Nikolas returns to Wyndemere and tells Stefan and Bobbie that Katherine has given up.
Stefan uses the pretense of having a meeting with a GH accountant. To go see Katherine.
Setting: Stefan comes to Katherine’s hospital room to convince her not to give up hope of walking.
Katherine: (Katherine hears a knocking)I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed… (Stefan enters the room)
S: It’s really too late for visitors, I know.
K: No, please come in, I was worried I’d seen the last of you.
S: Well, you.., you needed rest and you had other visitors it seemed best to stay away.
K: I’m glad you changed your mind.
S: I didn’t really, the driving’s bad, getting worse, even walking’s tricky. It’s becoming a city of shut-ins. If I had to be somewhere unable to leave, I wanted it to be here with you.
K: Then it’s snowing out; it’s too dark to tell.
S: No, no, you can feel ice in the air though, the winds roaring down in a unbroken sweep across the lake, it stings.
K: Weather seems like something that happens to other people.
S: Do you have family here?
K: That’s funny, the nurses keep asking me the same question, I think they’re worried who’s going to take me off their hands, but no, I don’t have a family in Port Charles. Haven’t you ever just wanted to start over some place where people knew nothing about you except what you told them.
S: I grew up wanting nothing else, never became possible for me though.
K: Well, it’s now in this room.
S: True.
K: My mother was a cook on a private estate and everybody was so careful not to call her a servant that I knew there was something wrong with the word. I even scolded her if I heard her use it herself, but she was very proud to be depended on by my…the family she worked for. She was very proud of her skill and the kitchen she scrubbed so clean her hands bled. But I could only see that life in the front part of the house was better. I was ashamed of her, now I’m ashamed of myself for treating her like that. I guess that’s lazy too.
S: Well, it all sounds like a very normal upbringing to me.
K: Does it? Well, now there’s a thought, I could be normal.
S: I was ashamed of my mother too, but for good reason, and the feeling was mutual. She thought I was timid and weak, her idea of manhood was my brother who was basically a charismatic thug. I felt superior to them, I’m sure that I was then, but circumstances changed, so did I. You might say I inherited the family business, it wasn’t something that I wanted but there was no one else, and I know I could do a better job of it than they did.
K: I’m sure you have.
S: No, but washing my hands of it isn’t a possibility anymore.
K: I’m always amazed at people who do difficult things, I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t wash my hands of. You can do that when you’re pretty, people let you . It’s mostly all I ever was–pretty. I guess I’m going to have to think of something else to be now, won’t I?
K: you know when I was a girl my mother used to do all of her baking at night. She was sort of like an artist you know, she needed her quiet and concentration. There would be the most incredible smells coming from the kitchen that it would keep me awake and I’d wait until she’d went to bed and then I’d sneak down there and just take a little corner from the last thing she was working on or scoop off the icing with my fingers just to spread it all out again so it looked untouched, that is public relations. I’m glad you don’t think my silly little stories are boring.
S: You’re anything but dull.
K: I’m sure you could find a difference of opinion about that. Why do I fell like I can tell you anything?
S: I don’t know, I feel incautious with you too, that’s rare for me.
K: It’s almost as if I’d known you before, even from the first time I met you, you just seemed so familiar. (Katherine’s plate drops and makes a sound like a gun shot, she flashes back to the shooting and the shooter’s eyes)
S: I’ll get it.
S: Katherine, are you alright?
K: I wonder if I’m going to be like a shell shocked solider, every time I hear a loud noise it’s going to take me back to that night.
S: Well, it must be very painful for you to remember?
K: No, not really, I hear the shot, I begin to see a face and then my mind just looks away.
S: Well, did the doctors say that your memory won’t come back?
K: Maybe it hasn’t because I don’t want it to. Does that sound strange? I’m sure people think that I’m just lying here racking my brain trying to think of anything that could help catch the person that did this to me. But why would I even want to think it? Only a masochist would want to keep reliving the worst moment of her live. Do you know Luke Spencer? I mean if you live here you’ve probably heard of him.
S: Yes.
K: They say it was his gun, they say the police are out looking for him, I hope they never find him if it’s true, I wouldn’t want to have to see him.
S: What about justice? Shouldn’t the person who did this to you be punished?
K: If it was Luke, I’m sure he thought he was punishing someone else. I don’t think that people are very good with justice, they always seem to get it wrong. I think when justice comes, it looks more like a mistake, like what happened to me. I mean how do I know that I’m not being punished for being a shallow and greedy, and treating my mother more like a servant than the people that paid her.
S: No, no, no Katherine–
K: Well, if it were, it would certainly be the perfect penalty. I’m not cut out to triumph over adversity, all I seem to be able to do is just to try to wish it away, to some how smooth it over. I’ve played at being helpless enough times, and I never was. Isn’t that justice?
(Stefan reaches over and holds Katherine’s hand)
(Stefan consoles a crying Katherine in his arms)
S: Is that better?
K: Maybe I just needed somebody to hold me. That’s not true, I needed you to hold me. There’s something I can’t tell anybody else.
S: What?
K: It my own fault that I’ll never walk again.
K: (Stefan holding Katherine’s face) The nerves in my spine are compressed not severed, I’ve heard them say it a million times, Tony Jones believes that if I work hard enough at physical therapy that I can learn to walk again. This is the part where you’re suppose to jump in and say if I try again.
S: Obviously you don’t agree.
