So, I guess in 2006 I decided to go with a recent trend and start a story where I would write a part, offer two choices on how the next part could go, people would comment, and I’d write the next part with that input. For whatever reason, I stopped after Part Four.

I’m cleaning out my writing folders, making sure that everything that needs to be on my site is there, and I found this. I actually don’t hate it, so I thought I’d post the first four parts and see if I can make this happen again.

So at the end of Part 4, I’ll offer a series of questions. You guys answer them, offer some suggestions. I’ll write the one that seems the most fun 😛 Make it difficult for me, people. I get bored easily.

So, this is set in 2006. Sam wasn’t shot, Lucky’s not on drugs. Jesse’s not dead, so Maxie is less skanky.

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Part One

There is a theory that in every life, there is a turning point. That one decision puts your life on entirely different path than it would have been if you’d made another choice.

There is not one person in the history of the world that has not looked at their life and felt that if they had just done that one thing differently, everything that came after that would be all right.

For Elizabeth Webber Spencer, that moment felt as though it had come a thousand times. The night she decided to hop on a plane and fly to Port Charles. The night she walked through a park instead of going to a school dance. The night her first love died in a fire. The morning she walked through the snow and found her friend bleeding to death. The day she decided not to marry her first love. The day she found out she was pregnant for the first time. The moment she found out she had lost her child. The moment she held her son. The moment she looked into her first love’s eyes and saw a future once again.

All were defining moments in her life but none of those was the quintessential turning moment. Her turning moment–one that would abruptly separate her life into a before and after was the moment she opened a door.

It was a door that she had passed through a thousand times in her nine years of living in Port Charles, in the six years that she had worked in Kelly’s and in the two that she had lived here. It was a door that matched the other four on the floor above the diner. It was a door that led to a room that she had once slept in, lived in and shared moments with her now-husband in.

She opened the door and everything she knew to be true was found false in that moment as she relived a nightmare that she thought was four years in her past.

She opened the door and would have thought she’d stepped back in time except the woman clutching a sheet to her bare breasts was a brunette and not blonde. The woman with the wide eyes and startled gasp was not her sister, but the fiancée of her best friend’s brother.

And the man in the bed with the guilty eyes was not her sort-of boyfriend who no longer remembered their love. The man with the apologies spilling from his lips was not the sweet first love of her youth, but the husband that she had stood before God, family, and friends and pledged her eternal devotion.

Elizabeth Webber Spencer would always remember that before she opened the door, she had the perfect life of a wife, mother and nurse and that afterwards, she was still all of those things but the perfection had been shattered and she wondered if it had ever existed at all.

“I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth murmured. She stepped back and calmly shut the door before hurrying down the hallway. She could hear shouts and some thuds from the room but still she fled.

Her steps quickened as she heard the door open and he called out her name. She clattered down the steps and flew into the kitchen, her breathing as fast as her pace. The further away from that room, the more her breathing hitched, the more the tears burned behind her eyes.

In the dining room of Kelly’s, a crowd of people that she knew were seated. They were gathered at different tables, there for different purposes, but all she could focus on was that they were present at the scene of her humiliation. She hesitated in the doorway and thought that she might escape from the back door when she heard his footsteps on the steps.

She rushed through the dining room and heard no less than five people call after her but she ignored them and broke into a run when the door to the diner swung shut.

She ran so hard and so fast that her heart was pounding in her chest and she thought for sure any moment it would burst and she almost wanted that because then this would be over and she wouldn’t feel like this anymore.

When she couldn’t run anymore, when her legs simply gave out and she collapsed, she gave into the grief that had choked at her since the moment she opened the door to Lucky’s old room above Kelly’s.

Her head buried in her hands, her sobs ripping from her throat as though she’d surely die if they did not escape, she did not even register the scene of her breakdown until she heard the water rushing into the fountain behind her and it was only then she took in the concrete benches surrounding the fountain at the Port Charles Park.

It was a sick joke that her life would end here, that it would end again the way it had ended so brutally eight years ago.

A voice broke through her misery and Elizabeth reluctantly raised her eyes to the compassionate ones of an old friend. “Go away,” she muttered. She swiped at her eyes and ignored the hurt look in Nikolas Cassadine’s dark gaze. “I d-don’t want anyone to see me.”

“Liz…” Nikolas knelt down and held out a handkerchief to her. “I don’t have to ask what’s wrong, I already know.”

Her head snapped up, her eyes met his and the horror of what he admitted seared her soul. “You–You knew?” she demanded, brokenly. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. “You k-knew and you l-let me go on l-looking like a fool?”

“No, no–” Nikolas held up his hands. “Lucky came down after you and not far behind–well, it was an unfortunate moment for them to choose to…because Jason was there with Carly and Michael, too. It was pretty clear what happened since neither of them was fully dressed.”

“Oh, God…” Elizabeth’s hands started to shake. “I d-don’t u-understand, N-Nikolas. What’s going on? Why?” She shook her head and dragged herself to her feet. She wanted to snap at him when he put an arm around her waist to steady at her but she needed the support too much to complain. “We were happy, weren’t we?”

“I thought so,” Nikolas murmured. He gently led her to a bench and helped her sit down. “Elizabeth, I wish I knew what to say, what to do.”

“There’s nothing.” She swallowed hard, ignoring the bile in her throat. She took a deep breath, and forced her insides to freeze. The only way she could survive this experience was to be numb. When she felt like she could speak again, when she could function again, she looked at him. “There’s nothing you can do. I have to go to the apartment, I have to pack some things and go to my grandmother’s.”

She felt his body tense but she gave him some credit, his expression remained neutral–remained concerned. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“The only thing in my life that I am absolutely sure about is that I just found my husband in bed with Samantha McCall,” Elizabeth said. “And I’m not sure you’re the right person to give me advice since you left Emily for a married woman.” She pushed herself to her feet and felt a calm settle over her.

There was no going back, there was no changing what she had seen. The only thing she could do was move forward, to make a decision and to figure out the next step.

| Part Two →