Author's note: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers. Title of this chapter is a lyric from the (otherwise unrelated) Corrs song "Queen of Hollywood"

Chapter 2: Hand Prints on her Body

"Johnny?" Michael's voice was hushed as if he didn't want to be overheard. Something was wrong.

"What's going on?" John asked quickly.

"Look, I need you to understand I am seriously pushing the boundaries of doctor/patient confidentiality and putting my medical license on the line," Michael said.

"Michael," he asked, "What is it?"

"You need to get down to the hospital now," Michael said gravely, "Meet me in the ER but don't act like it's planned."

As he raced to the hospital John tried to work out what was going on. His brother wouldn't be acting this way if it wasn't serious. He wanted to meet him in the ER and had made a reference to confidentiality. It obviously had something to do with a patient, one who didn't want whatever was wrong reported to the police. That either meant injuries obviously incurred while committing a crime or that someone was the victim of a crime and feared retribution from whoever had committed it.

Michael met him in the corridor looking a little too nonchalant. "Johnny!" he said brightly, "how's it going?"

"Michael what's-"

Michael took him by the arm and nudged him closer to one of the exam room doors. "So you get what you needed from that witness in the ICU?" he asked loudly.

Studying his brother's face and trying to determine the nature of the scenario he was supposed to be playing along with. "Yeah, I um-"

"Great! Well if you're done here I have a patient who needs a ride home," Michael said pushing open the door, "mind giving her a lift?"

As Michael opened the door to the room John's heart stopped for a moment. It was Natalie. It took him a moment to confirm that because he was shocked how much she'd changed in the months since he'd seen her; she'd lost weight, there were heavy circles under her eyes, and she looked as though she'd aged a decade. Wearing a hospital gown, hunched uneasily on the bed, she looked a John with terror.

"Natalie?" he asked unable to stop himself from taking a step forward, "What happened?"

Her mouth made a movement that was more of a tremble than an attempt to speak before Michael inserted himself between them. "Not that you didn't already know she was crazy, but this nut here drove herself here with two cracked ribs and a partially collapsed lung."

He felt a surge of anger as he asked the next totally unnecessary question, "How did that happen?"

She looked down at her lap and said softly, "A bookcase…"

"A bookcase fell on her," Michael explained, "but here's the crazy thing—you don't mind if I show him do you?"

Natalie made some sort of weak protest as he tugged at the back of her gown. He ignored her and continued, "It left this bruise that looks exactly like a footprint."

John caught a glimpse of what was very clearly the outline of a large shoe on Natalie's side before she jerked the gown closed, wincing in pain. It took every once of control he had to stay calm, but he knew that the last thing she needed right now was him overreacting. Not that it really would be overreacting…

He looked steadily into her eyes and, visibly shaking now, she met his gaze. Without looking away he asked, "Is she going to be okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Michael assured him, "We've got her ribs all taped and her lung reopened. She'll be fine I just didn't think she should drive herself home. We gave her some pretty strong pain killers."

"I'll give her a ride," John said forcing his voice to stay even.

In a voice barely above a whisper she said, "It's not necessary, I'll call a cab."

"Don't be silly," Michael insisted maintaining his forced cheer, "John's here, he doesn't mind. Might as well make him do something useful."

Natalie looked back and forth between the two brothers, realizing that arguing would get her nowhere she simply nodded and looked down. "We'll get out of here and let you get dressed then," Michael said, "you want me to send a nurse in to help you?"

"I'll be fine," she mumbled.

Michael had to tug on John's arm to get him to follow him out of the room. "Mikey?" he asked slowly, still stunned.

"Yes," Michael said gravely, "that is exactly what it looks like. Someone kicked the hell out of her."

John shut his eyes; he knew exactly who and he wanted to kill him, but he couldn't completely absolve himself of blame. He'd been afraid this would happen. No, he'd known this would happen; he'd warned her. And yet in the end he'd let her brush him aside and push him away… and he was lucky it wasn't worse.

"What are you going to do?" Michael demanded.

He covered his eyes with his hand for a moment, "Not a whole lot I can do. Legally. If she won't press charges. Won't admit who's doing this."

Michael stared at him in shock. "Johnny, you dug up a grave for this woman. Since when do you care about legal restrictions?"

