Part 24- Two Sisters

It was strange for Lucas to walk into University Hospital with Belle on one side and Marlena on the other. They weren't his in-laws and hadn't been for many years. But they deferred to him on all matters relating to Sami, despite the fact that both had medical training and standing in the hospital that far outstripped his own. He was considered to be the resident Sami expert.

He wasn't sure if that was flattering or frustrating.

Sami's doctors had just decided that Sami could be permitted to have her first visitors since the day of her surgery. (From what Lucas had gathered from a convoluted conversation with Will, Sami had already had unofficial visits from both Will and Nancy Wesley. He'd tried to get more details, but Will hadn't cared for Lucas' attempts at humor regarding Will's continuing fixation on Nancy's younger daughter and had ended the conversation abruptly.)

"I wish they'd let you go in, Lucas," said Belle wistfully as they drew near Sami's temporary home. "It wasn't you who upset her last time. It was Johnny."

"I was responsible for Johnny. I knew I should have kept him out of there, told Sami he was too young for it. He still insists that he didn't think he was telling Sami anything she didn't already know. Like that kid ever does anything by accident."

"Have you given any more thought to getting counseling for Johnny?" asked Marlena. "Dr. Medy has been very helpful to Allie."

Lucas sighed. "He thinks of himself as—and these are his words, not mine— a prisoner of war. He assured me that he would give name, rank, serial number, and nothing else if I forced him to sit in a psychiatrist's office for an hour."

"I wonder what his serial number is," mused Belle.

"Probably 666," said Lucas.

"Lucas!" Belle and Marlena scolded in unison.

"He's my son and I love him, but that last thing I want to do is be under any illusions about the way he acts. He's a snake and a bully and he'd do just about anything to get back to EJ if he knew how to find EJ. I have to stay one step ahead of him."

"We've got him surrounded," Belle promised.

They were quiet until Lucas left Marlena and Belle at the door and agreed to meet them when their visit was over. He was left with an hour to kill at the hospital.

Before he realized where he was going, he found himself in front of the nursery. Half a dozen babies slept peacefully where Allie and Johnny once had. He spared a moment to hope that no one was lurking around to steal these innocents' childhoods the way EJ had stolen those of his twins.

"Lucas!"

It was a well-known fact that one couldn't hang around University Hospital for very long without running into a Horton.

"Hi, Nick." Nick's broad grin would have been ridiculous had it not been so genuine. His arms were full of a bright-eyed infant—still smaller than the newborns in the incubators below, but several weeks older. "And good morning, Joshua Isaac." Lucas moved into the baby's line of sight, and Nick shifted his son so he could get a better view of his cousin.

"He looks ready to go home," said Lucas as Joshua Isaac's serious, unmoving eyes fixed on him.

"He is! Today!"

Even melancholy thoughts of his own son couldn't keep Lucas from sharing in Nick's delight. "That's great. I'm so happy for you and Chelsea."

"Thanks. Are you here to see Sami?"

"They still won't let me."

"That's crazy," said Nick loyally. "You calm her down, you don't rile her up."

"I've done both," Lucas admitted. Almost unconsciously, he reached out to stroke the baby through his blanket. "He's beautiful, Nick."

He refrained from telling Nick that the most beautiful babies could grow into the most trying teenagers.

One of the nursing assistants announced to Sami that her visitors were ready to come in if Sami was ready to see them.

More than anything, Sami wished that one of her visitors could be Lucas, but she was also relieved when she was told that that was absolutely not an option until she had "practiced" on people who provoked a less volatile reaction.

In a way it was for the best, she admitted ruefully to herself as she studied her body. She had made great improvements thanks to her therapy, but she wasn't the woman Lucas had fallen in love with so many years ago.

One tear rolled down her cheek, and she hastily swiped it away. If Marlena and Belle entered the room to find her crying, she would probably be set back to no visitors status indefinitely. She had lost enough time already. She needed to get back to her life—back to Will, her twins, and Lucas.

Belle and Marlena greeted Sami with hugs and kisses; Sami had grown strong enough to hug back, though her honest professions of love were mixed with the still-familiar flame of jealousy.

Belle had been a cute teenager and a pretty young woman, but as she approached middle age she was truly beautiful. Belle was like Will; growing older had agreed with her.

Marlena was undoubtedly a woman old enough to have grown grandchildren, but she wore what remained of her great good looks with a grace that made Sami resent her own ruined body anew.

"What are you thinking, Sami?" asked Belle. Without so much as an invitation, she climbed onto Sami's narrow hospital bed and stretched out beside her sister.

Sami stared at the lovely face inches from her own. "I was thinking how beautiful you are."

"Funny," said Belle. "I was thinking the same thing about you."

"So was I," said Marlena, as she settled herself into the chair beside Sami's bed and reached out a hand to take both Sami's and Belle's.

Sami sighed and closed her eyes. "You're both into blotchy skin and baldness?" she asked without meaning to. The last thing she wanted to do was get into an argument with Belle and Marlena over their polite lies.

