Where Will All Come Home?

Chapter 20
Stefan," Tony Jones stood in the doorway of the waiting room.
His jacket was rumpled, there were bags under his eyes, and his
nose was a peculiar shade of red.

Stefan nodded a terse greeting andfolded his arms over his chest.
He looked at Dr. Jones appraisingly. Was this man competent to
make any medical decisions? He looked like hell.

Tony nodded to the other family members and began to speak in low tones as they clustered around him. The denasal quality of his voice was reassuring, as was the handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. The neurosurgeon was suffering from a nasty cold, not under the influence of unknown drugs.

Stefan found himself unreasonably annoyed by the man's whiny droning voice.

"Laura is not ready for visitors yet, but she has regained consciousness. She's drifted off into a deep sleep, and that's typical of people who've had seizures."

"The blow to her head, Tony? " Lesley asked.

"It doesn't seem to have done any major damage. We can be thankful for that. She may be concussed . She almost certainly is, but we're checking her continuously for any danger signs."

Lesley nodded.

"What precipitated this incident? Can anyone explain what happened?"

Stefan spoke quickly. "I wasn't there. She fainted, but there was not any particular precipitating cause."

Lesley opened her mouth, but a single glance from Stefan silenced her.

"A friend who was visiting today has offered us the services of a surgeon from Massachusetts. He are hopeful that he will arrive late tonight. Perhaps very late."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "If you lack confidence in my ability to handle this case...."

"No, Dr. Jones, I don't doubt your ability, but we are discussing my wife - and your friend for many years standing. I think that both you and I would benefit from the advice of someone more objective than either of us are capable of being at this time."

Stefan pivoted toward Amy. "Are you comfortable with this plan?"

Amy considered his question. In a professional matter she was all business. "That depends on who's coming."

"I believe that Dr. David Gray will fly in from Cambridge tonight. He may bring someone with him. I am not totally clear on the details."

Amy's eyes widened. "I took notes for Monica at one of his lectures last year. I didn't know he saw private patients."

Tony sneezed. "I met David Gray once at a conference. He is brilliant. I can't object. I love Laura too much. I would be honored to have his opinion."

He blew his nose again. "We're doing an EKG while she sleeps. Those results, the first x-rays and the basic blood work should be finished before he gets here." He nodded wearily, patted Nikolas and Lucky on the shoulder absentmindedly and plodded off down the hall to give orders to the nursing staff.

Lucky glanced at the other occupants of the waiting room. One snored raggedly, a newspaper over his face shook slightly with each exhalation. An exhausted-looking couple waited for news of their son , also in intensive care following a holiday accident. They sat in a corner, holding hands, alternately crying, and talking quietly. Lucky spared them a compassionate look, before he leaned toward Stefan, and said in softly menacing tones, "Now that we've done the usual Cassadine two-step around the truth, why don't you just explain what actually happened to Mom today?"

"I don't know," Stefan responded. "But Lesley does. I simply refuse to share the knowledge of what precipitated the accident before the family discusses it privately. May I suggest that we move to my office before we proceed to further discussion?"

He opened the door and motioned them out. They followed in rag tag fashion down the hall and re-settled themselves in Stefan's office.

Once there, Stefan stepped over to a window and drew the curtains open, so that he could look out. The sun was drowning itself in the river. Day was dying, and perhaps his life, her life, their life was drowning with it. How could he stand here a moment longer and not throw something through a window, satisfy himself by punching holes into the godforsaken ugly walls of this building? He breathed deeply for a few minutes, willing himself to calm.

His struggle for control was not lost on the room's other occupants. Eyes transfixed by his rigid figure outlined by the setting sun's rays, they waited for him to speak again.

Stefan pivoted. His words were curt, unsparing. "Lesley, your tardy discovery of a need for absolute truth is the preciptating factor here. You enlisted my aid in your search. There were several factors, however, that we did not take into account. Lesley Lu was already aware of your secret. She in fact told Luke, who apparently did not believe her. I told Nikolas enough that he put the pieces together himself when Lesley Lu told him what she suspected on the week she ran away from Luke's."

"What search?" Lucky lost his temper. "I'm sick of this already. Just spit it out for once. Can't anyone in this family ever just be straight?"

Liz laid one hand on his arm, and grasped his other hand with hers.

Stefan arched his eyebrows, and smiled mirthlessly. "Lesley, feel free to explain yourself."

"Leave Grandma alone, Stefan." Lucky shot up, and Nikolas grabbed him from behind.

"Enough!" Lesley ordered. "Lucky, I lied to everyone, especially your mom. Her biological father is alive. I was afraid that he would take her away from me. His wife was mentally ill and became my patient before I ever found your mother. They moved away, and when I found Laura alive, I behaved despicably. I never told him. I never told her."

Lucky's face froze. "Guess Mom got her habit of convenient lies honestly," he spat out. Why did you decided to tell at this late date?"

Lesley stared at the floor. "Lulu started asking questions about her grandfather. Where he lived. What he died from. The child is a question machine. I think that I would have broken down years ago and looked for him if I had only known either you or Nikolas as small children."

"The next part I understand," Nikolas took over with a sympathetic glance toward his shaken grandmother.

"Lulu suspected that Grandma was lying. Her thinking was that Grandma never lies, so she said it was easy to tell when she started. Lulu asked Luke to help her find her mother's father. Lulu's theory was that if Luke helped her find Mother's father, that she would be distracted, and that maybe Lulu and Luke would be able to get out of visitation with each other."

