Chapter 14

"Everything went according to plan last night," Jason announced when he walked into his partner's office at the coffee shop.

Sonny Corinthos looked up from the newspaper he was reading momentarily to glance at his friend. "That's good news. I was weary about the truce with the Zacchara's but so far they've kept their word." His eyebrows knitted a few seconds later and then he looked up at Jason again with interest.

"What?" Jason asked. He sensed there was something Sonny wanted to ask him but he was having difficulty forming the words.

"Nikolas' surgery is this afternoon," he informed him.

"Spinelli told me." He had come downstairs to find Lulu Spencer crying on his couch and the gawky teen was sitting right beside her, consoling her.

"Sam's is tonight," Sonny added a few seconds later and watched as Jason absorbed the information.

Jason was about to respond when the door to the office swung open and his best friend walked in.

"Hi, Sonny, I need to talk to you about Michael," Carly said, and shuddered as her anger once again spiked. "He is out of control." Then she spotted Jason. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I work here," Jason replied. He gestured to his last name on one of the papers that had just finished printing. "What's going on with Michael?"

Carly was tempted to talk to him about the latest stunt her teenage son had pulled but decided against it and shook her head. "Sonny and I can handle Michael. Now why are you here, hanging around with him when Sam needs you now more than ever?"

He looked at both of them and rolled his eyes. Sonny and Carly were staring at him intently, studying him, trying to figure out the meaning behind every move he made. "I talked to Sam before she set up her surgery." He filled them in on what had happened.

"Sam was in therapy," Carly repeated, trying to process the information. She knew she would have enough difficultly admitting she had a problem, let alone actually taking the steps to deal with said problem.

"Yes and she probably doesn't want me hanging around when she's about to have brain surgery. She'll have enough on her plate with Alexis as it is," Jason said. He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince; Sonny and Carly or himself.

"Alexis isn't going to be there. She has court," Sonny informed them.

"Her nephew and her daughter are both having surgery on the same day and she is still going to work?" Carly asked, shaking her head incredulously. "Unbelievable."

"She told me that Nikolas and Sam were relieved. Apparently, Sam said the last thing she needed tonight was to watch her mother worry about her." Sonny looked up at Jason when he was finished speaking. "But I think she said that for her mother's sake."

"Duh," Carly remarked. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Sam was only trying to spare her mother's feelings. She wants someone there with her." Then she turned to Jason. "I think that someone should be you."

Jason sighed and rubbed his temple as he felt a headache building up. "Stay out of it for once, Carly." He looked up at her again and noticed a smug smile had spread across her face.

"Do you want Sam to be alone right now?"

"Of course not."

"Then go visit her." She said it so simply like it was the most natural thing for him to do but it wasn't that easy. Sam had already been through so much because of him. He didn't want to cause her any stress, especially on the day she was supposed to have surgery.

As if she could read his thoughts, Carly looked at him sympathetically and said, "You may not think Sam wants you there but I know she does."

"How?" he wondered.

"Because she loves you, Jase." Carly wanted to get off her feet so she sat down in one of the chairs across from Sonny's desk. "She used to say that you made her feel safe. I think that's still true. I bet that if you go visit her and just be there for her, you'll be helping her."

Jason stared at the form lying in the bed from the doorway of the hospital room as he recalled his conversation with Carly and Sonny one afternoon three days before.

He had come to the hospital to support Sam for the time she had to wait before she would go into surgery.

Understandably, she had been climbing the walls, glancing from the ceiling and the doorway pensively every five seconds. A smile had touched his lips when had come upon the scene and lingered for a few moments, content to just watch her.

He had laughed out loud when she had admitted that she had been coming up with numerous ways to escape her hell.

"I don't think I ever fully appreciated your agony during your brain surgery until now," she said, rolling her eyes in annoyance at the sound of his laughter.

"It wasn't that," he tried to tell her but the incredulous glare she shot him caused him to trail off mid sentence. "It is boring," he admitted reluctantly, "especially if you're all alone."

Sam met his gaze and there was no mistaking the pity lurking behind the concern that filled his eyes. "It's not like it's anything new for me," she said sharply and he caught the usual pang of sadness in her voice.

As he lowered his head in shame, he realized that for once, her pain was not entirely his fault; he had heard that same note of sadness several times while they were together.

In all the time they had been together and all the things that she had shared with him, her childhood was something she had always remained tight lipped about. He recalled hoping that in time, he would have been able to break through her walls and she would share her demons with him.

As if she were able to read his mind, she said, "Don't flatter yourself, Jason. There's nothing you could have done."

He looked at her and started to say something but the words caught in his throat as her eyes flashed again, only this time, they were filled with anger.

"Even if I had told you everything, you wouldn't have been able to make it all go away."

"I would have tried," Jason said feebly.

"And you would have failed." Her voice was so resolute that it pained him to hear it. It was as if she truly believed that she didn't deserve anything but the disappointments and misery life had dealt her.

"I'm sorry, Sam," he managed to choke out as his own sadness overwhelmed him.

She squinted at him in confusion. "For what?" The confusion in her voice was as clear as day.

"For everything," he said, running a hand through his hair. "For pushing you away, for Elizabeth, for lying to you about Jake; for everything I've ever done to hurt you."

