Ned Ashton collapsed onto his own bed and then winced as his head swum and the pain intensified when he bent forward to remove his shoes. His Uncle Alan laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's ok I'll take care of this," he offered.

Ned straightened slowly. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"I had hoped the Maxalt would be a game changer for you. Your grandfather did too, you know he didn't push that drug through just for the business bottom line," Alan said as he removed his wing tips.

"Right, and I'm sure that he thought he was doing his part by stressing me out so that my blood pressure would be up enough to tolerate long term prophylactic B-blocker therapy," Ned said.

Alan chuckled as he crossed the room to the dresser and opened a drawer to retrieve pajamas. "You know, if you present it that way, I'm sure he would agree, but, Ned, honestly, all we really want is for you to find your own way to peace with all of this. If that isn't possible at ELQ I think even your grandfather will come to understand."

"Not everything is about ELQ," Ned said.

"Don't tell your grandfather that," Alan quipped as he helped him change out of his tuxedo.

"I'll figure it out somehow, just not tonight," Ned said as he fumbled to turn back the bed without fully opening his eyes.

"As long as you believe that, and you remember that, no matter how awkward it all seems, your mother loves you, I think you will," Alan said as he pulled the sheets and down comforter back up over his nephew.

Ned didn't respond to his uncle's lament. He knew his mother loved him, but it was often so much more complicated. He wasn't naïve enough to not realize that his marriage to Carly had certainly added another layer. He knew on some level the marriage concerned his mother. He also knew, on another level, that if his mother and Lois hadn't been able to find any common ground it was pretty futile to hope that his mother and Carly might.

Alan broke the uncomfortable silence with a few pats to his shoulder. "I'll bring you up some ice. Is there anything else you need?" he asked.

"No, and thank you," Ned said. He knew he should be grateful for his uncle's care, concern, and compassion, and he was. Yet, it all seemed far too familiar to an earlier time and as he buried his throbbing head in his pillow the moment came back to him.

August 14, 1996

Ned Ashton's head throbbed more as the dial tone reverberated in his ear. His hand shook as he reached over and hung up the phone and then collapsed back against the couch in his Uncle Alan's study. Technically it was his Aunt Monica's house, but Alan had a few rooms of his own or something. Perhaps his latest migraine was a blessing in disguise maybe it would distract him from the fact that he had lost a child and his wife hated him.

"Here," Dr. Alan Quartermaine said as he passed the empty emesis basin back to his nephew. "Did you reach Lois, or do you want me to just take you home?"

Ned could only shake his head and then reflexively grab both temples as new pain overcame him. "Could I just stay here tonight?"

Alan wrapped an arm around his nephew. "Of course, you may. The girls are having a sleep over with Faith Ward and I think Kirk, Dylan, and Cooper are building some elaborate fort, so your head will be much happier if we avoid the East Wing. I'll help you upstairs."

XXXXXXXX

Later, Ned lay in bed, but couldn't sleep. He was still awake several hours later when his Aunt Monica came home from the hospital. He heard her voice, full of more tension than he thought was typical, in the hallway.

"Monica, wait," Alan called.

"Alan, I'm fine. I'm just tired, it was a long day, and I'm probably going to have a lot of them until Dr. Ford comes back from vacation. Now, I'd like to make sure that Allison put clean sheets on the bed in the guestroom, so it will be ready when Celia gets here and get some sleep myself. If you're still worried about me, we can talk more in the morning."

Ned wondered if they would. If you changed the identifying details and added a lot more bitterness it would sound like most of the conversations Lois had with him.

"What I was trying to tell you was that Ned is asleep in that guest room. I put sheets on the bed on the one down the hall for Celia. She won't be here until tomorrow afternoon anyway," Alan said.

"Why is Ned asleep in our guestroom?"

"He's in the middle of migraine," Alan offered.

"It didn't occur to you to offer to drive him home?" Monica asked.

In spite of his throbbing head, Ned was curious to hear how Alan dug himself out of his attempt to not lie to his wife. Alan would keep their secret though, whether it was because technically it was a matter of patient confidentiality or because he didn't think Lois' concerns were completely out of left field Ned wasn't certain. Honestly, he was afraid to ask.

"I think he just wanted to lie down and didn't really care where."