Before he could answer, Natalie opened the door and joined them in the hallway. Her clothes hung on her making it even more obvious how much weight she'd lost. She didn't make eye contact or say anything as Michael gave her some final instructions. Neither she nor John spoke as she signed herself out and followed him out to his car. He opened the door for her and she climbed in obediently.

As he situated himself in the driver's seat he thought back to the last time he'd seen her.

He had stepped out of his office when he heard a commotion. Jessica had just charged into the station with Antonio following closely at her heels calling, "Jess, please, don't do this!"

Seeing John she asked, "Is my Uncle in?" She looked furious about something

"I think he's in a meeting," he said, "is there a problem?"

"No," Antonio said firmly.

Jessica shot him a dirty look, "Antonio-"

"We don't know the whole story," he pleaded with her. Jessica didn't seem convinced.

"What's going on?" John asked.

"Have you seen Natalie today?" Jessica asked.

He hadn't seen Natalie in weeks. Not since she made it clear that she needed him to stay away while she and Cristian got their lives back on track. He shook his head.

"Maybe you should," Jessica said.

"Is something wrong with Natalie?" he asked his pulse unwillingly beginning to race.

"She's fine," Antonio assured him as he shepherded Jessica towards the door. Jessica sent him a final look that seemed to plead with him not to take Antonio's word for this.

He hesitated only a few minutes after they left before making his way to Llanfair where Natalie and Cristian were still staying the last he'd heard. He knew he wasn't welcome, but he wasn't about to stay away if Natalie was in some kind of trouble.

She answered the door herself and jumped when she saw it was him. "John?" she said looking around as though she were afraid of being seen, "what are you doing here?"

He hadn't been sure himself until he looked at her face and then the blue blot on her left cheekbone made it perfectly clear what had upset her sister. "Jessica came by the station. She was worried about you, said I should come check on you."

"I'm fine," she said not sounding convincing at all and not stepping aside to let him enter.

"Where'd that bruise come from?" he asked.

She shook her head, "It's not what you're thinking."

"What?" he asked tensely, "you fall down the stairs?"

"No," she said, "I…" she looked around again and hissed, "I startled him okay. I came up behind him; he didn't know it was me."

"Natalie-" he began fighting the urge to drag her from the house.

"Look I know how it sounds," she pleaded, "but he's been through a lot. He's getting help. It won't happen again."

"You don't think maybe he should be living somewhere else while he's getting help?" he asked.

"He's my husband, John," she insisted. "He belongs with me."

He would have continued to argue the point but he heard Cristian calling her name from somewhere within the house. Looking worried she said, "You shouldn't be here, John. Please don't come back. I'll be fine." And she shut the door in his face. He hadn't seen her since.

He heard that she and Cristian had moved into an apartment across town. Nobody seemed to see much of them; evidently they were keeping to themselves. He'd been worried. He'd spent whole nights awake worrying about her, wondering about her. But he hadn't tracked her down; she'd made it clear he wasn't welcome. He worried he made things worse for her and he told himself there were other people who would look out for her. Evidently they hadn't.

And maybe if he'd made a little more effort she wouldn't be sitting there battered in his passenger side seat.

She spoke finally to say in a voice eerily devoid of emotion, "You missed the turn."

When he didn't respond or turn around she said, "My apartment's-"

"You're not going back there," he said simply.

"Oh I'm not?" she said, "where am I going then, pray tell." She still had some spirit. That was a good sign.

"There's a shelter over on Oakton," he said.

"I'm not going to a battered women's shelter, John. I don't need one. You have no idea what's going on."

"I have no idea where you got a bookcase with size thirteen boots either," he said.

"John," she said softly, plaintively.

"Your mom's house then," he suggested, "or your Uncle Bo's."

"Would you please just take me home," she pleaded.

"That's the one place I'm not going to take you," he said. Deciding that they needed to have this conversation while he could give it his full attention, he pulled into a parking lot nearby.

As he put the car in park and turned to her she said, more to herself than to him, "I should have known Michael would call you."

"Yeah," he said nodding. He waited for a moment and asked, "So Cris doesn't know you went to the hospital, does he?"

"He wasn't home when it happened," she said looking straight ahead.

"Look, I don't think either of us believes that story-"

She continued. There was an urgency to her voice as though she were begging him to believe her. "I was trying to put something on the top shelf of the bookcase. I couldn't reach so I put my foot on the bottom shelf, which was stupid I know, and the whole thing just collapsed."

