This is trying very hard to be a fic...so be nice... (original) (raw)

Title: Science, Faith, and Fate
Pairing: none yet, but eventually...well, you'll see. ;p
Rating: PG for some cussin'
Summary: In Jack's head, everything that was broken needed to be fix...*wanted* to be fixed.
Warnings: AU, slash...SMUT! But not here and not yet. ;p Potential spoilers for episode 2.01: MAN OF SCIENCE, MAN OF FAITH
Disclaimer: the LOST boys aren't mine...damn it. But I'll put them back in JJ's toybox when I'm done playing.

A/N: Unbeta'd...I'm not only impatient, but euphoric. The writer's block is melting like a milkshake on a hot day. *randomFoxysquee* This is probably gonna suck, but here you go...feedback is love, concrit is very welcome, but be gentle...you know how writer's block can wear a body out, just don't leave any bruises. ;p

And please, please, PLEASE, everyone...tell me: do you want this to continue? This whole fic is just one great big random idea and I could use input.

Just FYI, this is an AU fic...extrapolated from MAN OF SCIENCE, MAN OF FAITH.

For artemis1701 for ever pointing Sawyer out to me, rogueapprentice 'cause the whole obsession thing is HER fault, and for uberaeryn 'cause she's a better writer 'n me and needs to post more of her new fic LIKE NOW!!!!!! *this CAPSLOCKOFDOOM(tm) has been brought to you by SawyerDay*

Jack should have been looking over his patient charts...but instead, he was looking over his patient.

The accident that put them here had been an intense one...he hadn’t seen it, but he could always tell how badly the cars were probably wrecked by the amount of damage he saw...could almost form a mental picture of what the car looked like with the victim trapped inside.

Considering he’d had to remove a section of the steering column from the patient’s torso, he didn’t need much more to know what was probably left...barely enough for the scrap yard. As it was, his patient had barely pulled through...and still wasn’t guaranteed to make it. Not without a price, anyway.

It wasn’t the extensive damage to the spinal column that had Jack so troubled, though...it was the last thing the patient said in the ER. Those simple, haunting words stuck in his head, and not simply because of their meaning...but because of their sincerity, their simple and almost desperate necessity.

Letting his gaze wander over the patient one more time, from blonde locks to motionless feet covered in a blanket...feet that might never move again...Jack finally returned his attention to the charts in front of him, pausing only to brush a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. He was *really* damn close to just cutting all of it off...

“What happened to him?”

Jack glanced up as the soft voice touched his ears. Crystal blue eyes locked with his own, strangely alert for all the drugs flowing through his patient’s bloodstream. “Just try to relax, okay?”

“That car I hit...the driver...”

“He died in the ER.”

Jack watched as those piercing eyes fell shut again. Just when Jack thought the patient might be out again, cracked lips parted to respond. “*Shit*...”

There was something...helpless, despondent in that single curse, something that made Jack’s chest tight. Before he could respond, the patient spoke again.

“I can’t feel anything.”

“I know.”

“What the hell happened t’ me?”

“You have a fracture-dislocation of your thoracic lumbar spine with multiple crushed vertebrae.” Jack replied evenly. “Your back is broken, your spleen is ruptured and bleeding into your abdomen and that has to be stopped. I'm going to perform surgery and repair as much damage as possible, but even the most optimistic result puts the likelihood of retaining any feeling or mobility anywhere below the waist extremely unlikely.”

Jack had given this kind of news before. It was usually greeted with plaintive denials, simple shock, or even tears from anyone and everyone.

What Jack didn’t expect was the response that he got.

“Am I gonna die?”

It was a beat before Jack could muster an answer as he regarded the patient in surprise. “If all goes well, you should survive the operation--”

“Forget the damn cutting...will I live if you leave me alone?”

“No.”

With a snort, the man in the bed with the impossibly blue eyes, honey blonde hair, and a broken back managed a smirk that pulled Jack in several different directions. Cutting across a ruggedly handsome face marred by cuts and scrapes, slick with the sweat of a fever and dark with contusions, it was far too easygoing to belong on such a visage. There was such a wrongness to it...but the devil-may-care way it was flashed gave Jack a spark of hope even after the patient spoke, casual as you please and calm as the Dead Sea.

“Well then, Doc...maybe y’all should worry ‘bout the stiffs in here that got a chance in hell and let me go like I told you to.”

Any other time, Jack would have done his job...placated the patient as part of procedure. Not now...there was something in this man that spurred Jack on. He never broke a promise, his Hippocratic Oath included, and he wasn’t at all good when it came to losing a patient. This man, though...he seemed lost before Jack could even get him on the table, and that irked the shit out of him.

In Jack’s head, everything broken needed to be fixed...*wanted* to be fixed. Why not this guy?

When he spoke, it was not with a doctor’s obligation, but a human being’s conviction. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ford...I can’t do that.”