The Battle Of Who Could Care Less – 37
Bobbie Spencer rounded the corner and stepped into the corridor leading down to the nurse's station, finally back from her trip to the lab with Noah, and her emerald eyes immediately landed on a young man sitting by a hospital room with his nose pinched between his hands.
Jason looked up when he heard the squeak of her sneakers and quickly clambered to his feet. His eyes were dry now but still red, and he fell into step with the doctor as she hurried down the hall to deposit some charts at the nurse's station before heading off to start her rounds.
"Any news?"
She slid him a sidelong glance, noting his quick, jerky movements. "I could ask you the same thing."
He dipped his head once, a movement so slight that it would have been imperceptible had she not been watching him out of the corner of her eyes. "I got a call from your nephew a little while ago."
Bobbie reached out and discreetly pinched the cuff of his t-shirt, prompting him to follow as she abruptly turned the corner and headed away from the busy nurse's station. Jason remained in step with her as they headed away from the hub of the hospital into quieter hallways.
The doctor glanced around to be sure that no one was listening in; after all, her brother was a wanted man. "What are they up to now?"
"They're trying to get some information," he answered, his voice as low as hers.
"And?"
"The virus is in the water supply."
Bobbie missed a step, stumbling slightly before picking up speed and attempting to look as if nothing had happened. Jason sneaked a sidelong glance at her but the doctor offered him only her rigid profile, her hard green eyes staring straight ahead.
"The whole town's infected."
Jason nodded curtly. "For a while now."
"And no one knew any sooner because everyone was going through the invisible preliminary stages," she cursed, tucking a stray lock of dulled auburn hair behind her ear.
Her scrubs rustled together as they rounded another corner, this time heading toward the administrative hallway where he knew his father worked. "The quarantine's no use."
"No."
"-The entire town will be within these four walls soon enough," she sighed, pressing her fingertips to her temple and wondering how this could possibly end well for any one of them. "I'll talk to Alan. We'll draw samples immediately and see what we can do. Thank you, Jason."
He tipped his head, once, as they approached a fork in the hallway. "Thank me when you find the antidote," came the quiet reply as the two turned on their heels and headed in opposite directions.
-------------------------------------------------------
"I understand that you're worried about Luke and Lucky," Alan stated in a calm, somewhat strained voice as his wife, son and Bobbie hovered around him. "And I can assure you that the secret is safe. I dropped a few hints around Patrick Drake, prompting him to wonder if the virus was exhibiting such a wide scope because it had pervaded the city's water supply, and the interns ran off to do samples. Mac's got the PCPD on it as well."
"I appreciate it, Alan," Bobbie thanked him solemnly. "The symptoms are getting more and more severe by the hour and if Luke's not careful, the people of Port Charles will be tearing the town down trying to find him and turn him over. I don't want anything to happen to my brother."
"Nothing will," Monica assured her. "This stays between the four of us. Jason, are you sure he didn't say anything more?"
Her son shook his head. "All Lucky said was that it's in the water. It's hard for me to get in touch with them, so I'll have to wait until they call back. But that's what we know now – that Helena Cassidine poured the virus into the water supply. We don't know when-"
"But we do know how," Alan muttered dryly, thinking already of Luis Alcazar and what Helena had said about him.
Jason understood the veiled barb but the enforcer offered nothing more to it.
"If Lucky has any more information, please pass it along," his mother told him, gently placing her hand on his forearm. "We could use all the help we can get."
"I'll let you know," Jason promised, spying Sonny coming up from down the hall.
"The quarantine is no longer in effect," his father sighed, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. Monica took them from him and gently wiped the lenses before handing them back to him.
"There's no point anymore," Alan continued as he put them on. "If the entire town is infected, it doesn't matter who gets in or who gets out of General Hospital. If anything, we have to prepare for even more patients."
"How bad is it?" Sonny asked quietly, slipping his hands into his pockets as he took his place in between Monica and Jason.
"We're down to our last four available rooms," the chief of staff informed him gravely. "The staff had orders to assign two to three patients to a room wherever possible, but that's simply not good enough anymore."
"Where will they go?" the mob boss wondered aloud. "Are you going to send them to Mercy-"
He knew it was a foolish question before it fully left him and Monica was already shaking her head. "We're not going to risk infecting any other hospital. Our patients stay here; all transfers have been halted until further notice."
"We'll have to start putting them in the hallways," Bobbie lamented, answering his question. "In the staff lounge, in the hubs, wherever we can find space."
"We'll be short on physicians and nurses as well," Alan added, turning wearily to stare at the nurse's station where his staff was somehow managing to stay on its feet. "We already are. I don't know what we're going to do."
