"Roman," Abe lays his hand on Roman's shoulder. "Just come for a while. Get something to eat."
"No." Roman shakes his head, his eyes fixed on Marlena's face. Pale and serene like a modern day Sleeping Beauty. If only his kiss could be so potent. If only he could bring her back to life with the force of his love for her. "No." He swallows, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. "I can't leave her Abe. I can't do it." A point of moisture trickles over lined skin, disappearing into the forest of stubble that carpets his chin. "Do you understand what it's like to stand on a precipice, Abraham? To know that in a moment, a split-second your life could end?" He draws his thumb over the back of her hand, oddly fascinated by the complex and fragile interplay of blood and bone beneath the skin. "If Marlena d...." He squeezes his eyes closed, tears spilling from his lashes. He can't even say the words. The next words come choked and gravelly. "Abe, it'll kill me. I can't do this without her any more. I can't live in this world without her, I just can't."
His breath is spilling from him, being snatched away moment upon moment by the pain that emanates from the very center of his being. It feels as though his heart is being torn from his chest and he can't stop the tears.
Abe is taken aback a little by the strength of Roman's words, the passion and anguish that thread every syllable he speaks. He knows how much Roman loves Marlena, has always loved her. But now it seems even more intense, if such a thing is possible. Like the trials they have suffered have bound them into a unit that can never be split asunder.
"Roman, you can't think like that. You have to stay positive. For her. For yourself." Abe feels lost, powerless to help his friend. He feels like he's standing on the outside of a bubble that contains only Roman and Marlena.
"You know," Roman laughs, the sound hollow and bitter. "For these past few months the only focus I've had is Marlena. When I lost her, when she became Grace... it was a big fucking reality check. I've treated her like shit, Abe. I've come and gone from her life and she's always been there, supporting me and loving me. I left her in the hands of a man that...." he halts, tripping over the words and the intention behind them. He still can't process what happened to Marlena in those years that she was missing. What Stefano did to her. It's like a nightmare that he can't wake from. "Jesus Abe. Grace *hated* me for what happened to Marlena. How the hell am I supposed to make that up to her?"
"You take it one step, one day at a time, Roman," Abe says softly. "Marlena is an incredible woman. She has always forgiven you and she always will. She loves you."
"I don't deserve that love," Roman says miserably. His gaze hasn't shifted from Marlena's face for even a second. "I hurt her over and over. I left her in DiMera's hands, I left her to be violated and abused and hurt. And then when she came back to Salem I did it all over again."
His head falls again and his hand raises, covering his eyes. It remains there for a brief moment and then Roman wipes it down his face, obliterating the tears that linger on his face.
"Roman!" Abe's voice is low and fierce. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't beat yourself up like this. It's not helping her at all."
"All that time, Abe," Roman speaks on, as though unaware that Abe has even spoken. "All that time, when I could have been with her. And I was with Isabella and then Kristen. God, all that time when I was with Kristen and it was hurting Marlena. And I just let myself be manipulated while Kristen rubbed it in Doc's face. I was so weak and stupid. And then Hope... on our *honeymoon*!" He drops Marlena's hand and looks away. "How can I ever expect her to forgive me? How can she even look at me after everything I've done?"
Abe moves around to face Roman and he places his hands on Roman's shoulders again, giving him a firm shake. "Roman, you have to stop this!" His eyes are intense as he glares at Roman. "You think Marlena needs this self-pitying from you? She is your wife. She married you again because she loves you. More than I've ever seen one person love another. Maybe you don't deserve her, but my God, you have her. And right now she needs you to be strong for her. She needs you to fight for her, to give her a reason to heal. To wake up. All this guilt and self-hatred you're drowning in isn't going to give her that reason. So maybe its time to stop thinking of yourself and start thinking of your wife."
Roman looks up at Abe, his bloodshot eyes conveying his surprise. And then, to Abe's profound relief, his lips tremble into a tiny smile, and he nods. "You're a good man, Abraham. A damn fine friend."
"Both you and Marlena inspire me to be a good friend," Abe says quietly. "So don't let me down. Don't let her down."
Roman holds Abe's eyes for a long moment, his thoughts and emotions playing across his face like it is a movie screen. And then he nods, slow and deliberate.
"You know I've never loved *anyone* like I love Doc." He turns back to look at her, reaching out with shaking fingers to touch her face. "I've been such a fool, but it ends here Abe. If I get the chance, I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I'll be the best husband I can be. I'll give her everything she needs and anything she wants."
