Thanks for the reviews. Even though I've been planning this chapter for over a year, it was still one of the hardest to write, mostly due to the amount of research that went into it. (Please remember that when the time comes to leave a comment. ;)) Based on what I've read, the main difference between childbirth then and now is the amount of choice women (and their partners) were given. In the 1970s, hospital births were still treated like any other surgical procedure, which meant doctors and nurses had the final say in everything that happened. ;)

Chapter 19.

"I'll park the car," Sawyer offered, braking in front of the hospital. "You guys just go."

"Thanks." Jack scrambled out of the back, then turned to help Kate while Juliet passed on instructions to Sawyer about where to go once he got inside. "How're you doing?" Jack asked Kate, slipping his arm around her waist, allowing her to lean heavily on him as they made their way up the walk to the entrance, Juliet trailing a few steps behind.

Kate's water had broken all over the hideous beige upholstery on the drive over, which meant that her labour was now well and truly underway. "I've been better," she quipped, flashing him a weak smile before she got caught up in another contraction.

While he hated watching her suffer, knowing that there wasn't much he could do, he couldn't deny the fact that he was excited that tonight, they were finally going to meet their daughter. "It'll all be over soon."

As soon as they crossed the threshold, a young nurse in a white scrub dress and nurse's cap rushed forward to meet them. "We'll take it from here," she told Jack, guiding Kate into a wheelchair. She fired a series of questions at her, relaying the answers to the middle-aged nurse who appeared to be in charge.

A moment later, a doctor Jack guessed to be about his father's age appeared and the two of them held a hurried conference.

"I'm going to have to ask you to remain here," the doctor said when Jack moved to follow them through a set of double doors.

Kate looked back at him in alarm, reaching up to grasp his hand. "Don't leave me," she pleaded.

Assuming that they just needed him to go over some forms, he crouched down in front of her. "I'll be right behind you, okay?" he told her and she nodded. He dropped a lingering kiss on her damp forehead. "You just try to relax. You're gonna be great."

"I'm afraid that's against hospital regulations," the doctor announced, and for a moment Jack wondered if he meant kissing his wife.

"Excuse me?" he said, drawing himself back up to his full height. "What regulations?"

"Most of our labour rooms are shared," the doctor explained. "We don't permit men inside unless a request is made in advance."

"How far in advance?" he pressed. While he would be the first to admit that hospital rules were oppressive, in all the years that he'd practiced medicine, he'd never encountered anything like this one.

"Two to three months."

"Three months?!" Three months ago they weren't even sure Kate was going to the mainland. "My wife is giving birth tonight."

Sensing that he was about to become a problem, the young nurse who'd received them stepped in to diffuse the situation. "We can make the arrangements right now," she told him, going behind the nurses' station and picking up a clipboard. "Do you have your paperwork with you? We just need a copy of your marriage license and a certificate of completion for whatever birthing class you and your wife attended."

"We didn't take a birthing class," he admitted. All of a sudden, the jokes they'd made about Dharma Lamaze classes didn't seem so funny. "Why do you need to see our marriage license?" Married or not, he was still the father.

"If you can't produce the required documents then I'm sorry, but there are no men allowed past this point," the doctor reiterated, turning his back on him.

If he thought he could get rid of him that easily, he was wrong. "You're a man," Jack called after him.

"I'm a doctor," he corrected him with an air of superiority that Jack didn't like.

"So am I!" Before he could think about what he was doing, Jack had him by the lapels, slamming him up against the nurses' station.

"Sir, you need to calm down," he spluttered, struggling to pry his hands off.

"I'll calm downwhen you explain to me why I can't go in with my wife," Jack insisted, giving him another forceful shove, the impact sending sheets of paper flying. He heard Kate shout his name; somewhere deep inside he knew that he wasn't helping the situation, but if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was feeling powerless. He was used to being the one calling the shots.

"Jack! Let him go!" Juliet cried, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and using it to haul him away.

The sudden loss of tension sent the doctor stumbling backwards into the desk. "Who's this?" he asked once he'd had time to dust himself off.

Juliet's eyes darted over to Kate. "I'm her sister," she lied.

"She can stay, but you need to leave and let me do my job," the doctor told Jack, fixing him with a hard look. "One of the nurses will show you to the waiting room. I suggest you go sit down before I call security to escort you."

