“Oh, believe me… you don’t know me… but this… yes, this is me being reasonable…” if she weren’t, Liz would have probably found a way to crawl out of there and she would surely not be having her child in this particular place, as it looked more and more like she would.
*
Across town, Max was just getting out of his meeting and leaving the building where it had been held when he heard his cell phone beeping once, indicating that he had missed a call or a message. Quickly he looked at the screen and then couldn’t help but frown when he realized he had a new message on his voice mail when he hadn’t even heard the phone ring in the first place.
Checking out his missed calls, his confusion only increased at first when he found none, but a second later he understood that he had obviously not had any reception inside the huge twenty-something stories building and that whoever had called had most likely been sent directly to voice mail.
Anxiously so, he listened to the message and couldn’t stop his heart from pummeling to his shoes when he instantly recognized Liz’s voice. Her message and her tone more particularly left him shaking from head to toes and he all but jumped into his car as he realized that it had already been more than half an hour since she had called.
Despite Liz’s warnings, he drove faster than he knew he should, hoping all the while that he wouldn’t get arrested or that he would find an understanding cop if he did, slowing down not being an option. Not when he didn’t know what was going on or if Liz was alright. She had seemed alright, a little upset and irritated sure, but alright nonetheless, and he hoped with all his might that it was still the case.
The last thing he wanted was to think that it could be otherwise, but he still remembered all too well what had happened the last time he had received such urgent call.
~ * ~
Max rushed through the doors of the hospital, his heart hammering in his chest so loudly, he was sure that anyone passing him by on his way could hear it. It felt like he hadn’t been able to breathe properly since he had received Kyle’s call nearly twenty minutes ago and he was sure he wouldn’t until he would have seen Liz and made sure that she and the baby were alright.
Kyle hadn’t said much unfortunately, beside the fact that there had been an incident at school and that he had to get to the hospital as soon as possible because they were taking Liz there, but that was about it.
Not knowing what to expect so, Max ran to the nurse station as soon as he spotted it, but before he could even reach it, he was called by one obviously nervous Kyle and immediately changed direction.
“Kyle, what happened? How is she? Where i-is she?” the words stumbled from his mouth the second he joined the other man, his voice cracking slightly despite his efforts to appear collected.
Kyle seemed to understand however, if the sympathetic look he gave him was any indication.
“Someone at school… a student… he involuntarily bumped into her and she fell a few stairs before she was able to get her footing back…” Kyle started, only to see from Max’s horrified expression that he probably shouldn’t have blurted it all out like that. “She’s okay but…”
“The baby? Is the baby okay, t-too?” Max interrupted him before he could go any further, catching from Kyle’s tone that something could be wrong nonetheless despite his weak reassurance.
“I-I don’t know, Max… bastards wouldn’t let me see her!” Kyle admitted dejectedly and Max understood that he had probably tried and tried, only to be turned down every time. He wasn’t family after all and Max, more than anyone, knew well how that worked.
“Where is she then?” he asked urgently, more determined to get to Liz now than he had even been earlier if that were possible.
“She’s in there… room 1023…” Kyle replied, pointing at a room a few doors down apparently. “But Max… she’s… you have to know… they’re trying but… she’s kind of…” he pursued hesitantly but knew immediately that Max wouldn’t listen to him a second longer once he knew where his wife was.
He was not surprised though. He would most likely do the same if he were in Max’s shoes and it were his wife and child in possible danger.
With only one thought in mind, Max pushed past Kyle before he could finish and strode to the room he had indicated, knowing that if they refused to divulge any information to Kyle, they would have no choice with him.
Truthfully Max had actually been prepared to see different things when entering: Liz sitting or lying on a hospital bed, probably scared out of her mind and waiting for him to arrive and promise her that everything would be alright. Doctors and nurses near her, hovering and checking on her. Monitors around, just to make sure everything was fine with her and the baby. That would have been normal. What he had surely not expected was to find Liz all but backed into a corner of the room with three people around her trying to catch her flying arms while she did her very best to ward them off and yelled at them like a woman possessed.