"You make sure you do that." Abe allows himself a small chuckle. He has his own misgivings about what will happen on their return to Salem, but for now, he will keep them under wraps. "Listen buddy, since you're not going to have a break, I'll leave you here. I need a break, something to eat. Why don't you try and get a little rest here and I'll bring you something back from the cafeteria later?"
"Sounds good man, thanks." Roman looks gratefully up at Abe again. "And thanks for being a friend. I needed it."
"Listen John, any ti-" Abe can't help but smile when he sees the weary grin curl Roman's lips. "God, that's going to take some getting used to," he concedes. "What I *meant* to say was - any time, Roman. Any time you need a friend, I'll always be here for you."
Roman nods with a smile that follows Abe from the room.
After a moment, he turns back to where Marlena is still and silent, swamped by hospital linens. He listens for a moment to the machine that beeps out the strokes of her life and then he silently moves to the other side of the bed and climbs onto it, edging down beside her. He lays his head on the pillow next to hers and lifts his hand to stroke her hair.
"Hey baby," he whispers, his voice breaking again. "I guess you heard all that, right? Abe's right, I'm being selfish. I.... I get all wrapped up in myself..." he swallows, his eyes glassy with tears again. "I look at you lying there and I can touch you and smell you but it's..." He sighs, his fingers sliding through strands of silky soft hair. "It's not enough. It's just not enough, Marlena. See, I had you for a moment there, a split second, I had you. After all those months, finally, you were there... and then you were gone. And I can't figure out how I'm supposed to do this without you." Another break in his voice forces him to stop for a moment and gather his composure. And then he continues, his chest thumping in long, aching beats as he traces the contours of her face with the pad of his thumb. "This living thing, it's too hard baby. I need you, I need to be able to hold you and talk to you and share everything with you. And I know I don't deserve that, I don't deserve anything from you, forgiveness, love...." He cracks again and a sob slips from his throat. His hand tenses, curling into a fist, clutching at her hair. "I don’t deserve it, but Marlena, I need it. I need you baby, I'm *nothing* without you, don't you know that?"
Silence.
There's nothing from Marlena. No flicker of life, no alteration in her breathing. She just lays still and deathly silent.
Roman presses his lips together to try and stop them from quivering, but they only tremble more with the threat of incipient tears. "Please Marlena," he begs her desperately. "Please baby, if not for me, then for Belle. And Sami and Eric and Carrie. They need you sweetheart, just as much as I do. For all of us, please fight this. Please baby, don't let DiMera win now."
And still, there's nothing, just cold, sterile silence, punctured only by the incessant beeping of the monitor above them.
Roman closes his eyes and buries his face in the pillow.
~
"You read the file, Brady." Hope is furious at her husband as they stand outside the door to Marlena's ICU room. "How much more proof do you need?"
"I'll believe it when I see the DNA results," Bo argues stubbornly. "It's all too far-fetched, Hope. I want to believe Roman's alive as much as you do but-"
"Do you?" Hope crosses her arms and stares at Bo, her eyes flashing with anger. "I mean, do you really, Bo? If it means you have to lose some of that damn stubborn pride of yours and admit you are wrong?" Her lips are set in a harsh line as she regards him. "That's your brother in there Bo and you're turning your back on him simply because you can't bring yourself to admit you've been wrong. About a lot of things. I have to wonder if you don't want to find out that John is Roman because it's going to mean a lot of apologizing on your behalf."
"That's not fair." Bo is taken aback by the venom in her voice and he shakes his head accordingly. "Of course I hope he's Roman. Yes, it will mean..." he stops, thinking about exactly what it will mean for his family. And Roman and Marlena's family. "It's going to be hard for all of us to come to terms with...."
He looks away from Hope, peering through the window to where Roman lies on the bed beside Marlena. God, this really does have the potential to turn the whole family upside down. Everything that they thought they knew, the foundations they have built their lives on for the past ten years, will be torn down. God only knows what it will do to Sami. If he's finding it hard to accept it, how the hell will Sami?
"Bo," Hope's voice softens as she slips her arm around Bo's waist, her eyes following Bo's gaze. "It's okay to be scared. It *is* going to be hard. But I think we both know in our hearts what those results are going to say when they come in. And when we return to Salem, Roman is going to need all the love and support he can get from all of us to deal with this. And Marlena..." Her voice trails off, not daring to speak the words which hang heavily in the air.
If she survives.
