Doctor
Ellen Burgess swallowed the last sip of her champagne.
She had nursed the single glass of vintage brut for over an hour while
she awaited the arrival of her date for that evening.
“Refill,
Doctor Burgess?”
“Not
right now, thanks.” Ellen smiled at the young resident so unfamiliarly garbed in
a somber waiter’s outfit. Nikolas
Cassadine had arranged for many of General Hospital’s medical students to
serve as waiters for his private pre-wedding celebration. They had, of course, been intensively investigated and
researched. Those who passed Stefan
Cassadine’s rigorous criteria were given a crash two-week course in food
service. The pay would be handsome
and the opportunity to ogle some of the world’s most famous, most beautiful
and most wealthy people was just icing on the cake. “I think I’ll just get a bit of fresh air.”
Ellen
pulled up short at the entrance. Strong
arms shot out to steady her and she found herself eye-to-eye with Doctor Matt
Harmon. “Matt?” Confusion
gave way to awareness. Ellen
curiously eyed the upright wheelchair that gave Matt the misleading appearance
of being on his feet.
“I’m
sorry I’m late,” he smiled. “Getting
through security took me a bit longer than I had expected.”
He patted the control panel of his wheelchair.
“Detective Taggert and his partner basically took this thing apart.”
Ellen
shrugged. “This is a pretty high
profile gathering. A little paranoia is understandable.” She turned back toward the party. “We can go in. I’ve
saved us a table.”
“I’d
rather just stay here and talk for awhile, if that’s alright with you?”
“Of
course,” Ellen agreed.
Matt
led them to a quiet corner. The
stern Cassadine sentry on duty eyed their movements but did not impede them –
due, no doubt, to Ellen’s close personal relationship with Nikolas
Cassadine’s aunt Sabrina. “You
look beautiful, by the way,” Matt observed quietly.
“Thank
you. You look…” Ellen sought
the right word, “amazing. I
don’t mean the chair,” she added. “There
is something different about you, Matt. You
seem-”
“Content?”
Matt supplied the answer. “I
am. Finally.” He straightened his shoulders.
Ellen recognized the gesture as a sign that Matt was about to venture
into dangerous territory. “When
the procedure failed, something happened to me.”
The
‘procedure’ was an untested, wildly experimental and highly controversial
surgery that claimed to restore limited use of severed spinal cords.
Despite all Ellen’s protests and the very actual threat of dying on the
table, Matt had insisted on becoming the unorthodox surgeon’s first human
patient. No amount of persuasion
had been able to change his mind. Matt’s
decision to have the surgery had severed their relationship as surely as his
accident had severed his spinal cord.
“I
don’t mean something happened to me medically,” he explained to Ellen.
He did not know that she had used her connection to the Cassadine family
to have a trusted set of eyes there in the room during Matt’s surgery. At Ellen’s request, Stefan Cassadine had enlisted one of
Europe’s finest surgeons to be on hand in case of an unexpected occurrence
during surgery. “When the doctor
told me the procedure had failed, I wasn’t devastated.
It was like I knew in my heart that I’d given myself that one chance to
be whole again and I could live with the outcome – no matter what.”