Author's Note: Hey guys, sorry if there was confusion about the whole 10 review thing. I am no longer holding you all to the whole "not posting until I get # of reviews" deal anymore. However, like I always say the more reviews, the faster the chapters go up. It's all up to you (hint hint) :)

FYI: To help prepare you for where my head was at, the songs that were on repeat while I wrote this chapter were This Woman's Work by Kate Bush and Lightening Crashes by Live.
~JP

True North
By Jaclyn Parker

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die…"
-Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
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"Carly, you can't push yet! I know it hurts, but you gotta stop pushing, Luv!" Lee cried as he peered out the ambulance back window to gauge how close they were to the hospital.

"I can't! I have to…" Carly cried, shaking her head violently. Another contraction came and she bit down on her lip so hard that she drew blood, which Jack quickly wiped away with a gentle but trembling hand.

The labor pains were coming much too fast and the wiring in Carly's body was telling her that pushing the baby out was the only way to relieve that pain. Unfortunately, her body was wrong and every time she pushed, the danger of losing the baby grew. Lee's eyes flew to meet Jack's and he sent him a silent message.

Calm her down, now!

"Carly, baby, listen to me. You gotta stop being so stubborn and pay attention to Lee, okay?" Jack said, bringing Carly's hand up to his face to kiss her knuckles and leaning down close to her.

"Oh God, Jack, it hurts. Make it stop, please." Carly moaned, her voice catching, and her plea was chased by a sob. Jack closed his eyes briefly, pushing back the tears. He placed his forehead on hers and began to talk slowly.

"Hey, do you remember the day I proposed?" Jack asked and he could feel Carly frown as she tried to focus.

"Which…time?" She panted and he chuckled softly.

"The first time. It was so cold and you had on this short little dress and heels because you thought I was going to take you to a fancy restaurant and then dancing." Jack said. "You remember?"

"Of, course…I…remember." Carly said and her blue eyes looked accusingly into his. "You made me…climb…Mount Everest…instead."

Carly began to whimper as another contraction hit and Jack swallowed his panic, forcing himself to keep talking.

"Oh, it wasn't that bad. It was your prize for winning that bet we had; Carly's Prize. And I told you about that beautiful house I was going to build for you, me, and Parker. Do you remember?"

Carly nodded quickly and he felt her grip on his hand tighten. The excruciating pain she was feeling was written all over her face, but Jack could tell she was trying her best to concentrate on his words.

"Well, Beautiful, I've been thinking...that maybe we should build that house after all. Of course it's going to need a few more rooms than we originally planned but that's a good thing, right?" Jack said and Carly's eyes flew up to meet his.

"But Julia…" She said breathlessly and Jack shook his head.

"I got an estimate a few years ago from the guy who owns the land now. He says the damage wasn't as extensive as they first thought. It's a pretty good price too." Jack said and Carly's eyes watered, but at the same time she shook her head.

"No, Jack." Carly said and Jack looked at her quizzically. "I…love…Milltown. It's…our house. I don't…want…any other…one. Okay?"

"Okay." Jack whispered back and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then her lips. "Okay, Baby."

"We're here!" Lee cried even as the ambulance came to a stop and the doors flew open.

As they rushed into the ER, Lee called out orders left and right.

"I've got a 37 year old woman with pre-eclampsia who is in pre-mature labor. She's only at 33 weeks so get the neo-natal unit down here and I want someone to find out how far away Dr. Adams from Midville Memorial is…now!"

"Jack, don't…leave…me!" Carly cried, tears flowing down her face as the gravity of the situation hit her again and Jack gripped her hand tighter.

"I'm not going anywhere, Carly. Ever. I swear!" He said firmly and gave a look to everyone around them that, in no uncertain terms, reinforced his point.

Jack kept his word even as they were rolled into an emergency OR room in case they needed to do a cesarean and as the nurses moved about to hook Carly up to several different monitors. The only time he let go of Carly's hand was when the nurses forced him to go wash his hands and put on a pair of scrubs. He changed so fast that he was still tying the pants when he made his way back to Carly's side like a magnet.

"Is…she…okay? Is my…our…baby okay?" Carly asked frantically and one of the nurses came over to place a gentle hand on Carly's arm.