"You know, he's had a lot of these headaches recently. Are you sure that this isn't something more than a migraine? Your mother had that aneurysm. They can be hereditary."

"I think he's just stressed. He and dad have some deal going with the Buchanans or something. I'm not sure of the details and I really don't want to know. I think he will be ok, he just needs time to work through stuff in his own way," Alan said.

Ned wondered if his uncle really believed that or if he just didn't want to have to explain other things to his wife. Alan and Monica were big on not keeping secrets in their marriage. Once he and Lois had been. Of course, they hadn't had a real conversation since he had told her that their daughter had died. Sometimes he was afraid they would never have another one.

Memories of Lois, and the daughter they lost, were still painful over a year later. Ned suspected they always would be. Perhaps that was the point.

XXXXXXXX

"Is he going to be ok?" Carly asked when Dr. Alan Quartermaine came back down front stairs of his nephew's home.

Alan decided to focus on the fact that Carly did seem to care about Ned's wellbeing and not get caught up in the reality that she didn't even know her husband well enough to realize he got migraine headaches. "He has had migraine headaches since he was pretty young. The first one was after his cousin Alexandria's funeral, I guess he must have been thirteen," he said.

"Shouldn't he be in the hospital or something?" Carly asked.

"Usually these can be managed at home," Alan said.

Carly raised an eyebrow. "Usually?"

"Sometimes symptomatic treatments and IV fluids may be needed if the attack and the vomiting persist. In most cases patients do well after some rest in a quiet, dark, environment."

"In English, does that mean I should just let him sleep this off?" Carly asked.

"I suppose you could say that. I'm going to bring some ice up to him and make sure he doesn't need anything else," Alan said.

As he made his way into the kitchen, Alan tried to convince himself it would be safe to leave his nephew alone with his wife. Alan was quite sure that he didn't trust her. Why should he? She had seduced one of his best friends away from his wife, who also happened to be a close friend. A close friend of his and, in theory, also a close friend of Carly's.

Bobbie Spencer-Jones had been the one who had convinced Audrey Hardy to let Carly into the combined PCU/PCGH nursing program even though her high school transcript had been more than a little lacking. Then it had been Bobbie who had encouraged Audrey to give Carly a second chance, or perhaps it had truly been a third chance, when she had ended up with a 1.3 gpa at the end of her first semester and was allowed to remain in the program. All the while Carly had been sleeping with her champion's husband, in their bed, while their son slept down the hall.

That had ended in one sense the April night when Bobbie had come home early from what had been supposed to be an overnight shift in the SICU and discovered the affair. Alan wasn't privy to exact details of all that must have ensued but from what he had pieced together from what Tony had told him, Bobbie had told him, Bobbie had told Monica, and what Lucas had told Alan's younger son, Kirk, he was sure it had been anything but pretty. The damage had been irreparable, or at least it had seemed it. Tony moved out. Bobbie had filed for divorce and sole custody, and Carly, left to sink or swim on her own merits, failed out of nursing school and lost her PT tech job at the hospital. Yet, in some senses, Carly had still landed on her feet because once she had announced she was pregnant and the divorce was finalized Tony had done the honorable thing and proposed marriage.

At least that had been the consensus of the hospital rumor mill. Alan had felt that the honorable thing would have been for Tony to have continued to honor the vows he had taken eight years earlier. There hadn't been any great way to say that without sounding self-righteous which Alan knew he couldn't afford to be. Sure, he had been faithful to his wife, but he was hardly perfect. That humility had served him well a few months later when Tony had learned that Alan's nephew was planning to marry Carly.

As he filled a Ziploc bag with ice from the dispenser in the refrigerator door, Alan moved past Carly's dishonesty and betrayal to truly reflect on the situation at hand: Ned's headaches weren't getting any better. As a physician, he should fear that his nephew had some horrible brain tumor, or perhaps some kind of an ateriovenous malformation in the blood vessels in his brain. He knew latter could sometimes be a ticking time bomb, his own mother had an aneurysm that had ruptured nine years earlier. She had made it through the surgery, a former colleague's wife hadn't been so fortunate a few years later.

