General Hospital Fan Fiction Message Board

MB Ch 2

“You have got to be kidding me.” Lisa looks up at the woman giving her the results of a pre employment physical screening.

“Normally it wouldn’t be a problem but single pregnant women don’t do well in Saudi and it’s a year commitment. We’d be happy to hold your application until after you’ve had the baby.”

“I’m pregnant? There is no way I’m pregnant. You need to do the test again.”

“Ms Pappas, it was urine and blood. Both came back positive.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Lisa mutters. “I guess my next call is to the Pope because there is no way... ah hell.” There had been once... just once and they’d used protection every single time. She closes her eyes and grimaces. “Nothing is 100%.”

“Only abstinence.” The health worker agrees with a nod.

“Thanks for your time.” Lisa gets up from the chair.

“Do come back after you’ve had the baby. You’ve got great credentials and we’d love to have you.” The official extends a hand.

Lisa takes it and gives it a shake. “Sorry it looks like I’m going to be busy for the next 18 years and six months.” She really doesn’t know how she got out of the building. Auto pilot. The next thing she recognizes is sitting in the driver’s seat of the PT Cruiser. She runs a hand over her still flat stomach. “Well this is another fine mess I’ve gotten mys... us into.” Never fails. If she’s going to **** something up then it’s something that is going to be with her permanently whether it’s the tattoo on the base of her back or this little bun in the oven. Fastening her seat belt she drives to the nearest drug store. It might be confirmed but she is going to check this one for herself.

Down in Miami–

“Con mucho gusto.” Morgan shakes hands with the other half of the deal-- a contingent from a Venezuelan oil company. They all speak english which is good because he is one of only about a dozen people in the office who actually speaks Spanish and that is including the janitorial staff. They are in Miami, specializing in international business but he is one of the few lawyers who speaks Spanish. Most of the other lawyers are old enough to be his grandfather and if they spoke any spanish it was to get another drink from their illegal help. Lisa had nailed it months ago. He had been unexpected. They’d seen his transcript of course and knew he’d studied summers down in South America but they hadn’t expected him to be brown when he walked in the door to interview. They knew they needed a Spanish speaker they didn’t realize they were getting quarter latino in the bargain.

“Con much gusto.” The grip is firm and the smile sincere. The Venezuelans know exactly what they are up against here but they want the deal. This Miami branch of the firm handled making sure that everything went smoothly selling their crude and getting it to the US to be sold and refined. Doesn’t mean they don’t realize that the additional price of everything going smooth is being treated like supplicants when actually they are the ones who have the norte americanos over the proverbial barrel.

Morgan switches to English. In addition to everything else the partners are paranoid that if he did more conversing than a simple greeting that he’d actually be working for the competition. He is definitely never going to make partner here and that is fine with him. A couple of years and he’d be going out on his own probably taking his secretary and legal assistant with him at that point he’d be a consultant and not have to put up with all this bull ****. The Venezuelans would be better off selling their oil to the Indians or the Chinese but they are trying to work a deal for US Steel.

The business meeting goes along smoothly after all that is why everyone is here to make sure that all t’s are crossed. As the meeting closed Morgan’s assistant is outside the door. “There is a woman here to see you. She says her name is Lisa Pappas. Personal business.”

Morgan frowns. “Thanks. I’ll be right there.” He walks the Venezuelan contingency to the elevator and keeps the conversation reassuring and general. “I’ll be in touch. Relax... enjoy Miami. You’ll be back with your nose to the grindstone soon enough.”

His counterpart laughs and gives Morgan a firm handshake again at the elevator. “We expect to hear from you.”

“Hay no problema.” Morgan shrugs. “Anything comes up you’ll be the first to know. And you’ve got my cell number.”

“Por supuesto.” He nods and pushes a the button for the ground floor.

As soon as the elevator door shuts, Morgan is making his way to his office and makes sure the door is shut there too. “Lisa. This is an unexpected visit; it’s been what? Three months? Since you snuck out of my room like a thief.”