"Natalie," he said softly, his heart breaking to see what had become of the headstrong, vibrant young woman he had reluctantly given up when the husband he took away from her came back from the dead.

Her breath grew ragged and he could hear the tears in her eyes even without looking at her, "It was just a bookcase… I swear…"

He wanted to comfort her and tell her it was okay, but it wasn't and they both knew it. After everything the least she deserved was the truth. He turned to look at her; her eyes were closed and she was shaking all over. He raised a hand to touch her face but stopped himself. He didn't think she'd welcome his touch, or anyone else's for that matter, at the moment.

"Let me call your mother," he said.

"No!" she said opening her eyes and turning towards him, "I can't get her involved in this!" A look passed between them as they realized at the same moment that a part of the wall she was trying to keep between them had just broken. Her exclamation had just confirmed that she was afraid of something worse than unsteady furniture.

"Tell me what to do," he said.

"Take me home," she pleaded.

"I can't do that," he said. "I'll call Jessica, I'll call Rex. I'll call your father and put you on a plane to England if that's what you want. But I can't let you go back to a man who just beat the hell out of you."

For a moment he thought she was going to keep arguing with him and then a tear slipped out of her eye. And then as he watched it was as though her entire face, the mask she'd been wearing for months, the face of a young bride deliriously happy over her reunion with her husband dissolved.

As she began sobbing he said again, "Just tell me what you want me to do."

"I don't know," she whimpered, "I don't know. I don't know how this happened. I don't know what to do. I can't think."

"Okay," he said gently as he put he car back into drive, "come on."

He drove to a cheap hotel on the outskirts of town. It wasn't the kind of place he wanted to put Natalie in, but if they went to his room in Angel Square or to The Palace there was too high a chance of someone seeing them and getting word back to Cristian. He was somewhat surprised when she didn't make any protest as he checked them into a single room. She was so torn he couldn't be completely sure that left alone she wouldn't try to make her way home and besides, at this kind of place they aroused a lot less suspicion as a couple.

She sat stiffly on the edge of the bed as he went outside to fill the ice bucket. Mutely, she took the glass of ice water that he brought her a moment later. "You hungry?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Let me know if you want me to order something," he said.

"You can go, John," she said.

He shook his head as he sat down beside her. "I'm not leaving you alone."

"You think Evangeline's gonna be okay with this?" she asked with more than a trace of bitterness in her voice.

It took him a minute to understand why she would ask that and then he realized how much she had been secluded from the rest of Llanview over the past several months. "I don't think she'll care," he said, "we aren't together anymore."

Natalie looked more confused than surprised by this, "Why?"

"You don't need to worry about that right now," he said.

She laughed harshly, "John you have no idea how much it helps to think of other people's problems instead of mine."

He took a deep breath, "You remember when I first got suspicious of Cristian and I had that DNA test run?"

"And it proved that he really was Cristian?" she reminded him.

"Yeah, well, when it turned out I was wrong it really upset her for some reason. She kept saying I only suspected him because I wanted there to be something wrong. That my concern for you was more than friendly. And one night I finally just told her she was right... Evidently she's dating some lawyer now."

Natalie looked at him disbelieving for a moment and then turned her face away from his, "John, he's still my husband."

"Yeah," he said. He wanted to argue with her; tell her that it didn't matter, but he sensed that he needed to let her talk.

She shook her head, "I can't just walk out on him, he needs me. He's been through so much… he just needs help that's all."

"The last time," he knelt down in front of her to make it harder for her to look away, "you told me he was going to get help."

"He was going to. He did. I think," she said still looking at some distant point past his eyes, "I don't know if he ever went I just know about a month ago Rex saw him out at a bar when he was supposed to be in therapy."

"Did you talk to him about it?" he asked.

She nodded.

"What did he say?"

She shivered. "He wasn't in the mood to talk." He didn't push. Didn't know if he could stomach hearing what Cristian had done to her that night.

"Rex knows what's been going on?" He had plenty of problems with Balsom, but if he had any redeeming quality it was his affection for his sister. He couldn't fathom Rex allowing someone to abuse her this way.

She shook her head. "I haven't seen much of him. Cris doesn't like him very much so…"

"And your family?"

