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Everyone and everything has gone mad, exploding into a thousand little pieces just like the ambulance had on impact. Valentina’s treatment and research is seemingly leaps and bounds ahead of any regimen she can come up, the collision left behind a crater at the hospital where everything important and good was being built, all shelled out and empty, and Max won’t speak to her.
(Helen doesn’t really know how to speak to him either.)
She’s wondering when her fight-or-flight response will kick in again, permanently. When her visits and public appearances will turn into an extended leave. When her dreams of crunching metal and snapping bones will fade. When she will get it and stop second guessing herself.
Helen has always been good at separating and enclosing what she thinks and how she feels. What others think of her and how she chooses to react. It’s something she has spent years coveting and grooming, considering it a lifeline to keep herself grounded in her both her practice and her personal life.
Always there but never really attached.
Those distinct lines began to blur as soon as Max took over the hospital and her headspace. The thing about him, though, is how he always blurs these lines and every line that separates two sides. Complacency and change, conviction and guilt, sickness and health, right and wrong, the future and the past. How easily he does it, like these distinctions were never meant to exist in the first place. Like there’s a life worth living where you’re allowed to feel all these things at once and it doesn’t really matter if you get swept up in it all. Like it shouldn’t. Like it wouldn’t.
Not with him.
In the end, standing in her office and biting hard into the inside of her cheek, staring at the offer from Northwestern Memorial’s oncology department, Helen chooses without rationality nor any semblance of sanity. She silently picks up her phone and dials, choosing what she considers to be relief.
After the accident, Helen leaves New Amsterdam.
—
Her departure is soon and it catches people by surprise. Though, in an evolving practice such as medicine, it’s not entirely unexpected for there to be movement and it’s the crutch Helen holds onto with every goodbye.
Between packing and transferring patients to Valentina, she’s been trying to find the right time to speak to Max. Helen had already send him her formal resignation and it took a lot of effort on her part to bury the disappointment of only receiving a written acknowledgement from his assistant in return.
She can’t tell if Max is avoiding her on purpose, though given their recent uncommunicative history, it’s rather predictable. This realization becomes a second crutch and another thing she will leave here.
Helen ends up waiting awkwardly outside Max’s office and finally catches him in between meetings.
“Hey,” he says hurriedly, pushing and sifting through the folders on his office, trying to find god-knows-what. “What’s up?’ He looks up at her.
“I wanted to say goodbye to you before I left.”
“I…” Max stops, closing his mouth and considering what he will say next. Helen holds her breath, unsure. “So, I guess this makes me your competition?” He says, finally, plucking the folder he had been searching earlier from the bottom of a pile and turning to her.
Helen pushes her hair over her shoulder and crosses her arms, pressing her lips together. She can appreciate Max’s humour when this conversation could very well go in a hundred different, and likely uncomfortable, directions.
“It’s a completely different city. Private too. Hardly any competition.”
“Scared you wouldn’t be able to take me on otherwise?”
“I can always take you, Max.”
He smirks at her slightly, his sleepy eyes staring at her, unblinking. “I hope you get what it is you want, Dr. Sharpe.”
Helen swallows, burying the disappointment deep in her chest, wishing she could leave it behind too.
“Goodbye, Max.”
—
Chicago is pleasant enough, though somehow colder than New York in the winter.
Northwestern has rigid and structured hospital management practices. It’s the type of system Helen had been trained and practicing under for large parts of her career and had only just begun to unlearn in the past year at New Amsterdam. Northwestern is all smudge-free glass panes and freshly painted walls, touchscreen heavy and donor rich. It’s a department head’s dream, brimming with resources.
Max would hate it here (after carefully scouring all its potential, his mind churning to develop solutions, taking things apart and putting them back together).
(She kind of hates that she still thinks of him and New Amsterdam, remembering and comparing, when the whole point of leaving is to put them behind her.)
Her new residents are not a complete mess but Helen finds herself checking too often on them, making sure they have not screwed up under her very early supervision over them. Making sure they can become the type of physician she is trying to be every day.
It’s a work in progress and, if she’s being honest with herself, Helen sometimes forgets who that physician is supposed to be exactly.
—
(“Do you want to take a leap of faith with me?” Max asks her once on the hospital rooftop, the shadow of the surrounding buildings and the city’s skyline behind him.
It's one of their earlier conversations and it had intrigued her, fire burning under her skin.
“I do.”)
—
At Northwestern, Helen gets every opportunity she can think of. New technology, advanced research, clinical trials that go deep and become published. When she isn’t seeing patients or managing her residents, she takes what she has learned and fights to make it better. To develop it further. To get the best outcome for her future patients and those she will never get the chance to meet.
Then she takes her findings all over the world.
