The Present is a Rope Stretched Over the Past
Title: Ebb and Flow (8/10) - "The Present is a Rope Stretched Over the Past"
Characters: Sawyer, Juliet, Jack, Kate
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: up to and including the season three finale
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine. This is what it would look like if it were.
Summary: Off island, Jack and Kate contemplate their mistake and receive help from unexpected sources. Meanwhile life goes on for those they left behind.
Author Notes: This is the sequel to the series which began with 'Neither Here, Nor There'. Those parts can be found here: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
x x x
Not caring who saw him, Sawyer walked in through the front door. He had never been in Ben’s house before and the first thing he noticed was the smell, fresh and clean, but artificial like it was spritzed often with something called Spring Rain or Hawaiian Breeze. It was the biggest, the only one to have wall to wall carpet in the living room and one of three that had their own kitchen. Apparently it paid to be King of the Castle.
How the hell had Ben hung onto all this after Locke took over? More importantly, why hadn’t he thought to rifle through it before now?
Sawyer wandered through the rooms. In the living room he studied the photos for familiar faces. Most of them were of Alex in various stages of growth, surprisingly, Rousseau hadn’t claimed these too. There was a small TV/VCR unplugged on the floor in the master bedroom beside a stack of unlabelled videos. They either had to be Ben’s porn stash or old surveillance tapes, difficult to tell since he probably got off on both. A smaller room was empty except for gauzy yellow curtains on the windows. The kitchen cupboards were bare and there was hardly anything in the fridge. At least Ben wasn’t hoarding the good stuff and no one’s head was in the vegetable crisper.
He saved the office for last. The filing cabinet was locked but he didn’t expect to find anything significant. If Ben wanted to hide something there were less obvious places. His knife made quick work of the flimsy latch, revealing rows of files. Sawyer flipped through each one, and once checked, discarded them onto the floor. He was right, there was nothing here, just ten year old invoices from medical supply companies, clothing catalogues, a run of National Geographic from the 1980s and someone named Annie’s school project on birds of prey.
He was about to investigate the desk drawers when he heard a clang. He reached for his knife as the closet door swung open and Juliet appeared.
“What’re you doing? Playing hide and seek?”
She smoothed her hair and tried to look nonchalant but failed. “You’re it.”
Sawyer slipped the knife back in his pocket. He peeked inside to see bare hangers and a folded wheelchair. “How’d you know I wasn’t Ben?”
“He wouldn’t need to look so hard and he’s not messy,” she said, studying the disarray on the floor. “There’s nothing here.”
“Of course, that’s why you’re here, what, watering his closet plants?”
“What are you looking for?”
Sawyer leaned against the desk and folded him arms. “You first, darlin’.”
“Would you believe me if I said I lost an earring?”
“Maybe if you said your panties.”
Sawyer turned his back to her and opened a drawer to find it full of paint brushes and an empty sketch pad. The other drawers were similarly useless, office supplies and more old magazines.
“I told you.”
“I guess I’ll have to stop by your house next.”
“Be my guest.”
“Well then, let’s go.”
She stooped to tidy the files. “You’re going to leave it like this?”
“Oh, he’ll already know I was here when he goes to watch his favourite episodes of Everyone Loves Raymond,” Sawyer said, returning to the bedroom. He scooped up the TV and found a bag for the tapes.
They crossed back through the living room. Juliet looked out the window and saw no one. “After you,” she said, opening the front door. Sawyer tucked the TV and bag under one arm and stepped out onto the porch. She shut the door behind them.
“Was that secret mission back there all yours or did Sayid ask you to break in?” he asked as they walked passed the gazebo. She cocked her head in response and looked at him blankly. “Oh sorry, are you helping Sayid find an earring every night? I’m curious to see if the midnight traipses through my backyard will stop now that Miss Havisham’s announced Jack’s safe and sound.”
Juliet cleared her throat and replied with her own question. “Have you talked to her?”