“Hey! What’s going on here?... what are you doing to her? Let her go!” Max didn’t even stop to wonder who those people whom Liz obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with were, although he suspected that they were part of the hospital staff, he just charged forward with the intention of getting them as far away as possible from Liz as he could if that was what he had to do to see her calm down.
It was little wonder so, if he was surprised when Liz seemed to want to reject him, too.
“Don’t t-touch me… I-I won’t let you take my baby… you c-can’t take my baby…” Liz cried out when she saw someone else attempting to reach her, and the way her voice broke a little more with each word she spoke was enough to break Max’s own heart.
He didn’t even mind that the fist that landed on his chin as she fought off his approach was sure to leave a bruise later, Liz was the only thing that mattered at that moment. She seemed hysterical, tears rolling uncontrolled down her cheeks, eyes unfocused, which obviously explained why she didn’t even seem to recognize him, and Max couldn’t help wondering what they could have told her or done to her to put her in such a state.
He didn’t have more than a few seconds to ponder that thought however, because the next moment Liz seemed to double over in pain and he was by her side and gathering her in his arms in an instant.
“Shh… shh… It’s me, Liz… It’s me… It’s Max…” he soothed gently as he tried to stop her from pushing him away once more, his task made somewhat easier by the fact that Liz was now holding her stomach protectively with one arm. “Shh, baby… it’s okay… I’m here now!”
Liz struggled against him still a few seconds, until his tender voice registered in her brain and all fight finally left her. With a harsh sob that tore at Max’s heart, she sagged against him and let him held her as close to him as he could with her five months pregnant belly between them.
“Max?... Max… they want… they want to take o-our baby… don’t let them take our baby, M-Max…” Liz’s words were muffled against Max’s chest but they had the same impact on him as if she had been shouting them, her obvious desperation chilling him all over.
“Shh… no one’s going to take our baby, sweetie…” Max cajoled as he held her for dear life but before he could stop himself, his eyes locked on the doctor who stood barely a few feet from them, a concerned look on her face.
“Don’t let them… you can’t l-let them…” Liz repeated brokenly, the way she clung to Max nearly cutting his air supply but nothing would have made him ask her to let go.
“What’s going on? What the hell have you done to her?” he addressed the doctor, a middle-aged woman whose nametag read ‘Dr. Silver’, as he continued to run his fingers through Liz’s hair and down her back.
She trembled in his arms as she kept crying her heart out and Max knew it wouldn’t be long before she just collapsed completely.
“We were just trying to help her…” Dr Silver ventured tentatively but was almost immediately stopped in her attempt to explain when Max favored her with an incredulous stare that said as much as his next words did.
“Help her?... you call this helping her?” despite himself his voice raised a few notches higher than necessary, and if he didn’t care one way or another about what the doctor and the other people present in the room could think of him because of it, he almost instantly regretted it nonetheless when he felt Liz wince in his embrace and sob even harder if that were possible.
“I assume you’re Mr. Evans?” the doctor ignored his tone and his words for now, wanting to confirm her suspicions before she gave him any further information concerning the woman they were trying to treat, and only when she saw him nod quickly at her own question, did she feel safe to go on. “Well, like I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Mr. Evans, your wife suffered a fall…” she pursued, sure that he had heard all about it from the other young man who had accompanied Mrs. Evans here and had been the first to relate to them what had happened.
Considering how concerned for his friend he had seemed to be, concerned to the point everyone had at first assumed he was the woman’s husband, she was quite sure he was still around somewhere, waiting for some news.
“Yes… is she… is she alright?” Max found himself asking apprehensively, not sure about the answer, given Liz’s state and the fact that so far, all she had said had been barely coherent.
“Your wife is fine as far as we could tell, although we suspect she sprained her wrist…” the doctor informed Max and she wasn’t at all surprised to see his worried gaze drift down to his wife, or how delicately he reached for her left arm to assess the damage himself.
