"JACK, YOU HAVE TO STOP!"

Kate fights to keep up with him, trying to protect him from himself. He feels responsible. "Which way did he take them?" Jack feverishly traipses through the jungle looking for Charlie and Claire (S. 1, ep. 11). An unknown enemy, a man they thought was one of their own, took them. Suddenly they come upon Charlie, blindfolded and hanging limp—from the neck—a human piñata. Jack rushes over to hold him up while Kate climbs up and reaches over to cut through the thick vines. Charlie plummets to the ground. Jack does CPR: nothing. Kate pleads hysterically while Jack pounds on Charlie’s chest, refusing to give up, even though it is clearly too late. "Commitment is in your blood, Jack. What you have trouble doing is letting go,” his father once told him. His father also used to tell him, "You don't have what it takes"--that he shouldn't try to save everyone--or else he wouldn't make it as a doctor. Like him? The chief of surgery who drank himself to death? No. He would work another miracle if he had to, just like he did for Sarah. After he operated on her, she was able to walk again, and they were married. Now she's gone. That seems so long ago. Suddenly, Charlie exhales, awakened from death. Jack and Kate are overjoyed. Once again, Jack has done it. Or has he? So many survived the plane crash with minor injuries--and Jack doesn't know it, but Locke used to need a wheelchair and Rose had cancer. It seems that the island somehow mysteriously healed them. Jack needs to learn that not everything is up to him. He doesn’t always have to be the hero.