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Okay, seems we have a bit of the post-holiday blues/downsies here on the board and no Another World epi's currently airing on any TV network so that we can escape those blues, if only for an hour. We do have the 80/81 epi's on AOL and the wonderful vids posted by Amy, Suzanne, Eddie and others on YT but if you want something a bit different...

I have attempted a little bit of fan fiction that I would like to (nervously) share with you guys. It’s a four-part prologue that is kind of a bridge to future fiction. It takes place mid-October, 1995, approximately two weeks after John & Felicia shared a kiss despite their vow to be just friends. Most of you know what happened after that and how I feel about it (@#$%&*!!!!) So…my fan fiction is how I wished the storyline had been written ~ or at least this is one version (there are soooo many possibilities, right Amy?). However, in order for this to be Felicia’s life in October, 1995, I had to rewrite a specific part of her earlier history, which took place in the months after Mitch left for Africa. Following that event, everything that we know about her life still happened (I tried to stay true to the storylines with the help of Eddie's site), just with some “minor” changes. Oh yeah, I also used that tried and true soap opera trick ~ SORAS (Soap Opera Rapidly Aging Syndrome) in order to age a new character. So here is Part I of the Prologue ~ I hope you enjoy it or at the very least that it gets your mind off of things for just a bit.

Special thanks to my own *Gloria Norris* for her input and encouragement Wink

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A

Another World ~ October 1995: The Rewrite

Prologue

Part I: The Intro

In Room 252 of Bay City General Hospital, Felicia Gallant looked down at the face of her youngest daughter and the beads of perspiration still riddling her forehead. She pushed the child’s hair back and put a cold, damp cloth to her face, gently pressing it against each cheek and then her forehead. John Hudson assured her the fever would break and the antibiotics would eventually gain the upper hand on the respiratory infection that invaded the girl’s lungs. Felicia had hoped that Morgan Winthrop would be pulling ER duty at BCGH that night but when John Hudson walked toward her to give her the prognosis, her heart skipped a beat. She and John had agreed that the kiss they recently shared was just the result of loneliness on both their parts and whatever feelings they had for one another would have to be ignored. Sharlene was too important to both of them to risk exploring any kind of relationship other than friendship. Still, when her heart skipped the beat, Felicia was angry with herself for allowing it to happen. John Hudson, on the other hand, went about his business as usual, treating Felicia with the same courteous bedside manner he’d always shown her ~ a little more friendly than his average patient but nothing that crossed the line. Felicia turned her attentions back to her sleeping child. The hospital room was dimly lit but she could still make out her delicate features. Everyone said that physically ~ the dark hair, green eyes, creamy skin ~ she was the spitting image of her mother, but Felicia recognized many of her father’s traits in her as well. Absently fiddling with one of her daughter’s curls, Felicia vividly recalled the day she learned she was pregnant for the second time in her life…

“Pregnant?” Felicia could barely spit the word out when John Hudson told her the reason why she had been feeling so lousy. She just thought she was run down. Traveling to Africa, mutually agreeing with Mitch to get a divorce, putting an ending (finally) to the most difficult book of her career and trying to figure out what kind of future she had with Lucas all took its toll on her health, or so she thought. How could she be pregnant? She was 41 years old and at the end of her third marriage. She sighed when she realized she would have to contact Mitch in Kenya and let him know. She knew what he would probably do: Give up photographing endangered species for the World Exploratory Society, his “assignment of a lifetime,” and fly back to Bay City. They would work out some sort of a relationship, marriage or otherwise, for the sake of the child, much like he did with Rachel and Matthew. But then there was Luke. As much as Felicia thought that this was Mitch’s baby (her August visit to Mombasa, Kenya, brought back bittersweet memories), there was the slightest possibility that this could also be Luke’s child. They were together that one night before she left for Africa, when he had returned from taking down Marius and his men and Luke and Fanny thought they would never see each other again.

