Part 27- Prelude to a Trial
On the evening of her family's flight to London, Sami checked herself out of the hospital against her doctors' advice. The physical therapy had been very effective; she could walk and talk and take care of herself, even if her mobility and strength weren't exactly what she would have preferred. The hospital couldn't keep her there without her permission, and she would have left with or without consent in any case. She'd broken out of prison while she was on death row; she could certainly handle breaking out of University Hospital's rehabilitation center.
Not that anyone trusted her to handle anything anymore.
Uncle Bo's words had cut her to the quick. You have no credibility. You handed your only daughter over to a sex offender. If the judge sees you, he'll assume that Allie wanted to be raped, just like her mother.
And of course, Lucas and Will had been feeding her platitudes ever since she'd returned to Salem. Allie's doing fine without you. Why would Allie need her mother when she's testifying against the man who held her prisoner and molested her?
The only one who ever wanted to tell her the unvarnished truth (at least as he saw it) was Johnny, and Lucas and Will seemed to be keeping Johnny at arm's length as if he were some sort of demon seed.
But her concerns for Johnny had to take a back seat for now. It was Allie who was about to be put on trial—and there could be no doubting that the subject of the trial would be Allie, not EJ. Rapists weren't put on trial; their victims were. Sami had learned that lesson at the hands of Alan Harris. That was one of many reasons she had never pressed charges against EJ.
You thought you had a child with EJ, and because you never pressed charges for rape, his attorney would make you out to be a spurned ex-lover.
She would have pressed charges if she could have foreseen that her other option was to shove the burden onto her sweet, sensitive daughter.
But she had never been able to foresee how her actions would hurt her children. She had meant to do better for her twins than she had done for Will. Will had spent most of his childhood caught between two parents who put his well-being behind their desire to hurt each other. She had promised the twins, since the day she'd known she was pregnant, that she would always put them first. So when EJ had told her that the only way to keep her family safe was to sacrifice her own happiness and her marriage to Lucas, she'd done it. She'd put her children first. Then, when EJ had told her that the only way to protect Johnny was to help his father turn over a new leaf, and help sort out the citizenship concerns, well, she'd done that too. She'd put Johnny first. She'd wanted to believe that Johnny's father wasn't someone who would…
"I want you, Samantha. I want you to have sex with me."
"You are out of your mind if you think for one second that I would— If you touch me, I swear to God—"
"Yes, come on. Threaten. Spell out the depths of my punishment. Will that be anguish? Incredible pain?"
"This is turning you on?"
"Would you rather savor your virtue and condemn Lucas to die?"
"So, you're gonna blackmail me. Rape me. That's how you like it."
"Are you trying to get me excited again?"
"I'll do it. I'll do it. You are only getting my body."
"My dear... that's all I've ever wanted..."
"You've had your revenge. You've scarred me for life. I'll live with it. I'll find a way. But if you do anything to hurt my son or Lucas or me, I will hunt you down and kill you. Do you understand?"
Uncle Bo was right. People would claim that she had wanted it, that she had enjoyed it.
And they would claim the same thing about Allie.
Lucas had to know that. It shocked her that Lucas was allowing Allie to testify. Lucas had always been so protective of his children, especially his only daughter. But he was letting her walk into a minefield.
Not having any material possessions to bring even if she'd wanted to, Sami went through airport security easily. She smiled wryly as she informed the ticket agent that she had only the handbag she carried.
No baggage. Right.
She slipped into the ladies' room to make certain her wig was on correctly. Her hair had begun to grow back, but it wasn't quite long enough for extensions. Sami had never felt comfortable with short hair. She'd worn it long even as a tiny girl.
The wig fell to just below her shoulders. Where her own hair was solidly blonde, the wig had the slightest reddish tint. It wasn't the fiery red of Joy Wesley or the stately red of her Grandma Caroline. Instead, it was almost the exact shade Sami's own hair had been 20 years ago on an ill-fated trip to Italy.
She spared a tiny smile for Brandon Walker and wondered where he was. Maybe she would look him up when the twins were doing better. He deserved another thank you for being one of the good men in a life too filled with bad ones.
Her smile, she noticed, masked many of the flaws that her appearance had developed over the course of her long sleep. Even to her critical eye, she was almost pretty again.
Deciding that her self-esteem wouldn't get any higher, she turned on her heel and prepared to face her ex-husband and their children.
She looked for them all around the boarding gate, and in the shops and at the windows. Maybe Allie changed her mind and they forgot to tell me, she thought hopefully. The second the thought entered her head, she saw Lucas.
Her heart began to pound, and her lips began to ache for a kiss, a split second before her conscious mind was able to remind her libido that she and Lucas had been divorced for a very long time.
But he was wearing blue. She loved him in blue.
