Thanks for the reviews. I was so pleased with the response to this fic that I'm actually considering extending it (or at least writing a follow up) to deal with things like David and Claire, but I want to try to wrap up some of my other fics (namely Old Habits and Deja Vu) before I commit to another WIP. I'm already fighting the urge to develop an idea I had today based on a certain incident (for those who haven't seen it) in this week's episode. ;)

Chapter 2. Jack

Jack hadn't expected to see Desmond again after he fled their last conversation, but when he answered a page asking him to come down to the ER, there he was, sitting in one of the wheelchairs as he waited to be taken up to x-ray, his right arm in a kind of makeshift sling.

"You," Jack breathed, stopping in his tracks. It was the third time their paths had crossed in less than a week and the second time that he'd shown up inside the walls of this hospital. Each time he had vanished before Jack could find out much about him, only to appear somewhere else a few days later. It was unnerving, to say the least.

His face lit up with recognition when he spotted Jack. "The woman I came in with… Kate…" he stammered and Jack assumed that he and his friend or girlfriend or whatever she was to him must have been separated when they arrived at the hospital.

"I'm sure the trauma team will take excellent care of her," he assured him, continuing on his way, but instead of easing the Scottish man's mind like he'd intended, it only seemed to agitate him further.

"No, it has to be you, Jack," he called back over his shoulder as one of the nurses wheeled him off to the lift. "It has to be you! Otherwise it was all for nothing!"

Jack was still trying to make sense of his words when the EMTs rushed by him with a gurney and he saw her: the woman from the plane, and again, he was struck by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. She was still unconscious, blood trickling down her pale face, matting her dark curls, and he had the overwhelming urge to stop them so that he could wipe it away. He was called in to operate on patients in worse shape than that every day and yet seeing her hurt like that shook him up more than he knew how to explain.

"What happened?" he asked the nearest paramedic, jogging up alongside them.

"Car accident, about a block from here. Guy drove his car into a telephone pole. Witnesses say it looked like there was some kind of struggle."

Desmond seemed pretty adamant that he be the one to treat her. Was it possible that this was somehow about him?

He forced himself to stand back while they transferred her across to the bed in the nearest triage room. "She could have spinal injuries," he told them, even though there was no real way of making a diagnosis until she woke up. "Why don't you leave her with me?"

"Sure," the EMT agreed and he and the others collected the gurney and disappeared.

A quick visual exam told him that nothing appeared to be ruptured or broken – at least where he could see – so the first order of treatment was to stop the bleeding. He pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and fished a handful of gauze out of the box, pressing it down gently on the wound at her hairline to try to stem the flow. Once he was confident enough to let go, he used it to mop up the rest of the blood and threw it in with the rest of the medical waste.

Next, he went in search of ID. As he dug carefully through her clothing, he tried to tell himself that he was only doing it so that the nurses could get in touch with her family, but he couldn't deny the fact that the question of who she was had been on his mind since she ran into him on the plane.

There was a credit card in the pocket of her jeans, tucked behind a wad of cash. He slid it out, simultaneously stunned and confused to see the name 'Claire Littleton' embossed in gold across the front. That couldn't be right. Desmond had referred to her as 'Kate'. He made a mental note to ask her about her connection to the woman in his father's will later, when she was feeling strong enough.

He replaced the card the way he found it and fetched a torch from the tray, preparing to test her pupillary response, but to his surprise, her eyes snapped open and she blinked up at him.

"Jack?"

"That's right," he agreed, taken aback by the way his name rolled of her tongue. He'd never had the chance to introduce himself on the plane, so how could she possibly know who he was? Unless Desmond had told her… But why even mention him? Not for the first time, he had the sense that something very strange was going on.

She yanked off her neck brace in spite of his protests and struggled into a sitting position. "I know this room," she said, eyeing the walls, the furnishings, the equipment with a dazed expression as if she were still coming out of a dream. "I've been here before, when Aaron and I came to pick you up for lunch."

While it was possible that she had been there before, he couldn't help being concerned. "I think you should—"

But before he could finish, he felt her palm connect with the side of his face, so hard that he actually heard it. "Ow!" he cried, clutching his cheek as he retreated to a safe distance. To say that he was shocked would be an understatement. He'd never been slapped by a patient before. At least he knew that her co-ordination hadn't been affected by the accident. "What was that for?"