"We're into having you back with us," Marlena answered. "And your hair and skin will correct themselves."

"Wigs and concealer until then, if you want," offered Belle. "But there are so many people who love you who aren't going to notice or care. We're so glad to have you back, Sami. We've missed you so much. Especially since Allie came home— I still do a double take every time I see her, she looks so much like you."

"Well, you both know more about my daughter than I do," Sami told them with more than a hint of bitterness.

"That can change," said Marlena in her soothing-shrink voice that made Sami even angrier.

"Like it did with you and me?" Sami snapped at her mother. "Maybe fifteen years from now Allie won't hate me?"

"Sami!" Belle reprimanded, because Marlena, to Sami's mean delight, was shocked silent.

"I'm sorry," Sami said automatically.

"If you don't feel like you're ready for this—" Marlena began, but Sami interrupted.

"I do feel like I'm ready for this. I'm frustrated and angry and jealous because I want more. I'm a stranger to Johnny and Allie, I can't talk to Lucas about them, I have no idea how Johnny is handling not being EJ's son, I'm scared of what EJ might have done to Allie, and I have to lie here and think about how Lucas will never want me again because I'm ugly now, and the two of you are so beautiful and you're patronizing me with all this inner beauty stuff, and it makes me feel like I'm the fat kid looking up at my sister the model while she tells me I won't fit into her dress because it's tight even on her."

Sami patiently waited for Belle and Marlena to leave the room and tell her handlers that she needed more time in solitary confinement.

Instead, Belle and Marlena had some sort of nonverbal conversation over Sami's head, which was almost worse.

"All right," said Marlena. "Let's start with Carrie. You were never overweight. You know that. You had a different figure from your sister, and clothes fit you differently. You learned that bulimia was not a good way to deal with your problems, and neither is railing against your appearance now while you're recovering."

"But you will get me the makeup and the wig?" Sami asked Belle. Belle nodded; Marlena continued.

"A lot of time has passed for Lucas. It's been three years for you, sweetheart, but it's been thirteen for him. Maybe you will find your way back to each other and maybe you won't. But either way, he has nothing but love for you. You'd be doing him a great disservice by insisting that the way you look has anything to do with his feelings."

"I know," Sami admitted unhappily.

"Why does it make you sad to know that?"

Sami wasn't about to answer that question. "Tell me about Allie and Johnny," she said instead.

Marlena and Belle gave her some platitudes about "sweet" this and "clever" that. Sami managed to keep herself from having another outburst as she asked for real answers. Like, whether EJ had ever raped Allie.

The look on Belle's face told her all she needed to know.

"Oh God," Sami breathed. "Oh God, after what he did to me, I let him touch her, hold her, I took her to England with us, and she does look like me…" Black spots swam before her vision and a vise closed in around her chest. "Oh God, not Allie. I didn't want to be right."

"He never raped her. Sami, he didn't rape her."

Hoping against hope, Sami stared at Belle. "But he…"

"He… he molested her. He kissed her. It's not like it's all that much better, but it was one time and she got herself out."

"She was apparently very resourceful about getting herself out," Marlena added. "Much like her mother."

"But she can be very cool-headed, like Lucas," Belle added. "Johnny, too. He's great in a crisis. Last month Claire hit her head on a diving board and lost consciousness—"

"Oh no!" Sami's alarm at this unexpected news of the niece she'd forgotten she had kept her from resenting Belle's implication that any common sense her children had must have been inherited from their father.

"She's fine. She was afraid of getting her head shaved, just like you, but she didn't end up needing surgery. But Johnny was the one who pulled all the other kids together and got them to the hospital."

"They get along? Allie and Johnny and Claire?"

Belle bit her lip. "Allie and Ciara and Claire are all very close, just like we wanted for them."

"And Johnny?"

"Johnny has a harder time of it."

Sami scowled. "If I'd been there—"

"Don't go down that road," Marlena warned.

"How can I not go down that road? I made a decision and my children are going to be paying for it for the rest of their lives. You know that, you both begged me not to marry EJ and not to go to England with EJ, but I had to try to save the world. You," she gestured at Marlena "didn't leave your kids on purpose," and "you," she gestured at Belle, "have probably never been away from Claire."

"Claire, no," said Belle quietly. "But I missed a lot with Tyler."

"Tyler?"

Belle nodded stiffly. "Your nephew. Your nephew you didn't even know about because of his parents' choices."

Belle didn't seem inclined to elaborate. "How? When?" Sami prompted. "And don't take this the wrong way, but who's his father?"

"Philip." Belle rolled her eyes skyward. "God, we can blame EJ for Tyler and for your twins, too. Remember when Philip and I tried to get pregnant, and someone—EJ—switched the embryos?"

"You ended up pregnant with Shawn's baby and Mimi's surrogate got pregnant with Philip's." Sami shuddered. "That was creepy."