"She's fine. Her heartbeat is a little fast but that's to be expected. It's you we need to worry about okay? I know it's hard, but you have to stay calm."

Carly nodded and then as the fetal heart doppler was finally set up, Jack heard the sound of his baby's heartbeat for the first time. With tears in his eyes he looked down at Carly who was staring back up at him.

"Jack, I'm…sorry. I'm…so…sorry. I know…you're mad…" she started to say but he shook his head, pressing another kiss to her lips.

"Mad? Baby, mad doesn't even begin to cover it." Jack chuckled dryly but then nuzzled his nose against her cheek before leaning back to look into her tear filled blue eyes. "But you know what? It's gonna be fine because we're gonna have plenty of time later to fight about it after she's born. Then we get to have a helluva lot of fun making up, okay? And we certainly know how to do that, don't we?"

Carly nodded, a small smile gracing her face. But almost instantaneously her face twisted into a mask of pain and she arched off the bed, unable to hold back a primal scream.

"Lee, help her!" Jack cried to the doctor who was furiously studying several different monitors. "Give her something!"

"I can't, Jack, this isn't my field of expertise. We need to wait for Dr. Adams." Lee said, sympathetically while trying to remain calm.

Truth was, despite him being Junior Chief of Medicine, as a close friend even Lee was ready to grab the nearest nurse and demand they help Carly with the amount of pain she was in.

"Well, then where the hell is he?" Jack demanded and even as the words left his mouth, the man in question burst through the doors.

Having been called immediately after the ambulance had started to Oakdale Memorial, Dr. Adams had gotten a police escort from Midville to Oakdale. Since he had gotten the preliminary information on the phone during the ride over, he wasted no more time before consulting with Lee and then checking on Carly.

"Should we prep for a C-section, doctor?" The same nurse from before asked but Dr. Adams frowned and shook his head. Pulling back from Carly he looked up at Lee.

"We don't have time. The contractions are too strong that even an IV of nifedipine isn't going to slow this labor down. She's completely effaced and the baby is already in the birth canal. I expect her to crown any minute now. We have to deliver her vaginally."

"Is the baby…strong…enough to…go through that?" Carly gasped out. Even though she was in more pain than she had ever been in her entire life, her protective maternal instincts were still in full force.

"We have one of the best neo-natal teams in the country, Carly, and your little girl is a fighter. We just need you to hang in with us for a little while longer, okay?" Dr. Adams said and Carly nodded, squeezing Jack's hand tighter as she couldn't help but let out another scream.

Ten minutes later, Jack was the one trying not to yell as Carly threatened to break every bone in his hand with her grip.

"Good, that's good, Carly! Come on, gimme one more." Dr. Adams said and with a deep breath Carly pushed again. "Fabulous! I can see her."

Carly's head dropped back onto the bed and she tried to gather as much air as possible. For some reason she felt like there was a 5 ton weight on her chest and no matter what she did, she couldn't pull in enough oxygen.

"Come on, Carly, can't stop now. One big one on the next contraction and she's out, okay?" Lee said and glanced at the fetal heart monitor. If they didn't get the baby out with this last push, he didn't know if she would make it. With a discrete motion Lee coordinated the neo-natal team into standby positions.

"I know you can do this, Baby. You're Carly Tenney. You can do anything." Jack whispered in her ear and she turned her face towards his. He pressed a kiss to her forehead as she nodded slightly.

"Okay, one, two, three…push!" Dr. Adams said.

Summoning up strength from a place that ran deep inside all women since the beginning of time, Carly gave it all she had.

"That's it! She's out!" Dr. Adams cried and suction noises could be heard before he hurriedly passed the baby over to neo-natal.

The two doctors had been right in their speculation that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around the baby's neck, causing every contraction Carly had to pin it tighter to the vaginal walls and therefore cutting the air flow off to the baby. There was no way she would have survived another minute in the birth canal. Even now Dr. Adams exchanged a anxious look with Lee before jumping up and moving to the neo-natal unit.

"She's not…crying. Why can't…I hear…her…crying?" Carly asked, laying back against the bed and panting. A few seconds went by but to Jack and Carly they might as well have been days. Carly tried to sit up again and struggled against Jack's firm hand pushing her back down.

