* * *
A month later was the next time he entered my life. Fate again was
strictly responsible. And for a long while after that I prayed and thanked
God that he had found me. If he hadn't, Lord only knows where I'd be or in
what condition. Or if I'd even be here at all.
Having been ditched by my date, on Valentine's Day no less, I was completely upset. Of course, my date had ditched me as soon as my sister Sarah needed a shoulder to lean on. Just like every other guy, as soon as Lucky saw the blond hair and long legs he was hooked.
And what kinda name is Lucky anyway?
In my expensive red gown that I had bought specifically for this date, I sat on the crusty park bench alone with my thoughts. I heard a twig or two move behind me but I was uninterested in whatever was causing it. If only I had looked behind me.
What happened next is the one topic I try to avoid, but to explain this story, is necessary.
Two hands emerged from the bushes behind me. One wrapped itself around my waist while the other took hold over my mouth, my scream coming out like a muffled cry. The hands pulled me down into the bushes, the stems and twigs of the bush scratching me. I could only make out the form of a man in the darkness. His larger figure hovered over mine for a moment before he brought his lips to my neck.
I wanted to scream, cry out, get help from anyone but all I could do was remain still. His lips sucked on my neck harshly as he slowly got on top of me. His body weighed me down as he took one free hand and slowly moved the strap of my dress down over my shoulder.
I tried to struggle but he held me down with all his strength. I guess my dress became cumbersome to him with the intentions that he had. He tore it, his lips moving slowly down towards my breasts. His one hand still held firmly on my mouth. I tried again to scream but he silenced me with a few words.
"Don't say a word."
My body froze at his voice. The voice sounded so vile, so dirty, and so forceful. And for a moment the light of the moon caught his eyes and I saw their horrible brown depths and it frightened me.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was far away from the park, from Port Charles, from anything that could hurt me. I focused on my happy place trying to fade out the pain and struggle. But I never really left. I could still feel him hurting me, violating me, and stealing from me something that I held precious. That night my innocence was stolen.
When he was done he left me bleeding in the snow. A huge red valentine, used and then thrown away. And that was just how I felt. Well, that was some of the thoughts that were going through my mind.
I felt helpless, scared, alone, depressed, angry, violated, and exposed in the snow. I wanted to get up and run but I lacked the momentum. I wanted to cry out to whatever God that I had disassociated with in my youth for a reason to live. I found nothing. All the thoughts raced through my head and I just lay there and let them lead to the point of no return:
Nobody cares if you're alive.
Since my parents had shipped me off I had felt alone, unwanted, unimportant. For years I had been crying out for attention to their deaf ears. And when I really needed someone to help me, no one was there, no one cared.
I wanted to just lay there in the snow and die. It seemed the perfect end to my life of loneliness. Thrown away like a useless piece of garbage on the ground is the way I thought I deserved to die.
I imagined my parents getting the news. My mother struggling to produce a single tear why my father just went for another glass of alcohol. Or my sister Sarah getting the news and feeling triumphant in knowing that she had won again for staying alive while I died. My grandmother could I see shedding a tear. She had looked truly happy when I came to live with her. I could see her crying. But that was a lie to, most likely, just like everyone else; she just was feigning interest in my life.
Lastly, I saw my brother Steven. I saw him being called at college, getting the news, and collapsing out of shear guilt. He had felt guilty when he left home, having left me there to deal with it all. He had been the one to cradle me when I cried and the one that gave me courage when I felt as if I was lost. I didn't want him to hurt but there is no other way.
I let out a moan, or perhaps a slight scream, at the injustice of it all. My final breath before I just gave up trying to breathe.
But somewhere in the darkness I heard a noise. I feared he had come back to finish me off. He had seen that nobody came and assumed he could have me again if he wanted.
A hand cut through the darkness and I flinched away. The hand pushed past the bushes and I saw the crystal blue eyes looking down at me. The hands did not touch me and did not try. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed quickly. What he said was barely audible but I knew he had sent for help.
He came slightly closer but still remained at a distance.
"Help is on the way." He said, his voice changing as he recognized me.
I saw the change in his eyes the second he recognized me. And it was then that I gained purpose to live. Somebody had found me and cared enough to rescue me.