Actually, at one time, he had feared most of those things. So, he had arranged for Ned to see a different neurologist for a second opinion. Somehow, he trusted Dr. Tristan Rosenblatt a bit more than Dr. Mark Dante. He had made sure that Dr. Rosenblatt had done a MRI and even that he had repeated it a year earlier when Ned's headaches had exponentially increased in both frequency and severity. Yet, even before the MRI came back normal Alan had suspected that Ned's frequent migraines had much more to do with grief than some hidden malignancy.

He hadn't been able to explain that to his sister, because technically it violated patient confidentiality. Call schedules were a funny thing because it was just the luck of the call schedule that had made the amazing Dr. Eduardo Muir the neurosurgeon on call the night his mother had collapsed in the front foyer. He had saved her life, Alan truly believed that. Yet it was also the luck of the call schedule that had caused Ned to inherit Dr. Mark Dante as a neurologist, and that had placed Alan himself on in house trauma call the July afternoon that his nephew's wife and unborn child got caught in the crossfire of Sonny Corinthos's world. Neither had been ideal but life often wasn't and Alan had done what he had needed to do. Or perhaps he had done half of what he had needed to do because there hadn't been anything anyone had been able to do for their daughter who had been stillborn at about twenty weeks gestation. As a physician, he knew that twenty weeks was a little too early to possibly be viable. Yet, as a father, he knew the pain of losing a child and he had never wanted that for Ned and Lois.

On some level he had also grasped that there was probably another issue with the fact that they hadn't announced the pregnancy sooner. Perhaps that had been out of respect for Sonny's feelings. His wife and unborn child had died from a car bomb a few months earlier but even that hadn't fit when Dr. Newman had just mentioned in passing that he had confirmed the pregnancy in April. He hadn't pressed that issue though, so he had just tried to support Ned and Lois. Unfortunately, from Lois's perspective, sharing that they had lost a child with the rest of the family would not be supportive. So, he hadn't shared their secret. In retrospect, he was quite sure that hadn't been the right thing for Ned. Perhaps it hadn't been the right thing for Lois either.

September 6, 1996

Dr. Alan Quartermaine liked to schedule his cases early in the morning. He was a morning person and with any luck he could get in and out before the OR schedule got behind. Typically, he would have made his inpatient rounds and done two or three cases before he showed up at his office and the particular Friday in question was no exception. So, a few minutes before nine he was sitting in his private office reviewing some CT films on the wall mounted view box when his secretary, Maude, came in.

"Oh, Dr. Quartermaine, you are here. I'm sorry, I just told your nephew you would have to call him back when you came over from the hospital OR. Also, your nine o'clock patient has cancelled they had an unexpected emergency. They just called twenty minutes ago, and it was too short notice for me to pull someone from the cancellation list."

Alan nodded as he reached for the slip of paper Maude extended in front of him. He recognized Ned's cell number which was a little surprising, usually Ned was at the office by eight or at least eight-thirty. Of course, it was possible that Ned just didn't want the call going through the ELQ switchboard. Actually, that was quite likely.

Alan knew his nephew was independent and private in a way that didn't always mesh well with being an ELQ Enterprises Executive, or even a member of the Quartermaine family. While Alan's older sister considered this part of her personal failing as Ned's mother Alan felt it was more a case where Ned was growing up and making his own way in the world. Or he had in the past, recently he was a little more concerned about his nephew.

"Alan?" Ned answered immediately.

Alan presumed Ned had recognized his office number on caller ID, however, he also heard the desperation in his voice. "Yes, how can I help you?"

"I'm not sure."

Alan allowed the silence for a moment waiting for Ned to finish the thought. Eventually he accepted that perhaps he couldn't. "Ned, is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"I'm sorry you must have patients. I'll try Lois again, or something, I guess."

"I had two cancellations, I only have one consultation scheduled for eleven, so I have a few hours and I want to help you. Ned, I know this is hard, and life will never be exactly the same but, in time, I think you and Lois will get to a place where you can find some joy around some of the pain. I do believe that. Monica and I did in time, it just was really hard for a while, but it did get better. Where are you? Why don't we go get some coffee or something?" Alan suggested.

Ned sighed heavily. "I'm at the hotel. I'm not really up to driving anywhere," he said.

"I can come there. We can have some breakfast maybe?"

Ned hadn't actually agreed, although he hadn't objected, so Alan had taken advantage of the silence and announced that he would see him in ten minutes. Over the years he had figured out that when Ned started to stoically shut down someone needed to maintain the connection. He had also learned that sometimes it was easier for Ned to accept that from him than his mother. The last part was nothing Alan ever planned to admit aloud to his sister. She already had enough parenting hangups where Ned was concerned. So, he just looked out for his nephew and tried to persevere through life.

