Note: This is kind of a short one; about half of my usual chapter length. I'm trying to refamiliarize myself with this story, and I like what's happening. Though this is short, more will follow soon.

Chapter Eighteen

Jason Morgan was worried.

It wasn't because he hadn't heard from his fiancé since she'd gone to the island almost a week ago; it wasn't because Lorenzo Alcazar seemed to be lying in wait on his yacht in the Port Charles harbor. It wasn't any of those things.

The cause of his unease and anxiety was one petite little brunette – the same one who had been inside her closed hospital room for about two hours with a small group of doctors.

Francis and Max had gone home and only he and Johnny remained, waiting vigilantly nearby until there was news. Monica had taken pity on them and tried to explain that they needn't look so worried; Elizabeth was doing fine and her life was under no direct threat. Still, her son remained unconvinced and Monica could only sigh as she retreated to her work once more. It was no secret that the hospital still made Jason uncomfortable, and the enforcer looked like a caged animal as he paced back and forth past a motionless Johnny.

Presently, the doors opened and several doctors filed out before shutting the door softly. Johnny shifted away from the wall, ready to assume his regular position outside as Jason went in. But his boss lingered there, his hand gingerly holding the handle, and the bodyguard shifted uncomfortably, clearing his throat.

"Just go in."

Jason looked up sharply at the man but Johnny stared calmly back at him.

"Just go in," he repeated. "You're one of the few people she can actually see here – one of the few people she actually tolerates. Just go in."

The enforcer sighed and quietly twisted the handle, entering her room. Johnny remained outside as he pushed it shut quietly behind him. Elizabeth was in her hospital bed, reclined back almost completely. She had told him a couple days ago that she hated it when the bed was flat and always kept it inclined a bit; laying flat on the mattress made the room seem bigger and she felt helpless, as if she couldn't get a full look at her surroundings. And Jason knew enough about this Elizabeth to know that she liked to have her bearings at all times, and absolutely detested feeling helpless, an attitude that prevented the doctors from treating her like any other patient. Despite the tragedy of her circumstances, she had refused to break under them and he found that incredibly admirable. The Elizabeth he had known from years before – back when they were actually friends – had been a remarkably strong woman, and he had almost allowed himself to forget just how strong. The Elizabeth in the hospital bed in front of him served as an excellent reminder.

He hovered by the door, studying her delicate form. She had pulled the blankets up to her chin and her small hands gripped them protectively as her head lolled listlessly to the side. She was tired. A frown pinched the corner of his mouth as he stepped closer; those doctors didn't help matters any. They had exhausted her.

His boots creaked and Elizabeth's lashes fluttered. Pools of sapphire blue peeked out from under raven lashes and the brunette shifted in her bed. Jason moved closer and shook his head. "It's okay," he whispered. "Go back to sleep."

"I…"

"It's okay," he repeated, "you're tired. I just wanted to check in with you before I went back to the warehouse."

She nodded slowly and let her lids fall shut. "Go."

He waited a moment and it was soon clear that she was fast asleep. Jason stood still, just watching her, and found himself wondering if her skin had been that pale the last time he'd seen her. She looked as if she had been completely drained of all color and life, and her nimble form was small and delicate in the large bed.

Hesitantly, he reached a hand out and brushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead before backing away and quietly exiting the room.

She had a dodecahedron-shaped Rubik cube in her hand and was sitting up in bed when he entered her room again. Max was at the door and let Jason in, and the enforcer was mildly surprised to see Johnny lounging in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs.

"Would you believe it?" he groused, ruffling the pages. "Martha Stewart's stock actually went up. Little Miss Susie Homemaker goes to jail and rakes in the millions. How come I don't have it that good when I get thrown in the slammer?"

To his amazement, Elizabeth actually chuckled as she played with her cube. "How's ALPET doing today?"

"Let me check." There was some more rustling of newspapers before Johnny found the listing. "Up thirteen points. Respectable."

"Good trend," Elizabeth murmured, furrowing her brows as the cube clicked. "Pretty steady, too; about a net growth of 27 over the past two weeks. Take my advice, John – get in on the action."

Jason felt like he was watching a movie as Johnny looked seriously up at the young woman in the hospital bed. "You think so? I'll see if Max and Francis want to – we can get a pool going or something."

But Elizabeth wasn't paying attention to him anymore because the brunette had finally looked up and seen Jason standing at attention at her doorway. "Hey."

He nodded back. "Hey."

Johnny tipped his head at his boss and stood from his chair, refolding the newspaper. "Take it easy, Elizabeth," he instructed the young woman before moving toward the door. "I'll be at the warehouse for my shift," he informed Jason, who only nodded in reply.

Left alone in the room with the patient, Jason slowly shuffled toward his usual seat. Elizabeth was watching him carefully, her fingers still moving with the multi-colored cube.

"Don't you ever have things to do?"

Her blunt, abrupt statements had ceased to surprise him, and the corner of Jason's mouth hooked upward. "I do things," he replied in mock-defense.