"Hey, there you are," Abe strolls down the corridor towards them, a bag in his hand. "Bo, I just had a call from Caroline. She's getting insistent about wanting some explanations. I think you'd better talk to her."
They've only given the family the most cursory of explanations, that they have located Marlena and John but that there has been an accident and Marlena is in hospital. With all the uncertainty surrounding John's identity, they had agreed that it would be better to have some time to process the whole thing and get some definitive answers from the DNA tests before they go ahead and tell everyone the truth. Assuming it turns out to be the truth.
Bo had adamantly maintained that there was no point in upsetting his parents and Roman's children by getting their hopes up when this might turn out to be another DiMera trick. And given the fact that there is some suspicion within the family now about Marlena's role in "Roman's" death, Bo had also felt it might be as well to keep the true extent of her condition quiet.
Abe and Hope had misgivings about the whole thing. However, seeing the state that Roman was in over Marlena's condition, they had quietly agreed between themselves that it might be best for Roman and Marlena if Roman had some quiet space and time to spend with his wife. Whatever the outcome.
"What am I supposed to say?" Bo looks at Hope helplessly. "I can't tell them Hope, I can't put them through that. Not until we know the truth."
"You can't blame them for wanting to know the truth, Brady," Hope shrugs. "You don't ask your folks to give DNA samples every day for no reason."
"Yeah, but..." Bo looks back through the window to where John lays, his arm around Marlena. This is so damn confusing. In the past few weeks he has been on a rollercoaster of emotions. For a while, was furious at John for lying to him and betraying. He'd used Bo, called on his guilt and his loyalty to help him snatch Marlena from under Stefano's nose.
And then the hell of finding that Marlena was possibly implicated in Roman's death. The idea had almost crippled him. Still does, if he lets himself think that way. Even if she was not *Marlena* at the time? But if he could forgive Hope for what she has done as Gina, how can he blame Marlena?
Except that it was *Roman*. His brother.
She had murdered him in cold blood, put a gun to his head and blown his brains out. Without so much as flickering an eyelash. Leaving his funeral with Stefano DiMera, she had carried on her life as though nothing had happened.
He's had nightmares about it, how it must have felt for Roman in those last moments, seeing the face of the woman he loved as she held a gun to his head.
And now they're telling him that wasn't Roman at all. That John has been Roman all along. Like that makes it somehow better that Marlena or notMarlena killed a man. Except that it *would* make it better. Because it wouldn't be Roman. And because there was a reason. And he hates that he even feels like that, except that he does and he's glad he does because it makes things simpler.
Except it all hurts so much. The choice, to prefer that he turned his back on his own brother or that his brother was murdered by his own ex-wife. What the hell kind of choice is that?
"But nothing, Bo." Hope says softly. "Look, I can call them tonight and stall them for a day or so, but you need to face this. Those results are going to take another couple of days to come in. Can you make Shawn and Caroline wait that long without some kind of explanation? Is it fair to leave the family in the dark about Marlena? Do we have the right to make that choice for them? I mean, if... God forbid, if Marlena were to.... if she doesn't survive this Bo, will they thank us for keeping them in the dark? Whatever it is she did?"
"Hope, you can't ask me to make that choice," Bo says, desperately. "Not right now."
"You already made that choice Bo. I'm asking you to think about it a little more carefully. There's more to consider here than just your feelings." Hope sighs and grabs Bo's cell phone out of his hand. She holds his eyes for a long moment and then she shakes her head, her long chestnut hair rustling softly as it swings about her shoulders. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
Abe watches her walk down the hall and then turns back to Bo. He feels some sympathy for his friend, but Hope has made good points. Bo needs to start considering everyone else instead of staying stuck inside his own head, mulling on his own feelings.
Bo looks past him to where Roman is stirring on the bed, drawing Marlena's hand up and kissing it. He feels such a turmoil of emotions when he looks at the pair of them that it's becoming impossible to tease them out and make sense of them. He needs some solid answers, the what ifs are driving him insane and he just doesn't want to put the family through this same hell. He wants to take definitive answers home to them and then they can all deal with whatever the truth is. That's not selfish, that's just protecting his family. Isn't it?
"I'm just going to drop these sandwiches in to Roman," Abe tells Bo and turns to open the door before Bo can reply. Bo frowns and follows Abe. He stops at the doorway and watches as Roman looks up with tired, reddened eyes.
"Here," Abe holds out the paper bag uncertainly. There is no response from Roman and Abe puts the bag on the bedside cabinet. Bo chews on his lip as Abe asks Roman if he needs anything else. And then, almost despite his best intentions, he takes a step into the room.