That night, he saved me. He saved me from my rapist and from myself.
I closed my eyes and just imagined my happy place. Imagined a place far away where my rapist would never find me. In this place, there was no word for a rapist because they did not exist.
But eventually I had to open my eyes.
He was still there, waiting with me, and watching over me. Never had anyone done that for me. Never.
But I still lingered on the ledge between life and death. I could just as easily given up and allowed myself to drift into death. But something provoked me to reach up and grab his hand. I held on for dear life. If it had not been for his hand, I would be gone.
He did not take his hand away nor did he flinch when I took it. He held on.
The ambulance came. It was full of men and every single one of them were strangers. Every single one of them could have been HIM. I could not stand the sight of them. Every cell in my body started to crawl in fear and disgust. If I had had the strength then I would have gotten up and ran.
He looked at me and somehow understood.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He promised.
He slowly brought his other hand to me and helped me off the ground. My dress was in taters, and the feeling of dried blood made my skin crawl. He somehow managed to get off his jacket without letting go of me. He slipped it around my shoulders and went with me into the ambulance. He protected me from the other men and no man stood in his way to question his presence.
Before they closed the door I looked back out into the snow. It was red with my blood. I closed my eyes and finally started to really breathe again. I had survived.
And at that moment I made a pact with myself. I would not let HIM win. Whatever it took, how ever long, I would regain my life.
I'm not sure why I let him help me. I'm not sure why I felt comfortable with him. Every other man I grimaced at the sight of, as if they could have been the one. But with him, I felt safe.
He never let go of my hand. He held on to me all the while I was at the hospital. As the doctors checked me, he stayed but politely turned away. When the police came and tried to pry from me information that I could not yet muster up the courage to say out loud, he got them to leave me alone.
My grandmother came a little while later after the doctors and police were finished with me. She was startled by Jason's presence. He ignored her look and looked at me.
"It's okay." I said, not recognizing my own voice. It sounded so ragged.
"I'll get you some water." He said, slowly letting go of my hand.
For a moment I did not want to let go. His hand had been a safety net and I let go hesitantly.
He walked out and I met the eyes of my grandmother.
"I'm sorry I'm so late." She said, her eyes tearing up. A single teardrop fell.
"It's okay." I said, my voice still not my own.
"No. I should have been here to keep the police out and the doctors away."
"Don't worry, they didn't bother me much. He made sure they left."
"You should not depend on that young man, Elizabeth. He is trouble, dangerous. He works for a man named Sonny Corinthos, a mobster."
What? That was impossible. How could this kind and decent man work for a mobster? The stereotype that I think of when I see the word mobster is a cold-hearted man that can feel nothing and does not understand how precious life is. The man who helped me, who saved me, was not like that.
"Not now, please." I begged, I already felt horrible enough without her trying to rule over whom I befriended. Sure, she is my grandmother but that does not give her the right to dictate my life.
"Elizabeth, did this happen on your date?"
"No. I did not go on the date."
"Why not? I thought you were excited to go."
"Lucky took one look at Sarah and changed his mind." I said, unemotionally.
No canceled date was going to get me upset. Sure, if he had not canceled then none of this would have happened. But it was not his fault. It was not Sarah's fault. It was mine, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Dear. . ." Audrey started to say but stopped.
"Please, not now." I asked. I was not ready for a lecture.
"I have to get back to work. I'll check in with you later." She said, getting up and leaving.
I missed her brushing the tears away from her eyes as she exited the room.
To me, she was just like everyone in my life, leaving me or shipping me off . . .
He came back in holding a styrofoam cup in his hand. I took it and drank readily; the cool liquid satiated my coarse throat.
"Thank you." I said, not just meaning it for the drink.
"I wasn't going to leave you there." He said, matter-of-factly.
"You know nothing about me but you helped me. If it wasn't for you . . ."
"Then someone else would have come along."
"Why are you trying to make it not sound like a big deal? It is a big deal, to me. I don't know how I can even repay you. God, I don't even know your name."
"Jason."
"Thank you, Jason." I said, holding out my hand towards him. He took it.
For a while we sat in silence. I could not stand the silence. Every slight beep or sound from a machine or outside made me want to jump out of my skin. It made me want to cower and hide. But his hand never left mine. My safety net had returned.
