"Kate, stop!" she heard Richard's voice about thirty yards behind her, Annie right there with him. "Wait!"

She looked back, then ahead to the Weather Vane and she knew they'd get their wish: There was no way she'd make it the last fifty or so steps to the hatch right now, not while this latest round of pain was pulsating through her in waves, shooting through her lower back like the sharpest knife, making it very hard to fight the urge to drop to her knees.

Seconds later they were running around the corner at her: Richard, Elian, Annie, Hurley and Walt, and they froze when they saw her doubled over, holding onto a tree and laughing and crying at the same time. She was crying at the misery she was in, laughing at the sight of them seeing it and looking like they wanted to run right back the other way.

Then Annie was with her, coaching her to breathe through the pain.

"You do know," Hurley yelled, sounding out of patience, "That you've been running away from the Staff and all the medical equipment and drugs and to a place where they have nothing," he was a more worked up than any of them had seen him, even during the war, and Richard looked surprised. "Nothing they can do to help you?"

"I wasn't going to stay," Kate straightened up to standing, tears drying on her face. "I was going to get him, bring him here."

"Oh, no," Hurley started walking in circles. "No. That sounds like the worst idea ever. It's bad enough you going over there and…."

Then he stopped and saw her expression, the one telling him she would be fighting her way past them all to the hatch right this moment if she had it in her, and it broke his heart.

"Please, Hurley," she said. "Just until the baby gets here…"

"Go," he pointed toward the camp, the Staff. "Walt and I will get him."

They watched while everyone else started back, Kate refusing the stretcher for the moment, Richard and Annie helping her walk.

Once they were out of sight Hurley looked at Walt.

"Okay, man, here's why I hate this time and space stuff," Hurley said. "What if we go back to before they left their island and we get him, and something about that, us going there, it screws everything up? And they never make it home all because we did this? Kate doesn't have it in her to think about that now, we have to do it for her."

"That's entirely possible," Walt said, suddenly sounding as cool and clinical about it as his new teacher Max, and Hurley threw up his arms.

"But..." Walt paused. "What if it's the other way around? Kate said John Locke told her things didn't go all that great, right? What if everything only gets better for them if we do go back again? "

"Aww, crap," Hurley said, waved Walt toward the hatch. "Okay. Here goes…"

The last few minutes of the walk back to camp were a painful, exhausted blur to Kate and then she was on the operating table in the Staff, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting them, waiting for things to get worse.

She heard Annie sending Richard for Bernard in case she needed help with anesthesia, and then she was hooking up monitors, taking data, and Kate fell into a light, jumpy sleep for a few minutes until she felt a kiss on her lips, on her forehead. She opened her eyes.

"How did it go?" Jack asked her. "Your war over here? How did it work out?"

"We won," she felt woozy, looked down when she felt a pinging, pinching sensation and noticed an IV in her hand. It hit her they'd given her meds she had no idea about, but that was fine by her. It felt so good to not feel bad. "We made it through. Why aren't you helping Annie?"

"Because she told me to leave her alone unless she asks for help," Jack said. "Or else. I'm pretty sure she means it, so I'm hanging out here with you for now. That okay?"

She saw he was sitting on a chair next to her, his face near her neck, then near her cheek. She could hear a flurry of things happening around them, the intensity of it ramping up, and she tried to enjoy the next few seconds, him kissing her randomly, pretty sure it wouldn't last.

"Thank you for coming over," she said, and he nodded, smiling and looking a little confused at the same time.

"It's very weird – seeing people I don't even recognize talking with Hurley, with Walt, like they've known them forever. I've only known them a few weeks myself."

"Probably Ben and Richard," she said. "They work for Hurley."

"Uh, yeah, and then there's that," Jack said, "It's great to see him like this, it's amazing watching him give orders. But it's odd. And he doesn't seem to be able to look me in the eye."

"It's only been six months since we lost…. him," Kate said. "You. And he was fond of you, he looked up to you. I think it's probably really weird for him right now, too."

Jack looked away, back at her and nodded, left it at that.

Then she heard Annie ask for him and he was out of her sight and they were walking out of the room together, voices low, collaborating. She drifted in and out of awareness, and then she heard Annie calling her name.

"Kate, can you hear me?" She nodded, and Annie sat with her. "Everything's okay, but I don't think it'll stay okay unless we go with a C-section. You're having your baby a week, maybe ten days earlier than I even thought… so now we're officially in preemie range. And, frankly, you've been through a lot lately and I think you've used up whatever energy reserves you might have had. Do you agree? Are you okay if we get your baby out here with us in a quarter of an hour instead of ten or fifteen hours?"

"Oh yeah," Kate said. "I am so good with that. You have no idea."

"Great," Annie said. "If we were stateside I'd have to have you sign about a dozen sheets of paper, but here I just want you to remember you told me so, okay?"

"Okay," it felt to Kate like it took about five minutes to get that one word out of her mouth and she realized new meds had started running through her IV the moment she'd agreed. She saw Annie go, fought to keep her eyes open, saw Jack sitting down with her again.

"You're not going anywhere?"

"Not unless you want something. Coffee? Ice cream? A steak and some French fries?"

She laughed out loud, saw him smiling down at her and the room went pixelated and grey and then black. It was the only time in her life she would ever be glad to pass out.

"That is the longest, skinniest baby I've ever seen."

