“Raised by Another”

Lost season 1, episode 10
Original air date: December 01, 2004

Backstory: Claire reveals to her boyfriend, Thomas, that she's pregnant. He's ecstatic at first and says that they could get married and have the baby together. The day after she finds out she's pregnant, Claire's friend takes her to see a psychic. The psychic begins Claire's reading and asks her about the baby. She tells him she just found out about it. He continues the reading, but then gets a terrified look on his face and breaks it off. He refuses to tell Claire what he's seen and refunds her money. He asks her and her friend to leave, which they do.

As months pass,Thomas becomes more and more distant and resentful of being tied down by Claire and the baby on the way. He and Claire argue more frequently, and he eventually leaves her. Desperate, Claire returns to the psychic. The psychic can see that Thomas left, and Claire asks if that's what he had seen before. The psychic says no, he saw something blurry. He asks if Claire wants to continue, and she agrees. The psychic becomes agitated again, and he tells Claire that he has seen that it is crucial that she alone raise her child with no one else. He says if the child is parented by anyone else, without Claire's "goodness," it will go off course. Claire argues with the psychic that she's planning to put the baby up for adoption, but the psychic says that there is no happy life for her child without her. Freaked out, Claire runs out, as the psychic yells at her that the baby needs her protection.

As Claire's pregnancy progresses, the psychic continues bothering her, calling her in the middle of the night to press her not to give the baby up for adoption. Claire resists and even goes to sign papers to turn the baby over to another couple. However, as she tries to sign the papers, all three pens she tries won't write. A little spooked, she walks away from the adoption and calls the psychic to hear his plan. His plan is that Claire fly to Los Angeles to give the baby to a couple there. He says that he's made all the arrangements and that this couple won't jeopardize the baby's well-being as he's foreseen. He tells Claire she must take the flight he's booked — the flight that eventually crashes — and she follows through with it.

Current: Claire wakes up in the camp, hearing a baby crying. She follows the sound into the jungle, where she sees Locke — with black pools for eyes — who tells her that she knows what's going on. He says the baby was her responsibility but she gave him away, and so everyone pays the price now. Claire stumbles on to find a crib filled with blood, which gets all over her hands, with a mobile hanging over it that has the parts of the plane dangling from it. When she wakes from her nightmare, she's screaming and Charlie's trying to calm her down. He says she was sleepwalking, but then he looks at her hands, which are covered in blood.

Jack treats Claire's hands, which were injured by her digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands so deeply that she drew blood. Jack's very concerned about Claire's stress level, because he knows it'll make delivery worse for both her and the baby. When Claire wakes again in the middle of the night and claims that a man was standing over her, trying to stick a needle in her belly to hurt the baby, Jack's worries seem founded. In the meantime, Charlie tries to make friends with Claire, but she rebuffs him, fearing that he'll leave her like Thomas did.

When Jack suggests to Charlie that they sedate Claire for her and the baby's well-being, Charlie gets angry and accuses Jack of thinking that Claire is crazy. Claire is also incensed and leaves the camp to go off on her own. Charlie accompanies her and refuses to leave her. Unfortunately, after they've gotten a little ways into the jungle, Claire begins having labor pains. Ethan comes upon them, and Charlie sends Ethan to find Jack and get his help.

After Claire's attack, Hurley takes it upon himself to begin a census of the island. He tells Jack that none of them know each other at all, and they ought to begin some record of who everyone is and where they're from. He points out that his name isn't even Hurley, it's Hugo. Hurley's just a nickname some friends gave him. With Jack's blessing, Hurley begins collecting information from everyone. In the course of his investigation, he convinces Sawyer to turn over the plane's manifest, since that would help rehabilitate Sawyer's reputation. Comparing his notes to the manifest, Hurley discovers that one of the people in the camp wasn't on the plane: Ethan.

Hurley tells Jack this as Claire's labor stops and Sayid stumbles back into the caves. Sayid tells Jack he found the French woman and that they're not alone, but he passes out. Charlie convinces Claire to go back to the caves and promises he won't let anything happen to her. Charlie's confused when he and Claire come upon Ethan, and they realize that he never went for Jack.