I wanted to close my eyes and fall asleep. The late hour made me drowsy. But I felt that if I closed my eyes then I would relive it. I did not want to relive that, EVER.
I could not go to sleep.
"Are you ever afraid to close your eyes? Afraid that if you do then you will see something you don't want to see?" I asked.
I did not give him time to answer, I just continued.
"Are you ever afraid that your dream about something in real life will transform into this monster that will hurt you more while you are sleeping? That's how I feel right now. I feel like if I close my eyes, HE will be there, waiting and watching. And since I'm alone in my dreams it will happen all over again and no one will be there to rescue me. No one would care."
He did not even hesitate, "I'm still here."
He stayed until I fell asleep. My last vision was of him holding my hand and watching over me.
**Flashback**
"Whose idea was it to go skating today?" My father asked my sister and me.
"It was Lizzy's idea. I told her the ice was too thin." Sarah answered.
"How many times do we have to do this?" My mother asked.
The doctor walks in.
"Elizabeth is going to be fine. Her temperature is almost back to normal. I would prefer to keep her here overnight just for observation."
My parents looked at eachother.
"Anything for our little girl." My dad said, feigning compassion.
The doctor left.
"I'll call work and tell them I cannot come in because of Lizzy." My dad said, walking out of the room.
My mother walked closer to my bed.
"When you keep him from work we loose money, and without money people cannot eat and buy pretty things. Did you think of THAT before you went skating?"
"No." I said, my voice scratchy.
I started to cry.
"I will not have any of that." My father said, walking back into the room.
"Liz-zy, Liz-zy, Diz-zy Liz-zy . . ." Sarah sang and nobody lifts a finger to stop her.
"Stop it!" I scream out to her.
**End of flashback**
"Stop it! Stop it!"
"Hey, hey, it's okay. It's just a dream." Jason said, bringing me back to the present.
I looked around but it took a while to bring the room into focus. I wasn't with my parents and Sarah after falling through the ice, I was with Jason.
Jason was still there.
"Sometimes dreams can feel so real." I said to him.
"But they are not. They cannot hurt you."
"Unless the wounds have not yet healed." I said, looking down at all of my scratches and bruises.
Just then two men walk into the room. I remember them from the night before.
"Ms. Webber, I am Lieutenant Taggart. This is Commissioner Scorpio." The man said, soothingly.
"Elizabeth, I know this must be difficult, but we need to ask you a few questions." The commissioner chimes in but his focus is on Jason and our clasped hands.
His eyes are cold as he looks at the two police officers.
"The more you can tell us the easier it will be to find him and bring him to justice before he hurts anyone else."
"I did not see him." I muster enough courage to say.
"We know it was dark but anything can help. What he was wearing, how tall . . ."
Just then a pungent smell enters my nostrils. I cannot identify it but it seems so familiar. I remember it from the night before. It was on HIM. It makes me want to vomit.
My eyes start to tear up and my stomach turns. The smell is so strong that it's all around me. As if HE was in the room next to me. I know that it's all in my head, that the smell is only a memory, but it feels so real.
I look around to find something to empty my stomach into. I can feel the acid trying to come up my esophagus. And with it I feel the dirtiness I felt the night before. The way HE touched me.
** "Don't say a word." **
I close my eyes to try and block out the visions but in my head they are so much more real. I grab at Jason's hand harder and he does not pull his hand away.
"Not now, Mac. Taggart. Go." Jason says.
"What I don't understand, Mr. Morgan, is why you are here?" Taggart says.
"Not now, Taggart." Jason said, a little harsh.
"Don't you see? Everyone around you gets hurt, Morgan." Taggart chimes in.
"He's with me." I say, hoping they will leave it at that.
"Ms. Webber, I would find better friends."
"He's the only one I've got." I said, defensively.
They leave. I look at Jason and see that his eyes are still cold. They are unfamiliar to me.
"Why are they so rough with you?" I ask, hoping the conversation will keep me from vomiting.
"It's not important. I'm sorry about them. They are only bothering you because of me."
"It's not you, Jason. They just want to find HIM."
His eyes return to the soft blue that I recognize.