Lisa winces. “Well this was obviously a bad idea.” She exhales and gets to her feet.

“Wait lets just start over....”

“I’m pregnant.” Lisa blurts cutting him off before he can say more. “I found out today and drove down to tell you. There-- my duty is done and I’m out of here.”

“Wait a gawd damn minute! You aren’t going anywhere. You aren’t going to drop a bomb on my life and then walk out AGAIN.”

“A bomb on your life? How about mine?! I found out at an employment physical for a new job! It involved traveling out of the country. There is no way in hell now.” She shakes her head. “I’m out of here.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” He grabs her by the arm halting her in her tracks. “Is it mine. Is it even true?”

“Oh hell no. It’s all a lie because this has been so much fun so far. Let me go or I swear to the Almighty I will scream loud enough to embarrass the partners back three generations.”

Morgan releases her as if she’s in fire but just as fast grabs her purse. She isn’t leaving again with him having no way of tracking her down.

“Hey give that back.” Lisa demands making a dodge for her purse.

Morgan turns his back on her and goes over behind his desk. He removes the wallet and cell phone from the purse. First thing he does is call himself from her cell phone so that her number is now in his call log and then he opens up the wallet to find her driver’s license. He leaves a message to his phone with her address up in Gainesville and her date of birth. Disconnecting the call he hands her purse and wallet back to her. “You didn’t call me. I left my phone number with Mouse.”

“I know. He called and told me. Wanted to know if I had any problem he needed to take care of.” Lisa’s tone is on the other side of bitter as she takes back her wallet and stuffs it in her purse with her cell. “Who knew.”

“Lisa, it’s been three months... how could you not know?”

“Morgan, I told you I wasn’t on anything and you had to bring the party favors. You couldn’t get the good kind? Or what-- you’ve got some kind of super sperm, some kind of power penis that rips right through condoms?”

“This is unproductive.” Morgan mutters mostly to himself.

But Lisa hears and snorts. “I wish.”

“Do you? Do you really wish?!”

“If you’re asking me to terminate– forget it. I’ve got this line and never had to push it, but I’ve always thought you should wait for people to prove they’re *******s before you kill them.”

“On this we agree.” Morgan nods. He hits the intercom to his secretary. “Maria, I’m going to be working from home. Please forward inquiries to my cell.”

“Yes, sir.” Maria’s tone has more than a hint of inquiry of her own wanting to know what is going on with her boss.

He starts packing his briefcase. He does work at home on a regular basis and there have been times when he’d worked at home rather than the office, especially if he was on a big project. It’s yet another place where he and the partners disagreed. They’d rather he was in the office on a daily basis Monday thru Saturday and half day Sundays like the rest of the associates. “Where did you park?”

“In the firm parking lot. Your secretary already validated my parking.”

“Good. We need to talk privately. You still have the GPS on your cruiser?”

“Yes.”

He writes his home address on a piece of paper and hands it to her. “Here is my address. It’ll take you half an hour max to get there.”

“And if I’m not there in thirty minutes?”

Morgan just gives her a glare before saying. “I think it’s time for you to stop testing me, Querida.”

“This has got to be the wrong address.” Lisa looks at the gated house backing up to the canal. “So much for not working for CSMC. How the hell a guy his age afford all this? Course the porsche– big freaking clue.” She gets out her cell and calls the emergency number, this time she puts it straight to the message line. “Hi, this is Lisa Pappas. I am currently at...” She gives the address. “... it’s the address Morgan Benson gave. If I disappear have someone drag the canal okay?” Then she looks at the address again, now she knows what the numbers on the bottom are. They are the security code for the gate. She enters them in the keypad and the gate pulls back so that she can drive up the driveway. There is a circular drive so she just pulls in behind the maid service van. Going up to the front door she knocks.

A maid dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt that has the name of the company on it. “May I help you?”

“I’m supposed to be meeting Morgan Benson here?”

“Mr Benson called to let us know you’re on the way.” The maid steps out of the doorway. “He should be here any time. Is there anything I can get for you? Something to drink?”

