fantastic banner by RosDude!
(I got bored and made another banner. Chad's is better!)
Title: The Thorn Mattress
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: I don't own it and I'm already in debt, so please don't sue.
Pairings: M/L, CC
Summary: Liz knew she was about to die. She knew it even before the doctors told her. Fighting cancer for years had sapped so much of her energy that she was too tired to fight anymore. On the drive home from the hospital, her death sentence still playing through her head, she nearly runs over a bloody, emaciated Max Evans wearing only a pair of white scrub pants. He begs her to help him. Knowing she has nothing to lose, she tells him she'll do anything. They go on the run together, hiding from the government and trying in vain to contact those at home. By the time they've reached the end, it wasn't just Liz's body that Max healed; he healed her soul too.
A/N: So I've had this idea in my head since last summer and finally decided to give it a go! I'm not entirely sure where this story is going, but I've been writing an outline, so hopefully it will have more direction soon. Also, for anyone who read The House of Atherton (not many people did, but just in case...) I'm going to be updating it soon! I've got a new part almost done.
They've come to find you, Odalisque
As the light dies horribly
On a fire escape you walk
All rare and resolved to drop
And when they find you, Odalisque
They will rend you, terribly
Stitch from stitch 'til all
Your linen limbs will fall
-The Decemberists Odalisque
Chapter 1
What was the point? What the the point of even living? What was the fucking point? God couldn't exist. First the doctors said she would live. Then they said that while she would live, she was infertile. Now she won't live at all.
She remembered sitting in the doctor's office, only five years old, a little slip of a girl with round cheeks and wide, optimistic eyes. Her parents sat beside her, holding back tears. She didn't understand then. She knew she was sick, but it was just like getting the chicken pox, only she'd have to miss more than a few days of school.
“It's OK, Mommy,” she'd said, kissing her mother's cheek. “I'll be better soon.” When she wasn't, she'd been confused and demanded to go home. The nurses brought her chocolate, but the chemo would let her stomach it. Her classmates wrote her cards, most of them spelling 'Lizzie' with one 'z' instead of two. Her grandma Claudia brought her books with pictures of exotic places, and blank notebooks for her to draw and write in.
She still remembers the day the doctors told her parents that she was in remission. It was at the beginning of second grade, two weeks before her eighth birthday. Her mother had cried so hard that Liz was worried that the news wasn't good. When she learned that she wasn't sick anymore, she cried too, partly out of relief, and partly out of grief for her friends from the hospital who hadn't made it.
That joy ended when she was fifteen. She was supposed to be cured. She was in remission for over five years, but it came back. Cancer. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia to be exact. She was being attacked from the inside of her bones. Two years later, she was in remission again. Her hair grew back, she applied to colleges, life continued on as normal.
It was all gone.
She didn't know what she was going to tell her parents. This was the first time she'd made the trip to the Phoenix hospital alone, as she was now eighteen, and her parents couldn't get off work. What was she going to tell Maria and Alex? They'd been there for her through it all, holding her hair back when the chemo made her sick, bringing her missed homework assignments when she'd been too weak to get out of bed, bringing her cards and candy at the hospital...
She'd never be able to repay them. What if Maria got sick? Liz would never be there to hold her hair away from her face, or to put a damp cloth on her forehead when she ran a fever. What if something happens to Alex? Her life would have been pointless. She made no impact, extended no helping hand.
Liz Parker lived a useless life.
She wiped at her eyes furiously, the tears blurring her vision. It was already hard enough to see with the rain beating down in sheets. She could barely see the taillights of a car miles in the distance, and there were no cars behind her. There usually weren't many cars on this road late on a Thursday night, especially not when it rained. Besides, it was Valentine's Day. People were out on dates, or curling up with their loved ones at home.
A small sob escaped her. She ground her knuckles into her teeth to keep herself from crying. Don't cry don't cry don't cry. Crying is for weaklings. As if dying isn't bad enough, now she has to cry about it.
She'd never be loved. Not in the romantic sense, at least. She'd never be kissed, or get to hold hands, or...or make love. She'd never get married or have children. She wouldn't die at an old age, having watched the world change before her eyes. No, she was just another notch in fate's belt. Just another dead kid that left before her time.
The tears poured out before she could stop herself. She pulled over to the side of the road and curled up against the door, her shoulders shaking violently enough to make her bones rattle. She sobbed for everything that life had dealt her, and everything that life had denied.
She glanced over at the Hospice information scattered on the passenger seat as a new wave of sobs struck her. Oh God, she was going to die, she thought as she began hyperventilating.
Pull yourself together, Parker, she said over and over in her head, trying to calm her breathing. She took deep breaths as her hands fumbled through her purse for that bottle of cypress oil that Maria had given her. She removed the cap with shaking fingers and took deep whiffs, the calming scent allowing her to catch her breath. She took one last swipe at her tears with the back of her hand, and put the car in drive once more, pulling back onto the desolate street.
Trying to distract herself, she popped a tape into the player. It was a mix tape that Alex made for her, titled 'The Essence of the Whit'. He purposely put bizarre tracks on it to make her laugh. As the sound of Styx filled her car, she unconsciously smiled, the edge of her immediate problems dulling.
Before she knew it, she was smiling. It took her a moment to realize, but when she reached up and felt her mouth, the corners were turned up and her fingers touched against teeth. She began to laugh, deep belly laughs that shook her whole body, much the way sobs had just two minutes before. She ignored the rain and her own death sentence, and thought about what could be done with the six months she had to live.
She could travel to Africa, or to Europe. She'd barely left the state of New Mexico, let alone the US. She'd always wanted to see Croatia and Turkey, to walk inside the great Hagia Sophia, or to go to Jordan and explore the ancient city of Petra. She could learn to bake, or could dread her hair, or smoke pot and sit out in the desert, living “with the land,” as the burnouts liked to call it. She could go bowling every night until she scored a perfect game, or she could volunteer at the old folks' home, listening to people five times her age telling her never to grow old.