"For our sake, I hope Luke comes up with some answers soon," Monica sighed, closing her eyes tightly as she leaned back against the wall.
"He will," Bobbie assured her friend and colleague. "Luke always escapes unharmed, and he'll pull the rest of us along with him."
"He's working on it now," Sonny agreed quietly, exchanging discreet glances with Jason. "No one knows Helena Cassidine better than Luke. He'll play her game and he'll win – he's already on it."
"And what about you?" Alan asked, directing a bland stare in the mob boss' direction. "What about you and Jason – are you on it, too?"
Despite the strain of the past seventy-two hours, the corner of Sonny's mouth twitched, hitching upward as his obsidian eyes twinkled. "You know how hard it is for us to sit something like this out."
Alan chuckled humorlessly, his chest rising and falling once with the expulsion of air as the doctor turned away from his motley crew. "Well, then. Luke has Helena, we have the town, and you have Luis Alcazar. Working together, we've got all our bases covered."
An ironic smile made Monica's lips curl and Jason watched as his mother wearily shook her head and dropped a hand on her husband's shoulder. "I bet you never thought you'd say that, Alan."
"Don't tell Mac," came the amused reply as Alan watched the commissioner talk seriously with a few of his men across the hub. "He'd have me arrested for the sentiment alone."
"Yes, I'm afraid he would," Monica chuckled, also watching the commissioner. With a sigh, she sobered up and turned back to the group. "We'll make the announcement and move on from there. Thank you for the information, Jason. Bobbie, I'm going to need your help with-"
The doctor's directions were interrupted by a man's yell, and the group looked over to see Luis Alcazar himself step off the elevator with a young woman in his arms.
"Doctor," he called out, looking around frantically as his guards instantly flanked him. "I need a doctor! Now!"
Bobbie gasped, and she and Monica instantly turned to Sonny and Jason. The Cuban stared at his nemesis with hard, calculating eyes and Jason backed him up solidly. But Alcazar paid them no attention as he adjusted the woman tenderly in his arms and looked harshly up at a dark-haired doctor that came running up.
"Patrick Drake," he introduced, his dark eyes only on the woman as he moved closer to inspect her. "What happened?"
"She collapsed in her bedroom," Alcazar responded, reluctantly letting Patrick take her from his arms after the young doctor called out for a gurney. "I don't know how long she was unconscious – I just found her on the floor."
"I'm going to have another doctor manage this case," Patrick replied, situating the young woman in his arms. Her face rested in the cavern of his neck and he had looped one of her slender arms around his neck. "I'm a neurosurgeon – I have other cases at the moment that require immediate-"
"No," Alcazar barked, slicing his hand through the air as an orderly approached. "If you're a neurosurgeon, you'll be taking care of her. She has a rare mental condition and is on medication. I will pay you ten times what you ask if you make sure that she has her own room and is the first to receive the antidote."
Patrick's dark eyes narrowed into slits. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Alcazar. This isn't going to work here."
The arms dealer balked at him, then eased a step closer to the brash young man. "And let me tell you something, Mr. Drake."
"-Doctor."
"-I always get what I want. And right now, I want you to make sure she recovers as quickly as possible. I have the power to make your life extremely uncomfortable if you do not comply with my wishes."
"Well, then, I guess we're both shit out of luck," Patrick shrugged, his chestnut eyes blazing. A pale orderly stood next to him, waiting for him to deposit the young woman on the gurney, but the doctor wasn't quite done.
"I've got seventeen other patients right now with pressing mental concerns, most of them in worse condition than your friend. But guess what? I can't do a goddamn thing for any one of them because the virus that was dumped into this town's water supply by your men is unlike anything else we've ever seen, and there isn't any antidote."
"Then make one!" Alcazar exploded, slamming his fist against his palm. "I'll pay you-"
"That's not going to work this time," Patrick responded smoothly in a low, cold voice reserved only for the extremely brave or the extremely stupid. "All the money and all the power and all the threats in the world aren't going to change the fact that we're facing an epidemic here, and most of the people in this hospital won't make it through the next forty-eight hours."
He shifted the young woman in his arms, now staring calmly back into Alcazar's enraged obsidian eyes. "Besides, Mr. Alcazar, what good is money in a ghost town?"
Without sparing the man another glance, Patrick turned to his attending orderly and gently laid the woman down on the gurney. Together they strapped her in and made sure she was settled.
"I'm going to need some basic information," the young doctor said, not looking over his shoulder. "What's the patient's name?"
Jason saw Sonny teeter slightly when Alcazar let out a heavy sigh and obliged the doctor's question.
"Brenda Barrett."
