The boyfriend has just told me that Locke and Ben are now on 'Alcatraz', the smaller island with the outpost of the Others, or so some Lost podcast informed him, but Ben is badly injured. I seem to remember seeing him on an army cot, bloodied up and unconscious. The theory seems to be that all the people who don't really belong on the island are hurt. (And I don't really care whether they're on the island proper or on the outpost - my point is that Ben is unconscious and we don't know whether he'll wake up.)

Maybe Ben knew that he wouldn't get to see Locke, because Ben wasn't really supposed to go back...