She wiped the tears from her eyes as she stepped out through the doors. The sight of him sitting in the chair next to hers gave her some comfort. At least she could always count on Jack to be there despite everything she'd done to him, he still remained one of her dearest friends. She took the cup of coffee from his hand as he held it out to her. "Thank you," she whispered.

Jack nodded. "You okay?"

"Not really," she admitted. It was hard enough to say goodbye to her friend. It was harder still when your heart was already broken going in. "It just all feels like too much at once. With Hilary and everything that's going on and …"

"I know this might not be the best time," Jack said quietly, "but it also might help us both not go crazy sitting here and waiting. The waiting is the worst part." He remembered all the hours he'd spent waiting at her bedside. There were times he wasn't sure he'd even survive, but he had and even though they weren't where he expected they'd be, they were still in a good place, still in each other's lives, still caring about each other. "You want to tell me what happened with Billy?" He saw her shoulders rise and fall with the dejected sigh. "If you don't want to tell me, that's okay too. "

"No. I just …" She shook her head, still not even sure how it had gone so wrong so fast. "He came to the apartment to tell me about the accident. He ran into Mariah at the club apparently and he thought I'd want to know, so he came to tell me."

"That was thoughtful …" The words were slow as they left his lips. What sounded like a positive had clearly taken a turn as Billy wasn't here and it didn't take a rocket scientist to determine that he hadn't left on the best of terms. "But I'm guessing it didn't go well from there?"

"It wasn't even that. I told him he didn't need to come and I came up here on my own, but he followed me in his car because he was afraid I was to upset to drive and he wanted to make sure I made it here okay." She saw Jack's reaction and felt compelled to add to her statement. "And yeah, that meant something to me, that he cared enough to come, that he cared enough to worry and for the moment I thought that maybe he had had an epiphany of sorts … that this had shown him what was important again, that this had reminded him of how fleeting everything was, but it didn't take long for him to slip right back into that deep, dark hole."

Jack's eyes were kind as they looked at her obviously pained face. "What did he do?"

"I forgot my phone back at the apartment," she sighed, "and I wanted to call you so that I could tell you about what happened to Hilary, so I asked him if I could use his cell and he started going on about how there was a waiting room phone that I could use …" She could still feel the wave of sick realization that had swept over her. "And I knew immediately that he didn't want me to see his phone and I knew why."

"Did you actually see anything?"

"Oh yeah," she hissed. "Texts back and forth for the last few hours about a game at the club and about how much the buy in was and times and places and people and …" She could feel the rage welling up in her again as she tried to banish the thoughts from her mind. "While I was sitting here worried that my best friend was dying, he was trying to set up his next gambling match."

There was venom in her voice as she spoke and he knew Phyllis well enough to know not to argue with her when she got like this, but he also knew his brother and he knew how it felt to do things that you knew were wrong, things that you knew would hurt the people you loved … and still – you felt powerless to stop the urges. "Phyllis," he said with a measured sensitivity in his tone, "You know he's an addict. He isn't doing this because he wants to hurt you. He isn't doing this because he wants to gamble. He's doing this because it's something that's out of his control right now. He can't help what …"

"Yes he can!" she snapped, immediately recognizing the volume of her voice and lowering it. "You did. You stopped yourself from falling back into the habits after you found out about not being John's son. If it was truly out of your control, you wouldn't have been able to do that."

"I had support. I had people around me. I had people that were able to see the signs and stop me before I was too far gone."

"I've been there, Jack." She heard the crack in her own voice. "I've been in the house with him day in and day out. He could have talked to me about anything. I said those very words to him over and over. I told him he could tell me anything and yet he chose to say nothing. Actually, scratch that, he did choose to talk to someone. He chose to talk to my daughter. He chose to tell Summer about his addiction and about what was going on so that she could be his damn alibi."

"Summer isn't someone he cares deeply about," Jack explained gently. "Summer isn't someone he's worried about disappointing. Telling you that he'd failed would have been like admitting that he wasn't enough. It would have been like admitting that everyone had been right about what they'd said about him … that he wasn't any good, that he was just going to hurt you in the end, that he was just self destructive and immature and useless."

"I never cared about what other people said, Jack. I only ever cared about him and now … He's so wrapped up in the next game and the next win that I don't think he cares about me at all."

"He does." He reached out and covered her hand with his own. "I promise you he does. He just doesn't know how to fix this right now. Don't give up on him yet."