"Georgie? Is there anything I can do for you?"

The young girl looked up from where she sat into the bright blue eyes of Elizabeth Webber. A quick glance told her that Lorenzo had joined his brother a few feet away, and the two were discussing something rather heatedly.

"Can you guarantee Diego's going to be perfectly fine?" At the sound of her own petulance, Georgie's face crinkled, even as Elizabeth sat beside her and offered a small, knowing smile.

"Well, I can't do that, but I can guarantee that we'll help you through this."

This we thing… That's all she'd heard from that particular camp. That "we" were grateful that she was there to help Diego. That "we" hope that she's safe and that she doesn't hold anything against Diego. It was like the royal we, and that was fine and normal she guessed, coming from Lorenzo and Luis. But from Elizabeth…

Georgie shook her head. She was horrible. Acting like everybody else in town, as if the Alcazars didn't deserve the same decency and loyalty that everyone else did. Of course, Elizabeth included herself in that we. She was attached to the family, and they treated her as such. She wasn't technically an Alcazar, but she'd been welcomed into the fold. She was one of them, for all intents and purposes.

In the moment, the Alcazar "we" was the only "we" that Georgie had. Mac wasn't helping her through this situation. He and Maxie kept trying to force her to leave the hospital, tell her that she didn't need to be there. It could have very well been her that got shot, and it would have all been Diego's fault. She ended up separating herself because she was getting really tired of telling them that she was an adult, a married woman who didn't need the two of them telling her what to do. Especially when she wasn't letting her husband do it.

Dillon was just… Georgie sighed. Her eyes closed for a second, then opened slowly. Elizabeth still sat there, waiting patiently. No wonder she was such a good nurse. She could just sit there and wait while people sat like logs, saying nothing. "Dillon will probably never talk to me again."

"Oh, honey, it'll be fine." She rubbed Georgie's leg lightly and gave her that smile again. That peaceful grin that was meant to make everything better. It was like the one she'd given Luis, except that all of the "I love you" was taken out. "Diego's your friend. You're upset."

"That's just it. He doesn't want Diego to be my friend. None of them do." She turned towards Mac and Maxie. She thought it strange that they were becoming less "her family" and more "them." She sighed and turned away. "Dillon keeps trying to tell me who I can and can't hang out with, and he's rigid when it comes to Diego."

"Well, you're not a child, are you?" Elizabeth paused for a second, pouting her lips slightly, then shook her head. "Okay, so you're under eighteen, and I guess you're technically a child, but you're married, now. That makes you a woman. An adult woman who doesn't need to be told who she can and can not see."

The very idea of someone disparaging an Alcazar seemed to fluster Elizabeth. Her tone was colder than it was before. Not without feeling at all, but with a restraint of anger. As though she would lash out if she didn't reign it in, and that left only a bitter chill to her words.

"I realize that the Alcazar family isn't exactly loved in this town," Elizabeth told her, "but they're not horrible people. They're just like you and me. They have family, and they have friends. They have people they would do anything for. They just sometimes take the anything a little too far."

"You sound like you've given this speech before."

"More times than I can count," she said, rolling her eyes. "When Luis and I got together, there were a lot of people who tried to tell me to stay away. I've got a lot less friends right now because I won't stand by and listen to people talk about them. They're not bad people and Diego—He's a good kid. He just messed up."

"That's what I keep trying to tell everybody. He knows that he was wrong, and he's sorry for it. He was just… He was confused and misguided. He wouldn't do anything like that again. Now, other things, I don't know, 'cause he comes up with money that he says he's not getting from his father, and yeah, I guess he could be getting it from Luis but I don't know. I just—" Georgie sighed and shook her head. "I don't know, and I really don't care. I know his family isn't necessarily on the up and up, but it's not any of my business. It doesn't make me care about him any less."

"That's good to hear."

"I just wish Dillon…" She sighed. "I wish he would stop."

The argument with Dillon had long since come and gone. The people standing around only saw the initial contact. They only got to see Dillon rush in and hug her tightly. They only saw him dragging her towards the elevator, talking about her changing clothes and being so glad that she was alive, that she wasn't hurt. They didn't see what happened inside the elevator. They didn't see the screaming match when she told him that she wasn't leaving until she had seen for herself that Diego was fine. That she wasn't going to go home just because he told her to.

"If you really love me, Dillon, you'll just stop. You'll come in here and sit with me. Dad and Maxie don't like Diego anymore than you do, but they're in there and they're not trying to force me to leave anymore. Just sit with me, and then when I know he's fine, when I've seen Diego with my own two eyes, we can leave."

In the end, Georgie went back upstairs, and she stepped off of the elevator alone. She didn't know where Dillon went, and she didn't care. If he couldn't at least sit there with her, support her in something that was obviously important to her, then he could just… go jump out the window at Kelly's for all she cared.

"You didn't see the fight we had," Georgie said, "and it's only a good thing for me that I didn't tell him what Diego told me. Then he'd have come back in here, but it wouldn't have been pretty. He'd have yelled, and I really don't think that either Alcazar over there would have stood by and listened to what he had to say."

"We all might have ended up in police custody over that one." Elizabeth gave her shoulders a slight shake. "What did he say?"

"He said…" Georgie's head went around quickly, looking to either side. She leaned in closer to Elizabeth and whispered, "He said he was in love with me."

"Oh, dear."

"Exactly!" Others in the waiting area turned towards her, and she could feel Mac's heavy gaze. Sighing, Georgie lowered her voice and leaned in again. "He said it just before he went to get the phone. And he said it again after he was shot, right before Nikolas showed up. I… I don't know how to respond to that."

"You either love him or you don't, Georgie."

"I love Dillon. I love my husband."

"But, maybe, there's something in you that loves him, too. There's gotta be something there for you to defend him the way you do. You're slowly alienating yourself from your family."

"I don't want to do that."

"They're not giving you a choice now, are they?" Her mouth opened to say more, but then she stopped as she saw something behind Georgie. "Nikolas?"

Nikolas knelt down beside them. Here was someone who'd had his own negative run-ins with the Alcazar family, but he wasn't crapping all over them. He was just trying to help find out information. Of course, he was one of Elizabeth's best friends, one of the few she had left from her pre-Alcazar days, but still…

"I found out some information that I thought you would like to share with them." His "them" sounded a lot like Georgie's, she thought, when she was referring to her family. "Diego's still in surgery, but it looks good. They expect to be able to close up and have him out soon."

"Nikolas, thank you." Elizabeth grabbed his hands and smiled. "I appreciate this."

"I'd do anything for you, Elizabeth. I just happen to have perks here, giving them the majority of their money and all." He looked to Georgie as he stood up and lightly touched her shoulder. "Don't worry. From what I hear, you did really good out there. Be proud of that."

Nikolas gave a nod towards Elizabeth, and then was gone. Georgie let her body go as she sighed with relief, falling to slouch completely in her chair. "Thank God," she said softly. "If he were worse…"

"You wouldn't know what you would do."

"Exactly."

"Between that and your fierce defending of him, Georgie, I think you really need to think about what you're going to say to Diego the next time he tells you how he feels. Because I think you just might feel more than you're allowing yourself to feel."