“It looks like you’re busy. Just stuff me in a room you’ve already done... with a Sunday paper if it hasn’t already gone out to recycling.”

“This way then.” The maid leads Lisa into the eating nook off the custom kitchen. “I’ll check the recycling. I’m pretty sure I saw the Sunday there.”

“Thanks. It’s the only day of newspaper I read. The rest is just bad news.”

“Good point.” The maid goes off in search of the recycling basket. Her phone rings on the way to the garage. “Miami Nice. Yes, I’m there now. Okay. Okay. Not a good time to talk okay? I’ll call you back when we’re done with this assignment.” She is soon back with a Sunday paper. It is not as tidy as when it was delivered but it’s in good shape.

“Thanks.” Lisa takes the paper and starts putting it together back the way it’s lettered just as if it was going to be put up on a rod at the library. They’d been broke poor when she was a kid, and she’d spent a lot of time at the library. Unlike Anders who’d hung with the hoodlums on the street. The librarian had not even minded so much and put her to work as much as she could handle working from the kid’s section to the adult and to the periodicals as her reading skills developed. If the money didn’t totally suck she would have become a librarian rather than a nurse. But nursing paid the bills.
As soon as the newspaper is back the way she likes it, she flips to the employment ads. “Damn, nursing pays the bills.” Miami is suffering for nurses. She could be working in a couple of hours at $45 plus an hour– her degree plus already registered in Florida– 90G a year easy. It’s actually more dire here than up in Gainesville. Goodness knows she’s going to have to make bank over the next 3-5 months depending on how she’s feeling to make sure her nest is properly feathered. Lisa hears a car pull up. She glances at the drive and then goes back to the paper. Only when she hears footsteps does she look up. “I see you replaced the porsche.”

“Yeah, Mona had one lined up by the time I got back to Miami with the same features at a local dealership.” He hands over a drug store bag.

Lisa already knows what is in it. “That’s the third one of those today for me.” She sighs and takes the bag opening it up. Sure enough there is a pregnancy testing kit in there. “I should have known why I beat you to your own house. Nice house by the way.”

“Thanks. I picked it up on foreclosure my sophomore year. Add in a few roommates who also didn’t like the accommodations on campus. It’s worked out.”

“And you’ve got the party house of University of Miami.” Lisa quips. “Your neighbors must love you.”

“There have been a few memorable ones.” Morgan agrees. “Still are. Mostly when we play Florida. Then there ends up basically being an alumni party here.”

“Go Gators.” Lisa raises her right hand in a fist. “I’m going to need some juice or something for this.” Lisa taps the bag.

Morgan nods and going over to the fridge pulls out a container of Florida’s finest. He pours her a glass and has a seat at the far side of the nook. “So what have you been doing for the last three months.”

“Working, living.” Lisa shrugs. “You?” She takes a sip of the juice.

“Same. You said you found out from an employment screening.”

“A year in Saudi. Rake in the tax free bucks spend my vacations traveling in Europe or Southeast Asia. You see where plans will definitely have to change.”

“It’s only Saudi tax free.” Morgan interjects for lack of something else to say. He’s enough exposure to macho dominated cultures in South America to wonder if Lisa had a clue what she was getting into. Blonde pretty girl, she would have been a temptation as he well knew. “You would still have had to pay federal taxes on it here in the US.”

“Damn. Should have thought of that.” She rolls her eyes.

Morgan winces. “Sorry. Habit.”

“I thought you specialized in South America.”

“Turns out my actual specialty has turned out to be petroleum.”

“Well that is going to be an expensive dead end– hopefully in your life time.” Lisa suggests as she takes another sip of juice. “When your secretary said you were in a meeting with some guys from Venezuela I was kind of hoping for chocolate– and that they had brought some samples.”

Morgan laughs at that.

“Okay lets get this done.” Lisa rises to her feet. “Restroom?”

Morgan directs her down the hall. As soon as she comes out of the bathroom. “How long does it take?”

“Not long. But it’s got that watched kettle factor. You brought some work home? Have some phone calls to make?”