“I don’t trust her. Who in their right mind would go through all this trouble to find anyone?”
“Don’t you believe in true love?”
He snorted. “What do we really know about Desmond? We’re taking him at his word that his boat don’t go anywhere. And these flashes, the so called visions he has…”
They passed a pair of Others returning from the farm pulling a cart full of corn. They looked curiously at Sawyer and the TV so he glared back. Juliet stopped and regarded him. “Is that what you were looking for? A file on Desmond?”
“Do you have one?”
“I didn’t even know he existed until Jack took me to your camp.”
“And that proves what, exactly? Either he was too important for you to know about or no one really knows who he is.”
“You think Desmond’s just pretending to be on your side, after all this time?”
“All I’m sayin’ is I have no reason to trust his girl.”
“Fair enough.”
They started walking again. Up ahead he could see Jin mowing the grass in the common garden. Sun came out of their house holding the baby and brought him something to drink. The image was so surreal it caught him off guard. They had gone from having their asses handed to them by the island to cultivating it into a suburban haven. If only he thought this was some sort of victory, or even a pardon, he might have been able to appreciate the peace.
But this was still a cage and some days he felt like he was the only one not blind to the bars. Hell, he didn’t know if this acknowledgement made him more or less resigned than everyone else to the fact that they were still trapped.
Except now, two days ago, fresh hope dangled in front of them once again, no less sketchy than a raft, a hatch or a satellite phone, but hope all the same. To believe meant there was a way out and a road back. But where do you go after that? And was the cage out there just bigger than the one here?
“So did you walk me home or are you really going to ransack my house now? Cause if you are I’d like to take a rain check.”
Sawyer looked up to see they were in front of Juliet’s porch. The smell of freshly cut grass was overwhelming. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Jin hold Ki high above his head, as if the baby was best admired against the stark blueness of the cloudless sky, as if threatening the gods to dare take this away from him.
When he didn’t answer or move, Juliet sighed, and spoke again. “Sawyer, go talk to Penny. Stop procrastinating by looking for answers everywhere else. Ask her about…”
“About what?” he snapped.
“Ask her about Kate.”
x x x
Heads whipped toward Jack as his cell phone’s ring disturbed the silence of the resource centre. It must have been ringing for a while and he didn’t notice because by the time he answered it had already gone to voicemail. He mouthed “sorry” to the annoyed faces, all interns hunched over their books, except for Dr. Randall, head of cardiology, who was tackling a crossword the same way he tackled a bypass.
As he listened to Kate’s message, Jack rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. He had come in to use the computer after his shift and lost track of time. He had meant to be in San Diego an hour ago.
He gathered his printouts and put them into his backpack. The nurses teased him about the bag, said it made him look like a schoolboy but he didn’t feel comfortable carrying a briefcase or satchel, never had. This was the one Kate had taken with her from island and despite its broken zippers and tear in one of the pockets he liked the way it looked, how it rested heavy on his shoulders. If he checked, he bet there would still be sand stuck in the seams.
Jack nodded to Randall as he left but the man was too engrossed in his puzzle to notice. Outside, he dialled Kate’s number on the way to his office.
“Kate.”
“Hey.”
“Sorry, I missed your call.”
“I thought you’d be home by now.”
“I got caught up. I just need to change and I’ll be on my way.”
“How was your day?”
“Mrs. Widmore called off the search. ”
“I know. Robert phoned earlier.”
“What did he say?”
“That her mother is devastated. She’s convinced it was suicide, blames herself.”
He recalled how lonely Penny has sounded the last time they spoke. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”
“No. She was strong, she wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s just…”
“I know,” she agreed.
