A/N: I can't make any promises that updates will be as frequent as they have been this week, or as long as this one, but I've had a few days off and a lot of motivation to write, so I figured I may as well get these chapters up as they're finished. We're about to get to the part of the story where the original story idea originated, and I'm very excited to share it with you!

By the time Kevin made it back to the waiting room, it seemed like the whole family had converged on the hospital, surrounding the young ICU doctor standing in front of them.

"What happened?" Kevin asked, his pace increasing as he approached the group. "What's wrong? Why is everyone here?"

"She moved," Viki said.

"What? Who?"

"Natalie," Joey said. "She moved her hand. On purpose."

"You mean she's awake?" Kevin asked.

The doctor shook his head. "Ms. Banks is following some simple commands," he said. "Thumbs up, moving her toes, that sort of thing. Recovery can be a slow process, and it looks different for every patient."

"But this is good," Kevin said. "It's good, right? She's waking up, she's making progress."

"It's a positive sign, yes," the doctor said. "But we still need to take this one day at a time. We don't know what her ultimate recovery will look like. Her injuries were serious and extensive, and there remains a very real possibility of long-term brain damage."

"But this is more than she was doing yesterday," Joey said. "This is a good thing."

The doctor hesitated. "It's progress," he said. "I just want to be sure that we're managing expectations. I don't want anyone to get their hopes up until we see a little bit more."

"We understand," Viki said, the tears brimming in her eyes clearly indicating that despite what the doctor was saying, her hopes were already up. "Thank you for coming so quickly."

The doctor nodded and quickly excused himself, heading back down the hall toward the ICU. In the waiting room, the tension that seemed to be there daily somehow felt like it had lifted almost instantly.

"This is great, Mom," Kevin said. "What happened when she moved? What did you say to her?"

Viki shook her head. "It wasn't me," she said.

"Then who?" Joey asked.

"She squeezed my hand," John said, lifting his head to look at the group from his spot sitting in the corner of the room.

"Did she open her eyes? Did she say anything? What did she say?"

John shook his head. "She squeezed my hand," he repeated. "I wasn't sure it was real, so I asked her to do it again, and she did. And then I called the doctor in."

"You know your sister, she'll do things in her own time," Viki said. "Oh, but it would be wonderful if she woke up in the next day or two, just enough to say goodbye to Liam before he goes back to Llanview."

"Liam's leaving?" John asked, surprised by the sudden wave of sadness that hit him at the thought.

"Well, just temporarily. His father's coming to get him. With Natalie in the hospital for who knows how long, it's just too much for us to keep asking of the boys and Kelly to watch him and…" Viki paused as she looked around. "Wasn't Kelly here earlier?"

"She, uh, had to take a phone call," Kevin said. "Anyway, when is Liam leaving?"

"Day after tomorrow," Viki said. "Brody's supposed to be coming in on the redeye to get him. I'll take Liam to the airport, drop him off, and they'll be on the late afternoon flight back to Pennsylvania."

"He's not even going to stop by the hospital?" Joey asked.

"Apparently not," Viki said. "I don't pretend to understand what's happening there, but your sister did break up with him before she left. Maybe it's just too much right now."

"So Liam just goes back to Llanview?" Joey asked. "What if we don't want him to go? He's no trouble, Mom, Kelly and I don't mind watching him."

"Oh, sweetheart, I don't like it any more than you do, but Brody has every right to want him back with him," Viki said. "After all, Brody is Liam's father."

"No, he's not."

The unexpected statement from the latest member to join the group in the waiting room drew everyone's attention toward the doorway, where Kelly was standing, an envelope clutched tightly in one hand, with other resting on the handle of Liam's stroller.

"Kelly, what are you talking about?" Joey asked. "Of course Brody is Liam's father. There was a DNA test."

"From a lab with a history of security problems and false results," Kelly pointed out. "Look, Joey, it's a long story, but I have a friend who runs a genetics lab here in London, and I had her run a new test."