"Jack, why…isn't she…crying?"

Jack looked over at where they were bustling around his newborn daughter and tried desperately to see what was happening.

Suddenly a sound echoed through the room, not unlike a kitten's mewing. It might have been tiny but it was the most beautiful sound they had ever heard.

"She's okay. She was just being a little stubborn." The nurse called over and then a moment later she held up an impossibly small wiggling newborn.

"Oh God, baby, she's beautiful. She's so beautiful." Jack cried, tears streaming down his face as he placed his head down by Carly and kissed her temple.

"Emmy." Carly said and Jack looked at her.

"Emmy?" He repeated and she nodded.

"Emma Rose. After…the woman who…always knows…what to say, even when...you don't...want...to hear it. And…"

"...Rose; after your sister and Lily's." Jack finished for her, more touched that he could even begin to describe. He knew that Emma and Lily would be too.

As the nurses put Emmy in an incubator and wheeled her out of the room, Jack and Carly's eyes followed their every move. Lee spoke up and answered their unspoken question.

"They have to take her to the NICU, but you can visit her later okay? She looked to be a good weight so you can probably even hold her."

"You hear that, Honey? They're just gonna check her out and then we get to hold her." Jack said and looked down at Carly. He frowned at how surprisingly pale her face was. "Carly?"

"Jack, I don't…I don't feel…so good." Carly said and all of a sudden, monitors started to go off around the room.

"Carly?" Jack cried and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Carly, answer me."

"Jack?" Carly whispered softly.

Her eyelids had unexpectedly become very heavy and it took a great deal of effort to keep them open. Her heart was suddenly pounding and she was hit with a bout of dizziness that was worse then the one that had come with the labor. A deep innate panic set in and Carly struggled to focus her thoughts.

"Jack…promise me…okay? Promise…me…that you'll…take care of…our babies."

"Carly, stop it. Don't talk like that!" Jack commanded, all the while trying to push the alarm from his mind. He remembered the last time she had said those words, deep in a cave while he prayed that help would arrive in time. Jack wasn't about to stop and think about what it meant that she was saying them again.

Carly's eyes brilliant blue eyes traveled over his face intently, as if memorizing each detail. Then something instinctive inside of her told her that it was time to say the words she had held back for far too long.

"I love you, G-man. You need to know…I've always loved you." Carly said, reaching up to touch his cheek gently. Her words were clear and steady which was distrubingly different from the breathless speech pattern from before. She gave him a soft secret smile before her eyes drifted closed, her hand dropped to hang by her side, and she went alarmingly still.

"Carly? Carly!" Jack said, shaking her shoulder more firmly this time. He shot a look down to the end of the bed where Dr. Adams was now working frantically.

"Damn! Someone get me 3 units of O negative blood, stat!" Dr. Adams yelled and a nurse bolted from the room faster than an Olympic runner. "And someone call Dr. Price from surgery and tell him we need him here now!"

"What's going on?" Jack asked and then he felt his stomach drop as Dr. Adams pulled away from Carly. It was brief movement but it was long enough for Jack to see what was causing the new flurry of activity.

The doctor's arms were soaked all the way up to his elbows in blood that was so dark red that it bordered on maroon.

Carly's blood.

"Oh, God. Oh, God, no." Jack repeated over and over. He leaned forward to press his nose to her cheek and picking up the hand that had moments ago caressed his face, he clung to it tightly. Closing his eyes in desperation, he felt the tears begin to slide down his face and into her curls as he whispered to her. "Come on, Baby, don't do this to me. Don't you do this to me! Wake up!"

As Jack listened to yet another alarm go off, he felt a terror rise inside of him that he had never felt before. Lifting his face from the comfort and familiarity of Carly's sweet smelling hair, he turned to the hectic doctors and nurses.

"Goddammit, somebody do something!" He yelled out.

Dr. Adams's eyes flew to him, as if suddenly remembering that he was there.

"For the love of God, someone get Mr. Snyder out of here! Now!"

"Come on, Jack. We need to leave, mate. They have to work on Carly and we can't be in the way."