Previously Helen would abandon these responsibilities to raise funds. Now she leaves to attend conferences and medical colleges, lecturing and speaking about the latest developments in oncology. Her team’s developments. Things she and her colleagues in the specialty only every dream of or whisper about. Helen wonders if this is the type of excitement Valentina felt with her gene therapy treatment.
Helen travels to Tokyo, Lisbon, Johannesburg, and Toronto. She gets lost in her work and in the places she visits. Her life is a kaleidoscope of red-eye flights, nights at the Ritz, and a creeping caffeine addiction she hasn’t had since medical school.
All her office plants die, she hasn’t gone on a date in months, and yet sometimes Helen thinks about building a life that is even further away from this, from the feelings that crush her still at night, in airport lounges, or back-stage as she’s getting ready to start her presentation. Like she can’t breathe.
Helen does not return to New York.
—
The next time she sees Max is across a ballroom at the end of a conference in Boston.
Helen is visibly shocked at the sight of him. Max had never been the type to attend conferences when she was at New Amsterdam. He would much rather be taking care of patients rather than sitting in lectures learning how to do it.
(But mostly Helen is taken aback by his sheer presence alone and all the things he represents that it all kind of comes crashing into her, like a tsunami, and it’s almost like she never went a day without seeing him.)
She can barely make him out with the crowds of people milling about, exchanging pleasantries and goodbyes as they leave the room. Max is talking animatedly with someone Helen doesn’t recognize. He looks healthy, hands on his hips as he laughs at something said to him and Helen can count the lines on his face near the corners of his mouth and eyes from all the way where she stands, relying on memory alone. There are just some things you can’t ever forget no matter how hard you try. Some things and people just have a way of imprinting in her memory and Max Goodwin is one of them.
Helen wonders if he’s getting enough sleep. If his blood work is normal. If he also thinks about how life could have been so different.
Helen is perplexed with what to do next. She hates that she even has to think and can’t just act. Helen senses it as her body’s sudden need to self-preserve, the same mechanism that has stopped her from calling or messaging him since leaving.
But time has a way of moving on without her and the moment passes. Max turns on his heel and exits the room.
Her body reacts almost instantly then too, letting out the breath Helen hadn't known she was holding in, her thoughts shuffling and compartmentalizing. Triaging. Pushing everything down a few inches deeper.
—
Once, when she hasn’t been dreaming of screeching tires and the bang that still jolts her heart, Helen dreams of Luna, dreams of the children they’ll never have, of what it could be like to grow old with Max.
Of the things they could have accomplished together.
—
(Other times she dreams of them in bed, the feel of Max’s body pressed against hers, so vivid in her sleep and clearer than the ghost of it when she’s awake, when she had been in his hospital, in his life.)
—
The hospital hires a new pediatric oncologist, Dr. Patel, from the west coast. Helen shows her around the facility and introduces her to the staff.
Over lunch Dr. Patel asks why she left New York.
Helen smiles as she chews her food, thinking of her answer. It ends up being some unrefined combination of wanting to face new challenges and the difficulty of co-heading the department back home and loving deep-dish pizza.
Truth be told, most days Helen has to pretend she doesn’t know why she left. Has to pretend really hard actually. Because the easiest lies are always the ones people tell themselves and there’s no graceful lie to be told about not knowing how to pick up the pieces of something she never had. Or not understanding how to move on and not knowing where to go.
It makes sense.
I love you doesn’t fit inside old hospital walls, writhing alone in the cold and dark of crushed steel, for people already spoken for.
—
Helen is standing near the complimentary refreshment table in Houston, attending a two-day research symposium at the university, headlined by her favourite former resident.
“I heard you broke a fellowship-placement record.”
Max is wetting a napkin into a glass of water and trying to make the very large stain on his shirt less noticeable. It’s not working so naturally, on instinct, Helen reaches out to help him, only to pull back, stung, when his fingers graze her own.
She breathes and laughs awkwardly. “Yeah, I can’t seem to get rid of them fast enough.”
A moment passes as Max abandons his napkin, mouth turning upwards as he motions with his thumb to the auditorium behind his shoulder, and without thought she falls in line beside him as they make their way in that direction with the rest of the attendees.
“How are you, Helen?” Max asks, finally. His voice is soft, kind, so utterly familiar and she breathes again and takes a small step back, placing some much needed distance between them.
Her head spins a little, congested with memories she hasn’t allowed herself to remember or indulge with in quite some time. Max looks so good. He looks fit, strong, and she spots a couple of greying strands of hair around the temples, but essentially the same as when she last saw him.
Helen smiles, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “I’m doing well. Really well, actually. You?”
“The same.”
“Still at the ‘Dam?”
“Of course.”
“And Luna?”
Max grins in that big stupid boyish way he always does. “Four years-old going on thirty.”