And he had his arm possessively draped over the back of Allie's chair. The simple gesture made him look even better. It reminded her of the way he'd always done that with her. It reminded her that if Allie was testifying, Allie really had made that choice on her own, because Lucas would never have pushed her to hurt herself.
Allie looked up from her magazine and pointed at Sami.
Allie looked up at her magazine and pointed at Sami. "There's Mom."
Agony ripped through Lucas when he saw the ghost.
He had known Sami was coming; he had emailed her a boarding pass himself. But he hadn't expected Sami to look so much like… Sami. She was wearing a wig that transformed her appearance and gave him a sharp, painful desire to grab her and kiss her.
He wasn't sure why, but he was forcibly reminded of a cliff in Italy twenty years before. Sami lay unconscious on the ground.
"Sami, please don't die on me. Sami. My God, she's not breathing. Sami, wake up. Sami, just wake up. I'm sorry. Sami, please wake up. Sami? Sami, wake up! Wake up, Sami! Will, Sami, think about Will. Please, Sami, wake up! Wake up. Come on. Come on. No way, Sami, I'm not gonna let you die. No way!"
He leaned over her and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He expected it to be clinical, nothing more than a technique used to save a life. But when his lips touched hers, he remembered the day they had created Will…
"Sami, listen to me. You're a caring, beautiful girl. Someday, some guy's gonna be real happy to go out with you."
"Thank you for trying to make me feel better, Lucas."
"Sami, I wouldn't lie about something so important. Don't you know how much I care about you?"
"Dad?" Allie interrupted his thoughts, and he ripped himself away gratefully. It was strange how he could get caught up in thinking about something that happened a million years ago for no reason. "You're spacing out."
"I was just thinking how good your mother looks."
Allie raised her eyebrows, and a mischievous glint flickered in her eye.
"I mean," Lucas clarified, "those doctors and physical therapists, they really did right by her, didn't they? Last month she never would have been able to come with us."
Allie stifled a giggle. "Yes, the doctors did a very good job," she agreed, and went to hug her mother. "Congratulations on getting out of the hospital," Allie whispered in Sami's ear.
Sami stepped back and admired her beautiful daughter. "Thank you. I wish it was for some other reason."
"I don't," said Allie firmly. "He'll go to jail, this will be over, and we can all forget him."
Sami winced. She wondered how a girl who had led the life Allie had could possibly be such an incurable optimist. But then, her own childhood had been less than ideal, and Carrie had managed to convince her that if she only testified against Alan Harris…
It would never be over, and Allie would never get to forget.
But Sami couldn't say that to Allie. So instead, she asked if Allie liked to fly.
"I don't really know," said Allie thoughtfully. "This is kind of my first time."
"What do you mean? I guess you don't remember flying to England when you were a baby, but you got back to Salem on a plane, didn't you?"
Allie shook her head. "They chloroformed me," she said matter-of-factly. "I woke up toward the end of the flight, but I was still really groggy—"
"Chloroform?" Sami demanded of Lucas.
Lucas held up his hands in surrender. "I didn't know about that, and neither did Philip. What happened was—"
Allie didn't get to hear Lucas' explanation, though, because Will grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her over to one of the large windows overlooking the runways.
"What?" she protested. She had never seen her parents together—not that she could remember, at least—and she was more than a little interested.
"Look," Will pointed. "There's our plane. See them loading your pink suitcase?"
"You brought me over here to look at my suitcase?"
Will sighed. "No. But act like you care."
"Why?"
Will sighed again. "I saw the look on your face when Dad said that Mom looks good."
"She does look good. The wig changes everything—well, I think it's how the wig makes her feel, more than that having hair makes her look different."
"Very perceptive," said Will, genuinely impressed. "I agree with you. But that other thing you noticed—that Dad wasn't talking about how good the hospital's P.T. department is—you can't go down that road, Allie."
Allie gave up any pretense of not knowing what Will meant. "But I think he likes her! And I think she likes him! And they only got divorced because EJ threatened her, right? Fine, I'm about to get rid of EJ. There's no reason they can't get back together, and then we can be a real family! I appreciate everything you've done for me and Johnny, but wouldn't you rather be the brother, not the… other father? I mean, wouldn't you want us to be a real family, like we used to be when Johnny and I were born?"
"I remember when I was your age, and I told Mom I wanted us to be a real family. She told me to get over it, and that I had a real family whether my parents were together or not."
Allie scowled.
"Yeah, and then I looked at her like you're looking at me. And I tried every trick in the book to get them together."
"Like what?"
"I'm not going to give you any ideas."
Allie lowered her eyes, and seemed to crumble inwardly beneath the weight of the backpack she wore. "I'm sorry. I just wish I knew more about what it was like when they were together, when you were a kid. I only know that I was born and bad stuff started happening."
Will seethed. Allie had handled every horrible thing thrown at her with such a sweet, sunny disposition that it was easy to forget that she was also capable of running away from the only home she remembered, willing to stand up to the twin she adored, and well-versed in manipulation.
