Hi
I'm not sure what you mean...
Free Text field is just a field so you should be able to use $cck->getValue('some_field)
or
$fields['some_field']->value
In either case, use var_dump($fields) or var_dump($cck) to see
a) if you can access it
b) what data is available to access ie
$fields['some_field']->defaultvalue
$fields['some_field']->id
$fields['some_field']->typo etc...