Has it been that long? Helen gulps, something settling deep in the pit of her stomach.
There are only two seats available, on opposite sides of the auditorium. They pause at the edge of the audience, just behind the open doors. The room is buzzing as the projection screen drops and the next speaker lecturer starts to make their way to the podium at center stage. Helen looks at him, just sort of lets herself stare at Max, in this new city and after all this time.
She nods her head to the left and says quietly, “I’m going to go this way.”
Max’s grin is almost wistful. “Maybe we’ll see each other after?”
“Sure,” she says, turning to walk away. “It was really great seeing you, Max.”
She doesn’t dare look at him during the lecture, focusing her eyes at the front and forcing herself to stop making memories of him like she used to.
They don’t see each other after.
—
The thing is, Max blurred all sorts of lines, categories, boxes – whatever people want to call them. But Helen had made the mistake of trying to redraw the boundaries, scribbling furiously, only to cross over them, again and again.
Sometimes she’s reminded of it, when she’s laying motionless in her bed at night, staring up at the ceiling until her vision starts to swim and Helen has to press her hands to her eyes to get it to return to normal.
—
This time it’s at a hotel in San Diego, three months later.
Helen has just finished giving a presentation on the summation of her findings on recent risk-stratification methods. She clutches her coffee cup in her hand, hard, feeling as if she is operating on her eighteenth straight hour. Helen is exhausted. Her flight back to Chicago just got cancelled until tomorrow. Her phone is lighting up with messages from her new residents. There’s a colleague from Hopkins who she knows in passing and he’s talking about something trivial, perhaps going for drinks.
Instead of giving her attention to any of these things, Helen spots Max lingering at the front near the check-in desk. Her eyes train on the line of his shoulders during the entire conversation until she manages to pull away.
“Max?”
She doesn’t mean for it to come out as accusatory as it does. This is just so not like Max and so she tells him this.
“They finally fire you from the hospital?”
“Not yet,” He quips back, blue eyes shining. “It’s actually… my latest round of discipline by the Board. Something about how I need to reengage with the medical practioner community.”
“I see there’s lots of that currently occurring here,” Helen replies, gesturing to the empty space around him.
She blinks, suddenly consumed with the thought of whether Max hates her for leaving, for trying to move on, in her own way. There aren’t enough symposiums, not enough money or labs or conferences in this world, to fill that hole in your chest where your heart should be, she imagines him saying to her although Max never would. His cruelty, if that’s what she chooses to call it, is extremely limited and manifests in different ways. But not like that and in an instant the thought is gone and leaves nothing in its wake.
Helen presses her lips into a thin line and doesn’t quite understand what any of it had meant. They aren't the same people they were when she left New York.
“Dinner?” She offers, tilting her head.
“Depends. Are you going to ghost me like you did in Houston?”
Helen smiles a little, incredulously. “I did not ghost you. Do you even know what that word means?”
“Are you suggesting I don’t understand millennial online dating habits?” Max frowns, his fingers running the zipper of his jacket up to his collar-bone.
“Well you’d only understand if you were a millennial and if you dated online.”
“I am a millennial—”
“Barely.”
“—and I do date online.”
“Stop it, Max. It’s too late in the day for me to pretend to find your jokes funny.”
There’s a pause and time snaps back from the past to the present.
Max’s eyes light up. “I’ll prove it …at dinner.”
“I was going to stand you up,” Helen can’t help the churning feeling inside her – all mirth and curiosity and longing rolled into one. “I’m definitely coming to dinner now.”
“Knew it.”
She resists the urge to laugh at his lame fist pump.
—
They go to a little hole in the wall Mexican restaurant a thirty minute walk from the hotel. Max shows her pictures of Luna, talks about her pre-school antics. He updates her about Lauren and Floyd and Iggy and Vijay. Max even talks about Valentina’s operations in her former department and Helen is glad to hear it has not been a total shitshow since her departure (not that she thought that would happen).
They are seated in a spot at the back, behind the bar next to the old exposed brick wall. Helen orders them drinks. Max lives up to his promise and shows her his Bumble profile.
Lauren no doubt set up it for him. Max, eyes downcast and lips upturned into a devastating smirk, standing in front of one of the entrances to Central Park. There’s no way Max would otherwise know how to operate his phone camera in portrait mode or describe himself without letting his humility and obvious absurdity completely undermine the integrity of the entire profile.
"So," she starts, then stops, running her fingers along the cool exterior of the glass in her hand. "Have you been seeing anyone?"
The words leave her mouth in a rush. Helen tries not to wince. It probably sounds like she's been waiting to ask him this since they sat down.
Max smiles and looks away for a second and then back to her. "No," he says, "Not really. You?"
She grins and sighs, "No. Not really."
