**Author's Note: if you don't like the story, so sorry... but feel free not to read it... and please do NOT comment. I would rather not hear grumpy comments. I write to satisfy the muse and hope to share my stories with the fans of Liason... **

Part 07 - Snow White & Rose Red

With all the drama at the GH Emergency Room, the ambulance carrying Lucky Spencer was diverted to Mercy Hospital. The doctor that met them at the doors took one whiff of the young man and sent him inside with a shake of his head and an order to "pump his stomach."

Luke grabbed the doctor's arm and steered him to the side. He had a hard whispered conversation with the doctor and followed him into the examination area. "You have to do it."

The doctor stopped at the curtain and turned around. "Look, I don't know you-"

"I'm his father!" Luke's fisted balled up and dropped to his sides. "I'm Luke Spencer!"

Rolling his eyes, the doctor sighed. "Look, that might mean something somewhere else, but right here, my only concern is taking care of my patient."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you-"

"Nurse Crowell," the young blonde nurse stepped free of the curtains, "will get any information you can give us. She'll add it into the file, but I need to examine him immediately… so you'll excuse me."

Luke was left with the eager young nurse and her incessant stream of questions. All he wanted was to get the doctor to listen to him, but he'd take what he could… At least until they'd pumped Lucky's stomach clean.

He'd tried to stop Lucky after he'd finished off the first bottle. He'd only wanted the boy to 'seem' drunk and unconscious, but once Lucky'd had the taste of alcohol on his tongue he didn't stop until he'd flopped on the bed in a stupor. Luke did what he could. That included finishing off the last half a bottle that Lucky had left behind.

Truth be told, he was still a bit tipsy himself… and Nurse Crowell was a pretty little thing. "Well," he gave the girl a grin, "I'm a bit wobbly on my feet, my dear… all of this worry over my boy." He looked around the Emergency Room. "I'm not used to Mercy… I was wondering if we might find a place to sit together?"


Jason found the quiet of the room soothing. He hated hospitals. Hated them almost as much as he hated business meetings. More than he hated ties. He couldn't stand the antiseptic smell of the halls or the constant bustle of people in the halls.

There were entirely too many people walking around for his liking.

But, here in Elizabeth's room, he felt strangely at ease.

He watched her face for any sign that she was waking up. There were so many questions he had to ask Elizabeth. Besides the questions about who had hurt her, he now had to add a number of questions about his sister.

There was a soft knock at the door a moment before Francis opened the door and stepped in. "How is she?"

Jason turned his attention to his good friend. "Sleeping. Healing, hopefully."

Francis nodded and pulled up a chair a few feet away from Jason. He lowered himself into the chair to avoid any possible squeaking or scraping the legs against the floor. "When they brought her out of surgery, Dr. Quartermaine came to see me. He wanted to give me a rundown of how things went." He waited to make sure that he had Jason's full attention before he continued. "He probably broke all kinds of medical laws and ethics, but he knew you'd want to know."

Considering his words, Jason nodded. "Grandmother always had nice things to say about Elizabeth."

"Well," Francis chuckled, "your grandmother usually has nice things to say about everyone."

"Everyone?" Jason's expression was curious.

"Almost everyone. Still, Dr. Quartermaine wanted to let you know that she came through the surgery as well as he hoped."

"And our man inside the police station?"

Francis nodded. "They went over to her apartment. Luke was there, pounding on the door. They took Lucky out on a stretcher, covered in blood."

Jason's shoulders tensed. "Whose blood?"

"They took him to Mercy, we have someone there as well, they'll get us the information we need."

"And their apartment?"

Francis scoffed. "They combed over it looking for evidence of the attack."

"And?" Jason heard an off-rhythm blip from one of the machines.

"We'll have one of our guys in there to look for everything they missed."

Nodding, Jason agreed. "There should be a lot left for us to pick through. I want Luke watched as well."

Smiling, Francis sat back in his chair. "Took care of that. He'll have a shadow before he leaves Mercy Hospital."

Jason turned in his chair to look a the monitors above Elizabeth's bed. The numbers were climbing slowly.

"You want me to get a doctor in here?" Francis had spent much of the time that Jason was held at the PCPD to find out as much as he could about Elizabeth and he liked what he was finding out.

"No, everything looks good so far." Jason mentally went back through Alan's explanation of the readouts. When Jason had returned to the hospital Alan had been only too happy to explain what they were looking for to indicate that Elizabeth was on the mend. The numbers were promising. "I just can't stop thinking about the way she looked when I found her."

Francis didn't make a sound. Jason wasn't usually someone to mull over things in their line of work. He was good at what he did. He could assess pretty much any situation and make a solid snap judgement.

But Elizabeth had literally stopped him in his tracks. And while Francis was glad that Jason stayed around in Port Charles, he was really curious.

"There's this statue," Jason continued as he got up from his chair, "on an old property… on the hill roads. A girl." Jason stood beside the bed and looked down at Elizabeth's face bathed in the soft fluorescent light from the wall above the headboard. The slightly blue tinge didn't mar her features, but in his head, he could still see her surrounded by snow. "Sometimes I think the statue is just about to move. Like she's just standing still because someone is watching her."

Francis swallowed, desperate not to make a sound.

"I've been into Kelly's a few times, enough that Elizabeth knows what I order when I'm there, but I never realized how much she looks like that girl. Like that statue." Jason lifted his hand from his side and took Elizabeth's hand in his, smoothing his thumb over the back of it.

Her skin was cool to the touch, but as he swept the pad of his work-worn thumb over her pale perfection, he felt a tremor.

The numbers on the readouts climbed higher.

He lifted his other hand and trailed his fingers up and down her forearm. Again, a tremor of movement. "Elizabeth?"

Jason leaned over the bed, tilting his head so he could took at her closely. He saw her lips close and open again, and a slight flush flow over her cheeks. "Elizabeth?"

From where he was standing, Francis could see Elizabeth's fingers tighten around Jason's hand. "I'll get a doctor." He was gone a moment later, leaving his friend alone with the beautiful young woman.

"Elizabeth?" Jason lifted her hand in his as he leaned further over the bed. "Can you hear me?"

The muscles in her arm flexed, a strange and wonderful feeling against Jason's touch. Her fingers moved, lifting and falling as if she was trying to reach for something. But it was her lips moving, and the hush of a whisper that had him moving closer to her.

"Elizabeth? Are you-"

Jason Morgan had felt the static charge of electricity that sparked when he'd spent too much time in Sony's penthouse and he finally made it outside and away from all the pretentious furnishing that seemed to be as much a part of Sonny as his volatile moods.

But this was different. He felt the a shudder roll through his body as her fingertips touched his chest. A frisson of some unnamed emotion that prickled heat along the skin beneath his shirt, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, wove its way through him as her fingers swept against him again.

Then, her eyes opened, a fluttering of dark lashes and the deep blue that locked onto his face as she struggled to make sense of her surroundings.

"Elizabeth?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words were lost as hospital staff burst through the door and swarmed around her bed.