The sunlight peeks through the trees, washing over his eyelids.  The air around him feels thick with moisture and the ripe stench of flames.  He’s alone and surrounded by over-sized leaves and a broad canopy overhead, but he can hear much more going on at the edge of the brush. 

He stands up with a surprising ease, fueled by the adrenaline now pumping through his veins.  The blood tastes like salt in his mouth, but the noises are growing louder with each step.  A Labrador runs past and he wonders where the hell it came from.  Where the hell he came from. 

His feet find the sand and the light hits him like a freight train as he steps out from the undergrowth.  When his eyes finally adjust, part of him wishes that he could go back.  Back to the safety of not knowing what was happening on the beach.  Instead, he finds his legs picking up speed, sprinting now towards the wreckage. 

Flames lick the plane’s fuselage.  A woman is screaming.  There is blood everywhere he looks. 

“Hey—you!”  A guy points to him.  “Can you help?”

He thinks he can and so he runs past the sputtering engine to help a fairly large man move a fairly pregnant woman.  Not two seconds later his body his thrown hard to the ground as the engine explodes. 

He struggles back to his feet and reaches the pregnant woman, helping to make her comfortable underneath the shade of the plane’s wing.

“Hey, what’s your name, man?” The guy asks.  “I’m Hurley.”

“Jim,” he nods back, and they both look to the pregnant woman. 

“Claire,” she replies to their wordless question. 

“MOVE! MOVE! Get her up!  Get her out of there!” He hears the first guy yelling, running in their direction.  The wing above them is groaning and coming toward them at a quickening pace. 

The sand is hot and in his eyes as they pull Claire out of the way, diving into the beach as it crashes in a fiery explosion behind them. 

“Fuck, that was close,” Hurley breathes, rolling over in the sand.  “Hey, man, your arm.”

He looks down at his arm, the sleeve damp and red.  He rolls the fabric back, revealing a substantial gash in his flesh. 

“We need to put pressure on it,” Claire offers, her Australian drawl catching his attention as she ripes the hem of her own shirt and wraps it tightly around the wound. 

“Thanks,” he smiles as another blonde catches his eye.   He stands up abruptly and walks over to her, putting a hand on her shoulder.  “Angela?”

She turns to face him and he can see that she is crying.  Falls into his arms, she hugs him tightly. 

“Angela, what are you---how are you here?”  His free hand strokes her hair, not wholly unaware of the strangeness of Angela Martin embracing him. 

“I—I can’t find Dwight,” she sniffs loudly.  “I can’t find him.”

“Wait, Dwight was on the plane too?”  Now he really starts to wonder if this is all some convoluted nightmare.

“Yes, we-we were coming from New Zealand and… Jim, what if he’s not okay?”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Angela.  We’ll find him alright?”

She nods into his chest before pulling away.  “Your arm.”

“Yeah,” he shrugs as though he isn’t about to pass out from the pain.  “It’s nothing.”

“Hey!  Jim!” Hurley calls over to him.  “I found the doctor!”

“You keep looking, okay?  I’ll find you,” he tells Angela and she nods firmly, traces of her normal self settling into her eyes. 

He jogs over to Hurley and the guy who had first enlisted him.  “I’m Jack, let me look at it.”

He unwraps his arm, presenting it to the doctor. 

“You need stitches, come on,” Jack starts to lead him somewhere but stops when he hears another scream down the beach.

“Go help her,” he shakes his head.  “I’ll find someone to sew it up.”

“I’ll do it,” a voice says from behind him. 

He knows who it is without having to turn around.  Her hair is blowing in the salty air and she holds out her hand as Jack gives her the thread and an airplane-sized bottle of vodka.  “Use this to sterilize it.  I’ll check on you later.”

They hold each other’s gaze for a few moments, the sight of her registering in his hazy mind.  Maybe he is hallucinating, it can’t really be her. 

“Jim,” tears spring to her eyes and she wraps her arms around his waist.  He lets his hands drift to her face, tracing the line of her jaw. 

“Pam, why—how are you here?”

“I—I was--” she begins nervously.  “Oh my god, look at your arm.  Sit down.” 

She finds him a shady area and begins preparing the needle.  “I’ve never done this before, what if I pass out  or throw up on you or something?”

He presses his thumb to her trembling lower lip.  “You can do this.  I know you can.”  

She takes a deep breath and begins to work.

He sat on the plane drinking a drink that wasn’t quite strong enough to take the edge off of the fact that he was leaving Australia and headed back to reality.  Back to Scranton. 

The date on his watch read June 18th.  Pam had been a married woman for eight whole days. 

He took another swig from his plastic cup and wondered if wherever Pam and Roy were now was as warm as the heat spreading down his throat.   Maybe she was in a skimpy swimsuit somewhere basking in the sun, or maybe they had spent the entire week locked in a hotel room.  He figured he’d be able to tell by looking at her tan tomorrow. 

A blonde in the next aisle caught his eye, throwing him a suggestive milehighclub-like smile.  He smiled back, gracious for anything to take his mind off a married receptionist, and raised his cup to her. 

She laughed and the guy sitting next to her clued in, jabbing at her arm with his elbow. 

“Jesus, Shannon, can’t you just keep it in your pants for a few hours?”

A haggard looking guy brushed past his shoulder, followed quickly down the aisle by a handful of flight attendants. 

He was in mid-thought, wondering what that was all about when the plane jolted him forward.  He quickly tightened his seatbelt as the warning light switched on. 

The plane began to shake violently, luggage spilling from the overhead compartment as the oxygen masks tumbled down in front of his face. 

“Pam, I need you to talk to me,” he breathes heavily, trying to stay conscious as she pours the vodka onto his arm. 

“Talk to you about what?” She asks tentatively, piercing his skin with the needle. 

He fights his body’s involuntary reaction to wince and pull away.  “Anything, talk about anything.  Hell, tell me about your honeymoon if you want.”

“Jim,” her voice is soft and the sensation of the thread pulling taut through his flesh is almost indescribable.  “I didn’t get married.”

And suddenly it’s like he’s just gotten a few hundred injections of morphine in him and he wonders how long it will take for his feet to touch back on the ground.