Lost fic: Pain Management
Disclaimer: Lost belongs to ABC, etc., not to me.
Spoilers: through the end of season 1
Archive: Please ask first.
Pain Management
by eponine119
August 8, 2005
Jack gave Sawyer the heroin.
…
The summer before Jack started junior high, he fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm. That's how this all started.
He wasn't supposed to be at the playground that day. He was supposed to be at Marc Silverman's house, but Silverman's little brother Marty had the chickenpox and somehow that meant Jack couldn't hang out. Since he didn't want to go home, he wandered around the neighborhood for awhile, until he found himself alone on the playground at the deserted elementary school.
He didn't mean for it to happen. His hands were slick and the bars were hot and he slipped. It just happened.
Jack still remembers how long the walk home was. He remembers the sun high overhead, and the way it made white spots dance in front of his eyes when he looked down at the sidewalk or at the windshield of a car parked on the street.
He almost threw up when he saw his father's car in the driveway. His stomach clenched and he felt the hot acid burn the back of his throat. Then he just stood there, at first looking at the car but then staring at his arm. The crookedness of it, the bulges that weren't supposed to be there. He knew it was broken and no matter how long he stood outside wishing that it wasn't, it wouldn't change things.
It was cool inside the house and Jack closed the front door quietly, leaning against it, wondering where his mom was. He'd just about found the strength to face his father when his father emerged from his study, empty glass in his hand.
"What're you doing home?" Jack asked. This was the first time he could remember that his father had ever been home in the middle of the afternoon.
"The patient died, Jack," his father said. "They cancel the procedure when the patient dies. And your old man gets an afternoon off."
Jack nodded hastily, trying to figure out what to say next. His dad was going to be mad. He already knew that. Anticipating the disappointment he was going to cause almost hurt worse than his arm did.
"What happened to you?" his father asked, raking his son with his eyes.
Jack looked down and saw the smears of dirt on his t-shirt. The scrapes on his knees that he didn't even feel. "I fell. I'm…kind of…hurt, Dad."
"Kind of?" his father snarled. Jack watched his father jump when he caught sight of Jack's arm. "Shit, son, what did you do this time?"
Jack leaned against the door again. "I fell." He suddenly felt hot all over and the floor was tilting. "I was playing on the monkey bars at school by myself and I fell off."
"Damn it, Jack," his father snapped, but then he stopped. Took two steps toward him, then turned away. Looking for the keys to the car. "You don't even go to that school anymore, Jack," his father reminded him, looking under the pile of mail on the hall table. "Shit," he said again, then thought to pat the pockets of his pants. "Found them. Come on." He paused to put on his sunglasses while Jack peeled himself away from the door's steady surface. His father looked at him but all Jack saw was his own reflected image in the glasses.
…
Jack was used to a practical approach to pain management. Jack was used to practicing medicine in a hospital.
He couldn't ask Sawyer where his pain fell on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest. He couldn't ask him because Sawyer was lost inside himself, trapped by an intense agony unlike anything Jack had ever seen. Sawyer's neck was rigid and his teeth were clenched, and the sounds that leaked out of him as he panted were like nothing Jack had ever heard before. Like an animal. Like a dying animal.
The caves were empty. It was just the two of them. The others had gone to the beach, hours ago, days maybe, Jack didn't know anymore. Time had slipped away from him. They'd gone because they couldn't bear to listen to this.
Kate had taken Jack's face in her hands before she left. To make sure he was listening to her. "You have to do something, Jack," she'd said, her words clipped and her eyes sad and green. He'd heard her.
It kept playing through his head, Sawyer shooting the marshal to put him out of his misery when he was just going to die anyway. Sawyer didn't have a will or a DNR order, those were for civilization. He just had his past actions to speak for him.
There was nothing really wrong with Sawyer, nothing he shouldn't have been able to survive. Not like Boone with his internal organs smashed and bleeding. Not like the marshal with peritonitis.
They didn't tell you in medical school that it was possible to die from pain. But Jack knew it was possible.
…
He sat in the front seat of his father's car, arm lying awkwardly across his lap where they could both see it. Jack looked out the window, knowing that if he closed his eyes his father would yell at him. On the radio a droning voice was narrating an Angels game.
"What have I always told you, Jack?" his father said. "Protect your hands. Your hands are your gift."