She shook her head and whisked her dark locks back irreverently with one hand, turning her attention back to the oddly-shaped Rubik puzzle. "You're always here, Jason," she answered, seriously this time. "I don't want to keep you from business."

The young woman had gleaned all the information she wanted about his business from the guards, and although it made Jason slightly uneasy, he brushed it off. "You don't."

"Good," she muttered, letting the pink tip of her tongue poke out of her mouth as she worked the plastic between her hands. Abruptly, she set her hands down in her lap and looked blankly up at him. "Why are you here all the time?"

He shifted in the chair, stretching out his long legs. "Because I'm one of the few people you actually let in here."

She didn't smile and just stared back at him. "I told Max not to let that Lucky kid in here, you know." Jason's mouth twitched. "He goes into hysterics and it annoys the shit out of me. The Prince is okay, though." She tipped her head to the side and blinked. "So are you here because you feel sorry for me? Poor brain-damaged kid with no friends?"

The words weren't tinged with bitterness or anger, or even remorse, but they still made him uneasy. Jason straightened in his chair, lacing his fingers together. "I don't feel sorry for you."

The answer pleased her and although she tried to hide it, he could see the glimmer in her sapphire eyes. "Why not?"

The corner of his mouth twitched once more. "Because you would have tried to hurt me if I ever felt sorry for you."

That answer pleased her more, and the little brunette let her chin jut forward proudly. "Good."

But Jason wasn't done. He leaned forward in his chair and his intense cerulean eyes bore into hers. "And you're not brain-damaged."

She stilled for a moment, staring back, and then lifted the puzzle higher and resumed fiddling with it. "Yes, I am." A long pause followed and she glanced up at him quickly, questioningly. "You want to hear about it?"

Jason's chair screeched as he hauled it closer to the bed and Elizabeth began to speak, never once removing her eyes from the brightly colored dodecahedron in her hands. "You came in after Dr. Mulrow left, before I fell asleep." She didn't wait for a confirmation. "They finally told me everything. The test results came back and looked pretty good; they said that they had been hoping a second surgery wouldn't be necessary, and they were right."

Relief flickered through his eyes but he remained silent, watching her.

"But…" The obnoxious clicking continued as Elizabeth played with the Rubik puzzle. "There was damage done to my frontal cortex. It was swelling when they brought me in, and they performed surgery to alleviate that. All the tests showed that – long story short – everything else is fine. But there's still a part of my cortex that is damaged, and that's why I can't remember anything."

She was relaying this account as if she were talking about someone else, and Jason curled his hands into loose fists.

"They said a second surgery to repair the damaged area was risky, and especially since there was a good chance that the tissue would heal on its own."

It was not what he had been expecting to hear and Jason cleared his throat. "How good?"

The brunette shrugged and the cube clicked. "About fifty percent. That's good enough for me." Her hands stilled and she looked up at him with wide, honest eyes. "I hate this place, Jason. I hate it. I don't want them to drag me back into the operating room and cut open my head. I don't remember anything and they want to fix it – I think they're confused why I'm not hurt or angry or sad or just…anything. And I don't know. Not being able to remember…I'm kind of numb to it. It's like I almost want to feel something, but I can't, and I think that in some ways, that's better."

She looked down at the cube and clicked a row in place. "And if there's a fifty-percent chance that I'll recover on my own, I'll take it. I'll walk and I'll take it. That's what I told them – I said I didn't want to go through with the surgery and that I wouldn't. And they said that they're keeping me for observation and that I'll be released in a week. I bet I can get it down to four days."

Jason felt rather numb himself as she heaped this information upon him and he watched her play with the cube some more. "Four days." It felt strange saying the words, realizing that in four days to a week's time, she could be out on the street, living her life despite what had happened. It was the same thing he had done, but applying those same memories of starting a new life from nothing and applying them to Elizabeth pained him deeply. What had happened to him was terrible, and he would never have wished it on another person. Despite the fact that he and Elizabeth were far from friends when her accident took place, he felt a certain kinship with her and consequently, he felt it was his duty to stay with her and help her and be there for her the way he had wanted someone to be there for him. No expectations. No insinuating, nostalgic reminders of the past.

"There. I'm done."

Her voice cut through his silent reverie and Jason blinked at the cube that she now held to his face. He wasn't that familiar with these plastic puzzles, but Michael had one and he remembered how thrilled the boy had been when he had first solved it after about three weeks of trying. Apparently, all the pieces that were the same color had to be on one side, which made sense. The dodecahedron that Elizabeth presented to him, however, still remained in a confusing jumble of colors.

He took it in his hand and stared at it. "Isn't it supposed to be red on one side, blue on the other, and so on?"

She rolled her eyes and plucked the hunk of plastic from his hands. "Yeah, in preschool, maybe. Look at this, Jason." Her slender fingers lifted the puzzle up, directing his vision. "See, here? Seven spaces for each side, twelve faces total, six opposing sides, and six total colors. The center of each of the twelve faces is a primary color – red, blue, and yellow here – and each opposing face corresponds exactly."