"Okay, Mrs Shephard," the doctor announced once the nurses had transferred her from her bed in the labour room onto the table in the delivery room. "It's time for you to push."

Now that the moment had finally arrived, she wished she'd decided to stay on the island. "I changed my mind," she told Juliet. "I wanna do this at home." Or in the infirmary, or even the jungle if it meant having Jack by her side. He should be the one holding her hand, not Juliet. As appreciative as she was of her not wanting her to go through it alone, it just wasn't the same.

"Kate, you're in the active stage of labour," she reminded her, a note of desperation in her tone. "We probably wouldn't even make it to the parking lot."

"Please, Juliet," she sobbed in spite of the fact that she knew that even if she were capable of walking that far on her own, the nurses weren't about to let her leave. It was worse than the nights that she'd spent in jail. She felt like a prisoner all over again. "This isn't what I wanted." As far as birth plans went, hers was pretty simple. "He was supposed to be here. We were supposed to do this together." Even before she'd realised that she was in love with him, Jack was always her rock; she didn't know how she was going to get through it without him there to remind her to take a deep breath and count to five. Sawyer was right: she'd never really believed that she would have this baby without him, and now she had no choice.

"I know," Juliet told her, her own smile sad, "and I wish I could help you, but your baby is ready now, so you need to do what he says and push."

"I can't." The nurses had been pumping drugs into her ever since she arrived; the pain had helped her understand what was happening been replaced by a strange floating sensation that made it impossible for her to tell when the next contraction was, much less bear down along with it.

"Yes you can, Kate," Juliet insisted, misunderstanding what she was trying to tell her. "You can do this."

"No, I can't," she cried. She forced her body to comply, pushing as hard as she could without giving herself an aneurysm, but it didn't seem to be making any difference.

"Where does that guy get off giving me orders?" Jack raged, massaging his bruised knuckles with his free hand. After his encounter with Kate's doctor, all of his anger had to go somewhere, so as soon as the nurses were out of earshot, he'd punched the drywall behind him. "That is my wife. My daughter."

In the end, Sawyer hadn't had much trouble finding him; he claimed that he could hear him yelling all the way from the parking lot. "Look, I know how much you wanted to be there, Doc, but Jules is gonna take good care of 'em," he assured him. "Three years ago, when we first landed in Dharmaville, she made a vow that she wasn't gonna lose any more mothers or their babies. She ain't about to break it now."

"I wish I could believe you, but that's my whole family in there," Jack reminded him. While he had absolute faith in Juliet's abilities, she wasn't going to be the one performing the delivery.

"Mine too," Sawyer agreed. "That's right," he continued with a smirk when Jack turned to him in surprise. "You ain't the only one who's gonna be a daddy."

While Jack could picture Juliet as a mother, it was harder to imagine Sawyer as a father. "Congratulations, I guess," he told him, even though his heart wasn't in it. He sank into the chair beside him when it occurred to him that pacing wasn't going to move things along any faster. "So what if it was Juliet? Are you telling me you would be okay with being shut out?"

"I ain't saying I won't be goin' outta my mind," Sawyer allowed, "but when the time comes, I gotta trust that that quack knows what he's doin'."

An hour and a half later Kate still hadn't made much progress.

"Is it normal for it to take this long?" she asked Juliet between intervals of pushing. Somehow she'd just assumed that once it got started, the whole thing would be over in a matter of minutes. That was how it always was on TV.

"I would have done a c-section by now," Juliet agreed. "But I can see the head, so she isn't breeched. It could be that she's just a little sluggish from the sedatives they gave you."

"Great," Kate muttered, fighting back tears at the thought of the damage the drugs they'd been pushing on her must be doing to her baby. No wonder she was practically comatose.

Even though she'd been fully conscious the entire time, no one was talking to her except to bark orders at her. "What the hell is that?!" she demanded when one of the nurses placed an instrument that looked like a giant set of tweezers into the doctor's hands.

"Forceps," Juliet explained in the same low voice, and when Kate glanced over at her, she realised that she was almost enjoying herself. It was like a lesson in medical history for her. "He's going to use them to pull the baby out."

"I thought they got rid of those?" she hissed.

"Most doctors use vacuum extraction now, but in 1978 it was still common practice," Juliet whispered. She gave Kate's hand a comforting squeeze. "The risks to the baby are minimal if the procedure is performed properly."

