Corinthos Household-

Courtney opened the door and called out to the empty void, "Carly? Sonny? Damian?" Each name was met with complete silence. If it wasn't for the fact that the penthouse was stories above the ground, and protected around the clock with the best bodyguards that Sonny's money could buy, which was a considerable amount, she would almost be worried. Again, perhaps in vain, she called out to them, "Is anyone home?"

"Where are my mommy and daddy?" Michael asked, walking into the house. He didn't like it when nobody was home. That was one of his favorite things about being in his family, there was almost always someone in the house, he never had to worry about being alone unless he wanted to be alone, and Michael rarely ever wanted to be alone.

Courtney brought the stroller that contained the now deep sleeping Morgan into the house and pulled him out, the boy not being awoken by the movement. "I don't know, honey. They called us at the zoo, remember? Carly said that she was going to take your father to get something to eat. Maybe they're still there."

"I bet whatever they have to eat isn't better than what we had to eat."

Courtney grinned, "Remember, you can't tell your mother that I let you have all that junk food. Actually, you can tell your mother that I let you have all that junk food, but you can't tell your father. Sonny will get on my case about feeding you food that he didn't cook." Sonny was like that, he didn't want his children eating anything that was unhealthy. Although he may not have looked the part, Sonny was probably the best cook that Courtney had ever known. Why Carly wanted to go out for dinner when she could have just asked her husband to make her something for dinner, Courtney would never know. It probably had something to do with Carly's need to get out of the house sometimes. One that Courtney could understand. Both of them spent a lot of time cooped up in their respective penthouses, and there were plenty of times when they just needed to have some sort of release. Ironic then that it happened to both of them on the same day.

"I won't tell daddy anything."

"Promise?"

"Of course I promise," Michael nodded. "I love it when I go out with you and Uncle Jason, because you let me have the things that daddy won't let me have, like corn dogs and cotton candy. If I told him that you gave me those things, he might not let me go out with you anymore, at least not the places that give that kind of food." Michael knew that his father would never deny him the time that he wanted to spend with Courtney and Jason, because Sonny also knew that those people were very important to Michael, and to Morgan as well.

"Such a good boy," Courtney looked over to the door where she saw Jason standing there, stoic as usual. Maybe he was thinking that there was something that was amiss as well. One couldn't blame Jason for wondering if something bad had happened to Sonny, it was almost always a possibility. "Jason, I'm going to go and put Morgan to bed now, could you stay with Michael?"

"Yeah, sure," Jason walked in, slipping off his leather jacket and placing it on the nearby table.

"Are you all right, Uncle Jason?" Michael asked as he sat on the couch, looking at his Uncle. Michael knew well and good that Jason was a man of little words, but what he didn't say with his voice he almost always said with his eyes, and those eyes said so much, it was almost impossible to understand.

"Why would you ask me something like that?"

"Because you look like you're thinking about something. Is there anything that I can do to help? I know I'm just a little kid, I know that there are things that I won't understand, but sometimes I know things, I can feel them, understand them. And you help me so much, Uncle Jason…"

Jason smiled at Michael. There was something about the boy that reminded him so much of someone else that was important to him: Lila. Lila was Michael's paternal great-grandmother, although they really didn't spend that much time together. But, the way that Jason felt around Michael was, in some ways, the way that Jason felt when he was around Lila. He missed her a lot more than he would ever let on. "Buddy, everything that you can do for me you do just by being yourself. You don't need to worry about me, though. I'm the adult here, I can take care of you."

"Yeah… I know, but, if you need me, you know you can come talk to me, right?"

"I do now."

Dillon had heard voices from the other end of the hallway, and he came to the open door where he saw Jason moving over to the couch and sitting next to Michael, wrapping his arm around the boy as Michael laughed and talked about all the animals that they had seen while they were at the zoo. When Dillon first came to Port Charles Jason was something else to him. Jason was like the beacon that he wanted to follow, the example that he needed to make sure that he became as well, especially when it came to being a Quartermaine. Jason made it look like he didn't care about anyone, but that just wasn't true. Jason cared more than anyone that Dillon had ever met, and that was evident by the sight that he was seeing at that very moment. People who believed that Jason and Sonny were just cold natured killers truly did not see everything. They only saw what they wanted to see, just like Mac.

"Hey," Courtney walked down the stairs again, alone, having left Morgan to his dreams, however pleasant they may have been. Leticia was upstairs, just coming out of the bath when she heard Courtney yell for someone, which was why she didn't say anything. And now the nanny was safely keeping watch over Morgan, almost assuredly able to take care of any problems that would arise. "What's up?"

Michael and Jason both found it odd that Courtney wasn't speaking to either of them, and then they looked at the door and saw the teenager who was standing there.

Dillon felt more than a little uncomfortable with the trio of eyes all bearing on his soul. It was at that moment that he felt like he was still an outsider, accepted only because of the situation, and nothing else. "I just thought that I heard you guys come back… so I thought I would see how the day went. Sorry, if I'm interrupting anything… I can go back to the house and, you know, make myself invisible."

"Don't be silly, Dillon," Courtney finished walking down the stairs, a small laugh coming out. "You don't need to feel like you have to leave. You've been living with Jason and I for months now, and I can count the number of times I've seen you here in Sonny's penthouse on one hand."

