In response to a bitesizebones prompt: "While on the run, Christine becomes extremely ill. Brennan must decide whether to seek medical attention for her daughter, even if it means risking arrest," which I played with pretty loosely.
In the end Max makes the decision for her. He sends her to the drugstore for another bottle of children's Tylenol, claiming the first bottle took a spill down the sink while he was administering Christine's last dose. When she returns, grape-flavored cure-all in hand, he and Christine will be gone, headed back to Washington and Christine's pediatrician and more importantly, Booth. Their motel room will be silent, Christine's meager belongings missing and Tempe's own suitcase packed in the middle of the bed. A one-way train ticket dated for that afternoon is pinned on top, sending her in the opposite direction of her family.
Max had seen it in her eyes clearly that morning; his daughter was getting ready to surrender.
Christine had been battling a double ear infection for days, and while the amoxicillin from a local hole-in-the-wall clinic was doing its job, the baby was just taking too long to bounce back. The fever remained: too low to consider emergency room worthy, too high and persistent for her mother to relax. While the baby had been happy and bubbly and clearly unaware of the grim situation for the first few weeks of the summer, the last few had seen her become irritable and cranky. His own daughter, in true Brennan fashion, would never voice her concerns so obviously, but Max could see the mounting distress that bringing Christine on this journey was not really in the best interest of the child but instead dangerous and selfish. Max had hoped that her panic would eventually fade away as new-mom, first time sick baby jitters. But when Christine's demeanor did not improve, neither did her mother's.
In the wee hours of this morning, from the discomfort of his own motel bed, he had heard her soft murmurs to the baby as she tried to rock her back to sleep in an uncomfortable motel bed. She was apologizing for not being able to sooth her in the way she knew Booth would have, for having left her favorite blanket behind and for forcing her to sleep in a portable crib instead of her own at home. He could hear the tears in her voice as her contrition continued, listing all of the ways she feared her fugitive status was harming her child and promising to find a way to fix it.
He could hear the defeat in her voice for the first time in all the weeks they have been on the road, and realized that the sick baby would be her greatest weakness, the one thing that would send her back to Washington and back into Pelant's web in a heartbeat. The need to protect her daughter would trump her own safety. But, this was Max Brennan. While he felt the same the same duty to his granddaughter, he must also protect his own daughter. (And it is possible that a psychologist might suggest that he suffers his own guilt about not being able to save his own sick Christine while on the run so many years ago.)
So he'll take Christine home, to Booth, to her own bed and physician so she can heal and once against be that bubbly happy little baby she deserves to be. He'll soothe his daughter's guilt and fear, let the FBI arrest him once again, and hopefully buy his daughter and her team just a little more time to clean up this mess, once and for all.