“You suspect?” Max repeated, the look on his face clearly stating that there was no way it could be otherwise, considering the bluish color the skin of her wrist had already taken. If there was a chance it wasn’t broken, there was no doubt it was indeed sprained.
“She hasn’t let us approach her close enough to really see or treat her yet…” the doctor revealed, although she seemed to be a little uncomfortable about the fact.
Usually they didn’t have so much trouble with patients, even ‘pregnant’ patients, but Mrs. Evans apparently seemed to have issues none of them were able to understand, if the way she had reacted when they had tried to examine her and her baby, or even if all those things she had been yelling about them wanting to take her baby away from her, were any indication.
There was probably more to that than they knew, but she hoped that Mr. Evans would be able to calm her down nonetheless now, at least long enough for them to be able to help her and see if nothing was wrong with her child.
“Liz?” Max whispered softly as he pulled slightly away from her, just far enough to look at her and try to understand why she wasn’t letting them touch her and treat her injury when he had no doubt that she had to be suffering a great deal because of it.
“They want to t-take our baby…” Liz moaned out for all explanation when their eyes met and Max had to swallow thickly not to sob himself when he took notice of the incredible pain reflected in her eyes.
“Is something wrong with the baby?” he turned to the other woman in the room again and asked apprehensively, his heart thudding erratically against his ribcage at the thought that they could have maybe said something to Liz about their child. Something that she couldn’t bear and something that made her think that she had to protect their baby from them.
“That’s what we were trying to determine when your wife… when she…” Dr. Silver started explaining, only stopping short of saying something along the lines of ‘when your wife turned all hysterical on us’ when she realized that that was probably not something she should say out loud, no matter how true it had actually been. “Anyway… apparently the high level of stress is causing your wife to have contractions and…”
“C-Contractions?” Max interrupted her before she could say more in what sounded more like a shriek than a simple word. “But she c-can’t have contractions now… it’s… it’s way too soon…”
Max felt dizzy suddenly with what this could imply, but he refused to think the worst of it. He couldn’t think the worst of it or he knew he would lose it as surely as Liz had and one of them had to be strong here if they hoped to get through this somehow.
“It is too soon, indeed… which is why we were trying to give your wife a sedative in the hopes that if we managed to calm her down some, it would be enough to control them and stop them…” the doctor replied, barely succeeding in reassuring Max however.
He might not know much about pregnancies, but he knew enough to understand what would happen if they didn’t manage to stop those contractions. And he knew, too, what it would mean for Liz.
“If you could just hold her a minute…” one of the male nurses who were in the room but hadn’t said a word so far, suddenly suggested out of the blue and advanced to Max and Liz with a syringe in hand.
Before he could reach them though, Liz started getting agitated again and Max had no choice but to take a step back, seeing as she had obviously noticed the man and understood what he intended to do and still didn’t want him to come anywhere close to her.
“It’s just an injection… it will help…” the man insisted, but the mildly irritated tone he used and that suggested to Max that he was slowly but surely losing patience with Liz was enough for his own anger to bubble forth.
“You touch her before she’s ready and I’ll break both of your arms!” Max all but growled menacingly, causing the nurse to look at him like he had lost his mind, but he took a prudent step back nonetheless the second he understood that the other man was all too serious and wouldn’t hesitate to do just that if he felt that was the only way to protect his wife.
“Mr. Evans…” Dr. Silver stepped forward as well this time and placed herself between the two men before this could degenerate, but she didn’t need to say more than his name for Max to know that this was really serious and that they had to act fast if they wanted to make things right.
If only he could convince Liz of that.
“Just give me a minute with my wife, okay!” Max retorted a little more curtly than he meant to, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about being polite when all he could think about was how much this was, and still had the potential of hurting Liz.
As gently as he could to not frighten her off, he tried to pull away so he could talk to her, but he soon understood that he wouldn’t have much luck this way. Her grip on him tightened even more the second he tried to move her and he refused to push her too far, too soon.