They were the first words Kate heard when she surfaced, in Hurley's voice.

She opened her eyes very slightly and saw that she was in the Staff still, but lying now in the recovery room where Elian and Sawyer had been just days ago. Jack was sitting immediately to her right with her son stretched out over his forearms, the baby's head in his hands and Hurley was kicked back in a chair just beyond him.

She shut her eyes again, in no hurry to break up this conversation.

"And a head full of really black hair," she heard Jack. "Another generation of Shephard men, doomed to have to shave every single day, maybe twice a day, for about sixty years."

"Oh God," Hurley said. "Seriously, when you get back to your L.A., man, don't grow a beard, okay?"

"Why would I grow a beard, Hurley?"

"Just trust me, you might get the idea and it's bad, dude. It's a bad idea and a bad beard and it's like a shield against things going wrong but it doesn't work. I'm just saying… don't."

"That's fine," Jack was laughing under his breath now and she opened her eyes again just a touch to see him staring down at the baby, entranced. "I won't, I promise."

"Anything I can do for you, while I'm here?" Jack asked, glancing over at him and back down. "What can I tell our Hurley for you?"

"Huh," Hurley said, like he hadn't anticipated the question. "Tell him to get his own apartment. And that he should start running the companies he owns. Tell him it's okay if he has no clue, he can take it a step at a time. And tell him he has it in him to lead, even if he thinks that sounds absolutely crazy right now."

"Good," Jack said. "That's great. I'll tell him that, for sure."

Hurley looked up then, saw Kate awake and smiling at them, her eyes wet with tears.

"Hey, how long have you been awake?" Hurley asked.

"A couple of minutes," she said. "I was enjoying hearing you two talk."

She looked at Hurley over Jack's head, and from their experiences together no words were needed: He could see her asking if he'd told Jack anything about his group's iffy escape from the island, and she could see the short, sharp shake of his head that told her no, they hadn't discussed it at all.

"How about you enjoy saying hello to your son?" Jack stood, set him in her arms and Hurley was gone in a hurry.

"I'll give you all a few minutes," he said on the way out.

Kate was kissing the baby's head, drawing in the scent of him, her tears falling on the blue onesie they'd dressed him in, and Jack sat down, watching it all.

"He is tall," Kate said, running a hand over him from head to toe.

"Twenty three inches," Jack said. "I'm thinking NBA, maybe?"

"Baseball," Kate said. "Not basketball, baseball. His mom's from Iowa."

"Good point," Jack said. "What's his name?"

"Damn," Kate said, one hand going up in the air, like, 'please help me out here'. "I have been thinking about that every night as I go to sleep, and I can't come up with anything I like. I know his middle name is Samuel, for my dad, Sam Austen. But I can't come up with a first name I like."

"Samuel. Sam. Sam Shephard. I like that for a first name. But isn't that a famous astronaut?" Jack asked and Kate shrugged. "No, not an astronaut," Jack said. "A writer. Well, okay, if Sam's the middle name, not the first name, you could name him after my grandfather."

"Raymond?" Kate almost yelled it, so loud that Jack ducked down to comfort the baby, but he was oblivious, sleeping right through it.

"No," Jack laughed. "No one has called my father's father Raymond for a very long time, that's why he's just 'Ray' to everyone. Even he wouldn't want you to name him that. How do you know him, anyway?"

"I met him," Kate said. "In L.A. We went to the group house where he lives. He was sweet. He was funny and smart."

"Yeah, he's a good person. But, I was thinking of my mom's father. He and my grandmother, they live in Malibu. She's the cool grandmother, she surfed into her sixties and she still boogie-boards. All the kids in the neighborhood love her because she's always up for an adventure, a trip to the beach or another country or something. Her husband, he's the best, kindest person I've ever known. My dad's family never liked the two of them, they thought they were hippies. Sometimes, growing up," he shook his head, looking far away, "I couldn't wait for summer, when school was done and my parents let me stay with them until September. I lived for those ten weeks of every year."

"What's his name, your mom's dad?" Kate asked. "Is it a little more modern than Raymond?"

"It's ancient, actually," Jack said. "Hebrew. But it has a modern feel, too, it works now. It's David. My mom's dad is named David."

"David Samuel Shephard," Kate said, looking down at her son. "David Samuel Shephard, clean your room! David Samuel Shephard, I don't care where you found that puppy, we can't keep him…" she said and Jack was laughing now, his hand going to her head, his fingers running through her hair.

"What is it with moms?" he asked. "Someday I'll tell him you were riding him at two hours old, and I'll bet he won't even be surprised."

"Probably not," she said. "I'm terrible with this stuff. What does David mean?"

"Beloved," Jack said. "David means 'beloved'."

"Perfect," Kate said. "That's perfect. Sold."

"I love you," Jack said, saw her nodding furiously.

"I know. I love you, too. And I do mean you," she said, "You know that, right?"

"No pressure," Jack said. "I just wanted to say it in case I make it home and you never show up. If you never show up, I want to know that it's because something went wrong here, and not because you changed your mind."

"I won't change my mind," Kate said. "I'll wait a couple of weeks, get my strength back, and then we're coming to look for you. Are you anywhere near ready for that? For an instant family?" she asked, saw him nodding.

"Yes," he said. "So ready. I am two lifetimes ready for you."