He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a woman so angry with him: not since his marriage began to deteriorate. "That was for letting off a hydrogen bomb!" she said, glaring at him.

The sentence itself was coherent enough, but the accusation behind it made no sense. He'd never been anywhere near a hydrogen bomb. He'd never even seen one except in the kinds of movies David was always dragging him to. "You must've hit your head harder than I thought," he told her. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you have a concussion. We should probably do a CT scan to be safe." He sat down on a stool, pulling the tray towards him in the hopes of warding off another attack. "But first, I need to stitch up this wound, so I'm gonna ask you to hold still."

She did as she was told, perching on the edge of the bed with her back straight while he threaded the needle, but that didn't stop her from arguing. "My head is fine, Jack," she insisted, flinching as the tip pierced the delicate skin of her forehead. "It's yours that I'm worried about. Our plane crashed on an island. We were stranded there for months. Are you telling me you don't remember any of it?"

He wondered if he should remind her that it was Dr. Shephard while they were in this hospital and she was his patient. "You were just in a car accident, Miss—"

"Kate."

"Kate," he repeated, feeling his colour rise. It was exactly the kind of intimacy he was trying to avoid. "You were out for over half an hour. It's not uncommon for people to feel confused—"

"I'm not confused," she assured him, even though it was likely that if she were confused, she would probably be confused about that to. "This isn't the first time we've met. We were together. You asked me to marry you."

Now that he would remember. He tied and cut off the end, turning his back on her while he stored equipment away to disguise the effect that her words – however absurd – were having on him.

Once he recovered himself enough to face her again, he performed all of the usual checks: temperature, pulse, blood pressure. Aside from the bump on her head and the fact that she was claiming to be his long lost fiancée, she appeared to be in perfect health.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

"Katherine Anne Austen," she answered with only a slight hesitation.

"Who's the president of the United States?"

"George W. Bush." Her voice was terse with annoyance.

He raised his right hand, curling his thumb against his palm. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Four. See? There's nothing wrong with my brain," she complained. "Everything I just told you is true, Jack. Or it was."

Under any other circumstances, that would be enough to convince him that there was no significant head trauma, but it didn't change the fact that she wasn't making sense; he began to wonder if she wasn't brain damaged so much as simply delusion. If she and Desmond were both mentally ill, that would explain why he'd deliberately crashed their car. It just wasn't something someone in their right mind would do. "You do realise that what you're saying is impossible?"

She dropped her head into her hands, letting out a cry of frustration. "Why do you always have to be so stubborn?" she asked him when she lifted it again, as if this wasn't the first time that they'd had this particular disagreement.

He opened his mouth, but before he could formulate a response she took his jaw in each of her hands and pulled him towards her, sealing it with a powerful kiss that left his mind and body reeling.

*

One…

"Do you have a second? I could use a little help here. I'd do it myself – I'm a doctor – but I can't reach."

"You want me to sew that up?"

"You can do this, I'm telling you. If you wouldn't mind."

"Of course I will."

*

Two…

"If we survive this – if we survive tonight – we're gonna have a Locke problem. I need to know that you've got my back."

"I've got your back."

*

Three…

"I'm so glad you changed your mind. I'm so glad that you're here."

"Me too."

*

Four…

"Nothing in my life has ever felt so right. And I just need you to believe that. Are you with me on this?"

"Yes."

*

Five…

"If what you're doing even works, then you and Kate will be strangers and she'll be in damn handcuffs."

"If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

*

"Whoa," was all he could manage when she finally released him, staring at her in amazement. How was any of this even possible?

"Now do you believe me?" she asked with a coy smile, seemingly pleased that she'd left him speechless, without a counterargument for once.

He could try to rationalise it, but the truth was there was no other explanation for what he'd just seen, or for what he was feeling.

Love.

It wasn't something he'd noticed was missing until she came along and showed him what it meant to be complete, but now that he'd found it again, he couldn't imagine why he'd ever been stupid enough to let it go. He laid his hand on her cheek and just like in his memory, she responded by leaning into his touch. "I believe you."