What Happened to Forever?

Chapters 72-74

~*~Chapter 73~*~

Not long after Lucky left the room, there was a loud noise out in the lobby. Taggert had been standing near the door, and opened it immediately. Everyone looked outside curiously.

“Oh my God,” Liz whispers when she sees Lucky. There’s something in his arm and his face is as white as a sheet. His legs give out and he falls to the ground.

“LUCKY!!!!!!!!” she screams, bolting from the table, with Luke right at her heels. They run out to Lucky while Taggert takes down his attacker.

“Cowboy, come on, wake up!” Luke yells, shaking Lucky as Liz collapses to the ground next to him, sobbing. Laura stands behind them, shaking her head in denial.

While Luke is trying to wake his son, Bobbie comes out of the ladies’ room. Seeing the scene in the lobby, she rushes out to see if she can help, but stops dead in her tracks when she spots Lucky on the ground.

“Luke! What happened?” she asks, running to her brother’s side.

The bodyguard who had jumped his attacker stepped forward. “That man jumped Lucky and injected something into his arm. I’m sorry, he came out of nowhere, and I wasn’t able to stop him in time.”

Luke looks up at the man. “It’s okay, man, at least you caught the slime. Who is it?” He goes over to Taggert while Bobbie checks Lucky’s vital signs. Taggert is busy reading the man his rights. As soon as Luke sees his face, he feels all of the air rush out of his body.

“Ari....” he whispers, unable to say anything else.

Taggert turns to him. “You know this man?”

Luke nods. “He’s...he was...Helena’s cabin boy or something like that. Oh God! Barbara!” he yells, rushing back to his sister.

“What Luke?” she asks nervously, taking Lucky’s pulse.

“The man who did this used to work for Helena. What if that stuff he injected was....” he can’t finish the sentence.

“It’s okay, Luke. Calm down. I’ve already sent someone to the lab with the syringe. There was still some fluid in it, so they will be able to test it immediately. In the meantime, we need to get Lucky to GH. He passed out, and I think he might be in shock.”

“Um, Bobbie, I don’t think he’s the only one,” Nikolas adds softly. They all turn to look at him, and see Liz sitting on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth. There are tears running down her face, but she’s staring off into space, muttering Lucky’s name over and over again.

“Okay, we need to get both of them there, then. Luke, can you carry him? Nikolas, can you get Liz?” Bobbie asks. Both men nod quickly. They carry Lucky and Liz out to Luke’s car and rush to the hospital.

They rush into the emergency room as Bobbie’s pager goes off. She quickly runs to a phone. A minute later she joins her family in the waiting room to give them the bad news.

“That was the lab. The results came back on the syringe. Lucky was injected with the same drug that you gave me after he was rescued.” Before she can finish, Luke lets out a wail of pure agony.

“Nooooo...not again. I can’t lose him again!”

“Shh, Luke, you didn’t let me finish. Because you had the instincts to pick up that vial and bring it to me, our chemists have been working on an antidote ever since we discovered what the drug did. I had a feeling that Helena would have more than just that one vial laying around, so I made sure that they were working around the clock. They found a cure last week.” She smiles as she sees her brother’s face light up with hope.

“Oh, Barbara, are you sure? They can stop it from working?” He jumps up and hugs her, while everyone else watches in confusion.

“Luke, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Laura asks. His reaction earlier to Bobbie had scared her to death, and she wanted to know what was happening to her son.

Luke sits down next to her and sighs. “Okay, when we rescued Lucky from that chamber of horrors, I saw a vial of liquid on the table where Faison had been sitting. Something told me took take it, so I did. I gave it to Barbara to have it checked out, in case it had been given to him at some point. It turned out that if it was given to someone, they would be dead within 24 hours, and at that time there was no known way to reverse the effects. It had Helena written all over it. I thought I had caught it in time, and that as long as we destroyed it, we wouldn’t have to worry about it, but I guess the old bat had extra batches mixed up somewhere.” He puts his head in his hands, wondering when her reign of terror on his family would end.

“That witch...” Laura hisses. “But how did she do this if she died in the explosion?”

Just then Emily gasps. “NB! Oh my God, that was NB!” Everyone looks at her like she’s lost it.

“Honey, what are you talking about?” Bobbie asks, trying to calm her down.

Nikolas suddenly shoots out of his seat. “She’s right! We were wrong the whole time. It was the Nurses’ Ball, not that Bartolli guy. And SC wasn’t Sonny, it must be...Stefan! Oh, if anything happens to Lucky, I’ll kill him myself!” He’s pacing angrily around the waiting room, his face red with rage. Emily is shaking with fear at the realization that they had completely misinterpreted the warning.

Bobbie and Laura are looking at the two teenagers strangely. “What are you guys talking about?” Laura asks.

“I think I can explain,” Luke says, and tells her the story about the Ouija Board and how they had thought it was referring to Sonny. She had already known about Luke’s near-miss with the bullet.

Laura looks at Emily and Nikolas. “So, a Ouija board told you all of this?”

Nikolas nods. “I know, it sounds stupid, but it happened. We didn’t want to believe it until that guy came into town and starting going for Sonny’s territory. It seemed to fit so perfectly, so when everything with him was over, we thought that was it. None of us ever thought......”

Laura puts her arm around him. “It’s okay, there was no way you could have known. Bobbie said they have a cure, so everything will be okay. Right?” she asks, looking hopefully at her sister-in-law.