"Thank you for staying with me." I add in, "But you must have a life you need to get back too . . ."
"That doesn't matter. You need me and I'm here."
Having been ditched by my date, on Valentine's Day no less, I was completely upset. Of course, my date had ditched me as soon as my sister Sarah needed a shoulder to lean on. Just like every other guy, as soon as Lucky saw the blond hair and long legs he was hooked.
And what kinda name is Lucky anyway?
In my expensive red gown that I had bought specifically for this date, I sat on the crusty park bench alone with my thoughts. I heard a twig or two move behind me but I was uninterested in whatever was causing it. If only I had looked behind me.
What happened next is the one topic I try to avoid, but to explain this story, is necessary.
Two hands emerged from the bushes behind me. One wrapped itself around my waist while the other took hold over my mouth, my scream coming out like a muffled cry. The hands pulled me down into the bushes, the stems and twigs of the bush scratching me. I could only make out the form of a man in the darkness. His larger figure hovered over mine for a moment before he brought his lips to my neck.
I wanted to scream, cry out, get help from anyone but all I could do was remain still. His lips sucked on my neck harshly as he slowly got on top of me. His body weighed me down as he took one free hand and slowly moved the strap of my dress down over my shoulder.
I tried to struggle but he held me down with all his strength. I guess my dress became cumbersome to him with the intentions that he had. He tore it, his lips moving slowly down towards my breasts. His one hand still held firmly on my mouth. I tried again to scream but he silenced me with a few words.
"Don't say a word."
My body froze at his voice. The voice sounded so vile, so dirty, and so forceful. And for a moment the light of the moon caught his eyes and I saw their horrible brown depths and it frightened me.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was far away from the park, from Port Charles, from anything that could hurt me. I focused on my happy place trying to fade out the pain and struggle. But I never really left. I could still feel him hurting me, violating me, and stealing from me something that I held precious. That night my innocence was stolen.
When he was done he left me bleeding in the snow. A huge red valentine, used and then thrown away. And that was just how I felt. Well, that was some of the thoughts that were going through my mind.
I felt helpless, scared, alone, depressed, angry, violated, and exposed in the snow. I wanted to get up and run but I lacked the momentum. I wanted to cry out to whatever God that I had disassociated with in my youth for a reason to live. I found nothing. All the thoughts raced through my head and I just lay there and let them lead to the point of no return:
Nobody cares if you're alive.
Since my parents had shipped me off I had felt alone, unwanted, unimportant. For years I had been crying out for attention to their deaf ears. And when I really needed someone to help me, no one was there, no one cared.
I wanted to just lay there in the snow and die. It seemed the perfect end to my life of loneliness. Thrown away like a useless piece of garbage on the ground is the way I thought I deserved to die.
I imagined my parents getting the news. My mother struggling to produce a single tear why my father just went for another glass of alcohol. Or my sister Sarah getting the news and feeling triumphant in knowing that she had won again for staying alive while I died. My grandmother could I see shedding a tear. She had looked truly happy when I came to live with her. I could see her crying. But that was a lie to, most likely, just like everyone else; she just was feigning interest in my life.
Lastly, I saw my brother Steven. I saw him being called at college, getting the news, and collapsing out of shear guilt. He had felt guilty when he left home, having left me there to deal with it all. He had been the one to cradle me when I cried and the one that gave me courage when I felt as if I was lost. I didn't want him to hurt but there is no other way.
I let out a moan, or perhaps a slight scream, at the injustice of it all. My final breath before I just gave up trying to breathe.
But somewhere in the darkness I heard a noise. I feared he had come back to finish me off. He had seen that nobody came and assumed he could have me again if he wanted.
A hand cut through the darkness and I flinched away. The hand pushed past the bushes and I saw the crystal blue eyes looking down at me. The hands did not touch me and did not try. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed quickly. What he said was barely audible but I knew he had sent for help.
He came slightly closer but still remained at a distance.
"Help is on the way." He said, his voice changing as he recognized me.
I saw the change in his eyes the second he recognized me. And it was then that I gained purpose to live. Somebody had found me and cared enough to rescue me.
That night, he saved me. He saved me from my rapist and from myself.