Jack vaguely recognized Lee's accented voice in his ear as the other man pulled Jack's hand from Carly's limp one and turned him towards the doors. He let Lee start to guide him away but all of a sudden Carly's heart monitor made a sound that caused everything in Jack to go numb.

"She's flatling! Grab the crash cart! Let's go people, move faster! We're losing her!"

As Dr. Adams's words echoed inside the room, something deep and primal inside of Jack snapped. Taking a wild swing at Lee, he growled in anger. Lee managed to grab Jack's arms just before he tried to bolt back to Carly's side.

"Get the hell off of me!" Jack yelled and he began to attempt to make his way back to where Carly lay, more still than he had ever seen her. Her chest wasn't moving and he could tell that her color was far too pale.

"Carly! Carly! Dammit, Lee, let me go!"

Lee had somehow gotten Jack close enough to the OR doors that, using the force of his entire body weight, he could push him out into the hallway.

Everyone had followed them over from the court, with Abby bringing an insistent Sage with her to meet them there. But when Carly had been moved up to the emergency OR, there was strict rule about how many people could be in that specific area's waiting section. And so Molly and Holden had been elected to go while the others remained in the main waiting room down a few levels.

The two chosen adults had been pacing simultaneously but they both froze as Jack and Lee burst out through the double doors. Molly and Holden watched Lee try and hold Jack back from going back inside the OR especially when another set of doctors and nurses passed by to rush into the room.

As Jack's yelling continued several nurses started to come over to see what the commotion was, fully intent on lecturing about the noise. But upon seeing their Jr. Chief of Medicine, who was depserately trying to hold on to the source of the uproar, wave them off, they left as quickly as they came.

Holden could see that Lee was fighting a losing battle by himself and rushed forward to held grab his cousin's arms. Jack just began to struggle harder as his voice started to become hoarse from his screams.

"I said, let me go dammit! That's my wife in there! She needs me! Carly! Carly!" Jack yelled, not even recognizing what he had called her since deep down that was exactly what she was to him. Always had been and always would be.

She was his true north. They had a home together that would now be filled with them and their four beautiful children. It's not that she wouldn't leave him, it was that she couldn't leave him; it wasn't possible. They had proven this time and time again whether it was kidnapping attempts, car accidents, or false medical diagnoses. In the end, the result was the same and the meaning clear: neither one was meant to be on this earth without the other.

But then, in one fleeting moment outside of the OR room, something happened that Jack couldn't explain. Staring at the still swinging double doors, he suddenly stilled in his struggle against Lee and Holden. It was as if a switch had been flipped and he startled both of his captors with his sudden lack of resistance. But how could they know that as he stood there, in their strong grip, Jack suddenly felt an emptiness that had never been there before. Expelling a breath like he had been punched in the gut, he knew immediately what it was.

For the first time in his life since they had met, Jack couldn't feel Carly within his soul.

Wrenching his arms out of both Holden and Lee's grasp, Jack blindly stumbled backwards to the nearest wall. Trying desperately to take in some air, he slid down it with his back until he was sitting on the hospital floor. Drawing his knees up, Jack placed his head in his hands and stared straight ahead at the thick OR doors that might as well have been the gates of Hell.

Molly walked over to them and looked as though she wanted to reach out to Jack but she didn't. She was desperate to know what had just happened but at the same time, deep down, she knew she wouldn't be able to bear hearing Jack say the words that were clearly written on his face.

And so they stayed in silence until almost thirty minutes later, the sound of the OR doors opening drew everyone's attention.

Dr. Adams came out, dressed in his normal clothes which meant he had taken off his scrubs in the room. Lee's heart began to pound, knowing that it could only mean that the amount of blood on them had been severe enough to warrant the change.

The worn out looking man ran a hand through his thinning hair and stopping a few feet in front of Jack, he waited as Holden and Lee helped him to his feet. The doctor watched Jack shake them off; the detective's brown eyes were focused on him and him alone. After sharing a quick professional glance with Lee, he turned his attention on the man staring him down.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Snyder." Dr. Adams said, his voice raw and his eyes sympathetic.

Jack's entire body went cold and he vaguely heard the doctor's voice speak again through the fog that was now rolling into his brain.

"I'm so very sorry."