Episode 18

On the island, Hurley steals some of Rousseau's documents containing a sequence of numbers that he had used earlier to win the lottery. Hurley sets out to find Rousseau by himself. Charlie, Jack, and Sayid catch up with Hurley at a rickety bridge that crosses a chasm. Hurley crosses it safely and when Charlie follows, it breaks just as he makes it across, leaving Jack and Sayid on the other side.

Looking for a way around to get Charlie and Hurley, Jack and Sayid set off one of Rousseau's traps blowing up her shelter. Sayid says that she knew he would be back so she set the trap and left.

After Charlie and Hurley split up from being shot at, Hurley finds Rousseau and he insists to know what the numbers mean. She tells him that her team followed a transmission to this island and in trying to find it, her whole team became "sick" and eventually died. She agrees that the numbers are cursed and Hurley is relieved to find somebody that believes him.

Hurley finds Charlie, Jack, and Sayid and gives them the battery from Rousseau to use on Michael's boat. On the beach, Charlie reveals to Hurley that he had a heroin addiction. Hurley tells him how much money he was worth before the crash and Charlie takes it as a joke and storms off, insulted. The end of the episode shows the sequence of numbers engraved on the hatch that Boone and Locke have been trying to open.

Flashbacks:

Hurley wins the lottery and in the following weeks he gets increasingly bad luck. His grandfather and the priest officiating the service die, his mother breaks his ankle, and so on. He then visits a mental institution where he had apparently resided for some time and talks to a patient, Leonard Sims, who keeps repeating the numbers Hurley used to win the lottery.  When Hurley tells Leonard this, he panics and screams that the numbers are bad. As he is being dragged out, he says to go see Sam Toomey in Australia. He goes there and talks to Sam's widow who tells Hurley that Sam and Leonard served in the Navy together when they heard those numbers across a radio transmission. After Sam used the numbers to win $50,000 at a fair, he experienced the same bad luck until he took his own life.

Coincidence or fate that the time Sam heard the numbers coincides with when Rousseau wrecked on the island?

OK: I don't feel like it's fate, but I feel like they are connected because it was the same transmission.

SH: It isn't merely coincidence, but I'm not a huge believer in fate, so I am going to be redundant and say that it is probably connected.

What do you think the numbers on the hatch has to do with what is inside it?

OK: I feel like it's going to be a Pandora's Box type thing and what's inside is going to be very bad or bring bad luck to the person who opens it.

SH: I think it means that it is some sort of sign or connection. It probably has to do with what Hurley believes is "bad luck".

Why at this point do you think Hurley was in a mental institution?

OK: Not sure yet, but I am very curious to find out more about that story line.

SH: Hurley wasn't in a mental institution... Unless you mean when he visited Sam? But he didn't meet Sam there. He met him before Sam was institutionalized.