--------------------------------------------------------------
"We're lost. Damn it, Elizabeth, we don't have the time to be lost."
"We're not lost," she hissed in reply, sticking close to the brick wall as they crept through the dark alley. "Trust me – I know these docks like the back of my hand. I lived here once."
"Oh, you did not."
"Did too," the brunette frowned, miffed at not having been taken seriously. "When we were kids, Lucky and I ran away from home and lived here. No one knows this area better than I do and I'm telling you, we're not lost. Just follow me."
"We need a safe place to stay," he reminded her, sullenly creeping along after the petite brunette. "Someplace that hasn't been used in quite a while, in a very low-key area, and very close by. So tell me, my little pixie, are you going to wave your magic wand and deliver?"
"I'll do you one better," Elizabeth snipped, leading him up to a beaten door hidden under a mass of graffiti. "I'll wave my magic hairpin and deliver."
Robert watched skeptically as she pulled a pin from her hair – the same one that had saved their asses in Portugal – and went to work on the lock. In a few seconds, she had it open and quietly slipped inside, waiting for him to do the same.
Neither spoke as the brunette crept toward the stairwell and tiptoed in. They ascended quickly, taking the stairs two steps at a time until she stopped on the landing and pulled the door open, leading him into a dimly lit hallway. Robert glanced around warily, uncertain as to the security the joint offered, but followed her because he had no other choice.
Elizabeth's keys jingled as she jammed them into a stubborn lock, and Robert turned to see her battling it out with a large door made of reinforced steel. But she soon had it open and they instantly darted inside. The brunette quickly flipped the first of six locks while the agent looked around, realizing that the little pad was better housing than he had hoped for.
Once Elizabeth was sure that the door would hold, she untied the small satchel that she kept at her waist and placed it on her little workbench. Robert maneuvered himself around a few easels and crept over to her window, staring out into the night sky and the ominous, troubled waters of the harbor.
She was pulling off her worn, mud-encrusted boots while the detective eased open his own satchel and pulled out a small black aerosol can. Giving it a few quick shakes, he quickly opened it and began coating her windows with a thick black substance. Once he was sure that not a crack of light would escape, he put the spray bottle away and joined her on the couch.
"You sure no one'll find us here?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "I haven't come here in weeks. Even after I left Jason, I stayed at the Brownstone because this place is so drafty at night. I've actually been thinking about getting rid of it for about a month now, so no one will expect us to be here. And about half of the rooms in this building aren't able to be rented out, so there aren't that many other tenants."
"Charming," he murmured, pulling a few small devices out of his satchel and searching out an electrical outlet with his flashlight. She waited as he connected the devices with adapters and plugged the whole gadget into the socket, then the young woman reached over and switched on the lamp. "Do we have any food in the joint?"
"I've got non-perishables and a Bunsen burner," she replied, gesturing to the closet where she kept her blankets and painting supplies. "I'll fix us something while you contact Shylock and Thucydides."
"Bless your soul, doll," Robert murmured in reply, already pressing the tiny keys on his gadget with a three-inch metal pointer. "Can you do me one more and get me a glass of water?"
She nodded, already heading toward her cupboard to pull out a styrofoam cup. The faucet sputtered before obliging her with a steady stream and Elizabeth frowned at the water as she filled the glass and headed back toward Robert.
He smirked when he saw her holding it with thinly disguised skepticism. "What's the matter?"
Elizabeth wrinkled her nose and shook her head, her ponytail swaying animatedly. "I just…I couldn't drink this, Robbie, knowing what's in it."
The detective shrugged and took the glass from her, downing it in three breaths. "Well, doll, this is the way I think of it. We were both already infected with the virus the minute we dove into the harbor, and the whole town is tainted. The human body can't last very long without water, so I'll take what I can get until we beat this."
The brunette wrinkled her nose again and headed off to find some food for them both. A few minutes later, she emerged from her closet with a few cans and headed over to her workbench to hook up her Bunsen burner.
Robert would periodically relay bits of information he received from his colleagues as she heated up the chili and ripped open a few spare packets of hot sauce to season it more to her liking. At this point, they were doing quite well. During their brief period of hiding out in Europe, they had come to know a good deal about Helena's virus. After all, it was much easier for them to poke around since the Cassidine Queen already assumed that they had been eliminated.
By the time they managed to catch – or rather, steal at gunpoint – a Cessna back to the States, they had a pretty good idea of what they were up against. Helena had unleashed a virus onto Port Charles and would bide her time until her enemies were delivered to her. Alcazar had been her little puppet and he had performed admirably. They didn't have much information on Sonny and Jason, mostly because Robert's colleagues hadn't deemed them very important, but they knew that they were at least alive for the time being.