“Okay, sweetie… just come here…” he breathed gently into her hair, barely a second before he scooped her up into his arms and cradled her protectively against his body, glaring openly at the nurse when he wasn’t quick enough to move out of his way for his liking.
Liz wrapped her arms around Max’s neck and held on like she meant to never let go and Max wasn’t surprised to hear her whimpering in protest when he sat down on the hospital bed, like she actually thought he meant to force her to lie down on said bed and leave her there at the doctor and nurses’ mercy.
“Don’t go, M-Max…” she whined before Max could reassure her and it broke his heart a little more to see how insecure she was being all of a sudden.
Yeah, like he could be anywhere else than where he was being right then. Or like he could even want to. Nothing and no one in the world could make him leave her side, not until she would be alright again at least.
“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart… I’m right here…” Max assured her, kissing her crown tenderly and moving her around just enough so she would be comfortable on his lap and he wouldn’t be hurting her or the baby in any way. “Baby, you have to let the doctor take a look at you and at the baby… you have to let her do her job…” he continued softly and immediately felt Liz go completely rigid in his arms the second she heard his suggestion.
“No… n-no… they want to take our baby… you… you c-can’t let them take our baby…” Liz wailed and shook her head vehemently and Max was sure she would have all but bolted off his lap and ran out of there if he hadn’t been holding her so tightly.
“That’s not what they’re trying to do, Liz… they’re just trying to help you…” Max contradicted quietly, one hand caressing her back while the other one rubbed gently over her protruding stomach.
The tender and slow gesture seemed to quiet Liz some, but obviously not enough for her to believe him completely since she kept shaking her head despite his words, leading Max to consider changing tactics.
“Sweetie, look at me…” he sighed softly, trying to make her lift her head from where she hid it into the crook of his neck. He wasn’t more surprised than that to see that it took him a few seconds of gentle coaxing to bring her to comply.
“You remember… the first time you told me… a-about the baby?...” he questioned in a soft breath, smiling lovingly at Liz when she looked back at him and nodded despite her tears. “You promised me the most beautiful gift you could give me that day… nothing could have made me happier in fact than hearing you say that we were finally having this baby, you know that, right?”
“I-I know…” Liz replied weakly, still remembering that day and his reaction when she had confirmed what he had seen like it was yesterday.
“And you remember how we b-both… how we both said that we were a l-little scared, too…” he continued carefully, one of his thumbs brushing Liz’s tears away, despite the fact that it seemed to be useless since they seemed to still come faster than he was able to catch them.
“Y-Yes…” Liz croaked out, her voice cracking on the single word, because if she had been scared back then, now she was terrified.
“I’m still scared, Liz… I’m so scared right now I feel like I c-can barely breathe…” Max admitted throatily, his own eyes filling with tears as Liz choked on a sob at his confession. “But baby, that day… that day I p-promised you that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you or to our child… and that’s still true, baby… I swear, Liz… nothing and no one will make me break that promise to you… but I need your help for that… you trust me, right?”
Another nod was all the answer he got again this time, but that was enough for him for now.
“You know that I would do anything for you… but as much as I wish I could take it all away, I can’t… I c-can’t help you right now… but they do… all you have to do is have that small injection…” he went on and had to wrap his arms around Liz just a little tighter when he felt her struggling against him again the moment she heard him.
“No, they’re gonna hurt our baby…” she cried out and Max had to swallow past the huge lump that clogged his throat when she pinned him with a glistening and betrayed look.
“Listen to me, Liz… you know that I love you more than anything else in this world… I-I mean, you, and Janelle, and this baby… and I would never ask you to do anything if I thought it could hurt either of you in any way…” fingers threading through the hair at her temple, Max barely breathed the words above a murmur, his forehead against hers now, the scene looking so intimate it made the three other people in the room feel almost uncomfortable as they witnessed it, even if they actually couldn’t hear a word of what was being said between them.