I closed my eyes and just imagined my happy place. Imagined a place far away where my rapist would never find me. In this place, there was no word for a rapist because they did not exist.
But eventually I had to open my eyes.
He was still there, waiting with me, and watching over me. Never had anyone done that for me. Never.
But I still lingered on the ledge between life and death. I could just as easily given up and allowed myself to drift into death. But something provoked me to reach up and grab his hand. I held on for dear life. If it had not been for his hand, I would be gone.
He did not take his hand away nor did he flinch when I took it. He held on.
The ambulance came. It was full of men and every single one of them were strangers. Every single one of them could have been HIM. I could not stand the sight of them. Every cell in my body started to crawl in fear and disgust. If I had had the strength then I would have gotten up and ran.
He looked at me and somehow understood.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He promised.
He slowly brought his other hand to me and helped me off the ground. My dress was in taters, and the feeling of dried blood made my skin crawl. He somehow managed to get off his jacket without letting go of me. He slipped it around my shoulders and went with me into the ambulance. He protected me from the other men and no man stood in his way to question his presence.
Before they closed the door I looked back out into the snow. It was red with my blood. I closed my eyes and finally started to really breathe again. I had survived.
And at that moment I made a pact with myself. I would not let HIM win. Whatever it took, how ever long, I would regain my life.
I'm not sure why I let him help me. I'm not sure why I felt comfortable with him. Every other man I grimaced at the sight of, as if they could have been the one. But with him, I felt safe.
He never let go of my hand. He held on to me all the while I was at the hospital. As the doctors checked me, he stayed but politely turned away. When the police came and tried to pry from me information that I could not yet muster up the courage to say out loud, he got them to leave me alone.
My grandmother came a little while later after the doctors and police were finished with me. She was startled by Jason's presence. He ignored her look and looked at me.
"It's okay." I said, not recognizing my own voice. It sounded so ragged.
"I'll get you some water." He said, slowly letting go of my hand.
For a moment I did not want to let go. His hand had been a safety net and I let go hesitantly.
He walked out and I met the eyes of my grandmother.
"I'm sorry I'm so late." She said, her eyes tearing up. A single teardrop fell.
"It's okay." I said, my voice still not my own.
"No. I should have been here to keep the police out and the doctors away."
"Don't worry, they didn't bother me much. He made sure they left."
"You should not depend on that young man, Elizabeth. He is trouble, dangerous. He works for a man named Sonny Corinthos, a mobster."
What? That was impossible. How could this kind and decent man work for a mobster? The stereotype that I think of when I see the word mobster is a cold-hearted man that can feel nothing and does not understand how precious life is. The man who helped me, who saved me, was not like that.
"Not now, please." I begged, I already felt horrible enough without her trying to rule over whom I befriended. Sure, she is my grandmother but that does not give her the right to dictate my life.
"Elizabeth, did this happen on your date?"
"No. I did not go on the date."
"Why not? I thought you were excited to go."
"Lucky took one look at Sarah and changed his mind." I said, unemotionally.
No canceled date was going to get me upset. Sure, if he had not canceled then none of this would have happened. But it was not his fault. It was not Sarah's fault. It was mine, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Dear. . ." Audrey started to say but stopped.
"Please, not now." I asked. I was not ready for a lecture.
"I have to get back to work. I'll check in with you later." She said, getting up and leaving.
I missed her brushing the tears away from her eyes as she exited the room.
To me, she was just like everyone in my life, leaving me or shipping me off . . .
He came back in holding a styrofoam cup in his hand. I took it and drank readily; the cool liquid satiated my coarse throat.
"Thank you." I said, not just meaning it for the drink.
"I wasn't going to leave you there." He said, matter-of-factly.
"You know nothing about me but you helped me. If it wasn't for you . . ."
"Then someone else would have come along."
"Why are you trying to make it not sound like a big deal? It is a big deal, to me. I don't know how I can even repay you. God, I don't even know your name."
"Jason."
"Thank you, Jason." I said, holding out my hand towards him. He took it.
For a while we sat in silence. I could not stand the silence. Every slight beep or sound from a machine or outside made me want to jump out of my skin. It made me want to cower and hide. But his hand never left mine. My safety net had returned.