"John-" He says the name apprehensively and the goal of his attention sighs and turns to him.
"What is it Bo?" He struggles into a sitting position, one leg dangling from the bed. But his fingers are still entwined with Marlena's. Bo feels slightly ill as he looks from her to John.
"I..." he swallows back the bile. "Look, I just wanted to say...." he fidgets nervously, his eyes flicking around the room, looking for something to alight on. Something that is not John or Marlena. "I don't want to upset you man. I know this is hell for you. I went through it not that long ago myself. I..." He meets Roman's eyes, his gaze hard and intractable. "I don't want to make things worse. But you have to understand how hard this is for me. For the family. There's... what Marlena..." he swallows again, feeling sick to his stomach. "What she did and-"
"She wasn't Marlena," Roman growls back, his eyes darkly intense. "Any more than Gina was Hope."
"I get that," Bo nods quickly. "I do, but... it was Roman. Maybe-" he says quickly as he sees Abe's look of disgust. "Okay, maybe it wasn't Roman, but we knew him for ten years as Roman. And she..." his eyes alight momentarily on his one time sister-in-law and he shakes his head, unable to continue. "And I'm having a hard enough time wrapping my head around that one. And now you expect me to accept that everything I've known for ten years is a lie. And it makes things better except that..." he looks up at Roman again, his brown eyes anguished. "Except that fuck man, it makes things so fucked up that I don't know how we make any sense of them. That DiMera had Marlena and then he had Hope and he sent this imposter back and we all accepted him as Roman. And-"
"You don't think I get all that Bo?" Roman says angrily. He lays Marlena's hand down on the bed clothes and pushes himself off the bed, taking two steps towards his erstwhile brother. "You don't think I understand how fucking complicated this is for *everyone*? I just found out I've lost ten years of what should have been my life and I still don't remember anything prior to coming to Salem in 1986. I'm having a fucking hard enough time believing it myself. So don't tell me how fucking *hard* this is for you, okay?" His lips compress into a thin white line as he tries to rein in his anger. The skin between his eyebrows creases into deep folds as he looks over at his wife and then back at Bo.
"You see, it's like this, little brother. Marlena is lying in this bed because of what DiMera did. And what I *didn't* do. While I lived my life back home with Yvette and Diana, DiMera was slowly destroying her. He was tearing her apart, piece by piece." Roman swallows, his mouth suddenly parched, his throat almost closed up. "He arranged for that *bastard* Lamont, the same man that you've been calling brother for ten years, the same man you sent into her bed when you welcomed him into the family, to *attack* her." The corners of his mouth are turned down and air blows noisily through his nostrils as he tries to control his temper. "And then, when that wasn't enough, he orchestrated a meeting between her and Orpheus."
His hands ball into fists as he tries to banish the images from his head, the images that have haunted him from the moment he released her into the paramedic's care. "While I was lying in my bed at home, making love to some woman that in hindsight means *nothing* to me, Orpheus was *raping* her, Bo." Bo flinches as Roman says the words but Roman pays no attention to his reactions. "He violated her, he ripped out her heart and soul. He destroyed every little shred of kindness and softness in her. And I *let* it happen. I should have been out there searching for her. If there was even the shred of a chance that she had survived, I should have searched for the rest of my life for her. And instead I took the easy route out. Maybe I wanted to believe that she was dead because the alternative was too painful." He looks at Marlena again and he brings his fists in front of him, his face contorted in pain. "And look how the alternative turned out."
"Roman," Abe's voice fills the room, velvety rich. "Don't. Don't do this to yourself."
"Why Abe?" Roman looks across at Abe, the misery just pouring off him in waves. "It's all the truth. I left her to that madman and then when he sent Lamont to Salem, I believed all of *you* and I walked away from my wife. From the one person I should have fought for above everything. I left her to that...." his lips tremble with barely suppressed fury, "that *animal*. So don't you *dare* tell me how difficult this is for you. Because, little brother, until you've walked in my shoes," he turns and points at the bed, his whole body shaking now, "or Marlena's, you don't fucking know *anything*!"
Bo holds Roman's eyes, his whole body tense and alive with nervous energy. He feels overwhelmed, overloaded with information and emotions that he simply has no way to process.
And then, like a slow motion nightmare that seems to last forever, the monitor that has been blipping quietly behind Marlena's bed suddenly ceases it's even, sonorous tones and instead begins to spill out a long, monotone hum that fills them all with horror.