Chapter 20: What Helping Is All About

Tortured screams tore Sonny from sleep. His initial movements towards her were instinctive but as he became fully awake, he realized that the threat was internal. He reached to turn on the light as he crouched down beside his bed and laid a hand on her shoulder. "It's ok, Alexis, you can open your eyes," he said. Yet, as he said the words, he wondered if it really was.

It had been almost ten years since the night she had fallen asleep on his couch reviewing contracts and awoken screaming. Perhaps she had trusted him more then, because she had told him about the memories of her mother's murder that haunted her dreams. So much had happened since that night and, as he watched her struggle in the present, he wondered if she would still be so honest with him.

She probably wouldn't, but perhaps that didn't change anything Sonny decided as he took her hand. "Come on, Alexis, you can wake up and make this stop."

A flash of brown eyes greeted him before Alexis once again reached down and pulled the down comforter over her face.

Sonny withstood the temptation to pull the blanket back down. "Lex, don't do this. I know there is something wrong and I want to help you."

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Under Sonny's down comforter Alexis exhaled with exasperation. He wanted to help? How chivalrous of him. Unfortunately, she was beyond help. After another painful sigh she flopped the top of the comforter back and almost met his eyes. "You know, Sonny, some kinds of help are the kinds of help that helping is all about and, well, some kinds of help are the kinds of help we all could do without."

After the words were out, Alexis had no idea where they had come from. Then she realized they were song lyrics from that Marlon Thomas album someone had gifted Kristina. Alexis had hated that. She couldn't believe she was quoting lyrics from it. Actually, she couldn't believe she was quoting song lyrics in general. That was so not her thing.

"I know something is wrong here, Alexis," Sonny said as the alarm on his cell phone sounded.

"I'm going back to sleep," Alexis said as she rolled onto her right side away from Sonny's crouched position.

She didn't sleep though. Her mind wandered back in time to her last conversation with Ric.

December 12, 2006

Alexis Davis released another frustrated sigh as she pulled the door into the parking garage under the courthouse open. After another long and frustrating day dealing with the felons of Chapparal County she could go home and face the fact that Kristina was still too traumatized to speak and her choices had created that. She was the one who had brought Ric into Kristina's life. She was also the one who had believed Sam McCall was her daughter and because of her thoughtlessness, stupidity, and naïveté Kristina had paid the price.

As she turned the corner into a new alley of the parking garage Alexis heard heavy footsteps and for just a moment her breathing quickened as she recalled Ric's threats. Alexis continued walking and assured herself that there was no reason to be afraid. Hundreds of court or county employees parked in the same parking garage and she was merely hearing the footsteps of some other disgruntled public servant behind her.

Then she felt the arm around her neck and felt herself being thrown and pinned against the wall. For a split second her eyes instinctively closed, and she held out hope that her assailant was just some crazed junkie looking for something to pawn for the cash for his next fix.

Alexis could feel his breath on her neck and could smell the scotch and musk cologne. Then she snapped back to reality and she knew even before he spun her around by her hair that she wasn't going to be so fortunate to find a crazed junkie.

"You really should be more careful, baby. Horrible things can happen to a single woman walking alone at night. Horrible accidents happen every day," Ric said when their eyes met.

Alexis winced at Ric's words. Horrible accidents, that was how Mikkos and Stavros had explained her multitudinous childhood injuries. As the first blow met her cheek Alexis struggled to remember that she wasn't still nine years old. Yet, as Ric's assault continued, she still was powerless to overcome her captor.

The sound of a car must have caught Ric's attention. "Consider this a message, the price of your life is my freedom. Choose wisely because otherwise we will meet again when you least expect it, and that time, you won't walk away," Ric told her before he slunk off into the night.

Alexis collapsed down to the concrete and sobbed.

