Cheating Death (SOW 8/8/2000)
When AMC's Dimitri reveal himself now that Alex and David have found a cure?

"The 'What ifs' have it this week on AMC as doctors Alex and David join forces to try to find a cure for the mysterious Patient X, whom David and Dixie know is Dimitri. When the two doctors make a breakthrough using hormones, it's a bittersweet victory for Alex, who has to face a lot of regrets.

What if David and Alex had not been adversaries?
'She's regretting the fact that she didn't let David help her sooner with Dimitri,' Finola Hughes (Alex) explains. 'And I guess Alex feels very regretful that these possibilities are now being found.'

Recent revelations from the woman she thought was her mother, Charlotte, have muddled Alex's perception of Dimitri's last days. She now knows he didn't walk into the ocean a year ago. Instead, 'she knows he did actually live for a year. So that means that some of the treatment that she had done with Dimitri early on had worked, or else he wouldn't have lived that long,' Hughes adds. But that is little comfort now.

What if David and Dixie didn't keep Dimitri's secret?
If only Alex knew what David and Dixie do. David uses doctor-patient confidentiality as justification to keep his mouth shut, but Dixie has made no such oath and finds it almost impossible to keep quiet about Dimitri. Dixie feels strongly that Alex should be told, as Dixie knows firsthand the pain of believing your husband is dead when he's not. Dixie even threatens to quit as David's assistant if she has to keep quiet much longer. 

'It's more difficult for David, because he has to keep convincing Dixie not to give up the fact that Dimitri's alive,' Vincent Irizarry (David) says. 'She's keeping the secret against her conscience. She thinks it's wrong. In large part, she is right; that's just her moral fiber. I feel that he's my patient and I have to respect his wishes. So I'm right, too, on that level. Where David finds his strength and finds his confidence is in the fact that it's doctor-patient confidentiality. He can stand behind that without any guilt, without any regrets.'

Adding to Dixie's guilt is the fact that she and David have already told Edmund that Dimitri has died again.

'Dixie is more volatile in some ways than David is,' executive producer Jean Dadario Burke explains. 'She's a romantic and she sees what's happening, and it's killing her to be quiet about it.' 

But that's Dixie, David has no such concerns about Alex's personal feelings, though the two have managed to forge a good working relationship. 'It does afford us the opportunity to explore parts of this relationship that have never been explored before. She believes that had she trusted me more and allowed me to participate more in helping to find a cure for him, she could have perhaps saved him,' Irizarry says in character. 

'But they still call each other a lot on stuff,' Hughes adds, 'which is sort of nice. There's an edge to their relationship. There's more room for a dialogue now, whereas before Alex would never even allow him the time of day. People can be good work partners and still be incompatible.' 

Their animosity will flare up again, Burke says. 'I think there is great respect on both their parts for their ability as doctors. When she sees the progress he's made in this department, there has to be respect on some level- but she knows who he is.'

Enter Dimitri, who's hidden away in a hospital room, blissfully unaware that Alex is the other doctor on his case. However, that's one secret David and Dixie don't keep, and when Dimitri learns Alex is the other doctor trying to save his life, he explodes.

What if Dimitri reveals himself?
He's still not ready to. Though Alex and David have found a cure, Dimitri still sees this as experimental, Burke adds. 'He loves her too much to put her in the position of burying him again.'

However, by week's end, Dimitri may change his mind. He watches as a distraught Alex breaks down in the hallway and tells David that she wishes Patient X were Dimitri. She blames her own stubbornness for her husband's death. At that point, a weak Dimitri takes a step out of his hospital room towards his wife. What if...?"