But Kate had heard enough horror stories about babies who'd ended up brain damaged or dead to know that she didn't want them anywhere near her daughter's fragile skull, even if it meant another hour and a half of pushing. "He is not touching her with those!" she insisted, trying to scoot backwards out of his reach when he bent over the table again without so much as a glance at her face, but a pair of nurses stepped forward to restrain her, pinning her shoulders while a third bound her wrists by her side with a pair of primitive looking arm straps. "Wait, what're you doing?" How was she going to hold her baby if her hands were tied?

"Call anaesthesia," the doctor ordered when this only succeeded in heightening her sense of panic and she began to struggle, trying to yank them free. "We're going to have to put her under."

"No!" She wanted to be awake when her baby was born, so that she could welcome her properly. She wanted her to be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. "Juliet?" She realised then that she was no longer standing beside her; searching the room for her, she managed to catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of her eye before she disappeared again, behind the cluster of nurses who were fighting to keep her still.

The last thing she was aware of was a pair of firm hands gripping her head while an anaesthetic mask was forced down over her nose and mouth and then everything faded to black.

By the time Juliet emerged from the delivery room, Jack was so desperate for news that he pounced on her before she could even take the chair that Sawyer had been saving for her. "What happened? Are they okay?" He'd tried asking the nurses for updates, but they wouldn't tell him anything, except that the doctor would be with him as soon as he could. He was beginning to wonder if anyone in this hospital actually understood how babies were made.

"I'm not going to lie to you – it was hard on her," Juliet told him, "but she's tough. You would've been proud of her."

Just hearing how brave she was made him smile. "When can I see her?"

"They're moving her to recovery now," she explained. "From what I've heard, she should be allowed visitors then."

"And the baby?"

"I didn't get a very good look at her before they took her away, but I did hear five pounds, eleven ounces. And she already has a full head of hair. She couldn't be more perfect," she assured him and he felt his face split into a grin so wide it made his cheeks hurt.

Kate was still drowsy from the anaesthetic when he was finally allowed into her room. "Hey," he greeted her, stroking the hair back from her face as he stooped over her to place a gentle kiss on her lips. "Juliet says you were amazing in there."

"I don't really remember much of what happened," she admitted, patting the space beside her. "It's all a little fuzzy." He sat down on edge of the bed, wrapping her in an embrace. "Have you been to the nursery yet? How does she look?"

Her question took him by surprise. "You haven't seen her?" The first few hours were crucial to the bonding process; he figured they would have brought her in for a visit by now.

"She was gone when I woke up," she explained. "They wouldn't even let me feed her." Her expression clouded with anger. "I'm not going through that again. We're definitely choosing a home birth next time."

"Next time?" he teased her. "Don't tell me you're thinking about that already?" After what Juliet had told him, he'd assumed that she'd be put off having another baby any time in the next thirty years.

"Weren't you the one who said she should have a sibling?" she reminded him, lifting her head with a tired smile and he grinned, kissing her again softly.

"Ahem." He pulled back from her in time to see one of the nurses bustle in carrying a pink bundle. "There's someone here who would like to meet you."

Kate could barely contain her eagerness as she settled the baby in her waiting arms. There was a red ring-shaped bruise on her cheek from the forceps the doctor used to deliver her; watching Kate press her lips against it, gently soothing the delicate skin, Jack couldn't imagine how it would be possible for him to love her any more than he did right then.

"I can't believe she's finally here," she breathed once the three of them were alone. "I tried to imagine what this moment would be like..." She trailed off with a tearful laugh, at a loss for words, the look she gave him almost apologetic as she confessed, "I wish I could tell you that I was sorry for what I did, but the truth is, I'm not." She shifted her gaze back to their sleeping daughter, her expression softening into one of pure adoration. "Not when she's so beautiful."

"Me either," he assured her. Any hard feelings he still held towards her had dissolved as soon as he laid eyes on Sydney. She was the best part of both of them, from her fine dark hair to the tiny fingers that curled around his. How could he be mad at Kate when she'd given him the most incredible gift?

I want to include Sawyer and Juliet's baby (who will most likely be born on the island) in the epilogue but I still haven't decided what I want it to be so let me know if you have any name/gender suggestions. ;)