"They've had other things on their minds. Ever since we found out about Tess and she confessed to killing Tico. That's why you can't tell them, John, my mom's heart couldn't take it."

"I won't tell anyone until you're ready," he promised.

She took a sip of her water. "It's not as bad as you think it is. Most of the time he's fine. It's usually just when he drinks."

"Has he been drinking a lot lately?"

She ignored the question. "And afterwards… once he realizes what he's done he feels so bad. John, last night he was just cried himself to sleep in my lap. If you could have seen him-"

He had been struggling since he saw her to keep his anger under control, but her showing pity on that man, excusing his actions was too much. Before he could stop himself he said, "And I'm sure he'll feel terrible when he kills you Natalie, but it's not going to make you any less dead."

"Cristian would never-"

"Don't tell me he would never kill you because it wasn't that long ago you were swearing to me he would never hurt you, and we both know that turned out to be wrong."

She hugged herself more tightly and bit her lower lip. Blinking back tears. "What happened last night?" he asked gently, regretting his outburst.

She looked into his eyes smiled a strange smile. A mix of tenderness and irony with a hit of regret. "He found a picture of you."

"Of me?"

She nodded. "From a while back. Roxy took it… I don't even remember when but she gave it to me. Before Cristian came back. I don't know why I kept it—I knew Cris would be furious if he found it. I had it hidden in my underwear drawer and I guess he must have been going through the dresser while I was in the shower last night. Sometimes he gets suspicious—thinks I'm hiding things from him… I guess he was right."

"He did this because of a picture?" John asked, unable to comprehend the mind of a man who could do something like this to a woman he claimed to love.

She looked down, "There's more to it than that."

"I don't understand," he said.

She looked away as though transfixed by something in the corner of the room and said with a distant voice. "He deserved so much better… He went through a year of torture, things I can't even imagine. He fought his way back to me through all that and I… I couldn't even wait for him. It was only a year-"

"You didn't know he was coming back," he reminded her.

She shook her head, "And when he came back I couldn't even love him the way he deserved. I still love him, John, I do, but I couldn't get you out of my head, or out of my heart. And I think he sensed it somehow. I think he knew."

The tears began to flow again as it sunk in that this was his fault. Everything that had happened to her was because she got involved with him, because she was foolish enough to care about him. He caressed her cheek as gently as possible and leaned closer to her as he said, "Natalie, this isn't your fault. Okay, whatever else you want to believe about this trust me when I tell you that this isn't your fault. Whatever he deserved or you feel like you owe him it's not this. It's not letting him beat the hell out of you every time he gets upset."

She didn't say anything. She just shut her eyes and let herself lean ever so slightly into his touch. He ran his hand over her hair and on the back of her head his fingers brushed something rough that didn't belong mixed in with the silk of her hair. Without being asked she turned her head so he could see a scaly, scabbed area about the size of a silver dollar where the hair had apparently been yanked out.

"Kind of hard to blame that on the furniture," he said fighting to control the new surge of anger that the sight aroused in him.

She took his wrist in her hand and gently pulled his hand away, not relinquishing it immediately but holding it in her lap. "I tried to walk away while we were arguing. He pulled me back…" She began trembling again and her expression changed back to fear. "John, he's not going to let me walk away. He's not going to let me-"

"Shh," he said bringing his face within inches of hers. He brushed his thumb tenderly over her cheek. "I'm not going to let him hurt you again. I swear to you, Natalie, whatever happens he will never lay a hand on you again. I will not let you go back to that man so he can kill you, because that is what's going to happen eventually, you know that."

She shook her head but made no verbal protest. "Natalie," he said, "I love you too much to let that happen." Her eyes widened in surprise and locked with his.

Through tears she laughed bitterly, "Now you tell me."

"I'm sorry," he said tears coming to his own eyes, "I'm so sorry."

She brought a shaky finger to his lips, "John, can we just not talk for a little bit?"

He nodded as she shut her eyes and slowly leaned her head foreword across the inches between them until their foreheads touched. Then finally, and he was never sure which one of them initiated it, their lips met. He kissed her gently, as tenderly as he could even as her swollen lips parted eagerly at the faintest pressure of his tongue. He kissed her as though it had some hope of drying her tears. Kissed her and then rose to sit beside her, pulling her into his lap, and letting her battered body rest in his strong protective arms.