K: I know better, I have never succeeded at anything in my life. I, I made myself up, my cloth, the jewelry, this ring, I mean how ridicules is it to wear a big diamond ring in the hospital.
S: Let me see if I understand this, you’ll never walk again because it’s up to you and you’re incapable of achieving anything independently.
K: Very well put, with not even a smidgen of pity. For that I thank you.
S: I find it very difficult to pity one of the most beautiful women I have ever met and one of the bravest. You know, I have never come here without seeing you smile, that’s courage. I’ve seen you carry the burden of your friends’ sympathy and your doctor’s diagnosis, that’s strength. You were born with nothing but you’re a wealthy woman, that’s determination. If you are your own creation, create yourself again. A cook’s daughter who can buy herself diamonds can learn to walk, she only has to want it badly enough.
S: Why are you alive?
K: Good question?
S: It wasn’t a rhetorical question. When you were brought into the emergency room you weren’t expected to live, and yet you survived two difficult surgeries in less than a month. How?
K: I had good doctors.
S: You had no part in it? Your will, your strength, you didn’t struggle to live?
K: Of course I did.
S: Exactly, because you are too vital to die and you’re too strong to give up.
K: I already have, you must not be listening.
K: I can’t fool anyone into making me walk again, I have to do it on my own and I don’t have the strength.
S: Maybe not the first time or the second time but what about the fifth or the tenth, the principal’s the same, lose the battle win the war. A girl born with nothing has millions. However you accomplished it, you achieved your goal. I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship with expectations, but I believe that you can walk if you’re willing to fight. So FIGHT!
S: Oh my goodness, it’s almost morning.
K: Could you maybe open the blinds? I love to see the sun come up.
S: My pleasure. (Stefan opens the blinds and looks out) You have a nice view of the park. Trees are loaded with ice, when the light touches them it’ll look as if they’re covered in diamonds.
K: It’s like Serenity when I was growing up, when there was a hard freeze. Would you carry me to the window, I, I’d love to see it.
S: I’d be happy to. Swing your legs around.
K: I can’t do that.
S: Yes you can.
K: Please don’t do this. (Katherine proceeds to swing her leg over with difficulty) I did it.
S: I thought you might. (Stefan carries Katherine to the window)
S: Soon you’ll be able to walk to this window by yourself.
K: Look at that one tree down there, it’s like it’s on fire, covered with rubies not diamonds, it’s so beautiful.
S: (Stefan looking at Katherine) Beautiful! (Katherine looks back)
S: You want me to put you down?
K: No, not yet.
K: I am enjoying the view but I don’t want to break your back.
S: You’re really no burden. (Stefan starts to put Katherine down)
K: You know something, for the first time, I’m really starting to see that’s a possibly, not being a burden to anybody, not even myself. I just want to tell you, I want to thank you for going to so much trouble for me.
S: I consider it a honer. What’s funny?
K: You, you’re, you’re so formal, so elegant.
S: Well, curse of upbringing, perhaps I’ll work on loosening up a bit.
K: No, I like you this way, sort of old world, but it doesn’t put me off.
S: I’m glad.
K: You know growing up the way I did, I always felt that manners were a veneer, but you had to have them if you wanted to fit in the right society, but it was an act. You treat me with manners that come from the inside, like out of respect. If the whole world treated each other like that…
S: Virtually nothing would get done.
K: (laughs) That’s what I like about you, you can laugh about yourself, it makes me laugh about myself too, which God knows I need if I’m ever going to get out of here and you have really made that seem like a possibility.
S: If I’ve had the slightest positive influence, I’m very happy.
K: It really was an amazing sight, the icy tree and the sunrise.
S: Shall I carry you back?
K: No, the sun’s up now and I know that tree is there, the next time I’m up at that window I want to be standing and I want you there with me.
S: Well, perhaps you should rest.
K: I haven’t pulled an all nighter since college. And that was to cram not to cry my eyes out.
S: You permitted yourself some honest despair and you got to the other side.
K: I’m still trying to understand how. All I know is it has every thing to do with you. It’s strange, everybody has come by here with a pep talk for me since I was hurt, Mac, Miranda, that well meaning woman in the wheel chair, even Robin has called several times, Robin is Mac’s niece, she’s HIV positive, she has a thoroughly wonderful attitude, I tried to be wonderful, I just couldn’t manage it.
S: That’s a matter of opinion.
K: Why could you get through to me when nobody else could? Why did you make me begin to believe that I could walk again because suddenly I do.
S: You need to understand that I didn’t do anything at all, I merely said what I believed.
K: Why did I believe you? I think I know, all the others tried to coax and cajole me and they did just about everything but read me the little engine that could, but I couldn’t and I could read the disappointment in their eyes, but you were so matter of fact that I felt what you said was real, I knew that you weren’t handling me. I loathe being handled. What ever you did–
S: Whatever I did you are giving me far too much credit and yourself none at all.
K: That’s because I haven’t done anything yet, but I will, I promise you that. I’m going to go to those physical therapy appointments and I’m going to slap these flabby muscles into shape and I’m going to yell down to the spinal cord to get with the program and decompress damn it, and I’m going to do all that on one condition. (Katherine reaches over and holds Stefan’s hand)
S: What would that be?
K: That you don’t stop coming to visit me.
S: I won’t. (Stefan kisses Katherine’s hand) Besides, I have to be here to see you walk to that window. (Stefan leaves the room)
K: See ya, whoever you are.
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