"Where have I been?" Lucky marvelled. "I had no idea things were that bad between Dad and Lulu."

"I wouldn't say that their relationship was bad," Stefan took up the story. "Simply nonexistant. Your father was disinterested, and if Laura and Sonny had not intervened, he would have relinquished parental rights at some time in the near future. Of that, I am certain." He realigned his wedding ring to his satisfaction, before continuing.

"In the meantime, Lesley told her story to me. We decided to find out if Laura's father were alive or not. The status of his health and that of his wife. Ironically, Lesley was afraid of damaging their health with this enormous shock."

He paced across the room, sat down behind his desk, and fingered his favorite paper weight. "It took me only a day to locate Dr. Gray. He taught literature when he was younger. A form of rebellion, I suppose. When his father died, he returned home to Cambridge, Massachussetts and has lived there for many years. He took over his father's company, diversified it and made the members of his family even wealthier than they were before."

Stefan looked at Lucky directly for the first time. "His wife was unable to bear children. The knowledge that he fell in love with a student, who bore his child, sparked his wife's descent into mental illness. He paid for that brief love affair with forty years of his life. He mourned the death of his only child for almost that long. He is a remarkable man." Stefan fell silent.

Nikolas held Lesley's hand, and filled in the awkward silence. "Father asked me to get to know this family socially. I did, but the man's wife died the night the very night I made contact. She literally died before my eyes. Since I had no knowledge of what his reasons were for asking me to meet the family, I panicked. I thought that somehow we might have caused her death. I was completely spooked. Later, some of the things Lulu told me seemed to point to one solution."

"I was home that weekend," Lucky said. "Why did she run away? I never got a straight story about what happened then either."

Nikolas hedged. "Luke let Lulu think that he was helping her look for our grandfather. Really, he wasn't. He was just trying to make her to spend more time with him. He must have realized just how far apart the two of them had grown and tried to fix it in his own way."

"By running a scam on her?" Lucky asked ruefully. "Yeah, I guess that would appeal to the old man."

"Yeah, I think," Nikolas grinned. "Anyway it kind of worked, because he eventually got through to Lulu The day she ran away he told her that he didn't intend to help with her scheme. She ran away before he got a chance to why he'd pretended to go along with her. He managed to make her believe him that night when he and Laura found her."

Nikolas heaved an internal sigh of relief. It looked like Lucky wasn't going to ask what happened to make Lulu run away. He didn't need to know that Lulu had given up any hope of being important enough to Luke to ever compete with Lucky. That was the mistake that Luke was still trying to fix. Lucky didn't need to know. It wasn't his fault.

Stefan began again. "Luke overheard a phone conversation between Nikolas and me the night, Florence Gray died. He became convinced that I had planned a murder, possibly with Nikolas's aid. This distracted him from the obvious: that Lesley and I were looking for Dr. Gray. That Lulu's suspicions were correct."

"What none of us counted on was Dr. Gray himself. He came to Port Charles to disperse his wife's ashes after her death. He met Lesley Lu, Luke and me accidentally. I was, of course, thrilled to see him. My original plan had been to gradually lure him toward Port Charles. To try and make him understand the truth slowly. I was not willing to introduce him into the family without knowing if he were willing to become a part of your lives."

Stefan pushed his chair back and stared at the sky again. " He had a right to know about his child, to claim his child. But if he did not care to do so, I wanted to know ahead of time so that I could prepare Laura. Before I could proceed with my plan, he returned to town with a private investigator."

"That part I don't understand, Father," Nikolas interjected. "Did Luke make him suspicious ? Is that why he returned?"

"No, son, he was not suspicious."Stefan smiled. "Dr. Gray thought that Luke was a bit eccentric to put it kindly." He smoothed his moustache with some satisfaction, and smiled grimly.

"Dr. Gray left Port Charles and went immediately to visit his child's grave. His family had asked him to stop going there many years ago, and he had reluctantly complied." He stopped and took a breath. " The next part is very difficult."

He stood up as if he could disguise his agitation with movement. "Dr. Gray was haunted by the lonely grave he visited many years previously. He had long promised himself that in the event of his wife's death that would move the child's body so that she could rest with his family." Stefan cleared his throat, and gave up trying to hide his tears. "The grave was gone, so he hired a detective to find where her body had been moved. He wanted to assure himself that she had been buried with Lesley's family at last. Was no longer alone."

Lesley finally spoke again. "The information he received helped him put the pieces together. He came to see me in Memphis. We decided to tell Laura the truth today. I did tell her. And then, oh God, she just looked at me like she didn't understand a word I'd said, and dropped to the ground."

Amy, stunned to silence, could not push away the love she had borne for Lesley for many years. She put her arm around Lesley, and hugged her, but uncontrolled tears found their way down her face.

Stefan found himself unable to tolerate another moment in his office with Lesley. Over and over, the thought, both unbidden and unwelcome, returned. Perhaps Dr. Gray had come too late. A child reborn only to die again. It was still very possible that he would never hear his daughter call him 'father.' Perhaps Sergei, like Nikolas before him, would know his mother's face only from aging photographs. Perhaps he, Stefan Cassadine, was never meant by fate to attain and live the only dream which had ever been his to dream.