Alexis hadn't actually had to tell anyone who her assailant was. Abby Donely-Quartermaine had presumed correctly when she had come out to her own car perhaps ten minutes later. Abby had called her husband, but Ric was never apprehended before he fled the country. A month later the FBI tracked him to Toronto and Canadian officials confirmed his death January 16, 2007.

As she put her daughters to bed that night, Alexis had felt peace for the first time in months. All of that had faded earlier in the month when John Quartermaine had told her that the FBI was looking further into the circumstances of her ex-husband's death. It had vanished completely, two days before, when he had told her that he couldn't prove it yet, but he was almost certain Ric was alive.

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As he lay in the dark, Sonny could hear her teeth chatter. That was hardly reassuring. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so quick to offer that she could come home with him and should have realized that Dr. Scanlon probably had good reasons to consider admitting her to the hospital. Perhaps he should have supported that. Perhaps that was what she needed, and perhaps if he was a better friend, he would have ensured she got that even if she was insistent it wasn't what she wanted.

He supposed nothing had really changed for him until someone had done that. However, that someone hadn't really been someone Sonny had considered a friend. Or at least he wouldn't have considered her one prior to the June 2006 night that things had spiraled out of control. Sometimes he wondered if her detachment had allowed her to actually see things clearly. Or maybe it had something to do with having just finished her medical school psychiatry clerkship.

Sonny thought back to that night, and the preceding days of destruction that had lead up to it. He supposed years, perhaps even decades, of destruction were more accurate; although it had taken him a long time to see that. Years of explanations, excuses, and memories flooded past him. People got angry, he was just fighting back, he had rough childhood, Ned was overreacting, AJ was overreacting, and even Jason was overreacting. He supposed there was a pattern there, just one he hadn't allowed himself to see. Perhaps that was a major theme of his life.

He and Brenda had been supposed to have dinner that night, or that had been planned. At the time, he had at least allowed Brenda to think he had forgotten. Honestly, by then, he had been past the point of caring. Much of that period had been a blur anyway. He thought it had started sometime after his sister Courtney's death that February in the encephalitis outbreak that had rocked Port Charles and Chapparal County. Then, in May, Ally and Jax had the affair and, in the beginning of June, Ally and the boys moved in with Jax. It had been easy to blame Candy Boy for destroying his life, stealing his wife, his kids, even his sister. There had to be something wrong on multiple levels when you started an affair with your dead wife's brother's wife. Sonny had done some reprehensible things in his day, but he hadn't done that.

He had been drinking that night. Back then, sometimes when things were bad the only way he could sleep was if he drank to a point where he passed out. The concept of day and night was gone. Sunrise and sunset had been replaced by a permanent blackness that he couldn't seem to navigate out of. He had been exhausted yet too irritable to sleep. As he had sat on the floor drinking, he had tried to remember when he had slept last, perhaps the day before, maybe the day before that.

There was a chunk of time he really didn't recall and would probably never know. He did remember the glass and the blood, but it hadn't really hurt or at least he hadn't noticed it at the time. Brenda had screamed, he remembered that. They had talked, although he didn't remember the conversation. Things went black again, but he could still hear her conversation with Emily. In fact, although he couldn't seem to open his eyes, he could follow it perfectly.

June 3, 2006

"So now what do we do?" Brenda asked.

Through the darkness Sonny heard the fear in Brenda's voice and the way it echoed differently. She was probably pacing, she did that when she was upset. He could feel someone else messing with his hand and wrist, but the touch seemed almost artificial. Latex gloves, that was it, suddenly it all made sense. Except not really.

"Those cuts are really deep and I'm not sure he didn't get the tendon. He needs to go to the Emergency Department," another voice that he eventually identified as Emily Quartermaine, Jason's cousin, said.

"He will never go for that," Brenda said.

"I know, but it's what he needs even if he isn't in a place to see that. We are, so, we have to make sure that he gets what he needs even if it isn't what he thinks he wants right now," Emily whispered.

"Yes, but once someone realizes who he is then it will be all over," Brenda said.

