We have one word for General Hospital: Don’t. If the show needs more than one word, try these: Do not.

Ava betrayed BFF Nina Reeves by widening the gap between her and estranged, now-ex-husband Sonny Corinthos. Ava discovered that the mobster’s bipolar medication had been tampered with and said nada — even after her own “adjustment” of his son’s pills helped get him killed. She leaked audio that didn’t just harm homophobic harpy Natalia Rogers-Ramirez, it outed her daughter Blaze and all but cancelled her career.

At this point, Ava has all but no one in her corner. And while characters like Sonny and frequent moll Carly Spencer can order hits left and right and live to tell, it feels like General Hospital is building up to something… something that we are going to hate. A lot.

Look, we know that Ava is bad. Rotten, arguably to the core. Previews for the July 10 episode suggest that she is going to ensure that Sonny has a public meltdown. But West is too, too, too compelling in the role to discard her — and certainly too magnificent to wipe off of a canvas that includes more sinners than saints. If Franco Baldwin could be turned into a romantic lead, if Cyrus Renault could be kept around, if Heather Webber could be offered a redemption arc, then Ava’s lease on life should be extended in [bleeping] perpetuity.

Has the supervixen done bad things? Yes to the extreme. But a horrifying double standard would be at play if she were made to pay for her crimes before Sonny. And don’t come at us with arguments that he’s “tormented” and “complicated.” They don’t come any more haunted and complex than Ava.

So make your next move with care, General Hospital. You’re on the verge of a terrible mistake, one with far-reaching ramifications that at present we suspect you can’t (or don’t want to) imagine. If a mafioso and a hitman can be your two big kahunas, you can’t smack a “dispensable” label on a woman who has acted, for better and worse, with similar resolve.

Over the years, we’ve counted out Ava Jerome more than once. When she killed Connie Falconeri, we thought that she was toast. When she had cancer and asked to die on her own terms, we thought that that was the end. When she fell off a bridge, we thought yet again that we’d lost her.

But by God, every time, every damn time, the indefatigable femme fatale has bounced back. Now, though… eesh. We’re scared, genuinely scared for Maura West and her character, the best film-noir bad girl this side of an actual film. The soap’s new regime in the writers’ room seems to be working overtime to paint her into a corner out of which she will never wriggle. Consider…