Max is in the middle of telling her a story about the last Board of Director’s meeting, when he no doubt did something noble but probably premature to irritate them and so he’s here, then it hits Helen. She misses him – she misses him horribly. It’s the kind of realization that doesn’t dispel; instead, it pounds in her ears and mixes with the acridness of her drink.
She thinks about Max, mostly in a speculative manner. Helen thinks of all the ways he's probably changed, about whether or not these changes are enough for him to face alone, about whether or not he is alone. She thinks about those months after she had left, the nameless guilt curdling in her gut at every turn. Helen thinks of the taste of regret that lingers in the back of her throat, about whether Max knows what it's like. If he's ever known it.
But then Max starts asking questions, about Chicago, about her routine, her research. Helen answers more animatedly than she intends while Max listens patiently, smiling, looking at her like he already knows. Like he knows her, all of her.
Helen had forgotten how easy it is for her to be around him, even at the very beginning. It was only really hard at the end, during those final weeks, when the loneliness had consumed them whole.
Of course, that’s not true. It was also really hard somewhere in the middle too – during that time they spent together, somewhere between his treatments and her visits, when Helen began to understand the extent she cared for him, wholly and unashamedly. Maybe not the way Max cares for literally everything and everyone, but maybe something close, something she doesn't quite understand.
After they finish, she grabs the check, ignoring Max’s protests to split the bill.
Helen laughs, “You can buy dinner next time.”
“There’s going to be a next time?”
“If you want,” she answers as they rise from their chairs, grabbing their jackets. “At the next symposium or maybe even Chicago.”
“Chicago?” Max raises an eyebrow.
“I’ll give you the full tour. Show you the works.”
He smiles, holding open the restaurant door for her. “I’d like that.”
—
(Somewhere between their first and second drink, Max looks at her, really looks at her, the way he used to: with half a smile and his eyes wide in awe, like she’s capable of anything.
“It’s been really great seeing you here. Being with you like this. I just...” He trails off, fingers moving to rub at his scruff along his jaw line.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding a little, as if operating on instinct, knowing what he means exactly.
“Yeah,” Max echoes and his smile shifts to something more somber, perhaps something bittersweet.)
—
They walk back to the hotel together. The conversation eventually hits a lull, their voices quickly replaced with the sounds of their shoes shuffling on the sidewalk and the late evening noises of the city.
Max’s arm lingers near hers and at one point their fingers brush. Her feelings quickly bubble back to the surface, flooding her thoughts and senses. Barely leaving enough of a sliver for her to take a deep breath before plunging back under the surface.
Helen isn’t supposed to feel this way, still. Not after she put all this time and space between them. What is the fucking point of it all?
When the hotel emerges in their line of sight, she starts walking ahead, picking up her pace. If Max notices, he doesn't react, only increases his pace to keep up. Helen’s not sure what’s more unnerving, the ongoing silence or waiting for the pin to drop, for one of them to finally say some–
“Why did you leave, Helen?”
“What?”
“Why did you move to Chicago?”
She stops in the middle of the sidewalk to look at him, surprised and wary. That’s the thing about being near Max for too long, how little time it takes to get caught up in everything he is and all that he represents – her old life, their old life, all of the things she tells herself she doesn't need. “You don’t know?”
“No,” Max replies, caught off guard. “How could – you didn’t tell me what you wanted. You didn’t tell me anything. Maybe I could have fixed it–”
“Max, you can’t fix everything.”
“I can try!” He exclaims exasperatedly, running his hands over his face. “But you didn’t meet me halfway. You just left.”
“I don’t want to do this–” Helen stops, choking on the rest of her words. She turns around and resumes walking, putting some much-needed distance between them.
“Of course, go ahead,” he calls after her, his laughter coming out low and cynical. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Leaving is just what you do – you probably can’t even help it anymore.”
“You know what, Max,” Helen spins on her heel, clenching her fists, nails biting in the skin of her palms. “It’s taken me some time to accept I couldn’t be what you needed back then, after the accident, and that it wasn’t my fault. It’s not really anyone’s fault. But don’t say I never tried. Trying is all I have ever done. All this time, even now, I try at everything.”
“Helen–”
“In New York I tried so hard but I got stuck and didn’t know how to keep going afterwards.”
Her own words do something to her then, thinking about it all, and something else entirely twists in the pit of her stomach and starts to move upward, tightening deep in her throat. She’s thankful it’s late and the street is nearly empty. Max steps closer to her, reaching out to touch her arm but side-steps it, teeth baring down on her bottom lip.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed either,” Max whispers, “And I’m sorry I didn’t call after you left and I’m sorry we weren’t… we didn’t… that we weren’t the same at the end,” he finishes, swallowing hard.