Jack pressed his forehead against the window. There was nothing wrong with his hands. Just his arm. He tried to tell himself it would be cool. He'd get a cast and the other kids would want to sign it when school started.
"What about football, huh?" his father pressed. "What about your fucking piano recital in two weeks? You think those lessons are cheap?"
Jack knew they weren't cheap. Twenty-five dollars a week, just so he could get nagged about not practicing enough and his father could call him a goddamned sissy, when it was his father who insisted on the lessons in the first place. Surgeon's hands, that was what his father always said. Surgeon's hands.
"What am I going to tell your mother?" his father demanded, and took a corner a little faster than he should have. The car bumped up onto the curb then dropped again, tires squealing.
Jack sucked in a sharp breath and tried not to make any noise. His eyes were burning, but he knew that his father would yell at him if he cried.
At the end of the freeway onramp, his father jammed on the brakes and swore. Jack blinked and saw the gridlocked cars in front of them, as far as he could see. His father's hospital was miles away from the nice neighborhood where they lived. His father swore some more, smacking the steering wheel with his hands.
"I'm sorry, Dad," Jack said softly. It went unacknowledged, his father staring at the sea of cars in front of them. Jack looked down at his arm, which was starting to swell. It hurt. It hurt a lot.
…
Jack rubbed his forehead with his fingers, sighing as he made his decision. He hadn't wanted to accept the drugs when Charlie brought them to him. "It's medicine, yeah?" the younger man had said nervously. "You should have it, just in case."
He'd put the small plastic bag filled with light brown powder away, vowing at the time never to use it. At the time, he couldn't think of a situation where the risks wouldn't matter. They didn't know how pure this stuff was or where it had come from, and heroin could kill a person even if it was pure. Not to mention it was about the only thing they had a plentiful supply of on the island, and things were bad enough without drug addicts to worry about.
Now though, with Sawyer screaming, all the while looking at him with accusatory eyes, Jack didn't seem to have a choice. There had been one single unbroken, sterilized syringe in the wreckage. Seat 20D had been a diabetic. Now Jack unwrapped it and his hands were shaking so hard he almost dropped it into the dirt. He set it down and took the bag of drugs from where he'd hidden them away.
Jack only knew what they taught him in med school, the barest facts about drugs. He could have gone to get Charlie, ask him how to do this, but he couldn't. Charlie faced enough temptation as it was. Besides, this was Jack's problem to deal with.
He mixed a very small amount of the heroin with water, heating it until it dissolved. Then he put it into the syringe and turned to Sawyer.
…
It took them almost an hour to get to the hospital that day. There was a two-car wreck, right at the exit they needed. Jack closed his eyes as they went past. He didn't want to see, and he had to keep his face turned to the window so his father wouldn't see his tears.
They ran down his face, which felt wet and raw. He couldn't stop them, and he couldn't wipe them away either, because then his father would see and be ashamed of him. He was supposed to be a big boy now, a man, and men didn't cry. He never saw his father cry, did he? Jack never even saw his mother cry.
The pain in his arm was intense. He could feel it pulsing through his entire body with every beat of his heart. Breathing seemed to jostle it, make it worse, so he tried to hold his breath but of course he couldn't. And the road was bumpy. You noticed it more at two miles an hour than you did at sixty.
"Almost there, almost there," his father muttered as he swung the wheel for the exit, accelerating down the ramp. The light turned red just as they reached it and he went through anyway.
It was only another minute before the car skidded to a stop in his dad's reserved parking space at the hospital. Only then did his father turn and look at him, and Jack ducked his head. He heard his father's sharp intake of breath and tensed, waiting for the words that hurt worse than back of his hand slamming across Jack's face. But this time it didn't come. His father ruffled his hair. "I know it hurts, kiddo," he said. "We'll get you fixed up."
Jack nodded. They went into the hospital. He wanted his dad to come with him, but he couldn't ask, and so his father went up to his office while Jack went to the x-ray room with Dr. Chandler, his dad's friend, an orthopedist. Jack remembered him from the party at their house last Christmas.
Nobody offered him anything for the pain.
