Part 3

Will was secretly, guiltily relieved as he rushed into the hospital with other doctors and nurses who had been paged. He didn't welcome whatever disaster had summoned them, but he welcomed the opportunity to do something he understood. Medicine was easy compared to his family.

He ran to the nurses' station on the fifth floor and pulled up sharply, breathless but thinking clearly for the first time that day. "I was paged. What's going on?"

The nurse looked him over as if he were over-reacting by more than a little. "I didn't mean to alarm you, Dr. Horton. You asked to be paged if anything—anything—happened regarding Theo Carver. There are notes all over his files, in your own handwriting." She held out a file as if to prove it.

Will opened his mouth to ask what had happened to Theo, but the nurse was two steps ahead of him. "Contusions, cuts that could use a few stitches, and maybe a fractured wrist. They haven't had a chance to look at him down in the ER. Some kids were fooling around and caused a twenty-car pileup near exit 28."

Will didn't ask whether Theo had been one of the "kids" responsible for the accident. He wanted to hear it from Theo himself.

Will had been more than a little flattered a few days before when Dr. Wesley had claimed that every patient Will saw felt that he or she had been treated as a special favorite. Theo Carver, though, really was a special favorite. Will felt a particular kinship for Theo; sometimes it was almost as if Theo was the younger brother Will had never had a chance to have. They'd both been stuck with crazy mothers who could never leave well enough alone. Theo's mother had once been a doctor at this very hospital, but her medical license had long since been rather publicly revoked.

As a teenager, Will had had the option of fleeing to Switzerland and the comparative normalcy of his aunt and uncle. Theo hadn't had that chance, though, and instead had taken special pleasure in getting into one kind of trouble after another. Will had thought—did think—Theo was making an effort to turn that around now. When they'd last spoken, Theo had hesitantly suggested that going back to school might not be out of the question.

Will knocked at the exam room door.

"Come in."

Theo was slouched in a chair, looking neither guilty or defiant.

Will's eyes swept over the cuts and bruises. Some of them looked painful, but Will had long ago learned not to wince. "Look who's back."

"They made me come up here," said Theo by way of explanation. "They said it was that or wait in the emergency room—leaving wasn't a choice. Isn't that illegal?"

"You didn't want to come see me? I'm hurt." Will ignored the question about legalities. No one had made Theo Carver do anything in years. That was part of his problem.

"Not really," said Theo, but he said it almost affectionately. "It's a couple of bruises."

"Then jump up on the table and let's see your wrist."

"I was afraid you were gonna say that," muttered Theo, but he complied.

The examination revealed that Theo was correct; his wrist was deeply bruised, but nothing more. But Theo's gloating was short-lived when Will announced that the worst of his cuts needed stitches. "Do you have to?"

"I've stitched you up more times than either of us can count. It never bothered you before."

"Will it be a… a problem if I have to go out of the country?"

Will made an effort not to shiver and forcibly reminded himself that most people who wanted to leave the country didn't do so because they had broken the law and were trying to evade punishment. Besides, Theo had always taken particular glee in being punished. He'd seemed to enjoy being caught more than he'd enjoyed his petty crimes. "Where are you planning on going?"

"London. Paris. All over Italy."

"Lucky you," Will said, even though he hated London. He only went there to visit a mother who didn't know or care that he existed.

Theo deflated visibly and shook his head. "I'm going with my cousin Jett. We're going to visit all the places my mother's family used to own. The DiMeras."

Will closed his eyes for a long second and then jumped up on the table beside Theo. "What your grandfather did has nothing to do with you, just like what your mother did has nothing to do with you."

"What my grandfather did had nothing to do with my mother, and then she found out that he was her father, and BANG," Theo snapped his fingers, "she went bad."

"She did some stupid things, but that's not the same as being inherently evil," said Will, feeling like a complete hypocrite. Lucas had always been in the position of saying things like that to Will about Sami, and it had never eased Will's deep-down feeling of hurt that Sami had disappointed him and hadn't cared.

"Whether she's good or bad or whatever, I feel like I need to know." A kind of pleading most unusual for Theo filled the small room. "I need to see what they saw before I decide that that's not what I am."

"I can understand that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And the stitches shouldn't be a problem. You might feel a little stiffer than usual after sitting on the plane time with all these bumps. Try to move around some while you're in the air."

"I will."

It was only after the stitches were in place and the chart was completed that Will asked Theo what had happened. "I knew they were planning a prank by the exit ramp and I thought I could talk them out of it. It didn't go so well. I told the cops everything already."

"Good for you."

"There's funny, and there's getting people killed. There's a difference, and those four—well, really it's only Jake, he's the leader—well, they don't get it."

Will didn't point out that the choice Theo had made that day differentiated him from his DiMera ancestors every way that mattered, and that no trip to Europe would make that more or less true. Theo had to learn that on his own.

The two of them made companionable small talk as they took a roundabout route downstairs.

Also taking the little-used stairs was a herd of nervous looking men and women about Theo's age. "The interns," Will muttered.

"How come you aren't on intern duty?" asked Theo in a mock-smarmy voice. "I thought they wanted the interns to learn from the best."

