I stood there in that hospital lobby, trying to hold my ground while Carrie Reed, Mike Horton’s public relations director, stood in front of the cameras and called me a desperate woman trying to extort money from the hospital. She said I was a master manipulator, a disturbed young woman with a history of mental and emotional problems, someone who made up lies because Mike didn’t want to marry me. I had passed the psychiatric evaluation the defense requested, and they still called me unstable. “You’ll pay for this, Carrie,” I said, loud enough for her to hear.
She looked right at me. “She’s unstable. ”
Then the reporters turned to me. They asked if I wanted to respond to her comments, and I did.
I told them I wasn’t doing this for money. I was doing it for every woman who suffers in silence when men in power take what they want and then throw them away. I told them I believed every promise Dr. Horton made me, and the second he got what he wanted, he tried to push me out of the job I loved so he could move on to his next conquest.
He knew what I was talking about. So did his father, Mickey. But Carrie didn’t want to hear it. She and Mike went back to his office, and the world went on spinning without me.
That’s when things got complicated in a way I never expected. My mother, Claire, showed up out of nowhere. She had been the one who pushed me to file the lawsuit in the first place, but she had her own plan. She had already spoken to Mike’s attorney and offered to make the whole thing disappear for a hefty settlement.
“You made an offer? ” I said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is about me. I don’t want to settle.
”
“Alison, we don’t want to air your dirty laundry in public,” she said. “The hell I don’t. ”
I wasn’t about to let my mother sell out my truth for a payoff. Now that she had gotten her fifteen minutes of fame, I was finally in the spotlight, and I wasn’t going to give it up.
This was my chance. Let me back up and explain some of what led me here. I know Carrie has been feeding everyone this story about me, but the truth is simple. I worked at University Hospital, and Mike Horton was the chief of staff.
He told me promises, and I believed them. When he got what he wanted, he tried to get rid of me. I filed the lawsuit to make him pay, not just in dollars, but in reputation, career, and family name. There were others who had their own motives swirling around this mess too.
Nancy and Craig, a resident doctor, had their own little conspiracy going. Nancy was the one who made the anonymous tip to the press. Craig wanted Mike’s job so badly he could taste it. They had photos of Mike and Carrie playing kissy-face in Vegas, and Craig wanted to sell them to the papers for big money.
Nancy was smarter than that. “We are not taking any money for that,” she said. “We have to remain anonymous. Besides, you’ll get your reward when you’re chief of staff.
”
They were playing their own game, using my lawsuit to fuel the fire so they could burn Mike Horton down. At the same time, everything else in my life felt like it was spiraling. My friend Sami came to see me. She knew what it was like to tell the truth and have no one believe you.
She told me she once had to go on the run with Austin and Will, and that it was one of the happiest times in her life. Austin, her ex-husband and Carrie’s husband, was there too. When I slipped up and called Carrie a lying two-faced bitch, he heard it. He told me he didn’t know what was going to happen with his marriage, but he would appreciate it if I treated his wife with respect.
I tried to apologize, but the damage was done. The worst part was watching Sami plant seeds of doubt in Austin’s head. She kept hinting that Carrie wasn’t telling the truth about something, that she was hiding something. When Austin asked her what she meant, she clammed up and told him to work it out with Carrie in marriage counseling.
Austin had agreed to go to counseling with his wife, but Carrie was so busy defending Mike from my lawsuit that she had forgotten to talk to him about it. He was hurt, and Sami was right there to catch him when he fell. That’s when things got even more tangled. Sami had her own troubles.
She was grief-stricken, missing her son Will, who now lived with his father Lucas and his new wife. She wanted to fight for custody, but Austin kept telling her the odds were against her. She was a single mother with no income. Lucas was a multimillionaire living in a mansion.
Sami was so sure Lucas had killed a man named Franco and framed her for it. She had held a gun on him and his mother Kate, trying to get a confession out of them that night, and she never really believed she had been wrong about him. Now that her son was living alone with Lucas, her fears were coming back sharper than ever. “What if my instincts were right?
” she asked, her voice shaking. “What if Lucas really did murder Franco, and then he framed me for it, and now my son is living with a murderer? ”
She wasn’t just worried. She was terrified.
Meanwhile, Mike was trying to figure out how to save his own skin. His father, Mickey, kept pushing him to consider settling. Mickey told him that if they went to court, everything would come out, including his relationship with Carrie. He pointed out how close I had come to telling everyone that Carrie was his next conquest.
“That’s not the only secret you’re keeping,” Mickey said. “You need to decide what’s more important—defeating Ali or protecting Carrie. ”
Mike finally realized he needed to tell Carrie the truth about what happened between us. He was going to find her and confess everything.