"But it wasn't Shawn's baby." Belle's voice shook. "I mean, the baby I miscarried was. Shawn's and Mimi's, just like they planned. The baby the surrogate gave birth to, the one Philip gave up for adoption? That was Tyler. Our child who we wanted and loved. Our child we didn't fight for, didn't double check his DNA, wrote off as some kind of inconvenient outcome of yet another DiMera plot. He was six when we finally got him back. It took two years and I'm not totally convinced Philip didn't have a judge blackmailed to speed it up."

"So you had a daughter with Shawn when you were married to Philip and a son with Philip when you were married to Shawn? That must have been awkward."

Belle looked slightly taken aback; Marlena looked uncharacteristically caustic. "Yes, Belle," said Marlena. "Why don't you tell your sister how awkward that is?"

Belle mumbled something Sami didn't understand—although she caught Abby Deveraux's name—and Marlena apologized and excused herself for some fresh air Sami didn't think she was likely to find anywhere near her hospital room.

"Do you want to pretend that never happened?" Sami asked Belle.

Belle didn't answer. Belle was crying. "Oh, honey," Sami said, pleased that she was able to put her arms around Belle and stroke her hair. "It isn't that bad, is it? If it is, you know I always liked you better when you were screwing up."

Belle laughed wetly and wiped her eyes. "You're going to find out—you'll hear bits and pieces, rumors. To start with, Shawn and I are married, but we live at the Kiriakis Mansion."

"And where does Philip live?" Sami prompted.

"A lot of the time he's at Titan all night, or traveling for business. More often than not. But sometimes he lives with us. Claire still thinks of him as her second father, you know, and Tyler responds better to Shawn than he does to Philip or to me. We all want Claire and Tyler to have the best, both materially and the most time with all of their parents—"

"Don't tell me that. You're a married woman. If you're living with your ex-lover, it isn't about Tyler or Claire."

"That's how Mom feels about it, too." Belle mimicked Marlena's voice. "'Have you forgotten who you're married to? Again?'"

"I'm sure she didn't say it that way."

"Maybe not. But it's what she means. I knew she'd feel that way, and I always downplayed how… integral Philip is to our lives when she called from Switzerland. But when she came here, with everything going on, we couldn't really hide it."

"What exactly are you hiding? Or not hiding?"

"Nothing, if Abby has her way," Belle snapped. "Not, that's not fair. I've always liked Abby. Not for Philip, but I like her. But when I hear Philip gushing about how she has this 'perpetual innocence' or something—yeah, like that's what he needs, someone innocent."

Belle looked distraught enough that Sami almost considered withholding the lecture. But, damn it, Belle obviously needed the lecture. After all these years, she still had two men locked in her orbit. She was truly Marlena's daughter. "You chose Shawn. You have to let Philip have his own love and his own family."

"We love him and we are his family! Sami, I tried to do the right thing. We tried. Not that long after you left, Shawn and I took Claire and went to sail around the world, like his parents did. We told ourselves that we were fine. We told ourselves that we were on an adventure and we didn't need anything but each other. Some of it was true. We met wonderful people and we saw interesting places and we loved each other like crazy.

"Then we got the message that some cop who thought he deserved a promotion Hope got kidnapped Ciara for ransom. We came home to see her. We could hear Bo and Hope screaming at each other from outside the house, so we walked down the pier. And when we saw Philip…"

Belle shivered at the memory. "It wasn't just me and Philip, it was Shawn and Philip too. It was the sun coming out in the middle of the night. It was getting filled in where you didn't know you were hollow. We don't work unless it's all three of us. We never have, not since we were kids. When I was with Shawn, he was always telling Philip to take care of me. Same with Philip telling Shawn. They need each other and they both need me. It's not like I'm— well, as soon as we came back Claire attached herself to Philip again. But he got so he couldn't look at her because he felt so bad about giving Tyler up for adoption. We went to visit Tyler, we had the names of his adoptive parents. We thought Philip would feel better when he understood how happy Tyler was with his family. Then we saw him—he has Philip's dimples, but he has my eyes. I tried to ignore it. We talked to his parents and they said Bonnie Lockhart tried to extort money from them, threatened to take Tyler away if they didn't pay. And the tests showed that Tyler wasn't Mimi's son at all. And we all knew that if he wasn't Mimi's, he had to be mine. And I'd never given up my parental rights, but I'd been off sailing with Shawn and Claire for four years…"

She shook her head. "Sami, you've just come back and I'm talking about me, and I ran our mother out of the room. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," said Sami, feeling more honest and happy than she had since the beginning of the visit. "You've really cleared something up for me."

"Do I want to know what?"

"Me getting Lucas back doesn't seem like such a long shot if you can have a three-way marriage for that long. Lucas and I getting back together might be crazy, but it's not as crazy as all that. And Belle?"

"Yeah?"

"You have to get them to let me see Lucas. You have to get Lucas to come in here even if they won't give him permission. You know what it's like to… be hollow and need to be filled in. You know what it's like to be separated from your child. I need to learn about Allie and Johnny. Lucas should be the one teaching me. You're a mother. You get that."

"I don't know…" Belle began, but Sami stopped her with a hard look.

"Get Lucas in here. Now."

TBC