"Welcome to University Hospital," Will told the interns as he pointedly ignored Theo.

He received a smattering of thank-yous and hopeful glances, but most of the interns were focused on the tiny, blood-spattered redhead who was brazenly staring down their tour guide.

Joy Wesley, in the flesh, at last.

"You were there to observe, not to—"

"The person doing triage got it wrong," the newest Dr. Wesley was complaining with a self-assurance familiar to anyone who knew the elder Dr. Wesley. "I jumped in because someone had to. Would you have rather had that woman die?"

"The situation was under control—"

"Then why wasn't she taken back first?"

"Our staff is very experienced—"

"Experienced isn't the same as intelligent. It's a good thing I was there. Why can't you admit it?"

Will and Theo slipped past the argument without drawing further attention to themselves. They pushed open the doors leading to the street in perfect unison and went their separate ways. Will felt ready to face his father again; after all, the reunion would surely be more fun than attempting to reign in University Hospital's newest resident genius.

Upstairs, the Penthouse Grille looked just as Lucas remembered it—not that he'd spent his years in prison wallowing in his memories of restaurants. Now that he was confronted with it, though, he felt that he had been unexpectedly jerked back to a moment in time when he hadn't known that a sizable chunk of his life would be spent behind bars. The air was thick with his past.

He saw Sami, barely fifteen years old, wide-eyed as she took in the view from what had then been a new building.

He saw himself on one knee, holding a microphone and asking Sami to marry him.

He saw a menu held inches from his face, and was overwhelmed by the array of choices.

Belatedly, he realized that his brothers, sister, and a uniformed waiter were all staring at him expectantly. He had sat down and picked up the menu in a fog, but the words had blurred before his eyes and he hadn't felt any sense of urgency to focus on them. The idea of choosing what he wanted to eat was so completely foreign to him that he didn't know quite what to do.

"Lucas? Are you okay?" asked Billie in the tone of voice usually reserved for small children or the mentally incompetent. Lucas registered the words and their meaning, but he couldn't figure out how to respond. His eye caught on the bottle of Dom Perignon that sat between Austin and Philip (the bottle between Billie and Lucas was, of course, sparkling cider).

"Filet Mignon, for him and for me," Billie told the waiter, who looked unsure as to whether he should stay or go. "That's what you're supposed to order when you get out of prison," she added to Lucas in a stage whisper. "You didn't grow up like Austin and I did, so maybe you didn't know." Lucas thought that she was more or less joking and wished he remembered how to laugh and assure her that he appreciated her efforts on his behalf, but that he was fine now, really.

Meanwhile, Austin and Philip ordered, and the waiter hurried away. As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Philip fixed Billie with a glare. "Don't coddle him like that, Billie. He's never going to learn to deal with the world again if you do."

"It's been, what, three hours? Just because you've decided no one should have any feelings doesn't mean—"

As long as Billie and Philip were going to discuss him like he wasn't there, Lucas didn't see the need for his continued presence at the table. Instead, he gestured that Austin should follow him to one of the large windows that looked out over Salem. Austin hastened to obey.

"What's really going on with them?" Lucas asked before Austin could start fussing like Billie or glowering with disapproval like Philip.

Austin sighed and dragged his hands through his short, graying hair. "I don't want to get into—and I don't know all of the details because I've tried to stay out of it—but as long as they're going to bring it up."

Lucas still felt unnerved by his reaction to the menu, but he was nonetheless fairly sure Austin hadn't responded to his question at all. "What's really going on with them?" he repeated.

Austin made an obvious effort to answer. "A couple of months ago, Billie and her husband—well, Billie thinks Philip is taking after Victor too much and making Titan his whole life. She thinks he didn't deal with it well when Victor died."

Lucas winced sympathetically. Victor's was one of a number of funerals he had missed during his long incarceration. It hadn't been the one that hurt the worst—that had been the funeral of his grandmother—but it was still one of the more dehumanizing moments of the past thirteen years. Victor had been the closest thing he'd had to a father in his entire life. He should have been allowed to say goodbye. He should have been there to help Billie worry over Philip.

"And what does Philip think?" he prompted Austin aloud.

"Philip thinks Billie should mind her own business and he said a few nasty things to her, which only makes Billie more convinced that Philip is letting Titan eat him alive."

Lucas nodded.

"They'll be fine," Austin assured. "I wish they hadn't put you in the middle so fast, but they've already fought over Chelsea, Claire, Tyler, and Will. They had to move on to you."

"They haven't fought over you yet?"

Austin smiled almost conspiratorially. "There's a reason Carrie and I live in Switzerland."

A door slammed, interrupting Philip and Billie's loud conversation and Austin and Lucas' quiet one.

"I have been treated badly in my life, but I never thought I would see the day that three of my children would fail to invite me to join their brother on his first night home in thirteen years."

Four heads twisted to stare as Kate Roberts tossed her white fur coat over a chair and stormed toward them.

"Yeah," Austin whispered in Lucas' ear. "There's definitely a reason Carrie and I live in Switzerland."

TBC