"You did what?!" Joey exclaimed. "What would even make you think to do that?"

"That's complicated," Kelly said. "The point is, I did it. I took a sample from Liam, and then it was going to be a little difficult to get a sample from Brody, but operating on the assumption that Natalie was telling the truth, and there were only two possible fathers…"

Kelly hesitated and looked across the room to where John was still sitting, now looking almost like someone had punched him in the gut.

"My toothbrush," he said, the realization dawning on him. "I thought I left it in Llanview, but I didn't, did I? You took it."

Kelly nodded.

"You ran the test with my DNA," John said, slowly standing up as Kelly took a few steps closer to him. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Kelly nodded again, holding out the envelope. "It's all right there, John," she said. "The test was conclusive. 99.99% probability. Brody Lovett is not Liam's father. You are."

John shook his head in disbelief as he opened the envelope and stared at the numbers on the page in shock.

"I don't understand," Viki said. "Did Natalie lie about the test?"

Kelly was about to respond, but to her surprise, John beat her to it, not even pausing to think before he answered.

"No," he said quickly. "Natalie would never have lied about that."

"Are you sure? I mean, she'd already lied to you about his paternity once," Joey pointed out.

"She lied because she wanted him to be my son," John said, looking down at the little boy sleeping in the stroller. "It destroyed us when he wasn't. She wouldn't have lied about that, it was the worst thing that could have happened to us."

"Then how did the test get messed up?" Joey asked. "Someone should go tell Natalie, if anything's going to shock her into waking up, it'll be this."

"Be serious, Joe," Viki scolded, a thought occurring to her. "Someone will have to tell Brody, though."

That evening, Jessica's hands were shaking as she stepped up to the familiar door and raised her hand to knock. Pausing just before her knuckle hit the wood, she drew her hand back hesitantly.

"What the hell am I doing?" she whispered to herself.

It had seemed like the right thing to do when the idea had occurred to her. Once she'd recovered from the shock of hearing that after everything that had happened, Liam was, in fact, not Brody's son, she knew she needed to be the one to tell him. Her mother had offered to call, but this wasn't the sort of news that she'd want him to hear over the phone. And with everything he'd been through, he deserved to hear it from someone who cared.

And try as she had to convince herself otherwise, she had to admit that she did still care about him. If she were honest with herself, she might even say that she still loved him, but that was a part of her heart she wasn't willing to open just yet. Shaking her head, she quickly raised her fist again and rapped on the door.

Brody frowned as he opened the door and saw Jessica standing in the hallway.

"Hey," he said awkwardly.

"Hi," Jessica responded, glancing down at her hands nervously, taking a breath before looking up at him. "We need to talk, Brody."

"Is it about Natalie?"

"Sort of," Jessica said.

"Well, I assume you've heard by now that she doesn't want to marry me after all, so I guess you win on that front," Brody said.

"It's not about winning, Brody," Jessica said. "I wasn't upset because I thought I'd lost some sort of game. You proposed to my sister barely half a year after you stood at the altar with me. How was I supposed to be okay with that?"

"I was doing what was right for my son," Brody said. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jessica asked, catching herself as the anger rose up in her chest. "You know what, don't answer that. I didn't come here to fight with you."

"Then why are you here, Jessica?" Brody asked. "You've made your thoughts on me and my actions crystal clear. Did you come to gloat about the fact that your sister left me and ran off to another country?"

"Of course not," Jessica said. "Brody, we need to talk about Liam."

"I don't have anything to say to you about my son," Brody said. "I've got a flight to London tomorrow night to pick him up and bring him back home. Unless or until Natalie gets back on her feet, that's where he's going to stay."

"Unless? Are you hoping she stays in a coma?" Jessica asked.

"Don't put words in my mouth, Jessica," Brody said. "I think you should go."

Jessica shook her head, pushing past him into his apartment.

"Brody, this is important," Jessica said. "You should sit down."

