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They continue their journey and are startled as Frank Lapidus comes crashing through the trees, on his way back to the chopper. The pilot warns them to hide because Keamy is right behind him, and "he'll kill you all."

They quickly hide, and as Keamy and his men approach, Frank tries to hurry them off to the helicopter. Keamy hears a faint noise and is suspicious; nearby, Aaron is whimpering. But Claire keeps the baby quiet enough that Frank is able to distract Keamy. He persuades the mercenaries to hurry with him to the chopper and then back to the ship.

At night in the jungle, all three adults are asleep around the campfire. Claire awakens, gasping, and realizes Aaron is not beside her. She looks over to see Christian Shephard on the other side of the fire, cradling her baby. (Or, more precisely, a doll that is supposed to be her baby, but actually looks very, very fake.)

"Dad?" Claire asks, unbelievingly.

Next morning, Sawyer wakes up to find Miles already awake. But Claire and Aaron are gone.

Miles says she got up in the middle of the night and walked off -- but not alone. She went with someone she called "Dad." He adds, sarcastically, that he would have gone after her, except that he's "under a restraining order."

Sawyer hears Aaron and follows the sound of the baby's cries. He finds Aaron under a tree, wrapped in a blanket. He picks up the baby and calls desperately for Claire. But Claire has disappeared.

On the beach: Jack becomes sicker and collapses in front of the other Lostaways and Daniel and Charlotte. He thinks he has food poisoning, but Juliet diagnoses appendicitis. "Well," she says calmly, "I guess we're just going to have to take it out."

Juliet sends Jin and Sun to the medical station (The Staff) to get medical supplies and instruments, because Sun knows the way. Daniel, who has some medical background doing zoological autopsies, volunteers to go with them to help identify the right instruments, and Charlotte goes too. Jin has a gun and has been instructed by Juliet to shoot the Boaties in the leg if they try to run.

Kate asks: why not just take Jack to The Staff and operate there? Because, Juliet explains, there's a good chance he will rupture and die if they move him that far. Meanwhile, Rose is wondering aloud to Bernard why Jack has gotten ill on an Island that cures other people, where no one else has gotten sick in months.

At the medical station, the four gather up supplies. Jin and Sun speak to each other in Korean about the two Boaties (she thinks Dan secretly likes Charlotte). Back at the beach, Jin catches Charlotte and tells her that he knows she understood his conversation with Sun. He adds that if she lies to him about her speaking Korean, he will hurt Daniel -- he will break each of Dan's fingers, one by one. Yowsa. That's the old Jin we know!

Charlotte acknowledges he is right and asks what he wants. He says that when the helicopter comes, he wants Charlotte to get Sun off the Island to safety, and she agrees.

Juliet prepares to operate on Jack, who has opted to take only local anesthetic so he can talk Juliet through the surgery, watching her work in the reflection of a mirror that he insists Kate hold. Bernard assists Juliet, prepping Jack with a shot of lidocaine. He asks Jack if he wouldn't really rather have chloroform: "Wouldn't you rather be dreaming about something nice back home?"

Jack insists on only the local, but the pain breaks through and he cannot hold still as Juliet makes her incision. She instructs Bernard to administer a gauze full of chloroform and knocks Jack out against his wishes.

Kate can't bear to watch the rest of the surgery, which is good, because Juliet makes her leave anyway. Later Bernard comes out and tells her everything went fine, and she can go back in now. Juliet's just sewn Jack up and says he didn't lose much blood; he will just need to rest and heal.

Juliet also tells Kate that Jack kissed her at the power station, and "it was nice," but she thinks he was trying to prove something to himself. Specifically, to prove that "he doesn't love somebody else." Kate thanks her, then adds, "for saving his life," then leaves. Then Juliet tells Jack: "I know you're awake." He opens his eyes.

Flash-forward to Los Angeles: Jack's at home, asleep, when a morning call from the office wakes him. He gets up, wraps a bath towel around his apparently nude bod, picks up a pair of lacy, racy panties from the floor and tosses them in a hamper. He walks to the kitchen and stumbles over a Star Wars Millennium Falcon toy.

"Son of a bitch!" Jack says -- sounding exactly like Sawyer.

Jack enters the bathroom and finds Kate there, getting out of the shower. It's obvious they just spent the night together, and they share a long good-morning kiss. (And the Jate-shippers everywhere scream, "At last!")

Later, at Kate's house, Jack's reading a bedtime story to Aaron:

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: Was I the same when I got up this morning? ...If I'm not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle."

Aaron falls asleep as Kate smiles at them from the doorway. Jack tells her that his dad used to read him that book, Alice In Wonderland: "He was a good storyteller, I'll give him that."

"I'm so glad you changed your mind. So glad you're here," Kate tells him, adding that he's good with Aaron. It is apparently some time after her trial, and Jack has changed his mind about seeing Aaron.

At the hospital, Jack is startled to see his father, Christian Shephard, walk across a nearby lobby. Then he gets a call from Hugo's doctor at the Santa Rosa mental hospital. All is not well at the hat factory: Hugo's not taking his meds.

Jack goes to see him and finds Hugo sitting dispiritedly on the edge of his bed. He says he isn't taking his meds because "We're all dead, all of us, all the Oceanic Six." He says Jack's new happiness with Kate sounds "like heaven" and that he too was happy until he saw Charlie...who told him Jack would be visiting today.

He tells Jack that Charlie gave him a message to deliver, which he has written down: "You're not supposed to raise him, Jack."

"Does that make any sense? Does he mean Aaron?" Hugo asks. Jack refuses to consider it. "Take your meds," he advises Hugo.

"Charlie said someone's going to be visiting you soon, too," Hugo informs him.

Jack goes home later that night, wakes up Kate and proposes to her, and she accepts his ring happily. He doesn't mention Hugo, or Charlie's message.

Jack's working alone late at night, at the neuro group's office, when he hears a noise. He investigates, finds the smoke alarm buzzing by the reception desk and turns it off. Then he looks over to see his father sitting in the reception area. "Jack?" Christian says.

Jack walks toward him in a daze, but is interrupted by Erica, one of his colleagues. When he looks again, Christian is gone. Jack tells Erica he's feeling stressed and isn't sleeping well, and asks for an Rx for clonazepam. She says he should talk to someone, but writes the scrip.

At Kate's house, he walks in and finds her on the phone with someone, and something secretive in her overheard conversation makes him suspicious. She goes up to bed, and Jack opens a pharmacy bag and pops two tablets, washed down with a bottle of beer. He looks frayed and anxious.

Next night, Kate walks into her house to find Jack has arrived two hours early, having sent the nanny home. Kate says she had to run errands and didn't expect him home so soon (or so drunk, either). He tells her he went to see Hugo Friday and asks where she was today.

Kate asks him to trust her and not to ask this, just to let things be, but he insists over and over on knowing. Finally she tells him: "I was doing something for him. For Sawyer. I made him a promise. It doesn't matter what; it has nothing to do with us."

"He made his choice," Jack tells her. "He chose to stay. I'm the one who came back, the one who saved you!"

Kate gets angry and tells him that if he's going to be like this, she can't have him "around my son."

"Your son?" Jack shouts at her. "You're not even related to him!" (Hmmm...does he know now that Aaron is his nephew?)

Aaron has woken up and appears in the doorway. Kate, who is crying, picks up the toddler. Jack leaves, presumably heading for Ye Olde Pit of Despair and another date with the bottle and Klonopin. (And Jaters everywhere scream: "Jack! You idiot!")