But Carrie was too busy playing her role. She told Nancy she would make sure I didn’t get away with spreading lies about Mike. When Nancy asked her how she could be so sure there was no truth to what I was saying, Carrie snapped back, “Do you know something that I don’t, Nancy? ”
Nancy backed off, but the look in her eyes said everything.
She knew more than she was letting on. I knew then that everyone was hiding something. Carrie was hiding her own secrets, Nancy and Craig were hiding their plot to destroy Mike’s career, and Mike was hiding what he did to me. I was the only one telling the truth, and the whole hospital was trying to tear me apart for it.
It reminded me of something that happened far away from Salem, on an island in Hawaii, where there was another storm brewing. My friend Marlena had just lost her husband, John. He had gone into the water to save a woman named Gina, and his belongings washed up on the shore. The Coast Guard said there had been reports of sharks in the area.
Marlena had been told there was no hope. Bo Brady, a detective and John’s friend, refused to believe John was dead. He had discovered that Stefano DiMera’s plane had never left the island. He was convinced that Stefano was still there, leading them right to Hope, and that John was with her.
But Marlena was broken. She held John’s belongings in her hands, tears streaming down her face. She said, “I hate the idea of Stefano having John, but if he did, at least he’d be alive. ”
Bo tried to stay optimistic.
“I’m not giving up, Marlena. Somebody’s going to have to give me more proof than this for me to believe that John is dead. ”
But she couldn’t hear him. She was already in mourning.
What she didn’t know was that John wasn’t dead. Gina had turned him back into the man Stefano had trained him to be, a mercenary. John had married Marlena, with Gina’s help, but now he had forgotten her entirely. He only remembered Gina, his old partner in crime, and they were back to stealing art for Stefano.
Stefano had found them, furious that John had married Marlena instead of following his orders to stay with Gina. He confronted John on the deck of his yacht, demanding to know where Gina was, and John told him he answered only to Gina. “I created you,” Stefano spat. “I’ll destroy you!
”
A gunshot went off. Gina ran to John, thinking Stefano had killed him. But John was alive, and the two of them tried to flee. They planned to fix some power plants and get out of there, but Stefano wasn’t dead.
He had only been wounded, and he was furious. John told Gina to get a letter, one that would tell her where to go. It was at a safe house in Paris. Then Stefano took control, and John was lost to her.
Gina sat near him, whispering over and over, “John, I’m so sorry. I’ll find a way to save you. What letter? What were you talking about?
”
Stefano told her it was over. He told her she would never see John again. He told her he knew about her and John, how they had planned to run off together back in 1985, before he sent John back to Salem. He had found out everything.
Gina begged him not to take it out on John. “He’s not responsible for this,” she said. “I am. ”
Stefano wasn’t listening.
“I warned you, Gina. I warned you what would happen if you were disloyal to me again, and unlike you, Gina, I always keep my word. ”
Gina begged him to tell her what he was going to do to John, but he just said, “John is no longer a concern of yours… or have you forgotten he married Marlena in Salem? ”
She hadn’t forgotten.
But John had. Back in Salem, Marlena had no idea any of this was happening. She was at home, crying, holding John’s belongings the Coast Guard had found on the beach. She was reciting a poem to herself, trying to hold onto the love she had lost.
“I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life, and if God choose…”
“I shall but love thee better after death,” she finished, sobbing. Then she saw something. She looked up, and her eyes went wide. “John?
Oh, my God. John! ”
She ran toward him, crying, reaching out for her husband. I wasn’t there to see if she found him.
I had my own battle to fight. The hospital was buzzing with my lawsuit. Mike finally made a statement to the staff, apologizing for putting them in the position of having to choose between their boss and their co-worker. He promised there would be no reprisals, no matter what they decided.
But it was too little, too late. Everyone already knew. The press was all over the lobby, and I was on my way to becoming a national story. A man handed me his card, saying he wanted to interview me for his magazine.
He said there was a big bonus in it for me if I named Mike Horton’s other woman. “That name sounds familiar,” I said. “Did you write for…? ”
Then my mother came back, telling me she didn’t think I should do it.
“Ali, I’d like to speak with you. ”
“Not now, Mother. I’m busy. ”
She grabbed my arm.
“I’d like to speak with my daughter in private, please. ”
After the reporter left, she told me her plan again. She had spoken to Mike’s attorney and offered to make the lawsuit go away for a hefty settlement. “You made an offer?
” I said. “You? Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is about me. I don’t want to settle.
”
“Alison, we don’t want to air your dirty laundry in public. ”
“The hell I don’t. ”
I walked away from her, done with the conversation. I had been hurt by Mike Horton.
I had been called crazy, unstable, a manipulator. But I was through letting anyone silence me. I would have my day in court, and I would tell the world the truth. And deep down, I knew something else too.
Whatever secrets Carrie Reed was hiding, whatever Mike had been keeping from her, sooner or later, the truth was going to come out. People like them never stayed covered up for long.
