A/N I do not own John McBain or any of the other OLTL characters. All others are my own creation. Please don't sue cause I am broke and have nothing to be sued for anyway.

Chapter 9

John watched as Shelly tossed and turned on the bed restlessly. If she was dreaming it obviously wasn't a pleasant dream. He looked over at Michael who had fallen asleep about an hour ago then back at Shelly wondering what she was dreaming about. Shifting in the chair trying to get more comfortable he closed his eyes to rest them. He needed sleep but he just couldn't succumb to it out of fear that Shelly would need him and he wouldn't hear her.

She was dreaming, Shelly knew this. But this wasn't any ordinary dream this was a different kind of dream. One in which images flashed before her like a kaleidoscope yet managed to leave a lasting impression in her brain. First a man holding a gun, then a flash of light and a feeling of inevitability and then nothing, just darkness. Slowly a light began to shine and focus on a bed. The images slowed and became sluggish. The image of the bed moved closer and Shelly could see that it was a hospital bed and that there was a person in it. As it came closer yet she gasped, stunned to see that the person in the bed was herself.

The imaged changed yet again and suddenly she was seeing a hospital O.R. and there were doctors standing around the bed working on her. John's brother Michael was there, looking frantic as he worked on her. Shelly watched all this with a strange detachment, taking in all the details as a cop would a crime scene. Again she noticed something different about this dream, usually these dreams came and they were silent only images but this dream there was sound. She could hear what the doctors were saying and hear the beeping of the machines. Suddenly the steady beeping became one long beeeeeep. "We're loosing her!" one of the nurses said and then she saw Michael shove a nurse aside and heard him say, "We are not loosing her! She is my sister and I won't let her die!"

Shelly woke up with a gasp looking around wildly. Clutching her head with her hands trying to shut out the blinding pain caused by the dream she looked around. Sitting up she saw John staring at her with wide concerned eyes. Her heart beating like a jackhammer she recalled the dream with perfect clarity and knew that it hadn't been a dream at all. It had been a vision but unlike her normal visions this one had been about her, possibly her death. But that wasn't what was disturbing her the most at the moment. Michael had called her his sister in the vision. If she was Michael's sister and Michael was John's brother that made John her brother! Suddenly everything made sense, the fact that she had been having visions about him, the fact that he had come to her home and why he had seemed to care about her before he even knew anything about her. In her gut she knew that who he was but she needed to hear him say it, she needed that final proof before she could fully accept it.

"Who are you?" She asked him.

"My name is John McBain. I'm an FBI agent," John answered wondering if the fever had caused some sort of temporary amnesia.

Shelly shook her head and said, "No, who are you to me?"

"I don't quite understand what you mean." John replied, knowing that there was no way she could possibly know that he was her biological brother. Looking into her intelligent green eyes he saw something that made him pause. There was an unfathomable look in them that made him suddenly unsure of what she knew.

Michael began to stir in his chair, opening his eyes and stretching as he tried to wake up. Looking from John to Shelly then back to John he noticed a tension between them but didn't understand the cause of it. Looking at Shelly again he asked, "Are you ok?" He took her temperature again and was relieved to see that it had gone down to almost normal. Noticing that neither John nor Shelly had spoken a word to each other but were silently sizing each other up he asked, "Ok what's going on? Did something happen that I should know about?"

Shelly looked at Michael and said to both of them, "Well since this concerns both of you I might as well come right out and ask. Are you my biological family? Is that clear enough, John? Or even more to the point are you my brothers?"

John and Michael looked at each other both clearly shocked at the question, silent communication flowing between them as they looked at each other. Michael gave a slight nod indicating that he thought that they she tell her the truth. John looked straight into her eyes and said decisively, "Yes."

Shelly nodded at this answer; it confirmed what she had already known. "So the case you were working on was me? You knew who I was, that we were related, before you came to my house?" Feeling weaker by the minute she struggled to stay upright, needing to know the answers to her questions.

"Yes."

Nodding again she lay back down on the bed and closed her eyes and went to sleep and began to dream yet again.

After leaving home and heading to the bus station Shelly noticed that she was being followed. Lifting her bag a little higher she began to jog hoping she could make it to the station before any trouble broke out. Looking behind her she saw that the man was still following her and had in fact gained some ground on her. Ducking into an alley and dropping her bag to the ground she decided that running wasn't the answer. There was only one guy and she felt that she could take him. Crouching into a fighting stance she waited for her pursuer to come.

As he rounded the corner into the alley Shelly made her move. Lashing out with her leg she knocked him to the ground. He was up again in seconds and reaching for something behind him. Shelly recognized him from the gym and knew that this man was a murderer. Lashing out again with her fist she landed a square punch to his jaw and then threw another punch to his stomach doubling him over. Clasping her hands together she brought them down forcefully on to the back of his head knocking him out.

Sighing with relief when he went down and didn't get back up Shelly grabbed her bag and began to run to the bus station. Tripping on a piece of wood Shelly fell to the ground hard. Stunned it took her a moment to get up and when she did she heard shouting behind her. Turning quickly to see what was behind her she heard a sharp crack and then gasped in shock as she felt a searing pain in her stomach. Realizing that she had just been shot she clutched her wound and ran to the station, which was very close. She jumped on a bus without buying a ticked hoping that no one would notice.

She must have been just on time because as soon as she was seated the bus began to move. Thinking god that she had been so fortunate to get on the bus she looked around and noticed that the back of the bus was empty. That was good because she needed to tend to her wound. The pain in her stomach almost unbearable and it was bleeding a lot. Taking a shirt from her bag she ripped it into strips and lifted her shirt to get a look at her wound. It was bad but there wasn't anything she could do about it but stop the bleeding and wrap it up. Breathless with pain Shelly folded a strip of shirt and pressed it hard against the bullet hole, just about passing out from the pain of it. It was all she could do to stay conscious but she knew she needed to wrap it to keep the makeshift bandage in place. Using every bit of will power she possessed she took another strip of shirt and wrapping it around her and tying it firmly she pulled down her shirt and then finally gave in to the pain and passed out.

Waking several hours' later feeling like her body was on fire she noticed that the bus was slowing down. Gathering her things she prepared to get off again hoping that no one noticed that she didn't have a ticket. As luck would have it no one even noticed her as she got off. Looking around it suddenly occurred to her that she didn't know where she was. That was good she thought if she didn't know where she was then Herbie wouldn't be able to find her. Walking or more like staggering to the nearest motel she got a room and collapsed onto the bed pulling the covers over her suddenly feeling cold. Waking on and off she drifted in a state of confusion until one time she opened her eyes and John was there.

John watched as yet again Shelly drifted off to sleep. Unable to believe that she hadn't said more about him being her brother and confused as to how she even knew to ask such a thing he started when Michael's phone rang. It was the hospital and they needed him to come back to work right away, there had been a car accident and they needed all the doctors they could get. Giving Michael a hug and promising that he would bring Shelly to Llanview as soon as it was safe, though from what he still didn't know, Michael left leaving John to watch over Shelly and nurse her back to health.