Max is apologizing and it’s both what Helen has wanted to hear and the furthest thing from it. In fact, it kind of just makes her feel worse. She’d rather have him hate her, just a little. It’s selfish but Helen figures that’s why she had needed Max – to remember what it's like to be good.
“Why don’t you say it?”
“Say what, Max?” Her voice is unrecognizable to her now, all scratchy and chafed.
He gazes at her, unsure but somehow still determined. “What it is that you wanted. Why won’t you tell me?”
Helen feels her eyes finally tearing and she wipes aimlessly at her face, trying to get her heart rate and breathing back under control.
"I don't know what to say," she responds quietly and it's the truth, words somehow failing her at every end.
But deep down Helen thinks Max has always known how she has felt. Maybe it hasn’t always been there, and maybe it won’t always be there, but Max has to know. Some days it felt like everyone at New Amsterdam knew. Helen wishes she had enough left in her to call his bluff.
The silence and stretch of time wears them both down, pulsating in her chest. Maybe her lack of response provides him with answers he needs or the conclusion he realizes he does not want. Regardless, they both silently continue their walk back to the hotel.
Later, inside the elevator, Helen stands firm, arms crossed over her chest. Max leans against the elevator wall on the other side, hands shoved in his pant pockets.
“I hope it was worth it.” There is something in the way he looks at her now – open and honest – that moves her.
“Me too.”
—
She thinks she sees Max at the airport the next morning but convinces herself she’s still asleep, still dreaming of his words, and his blue eyes, and his ability to leave her completely undone, still.
—
Helen goes back to her routine. It has always made her quick, agile, and inventive. She sees her patients, providers her consultations when asked, and prepares far too much for the remaining presentations she has scheduled.
The New Year rolls in and something new and unfamiliar itches in her blood. Helen doesn't know what to do about it. A cup of coffee soothes but her body still trembles, sometimes it aches with the feeling that she has somehow missed out on something really big and important.
She goes out a few times. Her dates talk a lot about music, and television, and sports. They ask a lot of questions too. They ask about her practice, about what she likes to do in her very limited free time. They ask questions but often times they don’t feel like the right ones.
Helen wants to say she’s forgotten what that’s like, but that would be a lie.
—
It goes like this:
Helen rushes down the sidewalk to the hospital entrance, her hands furiously searching her coat pockets for her key card, praying the sky overhead doesn’t dissolve into a flurry of snow like the forecast has predicted.
It’s late and the neighbouring streets are relatively empty. Her mind is sorting all the residence evaluations she needs to finalize before submitting them to the Director tomorrow.
Her feet slow down as she reaches the lit up arch near the front doors when Helen catches a familiar figure sitting on the nearby bench facing the street.
“Max?” She asks hesitantly, approaching him.
“Helen,” He exclaims, head snapping up to meet her line of vision as he stands.
For some inexplicable reason, her first thought is that something terrible must have happened for him to be here. She imagines the movement of Max’s mouth, his voice drifting as he gives her the bad news, and the thought of what that is slams into her, cutting through her ribcage with the intensity of an exploding landmine.
“Max,” Helen whispers, sniffing against the cold wind that hits her face. “What happened?”
He looks at her face and his eyebrows knit together, mirroring the concern she’s certain is open and too wide in her own expression.
“I’ve been thinking a lot since San Diego,” He starts, and she feels the relief flood inside her. Max presses on. “I’ve thought a lot about what we both said and–”
“Max,” she cuts him off, feeling her eyes go wide in disbelief. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’m so very serious.”
He looks so ridiculous bundled in a coat that is entirely insufficient for this weather and the stupid beanie that is also probably doing nothing to keep him warm. Helen wonders how much of what he’s about to say he has truly thought through or if Max is making another one of his impulsive gestures, motivated with good intentions but lacking in thought and execution at their early stages.
“Do you no longer own a phone?” Helen asks exasperatedly, preparing herself for a battle she’s not sure she’s capable of fighting.
“You know me, I always prefer the personal touch.”
“What about Luna?”
“I have a great sitter,” he answers, moving closer.
“And the hospital?” She frowns.
“It can manage for a few hours.”
Helen’s breath catches in her throat, never expecting him to say or admit those words aloud. “Max–”
“I realize that San Diego was unfair to you – I was unfair to you. Asking about what you wanted, after all this time, I didn’t exactly have a say or a right to an answer, your answer,” Max says, exhaling loudly. Helen is suddenly starting to believe she may not have fully understood him the last time they spoke. “Especially if I don’t tell you what I want first...So I’m going to do that now.”
Helen freezes. An ambulance rushes by them on the street and turns the corner into the hospital, and she can feel the last bit of protest and unease slip away from her.
Max reaches inside his front pocket, smiling sheepishly at her. “I wrote it all down.”