Jack had been so sure Penny was their best chance in finding the island. He and Kate had arrived in Fiji on New Year’s Eve, unaware anything was amiss. When Penny didn’t meet them at the hotel as planned, the manager admitted he hadn’t seen Ms. Widmore in days, had assumed she had gone somewhere else for the holidays. They called the marina and learned the Redux had departed on Christmas morning. The police found the boat, missing its dinghy, two days later, almost fifty miles from the last location in the log. There was no sign of Penny and hadn’t been any for three months. She had vanished, one more person who had slipped away like they never existed.
Kate had packed up all Penny’s research to take home with them. For safe keeping, she had said, but neither had felt optimistic, even then. On the plane home he had re-read her aunt’s diary and noticed scrawled in the back, in Penny’s handwriting, the words “Trust Jacob” over and over again. He remembers Richard calling for a Jacob, asking him for forgiveness, as he lay dying from the sickness in Jack’s arms.
“The letter from Father Ikalanga came today.” It took Jack a moment to realize Kate was still talking.
“Anything useful?” he asked, dodging a stretcher.
“They confirmed that a Father Tunde worked for a Red Cross child soldier rehabilitation program in Abuja but the photo in their newsletter is not Eko, nor did the church have any record of a priest by the name of Oduduwa Ulu in Nigeria or Australia.”
“How many is that now? Twelve?”
“Twelve out of the eighty we’ve checked.”
“That has to be above average. Fifteen percent of the passengers had tickets under assumed names, including you, Libby and now Eko.”
“I was under my real name.”
“Right.” There was an awkward pause. “Sorry.”
“Even given the circumstances, I don’t think it’s extraordinary. Didn’t you ever want to be someone else?”
He thought about her question as he turned a corner and headed toward the elevators. Instinctively he would say no or try to be funny and say how he always wanted to be a cowboy, but today the question dug deeper than it should, deeper than she meant it to. Right now, if offered, he would be tempted to switch places with anyone else in this hospital, even a patient. If they had a problem, more often than not modern medicine could fix it. If he had a patient telling him he heard voices at night, he would prescribe him something to make them go away. He would like to be back in that world.
“Jack? Are you there?”
“I’m about to get into an elevator. I’ll call you from the road.” He hung up before he realized he hadn’t even said good bye.
As he rode the elevator down, he pondered the new information from Kate. So Mr. Eko wasn’t who he said he was. This came as a surprise to Jack because the man had seemed so genuine, so solid. The passengers’ multiple identities made it hard to know who they should be looking for, who they were or who they said they were? Was that the same thing?
The false names were one problem, the coincidences were equally bothersome. In the course of their research they had tripped over a startling number of connections between the passengers, like the two men on the plane who had shared the same ex-wife or Hurley owning the company where Locke had been employed. Jack now expected them, looked for them. Another one had popped up yesterday.
After work he had driven to Malibu to see the dance studio where Shannon worked. He didn’t know why he had bothered, she hadn’t worked there in years and he already had a pretty thick file on her and Boone. It wasn’t until he walked in through the doors that he recognized it as the place Sarah had taken him before their wedding. He remembers how angry she was when he walked out ten minutes into their first ballroom dance lesson, barely holding the laugher in until he got to the parking lot.
Jack could have dismissed this connection, after all at least a third of the passengers lived in the Los Angeles area, but there was more. One wall in the studio’s hallway had framed photos mounted from past recitals. Immediately he picked out the one of Shannon. She was smiling at something off camera, surrounded by a group of little girls dressed like bees. Two stocky girls holding hands were identified as Megan and Nora Artz. He double checked Artz’s obituary when he got home and sure enough they were listed as his children.
Small world.
That’s what Sawyer had said to him, the morning he related the story about Christian. The guys at Princeton told him the same thing, that social scientists had proven most people could be connected worldwide through five or six other people. Hypothetically, Jack agreed this was probably true of random people but not out of a sample of two hundred and forty-nine, most of them strangers before the crash, who could now be connected by three or fewer degrees of separation.
He got off on the fifth floor and headed to the locker room to shower and change.