They hadn't attempted breakfast because Ned was convinced he wouldn't be able to keep anything down. Eventually they had ended up in the Emergency Department at PCGH. Alan had to admit that when Ned had admitted he had no recollection of anything between looking over some Deception contracts with Katherine and waking up next to her unclothed he had been both concerned and wary. Katherine had earned every ounce of his wariness. Alan remembered all the stunts and schemes she had pulled while she was engaged to his brother in law, Scott Baldwin. A marriage had never followed from the engagement because, ironically, Katherine's schemes had been exposed by another pair of schemers, Lucy Coe and Damian Smith.

So, when he had taken Ned to the ER for some IV fluids, he had requested that Dr. Faulk also run some toxicology tests. When those had been negative, he had presumed Ned's amnesia really was psychogenic which had concerned him more. That was when his desperation to tell the family the truth had increased. Ned had begged him not to. He had felt he had to work things out with Lois on their own terms or she would never forgive him.

Ned's attempt at honesty with his wife had blown up in his face. After Lois had taken their surviving child and fled back to Bensonhurst, Ned had admitted to his mother he had slept with Katherine Bell. He still hadn't mentioned his daughter. That truth had taken a few more months to come out.

January 5, 1997

"What has gotten into you?" Tracy Quartermaine-Grabler fumed at her eldest son.

"Nothing you would ever understand," Ned said as he got up from the table and stalked out of the dining room.

"I'm sorry, Alan, Monica, there is something wrong with him and of course I'm going to be the last to know," Tracy said.

Dr. Alan Quartermaine picked up the chair his nephew had upended in his haste or perhaps anger. "It's alright, do you want me to try to find him?"

"Well I guess the other option is me trying to find him and I think we both know how well that will go," Tracy said.

Alan saw the pain in his older sister's eyes. He did understand it. It looked very familiar to what he had felt when Jason had stormed out of their house for the last time the previous March.

Alan found his nephew on the west terrace. He was leaning against the railing staring out into the snow-covered side lawn, but Alan doubted he was really seeing any of that. He laid a hand on his shoulder. "Ned," he began gently.

"This would have been Lois' due date," Ned said.

Alan hadn't known that with certainty before, but it fit. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Me too. Maybe that's why Lois won't let me see Brooke because I did such an awful job of protecting her little sister."

"Ned, that's not true. There wasn't anything you could have done," Alan said.

"Do you really believe that? Or is it just one of those things you have to say?"

"I really believe that. Unfortunately, we live in a world with random acts of violence as well as kindness. There aren't words for me to reconcile this with, it was a horrible, awful tragedy and no child will ever replace another but sometimes your grandmother is right. Sometimes you have to remember what you still have, not just what you lost. Brooke Lynn is a beautiful little girl who needs her daddy in her life," Alan said.

"Try telling Lois that, because that's really not her take on the situation," Ned said. Then, in stark contrast to the bitterness of his words, he dropped down to his knees on the terrace and started to sob.

Alan did the only thing he could think of in the moment. He wrapped his arms tightly around his nephew and allowed him to cry.

Eventually, as the wind picked up and new snow started to fall, he had led Ned back through the French doors into the parlor. There he had found his sister sitting calmly on one of the sofas. When she had stood and wrapped her arms around her son Alan had caught his breath, but Ned allowed the embrace. Perhaps more importantly he had started to explain why he was upset.

Alan had hoped that having the truth out in the open would be the beginning of a healing process for his nephew. Unfortunately, he could see it really hadn't been. If anything, he thought sharing the truth with his mother had just made Ned feel obligated to insert even more distance into their relationship. He was quite sure that had been exactly what Ned was doing when he buried himself in work at ELQ. His father, Ned's grandfather, hadn't seen it that way of course. From Edward Quartermaine's perspective, Ned was finally living up to his full Quartermaine potential. Yet, as he made his way out of the kitchen, Alan wondered for the first time if perhaps his father had been operating from a place of denial as much as pride when he had offered that explanation six months earlier. As he climbed back up the stairs, Alan began to realize that had probably been the case and he had just missed it.