As she sat at her daughter’s bedside, Felicia recalled that time flew rather quickly once she got over her initial shock of her unexpected, and untimely, pregnancy. When she told Luke, he was thrilled just like he was when they were teenagers. He assured Felicia that he didn’t care who the father was, that he loved her and would be there for her no matter what. Naturally, he had hoped the baby was his and that they would have a second chance to raise their child but in the back of his mind he always knew that the baby was probably Mitch’s. As fate would have it though, Mitch Blake would never learn there was a possibility he was going to be a father again. When all telephone calls to him went unanswered, Felicia (over Luke’s objections), Sam and Matt traveled to Kenya, to the last place where Felicia saw Mitch. What they found was devastation beyond their belief. Poachers had ransacked his camp, destroying all of his work and burning his equipment. Felicia had seen the woman that Mitch had taken up with only once but she recognized her body immediately. The local police had no answers for them. They said it was not uncommon for poachers to kill foreigners, even journalists, take what they wanted and destroy their campsites. There would be no investigation and Mitch’s body was not found. The only evidence that indicated that Mitch had occupied the camp was a partially burned strongbox that had been overlooked under the rubble of what had been a cot. Inside, Felicia found a small camera she had given Mitch on their first anniversary, family photographs and his wedding ring. After making arraignments for Dominique’s body to be returned to her family in France, Sam, Matt and Felicia flew back to Bay City, and with heavy hearts, held a memorial for Mitch.

Despite her age and thanks to excellent prenatal care, Felicia’s pregnancy was surprisingly uneventful. The same could not be said for her life. Not long after her trip to Africa, her editor and friend, Gloria Norris, died and left behind her teenage daughter, Jenna, who Felicia took under her wing. The two would butt heads as Jenna tried to find her own way about Bay City but eventually they would become as close as any real mother and daughter. Lucas shared in all of Jenna’s teenage angst and he was there when Felicia’s baby was born. This time he never left her side. A DNA test performed on the newborn proved that she was, indeed, Mitch Blake’s daughter. That didn’t matter to Luke. He named the dark-haired baby Isabelle, which was his mother’s name, and also, coincidentally (or not), the heroine in Felicia’s first novel. Two months later he and Felicia were married and they adopted Jenna, who adored her new “baby sister” and Luke, Fanny, Jenna and Isabelle (“Izzie”) became, at last, a family.

“So much has happened since then,” Felicia thought as her daughter stirred slightly. Jenna’s nemesis, Lorna Devon, was eventually discovered to be her and Luke’s real daughter. Luke reconciling with Lorna before he died. Her own loving relationship forged with Lorna. Her drinking. Jenna’s miscarriage. Lorna’s rape. Jenna and Dean leaving Bay City to embark on his world tour. Marshall Kramer. Walter Trask. She had to ask herself if she had always been a good mother to the little girl lying in the bed before her. Felicia admitted that she had to count her blessings for the friends and family that helped her raise Izzie in the years since Luke’s death ~ Jenna, Lorna, godparents Cass & Frankie, Rachel, Sam (before he left Bay City), even Matthew, who loved spending time with his little sister. He said it made him feel closer to his father. Recently though, Felicia decided it was time to settle down and maintain a “normal” life for her and her daughter, at least as “normal” a life as Felicia Gallant could have. Her daughter was not making it easy. The girl was obsessed with learning about her father and Felicia thought their recent trip to Kenya would have helped Izzie understand Mitch’s love for the country and its people. Felicia wasn’t sure it satisfied her daughter’s curiosity but it certainly helped Matthew, who went with them, partly to gain some insight into his father’s last months, and also to escape Bay City, if only for a few days, and his increasing frustration with Donna Hudson’s refusal to marry him.

“Mitch Blake” Felicia said out loud, then remembered her daughter was sleeping. She was staring at a picture of Mitch Blake. The very picture that had been on Izzie’s bedside table since she was born. Felicia found it, out of its frame and dog-eared, in her daughter’s backpack, the one that officers found on the roof of Love Tower and brought to her shortly after Izzie was admitted to BCGH. “Why were you on the roof again Izzie?” Felicia whispered to herself. She had noticed that Izzie had been sick and kept her out of school today. She had planned to leave TOPS early and send the nanny home but a small fire had broken out in the kitchen and she was detained at the restaurant. Apparently, Izzie managed, once again, to give the nanny the slip and make her way onto the roof.

When the Bay City PD got word that Felicia Gallant’s daughter had been dropped off at the ER by an unidentified man who immediately fled the scene, practically the entire department converged on the hospital, lead by the new captain, Gabe McNamara. No sign of the man had been found and no one could give the police a good description. Ryan Harrison’s shooter had not yet been found and the city was still on edge. Felicia stared at the picture of Mitch and was still clutching it, exhausted, as she laid her head down on her arms and began to drift off to sleep. She didn’t see or hear the man who was hiding in the corner of the room, just inside the shadows. He had been there for quite some time.

~ to be continued...~

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"It has been a magnificent journey..." ~ Linda Dano, 1999 Daytime Emmys

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