John and Marlena (Finally) Get a Q!

Chapter 29 - Everybody Hurts......

John stood before the hospital and looked up. Somewhere in there was Kristen. Behind one of those anonymous glass windows lay the woman that had destroyed his life almost as completely as her father had done before her. He felt nothing for Kristen now. Nothing but revilement for what she had done to Marlena and his children. Belle had come close to losing her mother because of that woman and that, he could never forgive.

Still, he had found it hard to come here and deal the final blow. He had driven from the airfield intending to come straight to the hospital and walk straight in through the doors which now stood forbiddingly before him. Instead, he had driven past the building and round the block countless times. As he had come closer to the hospital, he had grown less and less sure of what he wanted to say to Kristen when he confronted her. The child that Kristen carried within her would link them forever, but John found himself struggling with the idea of even having a child by Kristen. Logically he knew there was no other choice, but the thought of being tied to that woman by a child borne of lies made his stomach churn. And yet, deep within himself, he knew the truth of the lines that Marlena had written in her journal. The child was innocent. It had no part in Kristen's deception but to be the desired consequence.

He jammed his hands further down into his pockets and shrugged the scarf he wore around his neck upwards in a futile attempt to stave off the biting cold wind. His breath blew lazy billows of mist into the icy air as he struggled with his instincts. Finally, the air of despondence re-enveloped him and with a non-committal shrug, he stepped towards the concrete and glass edifice

******

Sami stared at the road. The snow had ceased falling a while ago and a mantle of white cloaked the ground around the penthouse obliterating most of the landmarks that she knew. Somehow it seemed to sum up the way she felt.

She traced a small heart in the moisture that clung to the cold glass of the window with her finger. It quickly lost shape as it slid down the window and she rubbed it out, an implicit expression of her inexplicable feeling of loss.

Marlena had taken her aside when she had arrived and filled her in on the events of the previous evening. There had been no censure for her part in the episode and somehow this had only made Sami feel worse. All she had done to bring her mother and John together seemed only to have served to drive them further apart. All Sami wanted now was for her parents to be happy. To be part of a family. For as long as she could remember, that was all she had so desperately wanted, to be part of a happy, loving family. And when it had failed to materialize with her parents, she had attempted to create her own. But that had fallen apart too. And now all she wanted was to hold her beloved son in her arms and mourn the loss of an intangible dream.

******

Kristen smiled brightly as John entered the room. She had spent the previous night brooding over her earlier confrontation with John and had finally decided that if he visited her early, it would be good news. She was so wrapped up in her web of deception, she actually believed her own lies and had no doubt that John would come crawling back to her, asking her forgiveness for his transgressions.

Her smile soon faded however when she saw the expression on his face. What she was unaware of was the fact that John had been standing in front of the door of her room for ten minutes, recounting to himself all the terrible deeds that she had executed to keep her grip on him. He couldn't let his suffering and guilt at what Marlena had been through serve as a weakness for Kristen to exploit. He had to be strong for his family. His *real* family.

Kristen blanched slightly and then made an irrevocable decision to go with her planned approach. She had no way of knowing just how ineffective it would be.