"You have a point. What if there was a way, we could get him the help he needs and still leave him with as much dignity as possible?"

"What do you mean? Normally I would call Lois, but he isn't speaking to her for some reason," Brenda said.

"I happen to have a father who is a surgeon and a grandmother who is a psychiatrist. Admittedly neither of them are exactly his friends but they're both compassionate and I know they would do this for that reason alone. I could call them to meet us at the ED," Emily suggested.

"Maybe that is the best we can do," Brenda agreed.

He thought Emily must have left the room. He had felt her release his freshly bandaged wrist as she had finished outlining her plan. He felt someone run their hand over his head. The touch was different, not glove clad, and he knew it was Brenda's. He would always know that.

Time must have passed as Brenda stroked his head, but Sonny had a poor sense of it.

Emily must have stepped back into the room. "My dad will meet us in the parking lot. He can be there in about five minutes but I'm guessing it will take us closer to fifteen. He offered to come over here in case we needed help, but I figured that might just agitate him more," she said.

"Good idea. I'm trying to decide who I want to call," Brenda said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, even if we could carry him out of here, which I guess maybe you almost could, Miss I can bench press my body weight, you would think that one of his guards might have an issue with that," Brenda said.

"Oh, good point. Why don't you just call Jason? I know Sonny didn't want him before, but I think he'll understand why we had to. He'll probably understand the Jason part a lot better than my dad and Grandmother Gail," Emily said.

"Well, yes, but Jason isn't here. He's been out of the country for the past week," Brenda explained.

"Well, in that case, I won't be much help I don't really know the guards well. Except for that Johnny guy that used to follow us from afar," Emily said.

"Actually, that's a pretty good choice," Brenda agreed.

Brenda hadn't made a bad choice; Johnny was discreet, and by that point had worked his way up to Sonny's second in command, behind Jason, who had been out of the country at the time. It was more than that though, by then they were at least friends, maybe even brothers. He was definitely more of a brother than Ric would ever be, but then so were most people. Johnny had taken them to the hospital. There, Emily's surgeon father and psychiatrist grandmother had patched his physical and emotional wounds.

At the time, Brenda had presumed he would see what they had done as the ultimate betrayal. For a few moments, after he awoke with a wrist full of Dr. Quartermaine's sutures and a splitting headache in the inpatient psych unit at PCGH, Sonny had tried to. But he couldn't somehow; he just couldn't let himself hate Brenda. So, he moved on to Jax. But blaming Jax was too easy and not really accurate. Jax might be a spineless jerk but he hadn't created the chemical imbalance Sonny was going to need to accept and live with. Sonny honestly didn't know when his illness had begun. His psychiatrist, Dr. Gail Baldwin, suspected it might have started in his teens, but she was really only speculating and had said that really didn't matter as much as what they did from there.

Although not overnight, things had gotten better. The medicine had helped. Accepting that alcohol didn't mix well with trileptal or lamictal or his underlying illness had helped. He supposed getting the guns out of his penthouse had helped. Slowly he had put things back together. He was sure Alexis's situation was very different, but she would put things back together too. He would see to that.

With that thought, Sonny got out of bed and picked up the extra blanket he had brought upstairs. "Here, you're shivering again. Do you want to go back to the hospital?" he asked as he set the blanket down on his bed.

"I'm fine, Sonny," Alexis said without turning over to face him.

For just a moment her niece's definition of fine popped into Sonny's head. Actually, Alexis would say it was an acronym, not a definition, and she would argue that it was a ridiculous one at that. It probably wasn't something he should bring up, for those reasons, and others he definitely couldn't face.

"Come on, let's at least get you warm," Sonny said as he pulled back his comforter, laid the blanket over her, and then pulled the comforter back up around her. Cautiously he sat down on the edge of his bed. He waited for her to protest but she didn't. "You're going to get through this, Alexis. We'll get through this together," he promised.

**For my reader who wants a Q&A: I'll work on something...and anyone else with questions feel free to post them in a review