"Does my daddy scare you?" Michael asked, also realizing that while Dillon was only a few seconds away, he did not spend that much time at his house, and even when he did, it was almost always cooped up in Damian's room. "Because sometimes he scares people who don't know him very well, but he's really not that scary, Dillon. Daddy's just like every other person…"

"Sonny doesn't scare me," and he didn't, not anymore. Dillon had seen Sonny playing with Michael that one day in the park and it helped illuminate any fears that he had about being near Sonny, it helped dissolve them when he saw just how passionately Sonny cared about his children. While Dillon had no intentions of being a father anytime soon, he hoped that when the time came he could be half as devoted as Sonny appeared to be with his three children.

Anything that any person was going to say was going to have to wait, because before anything further could be said by anyone, the phone rang. Courtney walked over to the phone and picked it up. It wasn't her phone, but if it was an important message she could at least give it to Sonny or Carly. "Hello?" Courtney tried to make sense of the person who was on the other line, but there was so much noise, so much blubbering. "Who is this? Brook? Honey, you need to calm down… I can't really understand you…"

"Brook?" Dillon heard his niece's name and walked into the house. Why was she calling Sonny's, and why wasn't Courtney able to make sense of what she was saying? Dillon stood next to Courtney, "Can I have the phone, please?" Courtney nodded and handed it over. "Brook, its Dillon."

"Dillon?" Brook was glad to hear a more familiar voice. She was on the pier, sobbing on the bench. "I… I… tried to… to call you but… but nobody answered, even left a message on your phone…"

"I left it in my room when I came over to Sonny's house… Brook, what's wrong? Why do you sound like you're crying? Is everything all right? Are you hurt?"

"It's my… my mom… s-she… accident…"

Dillon felt his body go numb for a moment. "Lois was in an accident?" It made sense whys he called Sonny's now. Lois and Sonny were so close that it was scary. If she was hurt… or worse… "Brook, is she all right?"

"Don't know… I'm scared, Dillon…"

"Where are you?"

"The docks…"

"Stay there, I'm going to go and get you and we'll go to the hospital together. Stay there, Brook, please." Dillon placed the phone down and looked over at the others, his face had gone a ghostly white. "Lois was in an accident. Brook doesn't know anything else, but she's freaking out… I need to go be with her. When Sonny gets home… would you…"

Courtney couldn't believe that Lois had been in an accident. They didn't spend much time together, but the time that they did spend with one another showed that she was a great person. "Yeah. Call us if you find anything out, Dillon, please."

"I will," Dillon, not even grabbing his jacket from the Morgan Penthouse walked towards the elevator and slammed his palm on the button, hoping that the button would register the importance and the panic that was swelling up inside of him. "Please be all right…"

General Hospital-

"You know, I find it a little funny that you don't try and make sure that each and every one of your volunteer days doesn't happen to coincide with one of the days where I'm here on my internship…"

"I'm not going to be the kind of girlfriend who needs to spend every waking moment with her boyfriend. Give me a little bit of credit here…"

"I give you plenty of credit, Maxie," Damian wrapped his arm around her waist even tighter. "You know, I just hate to leave you here, in that nice little uniform of yours… someone might get an idea."

"Damian!"

"What, you can get jealous of someone, but I can't get jealous of someone? You happen to be a very beautiful young woman, and just because you're involved with me that doesn't mean that it is going to stop anyone from taking a second glance at you. If I were dating someone else…"

"You wouldn't even look, because you're not that kind of person," Maxie finished the sentence for him before he said something else. "That's why I shouldn't have been so insane about the relationship that you have with Brook. Just because she wants you doesn't mean that you have to want her back, and you don't, I know that now."

"Do you want me to walk you inside, or shall we part under the bright sign?"

"It might be easier to make the break now," Maxie noted, "every moment I spend with you is just another that I don't want to give up. I might just end up staying inside the hospital with you, wrapping myself around you, hoping that the moment would never end."

"You know that wouldn't work… it would look bad on both of us."

"Which is why we can't take the chance."

"Call me when you get off of work, all right? Even if I'm asleep, I'll wake up just to know that you got home safely." His last free day before the grind of hospital time started up again. It was like weekends didn't exist for him anymore. Such a horrible burden, and yet he was able to survive it. It should have said more about his character, but, to Damian, it didn't say much, just that he was too stubborn to quite, something that should have been known long ago.

"I'll do that." Maxie pulled at him as he started to walk away, "You know that you can't walk away from me without giving me a little something. How about a kiss?"

"I don't know… I don't kiss on command."

"You'd better start."

He leaned down and kissed her. "Is that better?"

"I'll expect something more passionate from you when we're not in a place where people can see us… but, for now, there was nothing to complain about. I love you, Damian."

"I love you, too. But I'll love you more if I know that I didn't cost you your job."

"I'm a volunteer!"

"They could still take your references away, or change them and make it look like you're some chronically late person." At his comment, Maxie rolled her eyes and walked into the hospital, waving lightly before she walked into the elevator. Damian waited until she was gone, then, turned on his heel and headed home for a night that he hoped would be relaxing.