“Dr. Shephard?” A nurse called out as he passed her station. “I didn’t know you were still here.”
“Trish.”
“Can you do an emergency appendectomy?” She rushed over to him with a chart. “The patient is already prepped but Dr. Dhillon had to step out to work on the bus crash victims.”
“They don’t need any help with that?”
“No, it’s covered.” She read out from the chart as they walked briskly to the OR. “Five year old girl brought in at seven o’clock by her grandparents: acute stomach pain, vomiting, and a mild fever. The ultrasound showed a perforated appendix. Dr. Dhillon planned a laparoscopy.”
“Did we get consent from the parents?”
Trish consulted the chart again. “The grandparents are her guardians.”
Outside the OR Jack examined scans. The tiny appendix bulged and twisted like a snake digesting a rat. This had been caught just in time, the little girl must have been feeling sick for a while. He changed into fresh scrubs and started to wash his hands and arms. A young intern he recognized from the resource centre stood frozen, already gowned, on the other side of the sink.
“Is this your first appendectomy?” he asked.
“It’s my first operation,” she said, her voice sounded small behind her mask.
“You’ll do fine. It’s a good one to start with.” An appendectomy had been his first operation too, under supervision of his father, who had volunteered for the easy procedure just so he could guide Jack through it.
They entered the OR and greeted the nurse and anaesthesiologist. The little girl lay draped on the table, already out. Jack could see tiny gold ringlets peaking out from under her surgical cap.
“I’ll makes the incisions and enter the scope. You tell me what you see on the monitor.” The intern nodded. “Let’s began.”
He hadn’t performed this procedure in years but his hands moved swiftly, ritually. Everything in front of him disappeared, even the girl, all he saw in front of him was the abdomen. He inspected the other organs for abnormalities and saw none. Jack then separated the inflamed tissue and removed the appendix. It popped off with a satisfying snip. She was fixed.
“Do you think you can close?” Jack asked the intern.
“Yes.” They switched places and he was pleased to see her hands displayed none of the shakiness found in her voice.
“Good work,” he said as they were done and the nurse wheeled the child out to recovery.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Why don’t you go tell the grandparents that…,” Jack consulted the chart, “that Clementine will be just fine.” The intern strutted off, pleased to deliver good news.
When he finished the post-op notes, Jack brought the chart back to Trish. He leaned over the desk. “Can you call the Langs and the Fischers in the morning, tell them I can move up their consultations from next week to tomorrow afternoon or even Friday, if they want?”
“The multilevel fusions?” she sounded surprised.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be in tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Alright.”
“Good night, Trish.”
“Good night, Dr. Shephard.”
Jack headed to the locker room, backpack strung over one shoulder. He stripped down and crumpled the scrubs into a ball, tossed them into the laundry cart like a basketball. He stepped into a shower but before he turned on the water, he just stood there, figuring out what was different, and then he realized. He smiled; he had fixed the little girl.
x x x
Kate hung up the phone and pulled the blankets to her chin. Her nose was still cold but she didn’t feel like getting out of bed to close the window. It was the second time this month Jack had stayed over an extra day or two in Los Angeles. They were short staffed, he explained. She understood but hadn’t expected him to work tomorrow or rather today, she noted, squinting at the clock. It was passed midnight. It was March 21.
The first day of spring marked the one year anniversary of their return. They had now been home twice as long as they had been on the island. It didn’t feel that long, not long enough to have loved and lost a daughter. Not long enough for it all to begin to feel like a dream.
It was all seeping away, like blood circling a drain.
The island.
Ellen.
Penny.
Even Jack.
What would it feel like a year from now when they were no closer to getting back?
x x x
Authors note: Thanks for reading. The end is near so I feel safe calling this 8/10. The title is based on a quote by Sean Stewart from his book Perfect Circle.
Chapter 8.5 "Pineapple Lessons" This was written after the series was finished because I felt the need to delve into Penny's first few days on the island.