“Of course you did,” Helen mumbles, biting down on the urge to laugh as her heart starts to beat wildly against the inside of her chest.
Max clears his throat.
“There are many things I want to do to help make lives better and more meaningful but I’m afraid there won’t be enough time or chances to do them,” he says, “I know I’m trying my best but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way and I don’t know what will happen if I stop or if the cancer comes back.”
Another gust of wind brushes up against them and Helen edges closer to him on instinct, closer enough so they can see the condensation from each other’s breath.
“Next,” Max eyes scan lower on the paper. He pauses, hands trembling a little from the cold or something else entirely, and looks at her momentarily before pushing on. “I want to stop forgetting. When Georgia died, I could barely remember the last moments I had with her. And soon I began forgetting nearly everything – the good, the bad. All I could allow myself to think was wishing I had done something differently,” He sniffs, “I owe it to Luna to not forget.”
Helen reaches for him then, holding onto his arm, hoping he can feel her hold and the warmth through the many layers of fabric and time between them. It hurts her still, just a little bit, being reminded that she couldn’t help him grieve, but also, grappling with the possibility that had she found a way to stay in New York, things maybe could have been so different. Maybe they could have been friends again and found a way to move forward, beyond the ability to endure, together.
“Max,” Helen is trembling a little now too, letting go of his arm and grazing her fingers along his cheek. It’s an insane thing to do because her fingers are probably solid ice, but Max leans in anyway and he smiles at her. “I was afraid and I didn’t have you and I didn’t quite know what else to do. I’m sorry,” she says, choking a little on the memories.
God, she’s reminded all over again of how much she misses Max. Helen wonders, if sometime during his treatment or shortly thereafter, they made permanent marks on each other that they've managed to carry all this time.
“Helen,” He watches her closely as she steps back and drops her hands into her pockets. “There’s something else.”
“Okay.”
Max stares at her and she senses the way his eyes dart around her face, and somewhere behind her, back and forth, open but tenuous.
"I want," He shifts on his feet, "To be your friend again and I want you to be mine. I want you to admonish me when I mess up, in that way you do, with your pragmatism.” Max breathes a laugh, "I want us to argue about movies and patient treatment and how I’m dressing Luna and hospital logistics and budgets. I want you to come back to New York.”
Helen gulps, wrapping her arms around herself and clutching the material of her coat in her hands, not knowing what to say to him next. “Max, I don’t–"
“I want to tell you about my day and stay up late with you. I want to figure out if you snore and if you’re the type to be bashful about it – which, I mean, studies now show more women snore than men so there’s really no reason because I’ll get used to it and find it charming,” he sighs, becoming more determined, “I want to get coffee with you in the morning – not from the ICU – and I want you to be a part of my routine – my cancer-free routine – and I want to be part of yours too.”
"I want–" Max stops, rubbing his hands over his face. “I want you, Helen. I’ve wanted you for so long and I think you deserve to know that.”
The memories don't come in flashes. These are entire conversations and situations, clear and definitive in her mind. They take into account the circumstances in which they've occurred, leaving no detail behind.
Helen thinks of the hours spent in the patient room and endless evenings in Max’s office, shoulder-to-shoulder. She thinks of his laugh, deep and easy. How Max kind of laughs at everything, in a wide range of tones to display an even greater variety of temperaments, how she had liked hearing it, how she liked causing it, because he found her funny, because it had made her laugh in return, as if laughing didn't mean showing weakness.
She thinks of everything Max has ever told her, as sharp and clear as the day he said them. Helen thinks of all the jokes, the metaphors, the things he never told anyone else, and how they meant something to her, how she believed him.
Max looks so good standing there, like every dream she's ever had and every possibility she doesn't know how to pursue, because she doesn't have courage or doesn't know how. But with Max, Helen had felt invincible. That’s the thing she still thinks about.
Her heart flies all the way into her throat and the words leave her mouth before she can properly assess them. "I missed you. After the accident, when I left, even now. I miss you."
Max pulls her against him, leaning down and pressing his face to her cheek. She reaches out to his shoulders, his chest and stomach expanding and contracting against hers as he breathes her in. They stand there for a minute and it’s entirely way too surreal having Max here, with her, in her city, in this place where she has worked so hard to build her own life separate from the person she had been when she knew him.
“I missed you every single day,” he murmurs against her skin. “Thought of you every single day.”
Helen’s fingers fist into thick fabric of his jacket as she rises to the tips of her toes and pulls Max’s mouth down, fusing her lips with his. He stills, but only for a moment, as he rests his hands of her waist, mouth starting to move slowly, like he’s trying to get to know her in this way. Max murmurs her name and its makes Helen’s heart stutter and she finds herself holding her breath, waiting for the moment to pass whilst memorizing it, filing it away so she can remember it later.