…
Jack slipped the needle into Sawyer's arm and held his breath while he pressed the plunger, sending the heroin into Sawyer's blood. He carefully set the needle aside, wrapping one arm around the other man's pain-rigid body, digging his fingers into Sawyer's throat. He counted Sawyer's pulse, which kept steady pace with the animal sounds he was making, and imagined the drugs racing through his veins. It would only take seconds for it to reach his heart, to shoot throughout his body, and up into his brain.
Sawyer started to relax in his arms. His skin felt warm and Jack could see the flush tinting his face. The screams stopped. Sawyer's eyelids grew heavy, but didn't drop all the way closed. He was still looking at Jack, his eyes unfocused now, and Jack could see his pupils contracting. His breathing was shallow, to the point where Jack leaned in closer, thinking for a second that he'd given him too much, that he'd lost him.
Sawyer wasn't dead, just blissfully high. He mumbled something and lay heavily against Jack's shoulder. His hair had fallen across Sawyer's face, strands of it sticking to his lips. When Jack brushed it away, Sawyer moaned pleasurably and seemed to tremble for a moment.
Jack wondered how it felt. Jack had never taken anything stronger than a drink in his entire life, and you could get drunk on booze but you couldn't get high like this. He wondered if Sawyer had ever been high before. There was something lawless about him, but Jack didn't think he seemed the type.
Jack knew he himself wasn't the type. He hadn't even taken the painkillers they prescribed when he got his wisdom teeth out. It didn't hurt that much, comparatively speaking. He wasn't tempted, or maybe he was too tempted and that's what made him scared. There was nothing to stop him, even now, from shooting up just to see what it felt like.
Except Sawyer needed him. They all needed him.
…
Jack was glad his father hadn't gone with him, because he screamed when they set his arm. He saw red and it ripped through him; for a second there wasn't anywhere he didn't feel the pain and all he could do was scream. For second he thought it was bad enough to die from.
He went to his father's office when it was all done. The door was partway open and his father was on the phone, leaning on his desk, back to the door as he stared out at the view of the city. "I don't know," he was saying. "I thought it would be faster. I never thought of it. They're for emergencies. Maybe I was scared. You didn't see his face."
Jack's foot accidentally hit the leg of the desk and his father straightened up, glancing at him. "We'll be home in ten minutes," he said quickly, and put the phone down. He looked at Jack and Jack tried to avoid his eyes. "They got you all patched up, didn't they, son?"
"I guess," Jack said. "Is Mom mad?"
"No," his father told him. "No, she was just a little bit worried about you. You know how she gets."
Jack nodded. That meant mad, how his mother gets. She got mad. "I'm sorry," he said again.
"It's okay, Jack," his father told him, patting his shoulder with one awkward hand. "It's okay."
…
Jack heard them come back, and wondered how they knew. They couldn't have been able to hear the screams all the way at the beach. But maybe they could feel it, sense it somehow, that the tension had been broken. Or maybe they just needed water.
Kate came into the cave reluctantly. "What happened?" she asked, taking in the scene. Sawyer was still slumped over, half-sitting and half-lying with his head against Jack's chest. "Is he --?"
Jack shook his head. "I did it, Kate," he said. "And I'm still not sure it was the right thing."
"What did you do?" Kate asked.
"Shot him up with heroin," Jack said, and for the second the dam burst and he was crying. "I couldn't stand it anymore. He couldn't stand it anymore. He was going to die if I left him like that, and I couldn't…" His breath caught. "I couldn't let that happen."
Kate's eyes were sympathetic and she went to him, kneeling down at his feet because there was nowhere to sit. She put her hand on his knee and squeezed lightly. "You did the right thing, Jack."
He shook his head. "There's no going back now," he said. "In six or eight hours I'll have to shoot him up again to keep the pain away. I didn't even ask his permission."
"Jack. He couldn't have given it."
"He'll get addicted now, and then what?"
"He's alive," Kate insisted. "Worry about the rest when it comes."
"I did this to him," Jack said. "Me. No one else. My fault."
"Jack," Kate said, giving him that look. The one he'd seen before, the one that said no one could possibly blame him. But Jack knew different. "You should get some rest. I'll stay with him."
"No," Jack said, shaking his head. This was his responsibility. He saw the slight roll of Kate's eyes as she got up, knowing it was useless to fight with him when he got like this.
"You did the right thing, Jack," she said. "Some day he'll thank you for it."
As she turned to go, Jack wondered if she was right. He hoped like hell she was.
End.