“Please, Max… p-please, don’t let them do this…” Liz begged hoarsely, the look of anguish she gave him causing Max’s own tears to fall at last.
“Shh… shh… I know you’re scared, sweetie… but I need you to do this for me… just this once, Liz… I need you to trust me and do this f-for me, okay?... it will just take a minute… and then you won’t feel any more pain…” Max started to rock her gently, although his eyes never left hers all the while.
“M-Max…”
“Just a minute… just a short m-minute, I-I promise… just hold on to me, baby… I’ve got you… everything’s gonna be alright…” Max kept on whispering in the same gentle tone, but this time he cradled her even closer while he continued rocking her and he was glad when Liz buried her face into his chest at last so she wouldn’t see or hear anything else but him. “We’re gonna be alright…”
His swaying motions lasted for a few minutes until Liz seemed to calm down enough for him to concentrate again on what was happening around him, although all the while, much to his dismay, she didn’t stop crying.
Very carefully so to not startle her again, he disentangled one of her arms from where she had it firmly wrapped around his neck, stroked it gently up and down for a few precious seconds, and then let it slide behind him, though he kept holding it so he would maintain it extended.
When she didn’t fight him despite the small moan of protest he still heard coming from her lips, he searched for the doctor with his eyes, giving her a look that seemed to say ‘if you want to do whatever it is you need to do, you do it but you do it now!’ as soon as he found her.
He knew that they had all been extremely patient with them, but Max was lucid enough to know that there was only so much he could do and that Liz’s relatively sudden quietness wouldn’t last long if they didn’t hurry.
The nurse that had already tried to approach Liz several times earlier, started advancing towards them again but he had only taken a couple of steps when Dr. Silver stopped him with an ‘I got it’ and he had no other choice but to give her the syringe he had still been holding all this time.
Doctor Silver was tempted to suggest to Max that he laid his wife down for this, but the way he wrapped her completely into his embrace then, clearly showed that they would have to do it his way or no way at all because he had apparently absolutely no intention of letting her go, or even less letting her get through this alone.
As gently as she could herself, she took Liz’s arm to do her job, Max not needing to see the action to know exactly the second she touched her when he felt Liz stiffen first and then wince and whimper when she apparently injected her.
“Shh… it’s nothing… it’s okay… I’m right here…” Max soothed, trying to smile through his tears when Liz pulled away long enough to give him one last teary look.
Whatever they had given her, it seemed to be acting quite fast, Max realized as her eyelids already started to droop after only a mere couple of minutes, Liz blinking repeatedly to apparently fight the effect.
Cupping her face in his hands, Max softly brushed his lips against hers, his tears mixing with her own, although Liz barely responded to his kisses. For once he didn’t mind however, because this was probably more for him than it was for her.
“I love you…” he murmured thickly then, not really waiting for an answer but needing her to remember nonetheless.
Liz’s head slowly fell forward until it was resting against his shoulder again, Max’s fingers finding their way through her hair once more the second she was settled.
“Don’t… don’t let them take our b-baby again, M-Max…” was the last thing Liz said before she finally closed her eyes and let the medication they had given her work its magic, and if Max hadn’t already suspected before why Liz had been acting so uncharacteristically and why she had been so unreasonable about all this, that last sentence would certainly have been explanation enough on its own.
Even if they hadn’t talked about it again since that first day when Liz had told him about the baby, the fear of anything going wrong and them losing it had never been too far from their minds for all that, although they never let it rule them, but Max knew now that that had probably been the only thing Liz had been able to think about today. She had probably thought about it the second she had fallen, without much consideration for her own injury, and all the way to the hospital, only to completely lose it when they had tried to examine her. As illogical or far from the truth as it could have been, Liz had most likely convinced herself that if she let them get anywhere close to her or the baby, they would only hurt him or her, instead of just checking on them and helping them like they meant to. Yes, only the fear of losing another child could have made Liz act like she had.