Max leans back in and this time his mouth is hungry, desperate even, as it moves over hers, again and again, his fingers a little cold but smooth over the curve of her jaw. It’s dizzying and makes her head spin, in a good way, heat enveloping around her skin and flaring in her stomach. Max feels strong and alive when he leans further and wraps his arms around her.
They only pull apart when Helen hears footsteps turn around the corner and watches as two people emerge and walk towards the hospital entrance behind them.
Max coughs a little, the corners of his mouth turning upwards. “So does this mean you want me too?”
“Yes, Max,” Helen laughs, rolling her eyes. “I want you too.”
—
“There was no board sanctioned punishment requiring you to be in Boston, or Houston, or San Diego, was there?” She asks later as they grab hot chocolate at a nearby café to warm up from the cold.
“And Vancouver and Kansas City before that?” Max shakes his head, not even attempting to hide the goofy smile erupting on his face. “Not even a little bit.”
—
They’re both physicians and therefore are far too pragmatic and knowledgeable to throw away their innate inhibitions and tear at each other’s clothes before getting the necessary tests done. Max also has to be back for Luna, so Helen shows as much of Chicago at night to him as she can before his red-eye flight.
They eat tacos from the trucks along the streets in Pilsen. She takes him to Bronzeville to admire the murals lit up by the streetlights. They go to a comedy club in Old Town too.
The smell of sweat and cheap alcohol is thick. Under the table, Max’s hand ghosts over her thigh, creeping higher as he grows bolder. His hand is big and soft when she slips hers in his, but its also a little rough in the crevices, and makes her hot.
Helen’s stomach curls with laughter when the performers land a particularly good joke. Max’s lips curl with approval as his chuckles sink into air around them. It burns all the way down her throat just like her drink, setting her belly on fire.
—
The next time she sees him, a week later with their tests clear, is the first time Helen returns to New York since leaving.
She grabs dinner on her way to Max’s apartment, bumping into him right as she steps off the elevator to his floor.
She meets Luna, again, and she has Georgia’s eyes but Max’s smile and loud brashness. Luna loves talking about her toys and her teacher and her classmates and pretty much anything she can think of. Endlessly and right on the spot. It’s adorable and perplexing all at the same time.
(Helen would be lying if she says her heart doesn't grow thrice in size from seeing her and listening to the sound of her voice.
Her eye catches Max across his kitchen table, gazing at her as he chews thoughtfully, mind going a mile a minute no doubt.)
It’s also the first night she has sex with Max.
The lights from the city and streetlamps outside break through the curtains, casting a soft glow and making everything in his room so much brighter.
They're a mess of tangled limbs and lips and Helen processes it all really slowly, that she’s actually here, with him, and that they're really going to do this. That after so much time, they're on their way to trying to make this work somehow. They nearly trip over his discarded belongings by the door and Max ends up stubbing his toe against the foot of the bed when he tries to lower her onto his mattress, making Helen laugh. Which makes Max laugh too and she likes that, likes that he can be himself with her and knowing she can find parts of herself with him too.
Helen runs her hands through his hair, tangling and pulling until it sticks in a hundred different directions as Max struggles a little to get her clothing off, his fingers trembling as if they've got a life of their own. His mouth is hot and needy against hers, slick with desire as she undresses him too, memorizing the feel of him, the freckles and wrinkles and traces of bone. Her hand slips under cotton and around him with an amount of pressure that instantly causes his hips to jerk forward on reflex, creating an unimaginable amount of friction.
Max makes a move to pull back but she catches him before he can, hooking her leg around his waist and pulling him closer, fingers still applying pressure. A groan forms low in his throat and she can feel a shiver race down his spine as his forehead falls to rest against her shoulder. The urgency of it consumes Helen, causes her mind to go blank, giving away to nothing but the feel of Max pressed against her in all the right places, the sounds he murmurs against her skin, the way his voice forms around her name. She smirks against his mouth then, all smug as she gives in, and her hands still just as quickly as they had started to move.
Max doesn't let Helen rejoice in her personal victory for long. He moves quickly and takes the opportunity to allow his hands and mouth to work her over. Helen freezes when he draws a delicate line with his lips across her thigh, shudders when he presses his tongue against her, and gasps when he draws her closer to an orgasm with smooth solid movements of his fingers curling inside her. Max wants her and tells her this. Tells her how beautiful she is, how badly he's wanted this, how long he's wanted it.
Helen comes blinding hot and fast, her hands curling into the sheets, into his muscle.
Max draws out the moment for as long as she can handle before he pulls away, moving back up her body, kissing her soundly and chuckling at the soft content sigh that escapes her mouth.
