Title: Tears of the Sun
Synopsis: I took the events of the day that Elizabeth found Jason in the snow and changed them and the fall out. This story is mostly Liason but other characters will have their own side stories as well.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. I have no affiliation with Disney, General Hospital or the actors. No copyright infringement intended. Grace Colorado is a town of my own imaginings. Harmony Grace is a hospital I made up.
Chapter 2
Grace Colorado, Two months later . . .
Elizabeth sat on the bed that was just becoming familiar to her. She was dressed in white pants and a comfortable white turtleneck but she felt confined. Upon her mother's insistence she had left her face plain, free of makeup. Her dark hair was tied back into a severe ponytail. She should have been downstairs ten minutes ago but she had not been able to bring herself to do so.
From her stiff position on the bed she stared out of her bedroom window. White capped mountains in the distance created a solid, remote background that made her feel more lost inside than she thought possible. She curled her bare toes into the soft, warm carpeting that covered her bedroom and let out a small sigh.
Her life had changed dramatically without any notice to her. She just woke up one day, pulled on her robe the same way she always did, went downstairs for a bowl of cereal and found her parents sitting on one of her grandmother's couches.
They had come to take her home.
Elizabeth had refused. She was eighteen after all, and was old enough to make her own decisions. Her parents took that bitter pill but threw two more at her: Lucky and Jason. Elizabeth thought she would drop to her knees on the spot. The fact that her parents would use two people that Elizabeth had lost to get their way did not come as a surprise to her. But the way that they brought them up so carelessly, as if they never existed- it cut her to the bone.
When she still refused, her grandmother had intervened. Audrey thought it was best. Port Charles had brought Elizabeth nothing but pain, her grandmother reasoned, Colorado would be better.
Even that had not convinced Elizabeth. It wasn't until Elizabeth's mother admitted the real truth of their visit that Elizabeth dropped down to the couch and listlessly agreed. Her mother had cancer, she could die. Her father needed her help. How could she say no to that?
Elizabeth looked down at the rolled pair of socks in her hand. Honestly, there had been nothing left for her in Port Charles. A little, drafty art studio, classes at PCU, other than that . . . She didn't even have her friendship with Emily. After Jason died, Emily became distant. Elizabeth hadn't known how to comfort her friend, not when she couldn't stop thinking that it was somehow her fault that it happened.
A lump swelled in her chest, tightening hotly.
She blamed herself. She should have never asked Jason to stay and dance with her, it was selfish and if she hadn't then he might not have run into the trouble he had. She should not have stopped at Kelly's for breakfast that morning; she would have made it to the boxcar sooner. She should have run faster for help, screamed louder. She should have prayed. She had forgot to pray.
She wiped the wetness from her cheeks profusely then pulled her socks on and slid her feet into a pair of white rubber clogs.
With her first college semester over, her father had thought it best that Elizabeth leave with them immediately. She could enroll in school in Grace Colorado as soon as they arrived. Of course she would miss the Spring quarter but she could make the summer. Upon her arrival in Grace, Elizabeth did just that. She went down to the community college and registered for summer courses. But that left her with the rest of the winter and spring with nothing to do.
That was when her father suggested that Elizabeth should volunteer at the Harmony Grace, the local hospital.
Her gaze was fixed on a single-out of the hundreds- tiny rose, inlayed in the pale pink wallpaper on her walls when her father walked in. Elizabeth turned her head, her eyes meeting his smile. She attempted to mimic her dad's mood, but failed; her smile turning down at one corner.
"Are you ready, Elizabeth?" Jeff Webber moved into the room and Elizabeth noted that he was holding material in his hand. His long fingers splayed tenderly over a small folded bundle of red and white. "For you," He informed her as he took a place on the bed next to her.
Elizabeth opened her hands and her dad handed her the material. With question, Elizabeth unfolded it and frowned.
"A candy striper apron," he said.
"Oh." That was all Elizabeth could manage at the moment. She didn't know what she thought the material had been, but her father had been holding it so dear, Elizabeth had expected something more.
Jeff patted Elizabeth's knee. "I've had this waiting for you for so long now. I always hoped that you would one day come to need it."