Brody crossed his arms over his chest. "I'll stand, thanks," he said somewhat angrily. "What's so important you have to come barging in here?"

"There's some information that's come up," Jessica said. "About Liam. Mom was going to call to tell you, but I thought you deserved to hear it in person, from someone who at one point cared a lot about you."

"What are you talking about, Jess?"

"I don't know the whole story, or why they did it, but they ran another paternity test on Liam," Jessica said.

Brody paled visibly. "What? Why would they do that?"

"I don't know all the details," Jessica said. "But Brody, I really think you ought to sit down for this."

"Why?" Brody asked. "No, this isn't right. They can't run a test on Liam without his parents' permission, and Natalie's still in a coma. She's still in a coma, isn't she?"

"As far as I know," Jessica said. "But Brody…"

"No, I won't stand for this, Jessica," Brody said, his voice a mix between anger and desperation. "He's my son, no one gets to just waltz in and think they can run tests without my permission. This is wrong, I won't have this done to him, to me, to our family."

Jessica frowned as she watched Brody's face. Something was off, she could she could feel it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Where do these people get off?" Brody continued, now pacing and talking more to himself than to her, a move she recognized all too well from their time at St. Anne's. "No, no, we are not doing this. I have worked too hard for this, I have put too much into this for them to do this. He's my son, mine! Liam is mine, he's my son, mine…"

"I never told you he wasn't," Jessica said under her breath, the realization hitting her hard and fast. "Oh my God!"

"What?" Brody paused and looked over at her, as though suddenly remembering he wasn't alone.

Jessica shook her head, tears in her eyes. "You knew," she said, staring at him in disbelief. "You knew Liam was John McBain's son."

"No, because he's not," Brody insisted. "He's my son. Liam belongs to me. Not John, me."

"When did you know?" Jessica asked. "Did you know on our wedding day? When Vimal showed us those tests, did you know then? When that fact tore me up so much that Tess came back, did you know it was all a lie?"

"Jessica…" Brody reached out a hand but she recoiled in anger.

"Don't touch me!" Jessica snapped. "How could you know and not say anything? How could you do that to John and Natalie? Forget them, how could you do that to me?!"

"Jessica, I didn't…"

"Just answer the question, damn it!" Jessica shouted. "For once in your life, be honest, Brody. Did you know from the start? Are you the one who tampered with the tests?"

Brody sighed defeatedly. "No," he said. "No, I didn't know at first. When we got those tests on our wedding day, I had no idea they weren't true."

"So when did you know?"

"Last spring," Brody admitted. "When Marty pushed Natalie off the roof, that's when I found out."

"How?"

"The tapes that she had," Brody said. "They were tapes of Marty's therapy sessions. She admitted to switching the results. She thought John would leave Natalie if he thought Liam wasn't his son."

"Well, she wasn't wrong about that," Jessica said bitterly.

"Jessica, you have to know that I loved you," Brody said. "I never meant…"

Jessica shook her head as a thought occurred to her. "But I heard those tapes were blank," she recalled. "If it had been on those tapes, we'd have all known months ago, before you and Natalie ever even got together."

"I erased them," he admitted. "By that time, you wanted nothing to do with me, and Natalie was coming around, and…"

"And you figured, what the hell, if I can't have one sister, I'll just take the other?" Jessica snapped.

"I didn't…"

"You didn't care," Jessica said. "You didn't care that you were stealing someone else's child, you just ran with it. You destroyed evidence, you broke the law, you tricked my sister into starting a relationship with you. You didn't care what you did to her, or to me, or to Liam. How could you do that, Brody? How could you lie to all of us for so long? My God, you proposed to Natalie knowing that your entire relationship was based on a lie."

"Jessica, I can't..."

"Just stop," Jessica interrupted. "This ends now, Brody. The truth is out, and now you're going to have to live with it. Don't you dare go to London, you have no business there. Stay away. Just…just stay the hell away from my family. You've done enough damage."