"Jason, stop it," Sam snapped, taking his hand in hers and giving it a good squeeze. "You can apologize until you're blue in the face; it won't erase everything."

He pulled his hand out of her grasp, stung by her words. "I'm trying to make amends." He was angry now.

Her brown eyes lit with realization and she shook her head at him. "You don't have to," she told him. "I meant that everything that happened between us is on both of us, not just you. We've both done things to each other that we can't take back. I made my peace with that. You need to too."

"You're not mad?" He was shocked to say the least.

She hesitated. "I was hurt more than anything else. I won't lie and say that I don't carry some resentment but I've decided not to dwell on it anymore. Don't torture yourself with the past, Jason. It will eat you alive if you let it. Trust me."

He nodded at her words and was about to respond when a light rap on the door interrupted his thoughts.

"It's that time," Robin Scorpio informed them as she walked into the room.

Sam looked at Jason meaningfully. "Thank you for staying, Jason."

He winced painfully at the memory and looked back at the form in the bed. They had finally broken some ground and he had hoped they could slowly work their way back to friendship when she got out of surgery but it was as if the fates were working against him.

Once again, he was watching Sam McCall fight for her life.

"So it's true?" A voice asked from behind him.

He glanced in the direction and was surprised to find Lucky Spencer looking over him and at Sam. "What are you doing here?" he asked suspiciously.

He knew that Sam and Lucky had formed some relationship before she had left town but when she had returned, Lucky had been furious with her because of her treatment of Elizabeth and her actions against Jake. He thought Lucky hated her.

Annoyance at having to answer to Jason Morgan crept up his spine. "I'm here for Nikolas."

Jason caught the contempt lingering in the cop's tone and was almost relieved to find that he was there for his brother's concern, not his own. "Yes, it's true." He decided to answer him for once. Nikolas was Sam's cousin, after all, and he was unable to get information on his own.

"Nikolas just woke up and was asking about her," Lucky filled him in on Nikolas' condition. Patrick had been able to remove the entire tumor in Nikolas' brain and he had made it through surgery unscathed.

"Good," Jason grunted. He was glad for Nikolas and his son but any relief he felt over Nikolas' recovery was trumped by his growing terror over Sam's condition.

Lucky once again looked over his shoulder curiously.

"She's in a coma," Jason told him simply, walking into the room and pausing at the foot of her bed. Lucky followed him inside but remained a few feet from the doorway. "They were able to get most of the tumor so it won't be causing her anymore problems."

Lucky scoffed at his choice of words. "As if that makes what she did okay."

Jason glared at him hardly and then turned his attention back to Sam. "But there were complications during surgery. She started arresting. They were able to stabilize her but she's still in critical condition. They don't know when, or if, she'll wake up."

"I'll tell Nik," Lucky said as he glanced at Sam coldly before he turned to walk out the door.

"Sam is the one that convinced Emily to get me to tell the truth about Jake," Jason called to him and heard him stop in his tracks. "It was her latest plan to help me realize that I should be in Jake's life."

Lucky turned around and looked at him uncertainly. "What do you mean her latest plan?"

"Sam was the only person that saw mine and Elizabeth's plan for what it was from the beginning," Jason started to explain and he looked down at her in misery. "She wanted me to stop lying to everyone, including you."

"So, what?" She shrugged at him angrily. "We're all supposed to sit back while you and Elizabeth hijack Lucky's entire life?"

He looked at her in confusion, caught off guard by the accusation. "Since when do you care about Lucky so much?"

She leaned forward. "Since we are both sitting on the same side of the fence looking in at the Liars Club, Jason."

He scoffed at her ridiculous charade.

Sam noticed this and her eyes narrowed in anger. "I thought you learned something from Alan's death; I thought that you regret how you treated him and how you kept AJ from Michael." She shook her head in disappointment as she continued berating him. "But you are still playing with another man's dreams of fatherhood all in the name of protecting a child who would be just as happy with you as I was."

"I never thought I would say this but you deserve every bit of pain you've caused for yourself."

And then she was gone.

"She felt guilty," Lucky immediately wrote off her kind act as a way of clearing her conscience.

"You're unbelievable," Jason said accusingly. "Sam stuck up for you when no one else would and this is how you repay her? Your own wife had written you off as a pathetic drug addict who couldn't handle the truth."

"I betrayed Elizabeth with Maxie; she had every reason to lose faith in me."

"And when she lied to you about Jake?" Jason wondered how many excuses Lucky could come up with to explain away all the things Elizabeth had done to him.

"When she lied about Jake, she was protecting me from a relapse and him from you," Lucky roared back.

"How about when she was meeting me at the safe house while she was still married to you?"

Lucky raised his fist to punch him but Jason anticipated the move and grabbed his hand before it could connect to his face and pushed him back with so much force that it sent Lucky staggering backwards.

Lucky was about to go after him again but a small whimper from the bed caused them both to freeze.

"Sam?" Jason called to her, looking over to the bed to find her opening her eyes and squinting at the harsh lights. Joy shot through his veins as he rushed to her side, forgetting about Lucky and his issues. He grabbed her pale hand and kissed it. "Welcome back."

Sam's eyes were wide open as she glanced at him, now fully alert. She stared at him curiously and opened her mouth, her words rocking him to his core.

"Who the hell are you?"

**Dialogue from third flashback was written by the writers of General Hospital**