Bobbie sighs. This was the part she was afraid of. “Well, there is one small problem...”

~*~Chapter 74~*~

Audrey stands over Liz’s hospital bed as she slowly wakes up. She had been on call when her granddaughter was brought in earlier. By the time they arrived at the hospital, she had lost consciousness from the shock.

“Elizabeth? Can you hear me?” Audrey asks gently, picking up Liz’s hand.

“Gram?” she says groggily, trying to open her eyes.

“I’m here, honey. It’s okay.”

Liz’s eyes fly open as she remembers what happened earlier. “Lucky! Gram, where’s Lucky? Is he....”

Audrey shakes her head. “No, he’s okay. He’s in the next room, resting.”

“I have to see him. I have to see Lucky!” she says, trying to get out of the bed.

Audrey tries to restrain her. “Not right now, dear. You’re still weak. He isn’t awake right now anyway, so why don’t you just rest?”

Liz looks at her grandmother defiantly. “No! I will not rest while he’s in here! I need to see him. I can help him get better, I know I can!” She jumps off of the bed and rushes into the next room. Lucky is still unconscious. He looks so pale and helpless lying there. Liz sits in the chair next to the bed and grabs his hand.

“Lucky, please wake up. Come on, you can’t leave me now. We just got engaged. You promised to marry me, so don’t get cold feet now!” She sniffs and wipes her eyes with her free hand.

“Remember when I was in that coma, and no one could wake me up? Well, I remember that I could hear everyone. I was waiting for your voice, and once I heard it, I knew that I could come back If that’s what’s happening to you right now, then I know you can hear me. Come on, Lucky, you already died on me once. You can’t do it again. I’m....I’m sure there are rules somewhere about that. Open your eyes, Lucky.” she squeezes his hand tighter and leans in closer to him, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

Overcome with emotion, she lays her head down on his chest and sobs. Why was it that every time things were going well for them, something terrible happened? Were they cursed?

Audrey enters the room quietly, her heart breaking when she sees Elizabeth. Liz looks up at her and sniffs. “What’s wrong with him Gram? Is he in a coma or something? Why won’t he wake up?”

“I’m not sure From what I’ve heard, the unconsciousness is from shock. He was injected with a poison that Luke thinks was made by Helena while she was still alive.”

Liz gasps. “Poison?” she asks weakly, looking back at Lucky. “Does that mean he’s going to....”

“No, honey. Bobbie said that they have an antidote for it.”

Liz jumps up. “Well, then why aren’t they in here giving it to him? Where is it?”

~*~

“What’s the problem, Barbara?” Luke asks, bracing himself for the worst.

Bobbie takes a deep breath. She had been hoping this wouldn’t happen. “The antidote needs to be administered within the first two hours of exposure in order for it to work. Once that two-hour window closes, it is ineffectual. Unfortunately, about an hour has already passed. Since they made this discovery so recently, there hasn’t been a chance to put any of if on reserve, so we have to wait until they can make some.”

“How long will that take?” Laura asks, afraid to hear the answer.

“Well, I called as soon as I sent the syringe out to the lab and told them to start working on it right away, just in case. They should be able to get it to us in time, but there’s always the possibility that something may go wrong.”

“Oh, God,” Laura whispers, sinking back into her chair. “Not my baby, not again. I can’t lose him again. Why does this keep happening to us, Luke? First the fire, then the plane crash, now this...”

“I don’t know, babe, I really don’t. I swear, if Stefan’s behind this....” he shakes his head, not needing to finish the sentence. Everyone knows what he means.

“If he’s behind this, you’ll have to get in line, because I’ll go after him myself.” Nikolas says angrily. “This time, he’s gone too far.”

Luke smiles sadly, feeling pride for his oldest son. He looks at his watch. Forty minutes left...

~*~

“Gram? Why aren’t they in here with the antidote?” Liz asks, panicking.

“Honey, they didn’t have any made, but they’re working on it right now. They’ll bring it as soon as they’re done.”

She nods. “Okay, good. But, what happens if they don’t finish it? I mean, how long do they have before this stuff kicks in?” She looks back at Lucky in anguish.

Audrey sighs. She really didn’t want to have to tell her this, but she knows that Liz won’t give up until she has all the information. “The poison will kill him in 24 hours if it’s not treated. It’s been a little over an hour since he was injected, so that leaves less than 23.”

Tears spring up in Liz’s eyes again as she gazes at his sleeping face. Less than a day? That’s all he could have left? She turns back to her grandmother. “But they’ll have the antidote by then, right? I mean, how long can it take to mix it up?”

“That’s true, but the way this poison works, the antidote can only save him if it’s given to him within 2 hours of exposure to the poison.”

Liz’s face falls, all hope vanishing. “You mean, if they don’t get here in less than an hour with it, he’s going to die?”

Audrey nods sadly, reaching for Liz to comfort her, but she backs away. “No! He isn’t going to die. I won’t let him. He didn’t give up on me when I was sick, and I won’t do that to him now. He proposed to me tonight, did you know that?” Audrey shakes her head. “Yeah, we’re going to get married. So, you see, he can’t leave now. He promised to marry me, and he never breaks his promises.”

She turns back to his bed. “You hear that Lucky? You never break your promises, so you have to come back to me. I know you’re in there, I know you can hear me. If I could just see your eyes again, I’d know everything will be okay. Please, Lucky? Please look at me?” She squeezes his hand again, but this time, he squeezes back. It’s a very faint squeeze, but it’s there.