours before he could head home.

"Good news," she said. "We'll do a CT tomorrow to confirm and get a 3-D image of your liver, but I think this is it. Your health history, your tissue matches, the anatomy of your liver… you're the perfect match."

Up next: Will Jack decide to go through with the liver transplant? And what happens when Kate and Sam find out?