Michelle knew that it was the guilt of what Stanley had willingly become a part of that created the acidic environment that allowed the cancer to flourish. She knew that what Stanley, Mark Rinaldo, Henry Zudak, and the bastards at Hilburn did to the O’Connell family and to Alexander was the cause of Stanley’s cancer.

When she learned that Mark, Henry, Peter, and Jacob had been killed by, supposedly Alexander Black, she knew that Alexander would be looking for her husband. She had no interest in her husband being the next person whose name got crossed off. There was no way that anyone would take her husband away from her a second before his time was up.

No way.

When she heard from that police chief that her husband’s name was on some list and that they needed to get protection until the suspect was apprehended, she knew that what she did six months ago had come back to haunt her. But learning about Stanley being on the list pissed her off. After all, wasn’t it her call that made everything possible in the first place? Wasn’t it she who let Ken O’Connell know what happened over two decades ago? Sure, she made the contact out of her own guilt and to remove whatever traces of guilt that were still creating the environment for cancer to grow in her husband’s body; but it was she and no one else who did what should have been done that day Alexander O’Connell was born.

As she pulled the final sip from her glass, Michelle listened again for any sounds coming from the bedroom. All was quiet except for the wonderful slight sounds of her husband’s breathing.

She remembered clearly the day she contacted Ken O’Connell. As clearly as she remembered the day she and Stanley were married, and as clearly as the day Stanley told her that he had inoperable and terminal cancer.

It wasn’t a rushed call, one made with a mindset of bargaining  with God for her husband’s life. It was a call she had wanted to make for years. She just couldn’t risk what would happen to her husband if the O’Connells took legal action. And she knew they would. Ken O’Connell told her so when she did finally make the call.

“I will make damn sure that everyone of you bastards are put in jail for the rest of your pathetic lives,” he screamed at her. “How the hell could you keep this from us?”

She had no answers for him. No excuses for what the doctors at Saint Stevens had done, nor for herself keeping quiet for over twenty years. She didn’t even try to explain why William Straus never alerted anyone. She didn’t care how the O’Connells decided to deal with him. She didn’t care about defending Brian Lucietta or Jacob Curtis in the least. To her, Straus and his entire team were criminals with doctorate degrees.

She never told Stanley that she had told Ken O’Connell. Nor did she tell Stanley that Ken told her that they would make Stanley and all the doctors pay for what they had done. And she never told Stanley that only he, Brian Lucietta, and William Straus were still alive.

Michelle was surprised that Ken O’Connell didn’t do anything that even remotely seemed like what he promised he would do after she told him the whole story. No one ever called from any police department. No one from any medical ethics board every paid a visit. No governmental oversight committee member ever sent an email requesting clarification on a matter of particular importance.

Nothing happened.

Though Michelle truly didn’t care what actions Ken decided to take, she was surprised when nothing seemed to happen. So surprised, in fact, that two months after her first call to Ken O’Connell, she called again.

“I know what everyone did was awful. Unforgiveable. And I honestly feel that everyone should pay for what we did to your son. But, Mr. O’Connell, whatever actions you are planning, I ask that you leave my husband alone. He’s sick. Very sick. He doesn’t have much time left, and I know that whatever you may have planned to do won’t be nearly as bad as what his guilt is doing to him already.”

“I’m afraid, Michelle Mix, that your logic is flawed. But take heart,” Ken O’Connell said, “based on what I’ve learned through my personal research, you played only a reluctant role in the doctor’s evil scheme. I have no issue with you. However, I’m afraid that your husband was too involved for me to just ignore. Maybe he will die before I’ve decided exactly what I will do. If so, I will regret how long it took me to execute my plan. But knowing that, as you say, his guilt is what is killing him, I will take comfort in that belief.”

For Michelle, what had happened to the other doctors was nothing more than the way  O’Connell chose to take out his anger and hatred. She didn’t feel guilty about what happened. She knew that once she told the truth that her only focus in life would be to protect Stanley and to make his final weeks of life filled with as much love and as little pain as was possible.

While she never heard from Ken O’Connell and had no concrete proof that he was somehow behind the murders, she knew in her heart that he was involved. She also knew that a man of Ken O’Connell’s resources would be able to know if her husband were still alive, and he probably could access those same resources to find where she and Stanley were hiding.

But Stanley wasn’t hiding. He had no idea why his wife packed the car with enough clothes for a week. He didn’t understand why she told him that they were going away for a surprise vacation. He knew that he had chemo treatments scheduled and going away would mean that those treatments would be missed. He began to think that Michelle had a conversation with one of his doctors and learned that the treatments were not working, and that putting him through the misery of additional treatments would serve no purpose. Stanley didn’t know that he was hiding at all but thought instead that his wife didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t have much time left.

But he knew. He knew the second the diagnosis was given to him, and he knew without any doubt the second after the first CAT scan showed his cancer had spread. He knew that he chose the aggressive treatment option for Michelle’s sake. She had already lost one husband to a tragedy, and Stanley was willing to do whatever he could to delay her losing her second husband to another tragedy.

He had fallen in love with Michelle the second he saw her standing next to William Straus in that urine-smelling institution. He felt that he had to overcome his fears of getting hurt and had to let her know, somehow, how he felt about her. And when he learned that she felt the same for him, his life became complete.

He often wondered how it was possible that his being a willing participant in everything that happened with the O’Connell baby had resulted in delivering the greatest thing in his life. He never forget about what he and his fellow doctors did with that baby, though once Michelle had left Hilburn, they never talked about it. He felt that talking about the baby would somehow destroy everything good in his life. The memories of those days haunted him, but he vowed to himself to never mention Alexander Black ever again. Especially not to Michelle.