The next day, Jason asked Spinelli to meet him at the hospital. Formidable Nurse Epiphany had been on the phone with her son when his car had crashed. She wanted Spinelli and Jason to find him.

He had crashed on a highway in Florida. Spinelli gave Epiphany the information and he and Jason waited for the police to call in case there was anything else they could do. Shortly after Epiphany had called the police to tell them where Stan was, she got another call from them. Spinelli doubted the time seemed short to her. He and Jason watched her face as she got the news.

"No," she said, beginning to cry, "there must be some mistake."

Spinelli felt his stomach drop. Stan was dead. Spinelli and Stan had not been friends; they had been rivals in Cyberspace and in the non-cyber world they shared a mutual, if grudging, respect. Spinelli knew Stan to be a good person in both worlds and never wished him dead, and he never wished anyone to go through the kind of pain Nurse Johnson was now experiencing, and would experience for the rest of her life. What would he do if he got a call that he'd lost his child.

Suddenly wanting to see his unborn baby's mother, he went to Jolene's room. Nothing had changed, but he could see the bulge in her belly and put his hand over it. That was his baby in there. It still didn't seem real to him at times.

He began to talk to Jolene. He believed what he'd read about comatose patients being able to hear what was being said to them. He usually rambled on about whatever popped into his head, or about things that he was thinking about frequently. He had told her about his blossoming friendship with her sister and his new found romance with Georgie. He told her about his new understanding, and consequently strengthened friendship, with Lulu. Now he told her about the move into his new apartment and his plans for the baby, and he told her about Stan.

After talking to her for a few minutes, he felt the baby move. He stared at Jolene's belly in amazement. That was his child in there and he had just felt him or her move. He had learned from research he had done on online medical web sites that it was normal to feel the baby move between sixteen and twenty-two weeks. Jolene was seventeen weeks pregnant. Spinelli was thankful that he could be here for the first movement. The circumstances of the pregnancy were far from normal. This gave him a sense of a normal fatherhood experience, even if the mother couldn't be here in the normal sense.

Nadine walked in and saw Spinelli staring at her sister's belly with his hand over it.

"Are you OK?" she asked, thinking he might be thinking about Epiphany's loss and his child.

"Come here," he said with a note of quiet excitement in his voice.

She did and he put her hand where his had been. Her niece or nephew was moving. She smiled at him, glad that he was here for this experience.

"This is real, isn't it?" she asked with mixed feelings.

"There are times when it doesn't seem so," he said, "but feeling the baby move just made it real in a way that it wasn't before." He paused, still hearing poor Epiphany's cries from the nurse's station. "It's even harder now to imagine what it would be like to lose my Innocent One , as poor Nurse Johnson has lost her son." He paused again, looking at the fetal monitor that had been strapped to Jolene along with all the other machines. "The baby's OK, right?"

Nadine was quick to reassure him.

"Yeah, it's fine; this is just a precaution. Jolene can't tell us if something's wrong, so we put the fetal monitor there to make sure everything is normal."

"Good," Spinelli said, relaxing with a sigh of relief.

Next week would be the sonogram. He would be able to see his child and find out whether it was a boy or a girl. Then he would start making preparations for the baby's room and start picking out names.

"Do you think Jolene can feel the baby?"

"I don't know," Nadine said, looking into her sister's expressionless eyes. "I don't know if she feels anything."

She looked out the window and Spinelli could see that she was upset.

Did I say something wrong?"

"No," she sighed, "I just wonder sometimes if she felt anything for a long time. I mean, how could someone with feelings do all the awful things she did?"

"I know other people who have done awful things," he said, thinking of Sam and Maxie. "With them, certain events seem to trigger their darker sides; for some it can be a series of events. Your father's death seemed to be the catalyst for Jolene. If he had died in a different way, of natural causes for example, maybe it wouldn't have affected her the way it did. She would have grieved, of course, as you and your mother have, but maybe it wouldn't have made her so angry."

"It turned her into a revenge junky."

The hurt and anger in her voice made Spinelli put his arm around her impulsively. He felt no romantic feelings towards her; he was just comforting a friend. He knew Georgie wouldn't mind.

"I'm sure she saw it as justice," he said quietly.

"When does justice become revenge?"

"I don't know. I guess it depends on the circumstances, and the person."

"Someone killed Epiphany's son."

Spinelli nodded.

"He used to work for Sonny and Jason, right? Was his death for justice, or revenge?"

"I wish I knew. He was a good person, and so is Nurse Epiphany; neither of them deserve this."

She looked up at him with haunted eyes.

"Spinelli, what kind of town, what kind of world, is this baby gonna be born into? I mean, his or her own mother is a murderer! We have stranglers, mobsters-" She stared at him then, horrified at what she'd just said. "I'm sorry; I know Jason's your friend and he's basically a good person, and that you're not a-"

"It's OK," he said quickly. "I know what you meant. Port Charles is dangerous, but so is the rest of the world. We can't live in fear of bringing children into the world because of the dangers or human beings will become an endangered species."

"Aren't we already?" Her tone was bitter and she sounded like she was going to cry as she looked at her sister. "I mean, look at what we do to each other!"

He gently turned her shoulders so she was facing him and took her face in his hands to make her look into his eyes.

"The Jackal firmly believes in balance. You can't have good without evil. Just because Jolene did evil things doesn't mean there's no good in her; if that were true she never would have saved me. If she were purely evil her smile would not have been so dazzling; that was one of the things about her that captivated me. Georgie's sister, Maxie, did awful things to Fair Lulu and others, but Georgie talked to me of her goodness. There was a side of Maxie that not many people knew. There was a side to Jolene that no one knew, except the MedCam representative. For all we know, he could have fueled that pain and anger already inside her until he convinced her that sabotaging this hospital was an affective way to exact vengeance on the hospital where your father died."

"I'm never gonna know, am I?" she asked hopelessly. "Jolene's the only one who can tell me."

"She might wake up. There's not much hope of that now, according to the life saving ones, but who knows what could happen later? The future isn't written, to quote one of my favorite movie trilogies."

She smiled for the first time since she'd gotten on this depressing train of thought.

"I like them, too, and you're right. But we have another future to think about." She smiled down at her sister's belly. "Can I ask you something?"

He nodded.

"May I be with you for the sonogram?"

"Of course. This baby is your family, too. I want Aunt Nadine to be an integral part of my Innocent One's life."

She smiled and they began speculating on the child's future. He or she would, of course, have Spinelli's cyber skills, but he was hoping to make his child more socially skilled than he was. Maybe the baby would grow up to be a nurse like Aunt Nadine.

Nadine became pensive again at that thought.

"The baby won't know about what Jolene did to the hospital until absolutely necessary," Spinelli promised.

"But when he does find out-"

"Then you and I will help him or her deal with it."

He smiled suddenly and took her hand, placing it over his. The baby was moving again.

"It'll be OK," he said with a quiet confidence that made her believe him.