I wanted to close my eyes and fall asleep. The late hour made me drowsy. But I felt that if I closed my eyes then I would relive it. I did not want to relive that, EVER.
I could not go to sleep.
"Are you ever afraid to close your eyes? Afraid that if you do then you will see something you don't want to see?" I asked.
I did not give him time to answer, I just continued.
"Are you ever afraid that your dream about something in real life will transform into this monster that will hurt you more while you are sleeping? That's how I feel right now. I feel like if I close my eyes, HE will be there, waiting and watching. And since I'm alone in my dreams it will happen all over again and no one will be there to rescue me. No one would care."
He did not even hesitate, "I'm still here."
He stayed until I fell asleep. My last vision was of him holding my hand and watching over me.
**Flashback**
"Whose idea was it to go skating today?" My father asked my sister and me.
"It was Lizzy's idea. I told her the ice was too thin." Sarah answered.
"How many times do we have to do this?" My mother asked.
The doctor walks in.
"Elizabeth is going to be fine. Her temperature is almost back to normal. I would prefer to keep her here overnight just for observation."
My parents looked at eachother.
"Anything for our little girl." My dad said, feigning compassion.
The doctor left.
"I'll call work and tell them I cannot come in because of Lizzy." My dad said, walking out of the room.
My mother walked closer to my bed.
"When you keep him from work we loose money, and without money people cannot eat and buy pretty things. Did you think of THAT before you went skating?"
"No." I said, my voice scratchy.
I started to cry.
"I will not have any of that." My father said, walking back into the room.
"Liz-zy, Liz-zy, Diz-zy Liz-zy . . ." Sarah sang and nobody lifts a finger to stop her.
"Stop it!" I scream out to her.
**End of flashback**
"Stop it! Stop it!"
"Hey, hey, it's okay. It's just a dream." Jason said, bringing me back to the present.
I looked around but it took a while to bring the room into focus. I wasn't with my parents and Sarah after falling through the ice, I was with Jason.
Jason was still there.
"Sometimes dreams can feel so real." I said to him.
"But they are not. They cannot hurt you."
"Unless the wounds have not yet healed." I said, looking down at all of my scratches and bruises.
Just then two men walk into the room. I remember them from the night before.
"Ms. Webber, I am Lieutenant Taggart. This is Commissioner Scorpio." The man said, soothingly.
"Elizabeth, I know this must be difficult, but we need to ask you a few questions." The commissioner chimes in but his focus is on Jason and our clasped hands.
His eyes are cold as he looks at the two police officers.
"The more you can tell us the easier it will be to find him and bring him to justice before he hurts anyone else."
"I did not see him." I muster enough courage to say.
"We know it was dark but anything can help. What he was wearing, how tall . . ."
Just then a pungent smell enters my nostrils. I cannot identify it but it seems so familiar. I remember it from the night before. It was on HIM. It makes me want to vomit.
My eyes start to tear up and my stomach turns. The smell is so strong that it's all around me. As if HE was in the room next to me. I know that it's all in my head, that the smell is only a memory, but it feels so real.
I look around to find something to empty my stomach into. I can feel the acid trying to come up my esophagus. And with it I feel the dirtiness I felt the night before. The way HE touched me.
** "Don't say a word." **
I close my eyes to try and block out the visions but in my head they are so much more real. I grab at Jason's hand harder and he does not pull his hand away.
"Not now, Mac. Taggart. Go." Jason says.
"What I don't understand, Mr. Morgan, is why you are here?" Taggart says.
"Not now, Taggart." Jason said, a little harsh.
"Don't you see? Everyone around you gets hurt, Morgan." Taggart chimes in.
"He's with me." I say, hoping they will leave it at that.
"Ms. Webber, I would find better friends."
"He's the only one I've got." I said, defensively.
They leave. I look at Jason and see that his eyes are still cold. They are unfamiliar to me.
"Why are they so rough with you?" I ask, hoping the conversation will keep me from vomiting.
"It's not important. I'm sorry about them. They are only bothering you because of me."
"It's not you, Jason. They just want to find HIM."
His eyes return to the soft blue that I recognize.
"Thank you for staying with me." I add in, "But you must have a life you need to get back too . . ."
"That doesn't matter. You need me and I'm here."