The New Mexican landscape stretched out beyond the darkness in front of her. She'd miss the grass and sand and rock, and the miles and miles of nothingness. She'd miss the history, and the loony UFO nuts that crowded her town. She'd miss so much.
She would have started crying again, had her headlights not flashed against something white in the middle of the road. She slammed on her breaks, turning the wheel just in time to see a person crumble onto the pavement. Something was wrong. Something had to be seriously wrong. She skidded to a stop and threw the car in park, rushing to the body lying in a heap on the pavement.
It was a dark-haired boy, wearing only a pair of white scrub pants. He was painfully thin, a deep crevice of skin in between each rib. He was covered in blood, his feet and palms scraped, and blood ran in watery rivulets down his arm. It looked almost as if a bullet had grazed his skin. She flipped him over onto his back and gasped.
She was looking into the face of Max Evans.
His eyes fluttered, and she shook him gently. “Max,” she whispered. “Max!” She hadn't seen him since his disappearance three months earlier. It had been all over the news. A healthy, athletic, intelligent West Roswell student, gone without a trace. It made the UFO enthusiasts squeal with delight, something his family cried over. Liz had never known him well, but she too had mourned his loss, remembering him to be a kind soul.
And now here he was, half-naked, half-starved and covered in blood in the middle of a New Mexican highway.
His eyes snapped open and he began coughing violently. Liz helped him sit up, startled at how light his body was.
“Liz?” He rasped, looking at her with wide, frightened eyes.
“Max, what are you doing here? Are you OK?”
“Please help me,” he whispered. Liz's heart broke at the feral desperation in his eyes. She nodded and rose to her knees, supporting his thin frame until he was on his feet.
“Let's get you home,” she said, taking each step slowly.
Something about the word 'home' startled him and he began hyperventilating, shaking his head violently. “NO! No, I can't go home. We need to leave, now.”
“What do you mean?” Liz yelled back over the thunder of the water against the pavement. “Why can't you go home?”
“They're going to kill me, Liz,” he pleaded. “Please, help me.”
Liz grasped his arms, shaking him gently. “Max, who is going to kill you? How can I help you? What's going on?”
He began crying, his whole body beginning to shake as soon as she touched him. “I-There's no time. I'm so scared, Liz.”
Liz's heart began racing. This was her chance. She had nothing to lose, and this boy had everything to gain. If she died in the process, then so be it. She would be dead soon anyway. “OK,” she said, steering him toward her car. His eyes met hers and the relief mixed in with the fear broke her heart all over again. She threw the forgotten Hospice leaflets onto the dashboard and helped him into the passenger's seat before racing around to the driver's side and climbing in. “Where should I go?”
“Anywhere but Roswell,” he said darkly, shivering violently. Liz reached into the backseat for her blanket and handed it to him. He wrapped it around his shoulders gratefully. She put the car in drive and turned in the opposite direction, heading back towards Arizona.
“Max, what am I saving you from?” Liz asked as her speed climbed dangerously high.
“The FBI.”
“What would the FBI want with a high school kid from Roswell?”
He bit his lip hard, so hard that Liz was afraid he'd draw blood. “I-I'm not from around here, Liz.”
Liz froze. “What do you mean? Where are you from?” Silently, he pointed a finger toward the roof of the car. Liz glanced over nervously. “Up north?” She asked, realizing exactly why the FBI wanted him. His finger lifted higher as more tears streamed down his face, mixing with the rainwater and the blood from a cut on his forehead. She gulped. “And the FBI wants you because...you're-you're not human.”
He nodded, tugging the blanket tighter around his shivering form. “If that scares you, you can just drop me off. I'd understand.”
Abandoning all logic, Liz shook her head. “No. No, I told you that I'd help you and I'm going to help you.” Her hands held the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. “I've got nothing else to lose,” she muttered.
He flashed her a look of thanks. She gave him a nervous smile and turned her sight back to the road. As she drove around a sharp corner, the papers she'd thrown onto the dashboard slid off into Max's lap. He picked up the pamphlet and his face turned even whiter. “You're going to die,” he said incredulously, new tears dripping down his face. “And I could have...”
Liz began to shake. It was one thing to tell yourself that you were going to die, or to hear doctors say it, but it was a whole other thing to here someone else say it. “I told you I'd help you. I've got nothing to lose.”
“I-” But he was cut off as he glanced over his shoulder, his breath hitching. “They're coming,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “Liz, I'm so sorry.”
Liz glanced in her rear view mirror and her heart began to pound in her chest. Headlights were approaching fast, and she was going over ninety. “What should I do?”
Max glanced around at the surroundings and then back at the car behind them. “Can this go any faster?” Liz shook her head. He took a deep breath and his face completely changed. He now looked strong and determined, and when he spoke again, his voice didn't shake. “Pull over. We have to run.”
Liz shut her lights off and pulled over, taking his offered hand. “It'll be OK,” he whispered, but his frightened eyes betrayed him. They took off into the desert, all too aware of the steadily approaching lights.
My summaries have always been weak in the past, so I'm glad that I finally managed to write a good one that could reel people in!
Well, thanks for reading and your great feedback! I love broken!Max too, but I can't ease his pain for awhile for the sake of entertaining the masses. I'm too evil.
But it is necessary. Just to warn you...there will be more in the future, but I'll make sure to mark it again so you'll be warned. Thanks for the FB 
Their journey will continue soon! This part is a little breather from the angst, so no more sad faces!
Hee! Man, you are always the first to comment! Are you up at all hours of the night like I am, or are you just in a different time zone?
But hey, good for you guys