"Don't think I'm buying that. I was a master at that before you were a twinkle in Mom and Dad's eye. 'Oh, Mom, I know I was a mistake and that's why you and Dad fight over me.'"
Allie stayed silent.
"Practically as soon as I could talk, I was making up stuff about how I couldn't sleep unless they both tucked me in. Then I wouldn't go to sleep so they'd have to stay there longer—but I'd act like I was pretending to sleep and doing a lousy job of it so they wouldn't catch on. I'd tell Mom how much I loved Dad. I'd tell Dad how much I loved Mom. I'd tell Dad about Mom's boyfriends and try to make him jealous. I'd tell Mom about Dad's girlfriends and try to make her jealous. Sometimes I just tried to reason with them. Once we went on a camping trip and I put a snake in Mom's sleeping bag so she'd share with Dad. I planned family movie nights. I left my homework to the last minute so they'd both help me together. But you know what the important thing to remember is?"
"What?"
"None of it worked. We finally got to the wedding day—I remember this like it was last night—and I was walking out of my room in my tux. I asked Dad to help me with my tie, and he said I didn't need it because the wedding was off."
"But they did get married, didn't they?"
Will shrugged. "A couple of years later. A couple of tries later. When it finally went through I walked out of the reception before it was over because I'd seen it too many times and I was sure they were breaking up. But that time it took six months, and we were never really happy. All that effort—fifteen years of work and it—it ended with Mom unconscious and Dad in prison. You can't do this, Allie. It will eat you from the inside out. It doesn't matter how hard you try or how right it seems. Your everything won't be enough. You'll end up sad and frustrated feeling like you wasted half your life. You've lost too much already. I wouldn't like to see you lose anything else trying to force two people together when they weren't meant to be."
"They didn't break up because they wanted to."
"There was always something. EJ, Grandma Kate, Mom dressing up as a man and pushing drugs."
"Mom—"
"Never mind."
"Mom!" Allie shouted. "Did you ever dress up as a man and push drugs?"
Sami and Lucas joined Will and Allie at the window. "You thought this was a good time to tell her that story, Bud?" asked Lucas coolly as he wrapped an arm around Allie. Will felt about five years old.
"It just came up," Will said lamely.
"Don't worry about it," said Sami to Will, giving his arm a squeeze.
"So it's true?" said Allie to Lucas.
"It's not like it sounds," said Lucas.
"It was a long time ago," added Sami.
"First class passengers are welcome aboard flight 1776 to London," said the public address system.
Lucas took Allie's hand and led her to the gate. Sami took Will's arm and followed.
The flight lasted ten hours, and Allie spent most of them longing for the bliss of chloroformed unconsciousness. The cabin was too dark to do anything but sit and think about EJ's lips on her mouth; and what it would be like when everyone in the world knew what had happened; and what EJ might do if the judge decided not to keep him in prison; and whether Johnny was ever going to forgive her; and why Will didn't want her to have a real family; and whether Will might be right about Sami and Lucas not wanting to be together; and whether Sami might really want EJ they way EJ had wanted her.
Allie was starving when they landed in London, but as soon as Lucas bought her the best Indian food she had smelled in months, she was unable to eat. Sami and Will had gone to the next shop to buy boring sandwiches, and they offered to share with Allie, but she couldn't eat those either.
She was tired for what remained of the day, and was barely able to pay attention when the harried, over-excited prosecutor sat her down to practice answering questions about her life with EJ.
But when it was time to sleep again, she spent another night hearing her thoughts chase themselves in circles. Sami was fast asleep in the next bed; the trip had been more exertion than she was used to. Allie thought briefly of going to the next room to see Lucas and Will—she could hear the television and knew they were awake—but she didn't know what she would say to them.
She was grateful when it was time to get up, ignore most of her breakfast, and get dressed for court.
Her skirt was flowered and her blouse was pink. She thought that they made her look young and innocent. Her hair, though, defied all of her efforts to braid it. She could just imagine the judge's decision:
The alleged victim, who cannot be named, is so ugly that no man would ever molest her. All charges against EJ DiMera will be dropped.
She imagined EJ coming toward her with a menacing look on his face and a gun in his hand.
She imagined dying without ever having done anything with her life.
She imagined EJ renewing the DiMera-Brady feud by torturing Claire and Ciara.
She imagined walking into a classroom filled with boys and girls who giggled at her and called her a delusional slut behind her back.
She imagined her mother comatose once more, and her father back in prison, and both of them blaming her.
She imagined what it would be like to be disowned by both Will and Johnny.
She imagined living alone, ostracized, to a great old age.
Her hair slipped through her fingers for the seventh time.
"Mom?" she asked.
Sami couldn't have been at her side more quickly.
"I can't do this."
TBC