Max leans back and over, rummaging through his bedside drawer and pulls out a condom. Her hands are steady as she sits up and takes it from him, tearing open the foil wrapper. When she looks back at him, the sight of Max puts her in a momentary trance, making her inhale harshly. Max is already staring at her, waiting, face flushed with amusement. She returns his grin, rolling the condom onto him.
When Max presses between her legs, there is a moment of absolute stillness as Helen watches him, watches his eyes blink slowly in the dark as she clutches the hair at the nape of his neck. Helen hears the sharp intake of breath that leaves her as she stretches to accommodate him as he sinks into her.
"Is this okay?" He asks, panting.
Helen gazes at him, his blue eyes dilated and mouth strained around a groan. She pushes his hair back from his forehead, trailing her fingers down to his chin, over his throat as he swallows, down his chest. "Yeah."
Max grins, bending his head to kiss the sweat from her shoulder, her collarbone, her breast. He shifts a little, pulling away and then flexing his hips forward in one solid move, causing her head to spin and her eyes to squeeze shut. Her hands, unrestrained and curious, rub at everything she can reach, and moans at the fit of them, the sound striking and full. Max moves above her and when Helen opens her eyes again, the look of concentration on his face is undeniable as he tunes in to the small noises he forces her to make. Helen listens to his in return, starting to move in his rhythm, flicking out her tongue to lick his bottom lip. Max smirks as he flicks out his own, lowering to kiss her and coax his way into her mouth.
Helen’s head swims with words and thoughts she tries to express with the urgency of her movements, arching into him, meeting his thrusts. She moves to kiss Max’s neck, sucking softly as she runs her fingers through his scalp, tugging slightly at his hair. The grunt she elicits from him is beautiful.
“You feel so good,” Max whispers, reaching underneath her to angle her hips more.
Helen whimpers as he sinks deeper, looking down to where their bodies meet with half-open eyes and then back up at him, smiling through her heavy breathing. She leans up and presses her mouth against his cheek and jaw, pushing his shoulders. Max pulls back as Helen uses her thighs to turn him over, pushing him into the mattress, one leg on either side of his as she settles above him.
The furrow in Max’s brow gives away as his hands drop to her hips, then travel north over her belly and to the underside of her breasts. Helen gazes down at him, leaning forward to drag her mouth over his. Max fumbles for the headboard before gripping it and pulling himself up. He gives up his control, letting go of her and raising open palms. She entwines her fingers in his and she can feel the strength in his hands as she rises and sinks onto him.
"God, Max, please–" He lifts his chin, kissing the rest of the words from her mouth.
—
The routine that develops afterwards is not the one either of them had immediately pictured – late evenings in New York, weekends in Chicago – but it works for now.
It strikes her one late afternoon, as she’s reading through a medical journal on her couch, Luna sitting in front of the TV and Max fixing them dinner in the kitchen, that while he is still mostly the same person, still Max in all the ways it matters, there have been changes. They are small, insignificant when placed on their own, but when combined they make all the difference. The Max of here and now is more assured. He is not afraid of who he is and is sure of what is he capable of. Strong, secure, successful – and wears his age like it’s not something to endure.
Later, over dinner:
“I was just thinking,” she comments, looking at Max through her lashes. “I know a place that could use the ‘ol Goodwin shake up.”
His mouth quirks. “You don’t need me for that.”
“I know,” Helen replies, taking a long sip from her wineglass. “I figured there’s something about your personal touch that could do some good after grinding a few – several – gears first, of course.”
“Chicago, huh?”
“We’ll find the best public school for Luna.”
“Hmm.”
“I know it goes against all your sensibilities—”
“I could do it—”
“But I think you could—”
“Yes—”
Helen stops, her eyebrows furrowing together. “What did you say?”
“Yes, I could do it.”
She springs from her chair almost immediately.
—
“I didn’t come here for you,” Max whispers as they stand outside the entrance. “I came here for me.”
“I know,” she whispers back, leaning up to kiss his mouth, excited to enter with him.
It’s her favorite part about Max. The way he puts absolutely everything he is into something he genuinely cares for. Helen remembers things like that, lets them pass over her and settle somewhere deep because they are what she chooses to carry with her for all these years, those lingering moments of promise.
“I was thinking afterwards we could go celebrate before picking up Luna? Grab a cup of coffee?”
“Sounds great,” Helen replies as she starts her day with fishing through her purse for her key card.
“Perfect, I know a great place.”
She stops rifling through her belongings, raising an eyebrow at him. “You mean my place? The one I showed you?”
“Just because you saw it and were a customer there first, doesn’t make it your place.”
“I’m pretty certain that’s exactly what makes it my place.”
Max laughs breathily, shrugging his shoulders in surrender.
Helen reaches down for his hand to find his already there waiting.