"Dad," Elizabeth began. She did not want him getting his hopes up about this volunteer work. Elizabeth thought she had made it clear that she did not wish to go into the medical profession like the rest of her family had.
"I know, Elizabeth," he said quickly, as though she knew exactly what she had been thinking. "But I can't help my excitement in this one little thing. At least give me that." Jeff gave her knee one last squeeze and stood up.
Elizabeth looked down at the candy striper apron in her hands. She forced her mouth to turn up in a smile, "Thank you," she said quietly before her father left the room.
Elizabeth's first day as a candy striper at Harmony Grace Hospital had been uneventful. It began with being introduced to the two other volunteers who she would be working with. Both were women a few years older than Elizabeth's eighteen years and actually interested in medicine.
From there they were taken on a tour of the small hospital that seemed to drag on for hours. While the other ladies found interest in each destination and minor detail and hung on every mundane, repetitive word their tour guide said, Elizabeth battled the memories that the hospital lit in her.
As they passed a waiting room where a group of people sat gathered, waiting on word of a family member, presumably, Elizabeth felt a roiling of her insides. The picture it painted reminded her of how the Quatermaine's had been gathered when Monica and Alan came back with the grave news. She was vaguely aware of the tour guide's words as she stood transfixed.
She fell behind the pace of the others, reliving the day that she waited in the hospital for word on Jason. Hopeful that he would be fine, that the surgery would go well. All in vain.
"I asked if you were feeling all right, Miss Webber."
Elizabeth snapped her head toward the voice. "Yes," she said hollowly.
"May we continue on with the tour, then?"
It was then that Elizabeth noticed the impatient stares of the three people waiting on her. She felt silly, embarrassed by her actions or lack there of. "Of course," she answered, feeling her cheeks heat.
"Good." The tour guide turned on her rubber soled heel and they all continued forward.
Port Charles, New York
Emily Bowen Quartermaine was in a mess of sorts and to her total discredit she could not bring herself to care.
Nothing was right. Her life had taken a one hundred eighty-degree turn and she found herself back in the lowest, seediest sides of town, digging into her designer bag for cash to pay a dealer so that she could get a fix and fall into a blank oblivion.
Her hand withdrew from her purse, fifty dollars enclosed in fingers that shook, not from nerves but from withdrawal. She handed the bill to the guy in front of her. He reached out, his fingers skimming hers before he caught her hand in his and yanked her forward. Emily squeaked in protest as he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him.
The bill in her hand crumpled as her hands balled in fists and she pushed at his chest. He held her still, catching her hand and prying the fifty from her tight fingers. Then just as fast as she was in his arms, he had let her go, his attention on the money now in his grip. He smiled, a slow curving twist of his cruel mouth, dug into his pocket and pulled out the small paper packages Emily had been waiting for.
Her breath hitched at the sight of them, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She could almost feel it, the slow creep of the drug in her body, helping her to forget everything. She reached out and snatched her purchase from his hand, clutching them in her grasp. The dealer frowned at her and she turned away and rushed to her car, her heels scratching against the rough ground of the sodden alley beneath her feet.
By the end of the tour Elizabeth was close to dying of boredom. This was a bad idea. She could be painting, or at least trying. The truth was that she hadn't been able to paint in weeks. But she would much rather be staring at a blank canvas than walking the desolate halls of Harmony Grace.
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her red and white striped apron as they came to the last stop of their tour. The psych-ward. They would be required on occasion to help out at the nurse's station at this wing of the hospital and they needed to be familiar with the nurses, orderlies and patients.
It was imperative, said the tour guide, that they know how to act and react towards the wards patients. Many of the patients in this area of the hospital were volatile and could be a danger to themselves and the staff, safety of both the patients and staff was paramount.
Elizabeth half listened to the droning of their guide while her eyes traveled over the patients. Most of them were sitting docilely. Some stared out at nothing, a few picked at their clothing and hair. There was one man who stood with his face in a corner as though he was being punished with a time-out.
Elizabeth noticed two orderlies dressed in white uniforms standing on either side of the room, arms crossed, blending into the walls they stood against. Unassuming and nonthreatening. But it was something about them that told Elizabeth that under their carefully practiced stance they were waiting, anticipating one of the patients to step out of line.