The same could not be said much longer for the citizens of Port Charles. The entire town was infected and the people were dropping like flies and wouldn't make it to the end of the week unless they found the antidote. The reports had been very clear: there was an antidote. Helena had it in her possession, and they knew exactly where. The only problem now was getting there and finding it.
There were so many people who needed them to succeed one more time: there was no way for them to give up now, especially after their daring escape from the hotel in Portugal. They'd see this through to the end, along with the Spencers and the team of Morgan-Corinthos, or they'd die trying.
The World Security Bureau had already sent its operatives to infiltrate the town at the risk of getting infected and from what they knew from Robert's colleagues on the ground, no one had much time left. Edward Quartermaine was knocking on death's door. His daughter, Tracy, and his grandsons AJ and Dillon would soon follow. The Commissioner's family was also in dire straits, as was Elizabeth's own grandmother.
And that was what kept her going along with the pure adrenaline racing through her system. All she had to do was help Robert get the antidote into the right hands – to get it to Audrey, to Edward, to Georgie, to little Michael. Luke would handle Helena; Sonny and Jason would handle Alcazar, she was sure of it. This, however, was their job.
"We'll be getting the signal shortly, I dare say," Robert mumbled, turning away from his interceptor to gratefully accept a bowl of steaming chili. His serious topaz eyes lifted to meet the grim sapphire ones of the petite brunette as she sat cross-legged at his side, his loyal disciple. "A few hours, if all goes well. Then we'll know it's safe and we'll head out to meet with an old colleague of mine who's also on this. If that goes well, doll, we're home free. It's up to Luke and your boys then."
"And what about the WSB medical team?" she asked instantly, thinking about the elusive antidote that they'd have to replicate as fast as possible. "Are they set?"
"They're setting up in the next town, right across the harbor, that way," he answered, pointing in the vague direction. "We'll be set, doll. Just eat and try to get some rest, all right? We're no good to anyone, starving and half-asleep."
She nodded, swallowing hard to force the food down. Weeks on the run, keeping irregular hours, the constant pressure and fear, and the scarcity of food in general had weakened her appetite drastically. Her entire body was off-center and she didn't know how she'd ever recover. But she kept pushing herself, knowing that this was the most crucial point in their journey.
Elizabeth sighed to herself, not realizing that Robert's watchful eyes were on her. Being back in Port Charles was a disillusioning experience. After the instability and the fear that plagued their days in Europe, she was looking forward to returning home. She hadn't, however, realized that the city would seem as if it were under martial law. It was a veritable ghost town, dead and silent. It had been jarring for her, and she didn't even want to let herself think of all the people who were suffering while she sat on the floor in her studio eating hot chili.
"You're thinking about Morgan, aren't you?"
She blinked away tears at the sound of his sympathetic voice, shaking her head with a rueful smile. "Trying not to, thanks."
Robert tucked her hair behind her ear affectionately, then dropped his hand to her knee to give it a reassuring squeeze. "It's all right, you know. You can think about him if you like – I'm not mad."
His affected magnanimity made her laugh, and the detective's eyes crinkled as she wiped away her tears. "Gee, thanks, Robbie."
"My good deed of the day, doll," he answered with a wink, heartily cramming another heaping spoonful of chili into his mouth.
Elizabeth shook her head and concentrated on her food, pushing the same three beans around and around her bowl in an attempt to look like she was at least actively doing something with her food.
"Elizabeth."
She looked up abruptly only to find that his knowing silver-blue eyes were still trained on her. "Yes, Robbie?"
"He's going to be fine. He's as strong as an ox, that boy is."
The brunette blushed, embarrassed at being so transparent, but nodded anyway. "I know."
"But you're still worried."
"Well…yeah."
Robert chuckled noiselessly to himself, using the plastic spoon to clean up the contents of his bowl. He brandished the last spoonful, his eyes looking directly into hers. "Then think of it this way. It's just like me and Anna."
A slow, enlightened but strained grin spread across her face, and Elizabeth didn't quite know what to say.
"You said on the plane, doll," he continued, talking around the last mouthful, "that you and Morgan used to have an illicit partnership back in the day. He helped you, you helped him. Anna and I had a partnership, too, you know. We trusted each other not only to do our jobs, but to stay safe."
"…So you're saying that I need to trust him to do his job so I can do mine, because sitting around and worrying about him isn't going to do anything."
"All I'm saying is that the best way to help everyone out is to stay as cool as you possibly can," Robert informed her. "No one's asking you to be a robot, Elizabeth. You don't have to stop worrying about those that you care about – that's hardly fair to ask of you. But stay focused as best you can, because that's the only way to win this battle."