Remembering how she had looked completely out of control and on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he had first entered this room was enough for Max to feel like he was suffocating, but he forced himself to push that thought to the back of his mind, knowing that if he didn’t, they would probably have to give him something, too, when he finally lost it himself.
As he tried to compose himself, he noticed the doctor looking at him questioningly and it made him realize that being so close now, she had most likely heard what Liz had said this time.
“Uh… Liz… she… she had a m-miscarriage last year…” he coughed and stood up with Liz in his arms, but refused to look at any of the people in the room, not wanting to see pity or whatever else in their eyes. All he wanted was to make them understand that Liz wasn’t crazy and that there had been something -something that still hurt too much to bear a repeat- behind the way she had behaved.
“Oh… I understand…” the doctor nodded and whispered, the pieces of the puzzle finally coming together.
She had thought earlier that there had to be something more, something they were missing, and now she knew exactly what kind of traumatic experience this couple, and more particularly this young woman had gone through to make her so frightened of being approached or touched.
At that, Max just made a weird throaty sound that seemed to say he doubted she really did if as a woman she hadn’t gone through the same as well herself, and then indicated the bed with a jerk of his head. “Could you just…”
“Sure!” the doctor instantly understood what he wanted to do and she was quick to push the covers down so he could lie Liz down.
He did so like he was handling the most precious thing in the world to him and the doctor didn’t doubt that that was exactly how he viewed his wife. It was in every touch, in every word he had spoken to her, in every look he bestowed upon her. One would have to be completely blind not to see just how much he loved this woman.
He pulled the covers back over her with the same gentle care, like he was afraid he would wake her up if he was too brusque with her, placed a loving kiss upon her forehead after having tenderly brushed a few tendrils of hair back, and then finally turned to her again.
“Can you… can you make sure they’re both alright, now?” he demanded quite emotionally then, showing that he had apparently only kept it together before for his wife’s sake and wasn’t far from breaking down himself now.
“Of course.” She conceded easily, since she had already planned to do just that, and she took her stethoscope from around her neck before moving to Liz’s side.
Max’s eyes never left her all the while and he could feel himself breaking into a sweat with each minute that passed. Her examination seemed to last an eternity to him and he couldn’t even tell if the sigh she expelled once she seemed to be done and she finally stepped back again was one of relief or of worry.
“Is she going to be okay? And the baby… is the baby going to be alright, too?” his gaze seemed to be pleading with her to give him some news at last and Dr. Silver favored him with a small smile, even if she knew that that would probably not be reassurance enough.
“Yes, they should be… as long as we manage to keep your wife calm… they should be fine… I’d like to run some tests just to be sure there are no complications and we’ll be monitoring both of them closely for the next few hours, but her contractions were fortunately still far between and that’s good… I mean, all facts considered…” Dr. Silver told him, hoping that it would appease him some, at least for the time being.
He would certainly not feel completely better until she could tell him without the slightest doubt or hesitation that his baby was completely out of danger, but hopefully this was a start.
“O-Okay… thank you!” Max murmured gratefully, taking his position by Liz’s side as soon as he could without getting in the doctor’s way.
The first thing he did once he was settled down, was to brush away the few traces of tears that were still left on Liz’s cheeks and then he took her hand in his, his eyes drifting to her hurt one almost in the next second, which didn’t go unnoticed by the doctor.
“I’ll send someone to take care of that in a minute…” she announced immediately, not wanting him to think that she had forgotten about it or that they would leave her unattended. She had indeed seen for herself that her wrist was sprained and would most likely need to be immobilized for a while if she wanted it to heal fast when she had checked on her barely a few minutes ago. “Okay, I’ll leave you with your wife now then… if you have any question or if you need anything… feel free to ask a nurse to page me, okay?” she added when he nodded at her first statement and squeezed his shoulder encouragingly before she could stop herself.
I guess it’s because this is like probably the hugest fic I’ll ever write and it’s finally done after I don’t even want to remember how many years 
)