“Why don’t I show you around the house?” Morgan offers instead. “Four bedroom... at one point we had seven of us living here. It’s dropped off as more of us graduated or moved out.”

“How many here now?”

“Four, but one of the guys is probably going to be moving in with his girl friend.”

“You’ve got your own little monastery going here. A boys club, no girls allowed?”

“Pretty much.” Morgan agrees. “Didn’t start out to be that way but I got the house when the on campus and frat thing didn’t work out. So it was guys that were in the same situation. Whenever there’s a room available and we show it... the women say thanks but no thanks.”

“Probably afraid of getting stuck cleaning the kitchen.”

“We have service come in one a week to dig us out and do laundry.” Morgan retorts as he takes her upstairs to the master suite. “As they say on Cribs...”

“So this is where the magic happens.” Lisa looks around. “Nice.” There’s a back balcony that opens with french doors to a view of the canal. The room is huge with a king size bed and a fan circulating air. The master bath tub looks like it could fit three comfortably. There’s a sitting area Morgan converted into a home office complete with all the bells and whistles. “How do you get any work done?”

“I pull the shades.” Morgan quips. “The other three bedrooms are on the main floor.”

“I saw the living room. I’ve seen clubs with a smaller floor plan– and less seating.”

They go back down stairs and into the living room. “It has a pretty open floor plan to we can just throw open the doors and use the whole area.” Morgan opens another set of french doors. These open up to the back patio with it’s long narrow pool and beyond that the canal with at least 95 feet of frontage and a boat that would be fine going fishing on the ocean.

“Well don’t piss you off. You could always dump my body at sea.”

“Lisa.” Morgan’s tone is already half way to pissed. He is really getting tired of being the whipping boy in the situation when she’s the one who ran and he’s known her a grand total of maybe 18 hours in the last three months. But he can already tell she is not going to apologize. Just keep pushing.

“Mr Benson, we’re done for the day.” The maid who had answered the door comes out onto the back patio.

“Thanks. I appreciate all your help.”

“We’ll see you next week.” The maid and her two assistants leave.

“You really have a maid, no a team of maids come in once a week.”

“Yeah, we’ve actually been with the company for about 6 years now.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have one of the maid services that come out and do housework in a thong.”

“We did. That lasted about a month. A) the house wasn’t getting clean and B) We were missing too many classes. The first year we went through a lot of maid services until finally settling in with Miami Nice. They do good work. Their prices are reasonable.”

“The test should be ready.” Lisa says abruptly and heads back inside.

Out by the street the van is pulled to the side of the road with the three maids keeping an eye on the house. “He wouldn’t actually do anything to her. No matter what kind of message she left on the CSMC hotline.”

“You mean beside knocking her up?” The lead maid quips. “I saw the plus sign big as you please.”

“Did you see what she did with the newspaper? Last time I saw something that fancy was that butler who would actually iron the paper before delivering it to his boss. Gawd he was a tight ass.” The most junior of the maids and the one who’d just recently gotten out of training interjects.

“Alfred’s old school. That’s why he’s on the training side now trying to instill some old school in the people who want to call themselves butlers or major domos and don’t know dick.” There is a pause. “Hey Mouse. She’s still inside. We finished up but we’re still within sight of the house. He’s not going to do anything to her that he hasn’t already done– if you get my drift. He’s a nice guy... for a lawyer.”

“She’s pregnant.”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Hacked the records where she had her employment physical.” Mouse says absently.

“Is there anything you won’t do? Are you telling Baby about this? I mean he is her little brother even if he never mentions her.”

“No, and you’re not going to either. No telling Anders either.”

“She’s Anders sister?! Oh my gawd! He’s going to have a cow! How in the hell did those two ever meet?!”

“That’s a story that’s not going to be told either. You gals aren’t going to say a word. Not to anyone CSMC, friends, family total confidentiality on this. Loose lips on this one and we’ll lose the inside edge keeping an eye on Morgan.”

Don't think you can EVER hide something from Mouse. That's all I'm saying.

Deb