His head was spinning as he studied the puzzle and after listening to her explanation, Jason could see what she meant. And despite the fact that he usually braced himself for these surprises, this one still blew him away.

She took the puzzle from him and tossed it in the air, catching it easily. "There's always a standard way to do something, Jason. Sometimes, you've gotta put a different spin on things to see what they could be like."

It was late when he walked into Jake's, inhaling the familiar scent of beer, sweat, and cigarette smoke. He noticed a couple of the regulars still lingering by the pool tables and the jukebox was blaring as usual. Johnny could be seen in the corner talking to a buxom redhead who was soon joined by her equally blessed blonde friend. A couple of the other guards were also loitering around, collectively sending up billowing clouds of smoke as they played a card game in the back.

But there was one person seated at the bar that certainly wasn't a regular. In fact this man, dressed in an olive green Armani suit with expensive calfskin loafers tapping a nervous beat on the rung of the worn leather stool, he stood out like a bull in a china shop. Or rather, he stood out like a Quartermaine in a ratty dive.

His older brother hadn't seen him yet, but Johnny had. Jason leveled a stoic look in his direction and the guard quietly untangled himself from the two women enjoying his company. He strode easily across the bar to Jason's side, pulling him into the shadows where the two of them watched the Quartermaine heir.

"He's been here for an hour and forty-five minutes," the bodyguard related without much preamble or even a greeting. "When he asked for you, Jake said you were out and that she wasn't expecting you til late – and that was only if you finished early and wanted a beer."

Jason nodded and Johnny continued. "Jake tried to hint around that you probably wouldn't be here, but he said he'd wait for a week if he had to. She said it seemed pretty important, but she knew that you could never tell for sure with a Quartermaine. Anyway, he's been here since and he's had a couple beers, that's about it. Kept to himself, hasn't talked to anyone except one guy – and from what I can tell, there was nothing suspicious about it. Anything else?"

The enforcer shook his head, still staring hard at his older brother. Johnny hesitated a moment and then tipped his chin at the older businessman. "You gonna talk to him?"

Jason let out a deep breath and rubbed his jaw with one hand. "Yeah."

Johnny nodded and straightened his tie, taking a step away. "I'll be by the jukebox."

With that, he retreated and Jason was left standing in the shadows, wondering just what on earth was so important that AJ Quartermaine would wait almost two hours at a dirty bar in an Armani suit to tell him. Letting out another sigh, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, instantly finding the dodecahedron that Elizabeth had given to him, and advanced on the man.

Casually, he slid onto the worn leather stool next to his brother and motioned for a beer. To his credit, AJ remained staring straight ahead of him as he lifted his own bottle and took a long pull.

Squaring his jaw, Jason raked a single disdainful look over his older brother. "Slumming tonight?"

The Quartermaine heir's mouth hooked upward and he set his bottled down on the counter. "Yup. Seeing as how this was the first place you went, I figured it was a pretty good place to begin my career as a lowlife."

"Begin?" Jason muttered, wrapping his fingers around the slender glass bottle Jake set in front of him.

"I'll have one more," AJ announced, smiling broadly at the matron as she handed him another bottle.

Jason slid a sidelong glance at his older brother. "Fall back into the bottle again?"

AJ turned on his stool for the first time and graced his brother with a smarmy smile. "Oh, we've all got to fall sometime, Jason, somehow. And now seems to be my time. But I don't intend to go alone."

"Expecting your luck to change?" Jason all but sneered, finding it difficult to rein in his hatred of his older brother. He normally didn't bite when AJ baited him, but the older man's appearance threw off his equilibrium. There were minor problems at the warehouse, trouble on the horizon with the families, and coupled with Elizabeth's situation, he was set off-center by his brother's uncharacteristic venture to the lower end of town, to his own turf. "You've always been alone, AJ, and you always will."

AJ's dark brown eyes sobered and he looked hard at his brother. "It must be nice being the Golden Boy," he finally said. "Med student or street thug, some things never change. It must be nice, though, to wander in from on high and pass judgment on all the contemptible, wretched souls that aren't even worthy to be the shit on the bottom of your shoe." He leaned closer and the smell of his expensive, spicy cologne made Jason grit his teeth. "It must be nice to always be right, Jason. I wonder, then, what would happen if you were ever wrong."

Jason glared hard at his brother, a stoic mask descending upon his stony features, and the older man continued unabashed, in a low timbre. "Would the sky come crashing down? Would the world tip on its axis? Or would everyone just wake up and see that under the weed-whacker spikes and James Dean jacket, you're just a confused and lost hoodlum?"

He ground his teeth together and slammed his bottle down on the counter, sliding off his stool. "You can save your barbs for someone else, AJ. I don't need this. You came to me, not the other way around."

AJ, too, slid off his stool and stood stock-straight, barring his brother's path with a hard, defiant look in his dark brown eyes. "Classic Jason – no one's worth your time. But tell me, little brother - Is that any way to talk to the man that saved your drug-addicted fiancé from the long arm of the law?"