"If you all will walk this way . . . "
Elizabeth pulled her eyes away from the sullen room and fell into step behind the other stripers as they continued down a hallway.
Their guide was pointing at a door, explaining the medicine housed behind it as a door opened in Elizabeth's peripheral. She turned her head in the direction of the movement. A tall, burley orderly walked from the room, behind him; a patient, and behind the patient; another orderly.
Her quick glance allowed only a glimpse of the patient, but it was enough to intrigue her. The way he stood: tall, proud, but with his lowered, hair the color of sun-kissed wheat falling just over his brow.
"Miss Webber, are you not listening again?" Her tour guide asked, clearly irritated.
Elizabeth was turning her attention back to the woman when the patient jerked his head up. She sucked in a gasp at the familiar face and brilliant blue eyes that locked with hers. Jason. It could not be. It was impossible. But here he was.
The orderly behind the patient grumbled for him to keep on moving. But the patient-Jason- did not budge.
"Jason?" Elizabeth asked, turning completely away from the irritated tour guide and equally disgruntled candy stripers. She could not believe that she was asking such an impossible thing. Surely this man was not Jason.
The patient did not speak, but his blue eyes- wild with questions of their own-stared intensely at her.
"Miss Webber!" The tour guide seemed to choke on her name.
"Jason," Elizabeth asked again, ignoring the-now staring-orderlies, and huffs from the women behind her.
"He doesn't talk, miss," the first orderly told her.
"Is his name Jason?" she asked. "Jason Morgan?"
The second orderly shook his head. "No, ma'am. It's not."
Elizabeth kept her eyes locked with the patients. Not Jason. They told you he is not Jason.
The straight line of the patient's mouth twitched at the corners, almost lifting into a smile. Almost, not quite. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him and his narrowed in response; two dangerous slits that only allowed a glint of his startling blue eyes, hidden under dusky lashes.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, not sure of what she meant to say. The second orderly nudged the patient forward and he removed his gaze from her, dropping his head again as he was shuffled away. Shocked and confused- she brought a hand to her increasingly tightening chest and looked away. Three sets of eyes stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
She felt as though she had.
Jason? Jason Morgan?
The girl had known who he was.
Alex, they told him his name was. Alex, they called him repeatedly, but he knew better. He might not remember where he was from, how old he was, who his parents were, if he had any sisters or brothers- but he knew his name was Jason Morgan.
When he came to in the first hospital, the doctor had called him Jason. "Mr. Morgan? Jason, can you hear me?"
The doctor had clearly called him that name and it had felt right, the only thing that was real to him in the new world he had woken up in. But after that no one had called him Jason again. Out of nowhere they began to call him Alex, but Alex never fit. It did not feel like the worn glove; Jason did. He had now been referred to as Alex so many times that he began to wonder if he had really heard the doctor call him anything but that.
But then came Miss Webber.
Miss Webber. Miss Webber. Miss Webber. He ran the name over and over in his head trying to work his brain around reason that the name had alerted him. He could not come up with anything. It had been reflexive, a response that came naturally. He heard the name, lifted his head and met the eyes of a girl dressed up like a candy cane. She looked silly in that red and white peppermint sack she wore. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that she knew Jason Morgan.
At this new knowledge Jason was too anxious to eat. He lifted his left hand and pushed his paper plate away. He looked down at his right arm, his hand resting lifelessly in his lap. He focused hard, trying to get his fingers to move. He gave a dissatisfied grunt when they did not.
"Say something?" One of his assigned orderlies' asked. There were snickers from two other orderlies standing beside him.
"Of course he didn't." Another one replied.
Jason set his teeth. His left hand closed into a tight fist.
"What's the matter, Alex? Cat got your tongue?" That question elicited laughter from all three orderlies.
Jason tuned them out, searching the cafeteria for any sign of Miss Webber. He did not see her peppermint draped shape anywhere. Dread settled in his stomach as he realized that Miss Webber was probably gone forever, and with her- all knowledge of Jason Morgan.
To be continued...
