Max

I don't know why I can't look away. Stop myself from gazing at her lips instead of her eyes. Watching the way they pucker and pout to form those sophisticated medical words that we all initially stumbled over in medical school, but finally mastered by residency. The bronze gloss slicked across them stealing my focus more often than not.

She's my doctor. I'm her boss. I'm a married man. Kind of. With Georgia leaving me, absconding away to Connecticut with our baby, I have no way of knowing where our relationship stands. And now my heart wanders, wonders, rapidly bruising an anxious rhythm against my chest…for another. A woman who is not my wife.

Her dark eyebrows raise high on her forehead, signaling that she's waiting for some verbal response from me. "Did you hear what I said, Max?"

"Huh? Yeah. Yes, I did."

"Remission. For now. That's good news."

"Yes, Helen, I know that."

"Then why aren't you smiling?"

Inching my arms from the sleeves, I toss my white coat across my desk, and I wearily drop on to the couch behind me and lean back, my arms crossing my chest. The stress of the day is still heavy in the strain of my muscles, my bones. But her question, posed in that sardonic, British lilt of hers, instantly lightens the weight of everything. Catching the gaze of her dark amber eyes dancing over my face, a slight frown dipping her full lips, I tilt my head a little. "Am I not smiling enough for you, doctor?" I ask, grinning now, wide, wanting to please her for some irrational reason, to obey her obvious desire for a smile. From me.

Pulling her head back a little, fighting a grin of her own, she points her index finger my way, zeroing in on the tilt of my lips. "Well now you are positively grinning. Cheshire Cat has nothing on you, eh?"

Dropping my head bashfully, then raising my eyes back to hers, I can feel a blush coming on as her eyes travel the planes of my face again, studying me. Looking for something that I hope she finds pleasing. Lasering in on my lips. "Just giving you what you want. Er- asked me for." I stutter, keeping my head angled slightly away as I rub my hand nervously across my neck. Could I be any more transparent? I assume it's obvious that my affection for her lives and breathes in my every moment with her. Why should I even attempt to conceal it any longer?

"Max, it's been a long time since I've seen you smile. Genuinely smile. A smile just for you. The chemo, the radiation, your personal trials-"

"You can say it, Helen. My wife leaving me."

"It's just good to see you happy, like you were when your baby was born. You deserve that kind of joy, simply for what you mean to everyone you've impacted. You change so many lives for the good. I'm- I'm just glad I could help put that smile there." She advances on me. Two short strides bringing her to standing in between my wide stretched legs. Helen gestures to my lips again, one red tipped, manicured finger, just a hair's breadth away from me being able to kiss it. Suck it gently into my mouth. The thought ambles in the forefront of my brain before I get a chance to tuck it away with the rest of my secretly held desires for her.

This time is different though. Something unnamable between Helen and I has changed. After the many early mornings and late nights of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Of her bringing me back to my empty apartment, to feed me, care for me, make sure I am resting before I charge back to the hospital to change the world. Unable to even change the trajectory of my hopelessly broken marriage. There were so many late nights spent with me witnessing her triumphant return of Helen's emotional investment, and relentless drive back to the profession we both love, that bolsters the brilliance of her mind, and the earnestness of her will to make a difference. Countless days have passed with me listening to the sadness lacing her soft voice as she ruminates about the lack of love in her life, and her dwindling prospects for parenthood. Together we have unwittingly knitted from the remnants of our past lives, a new one together, interwoven with pieces of heartbreak and latent desire for more. For a connection.

I cannot discount that I owe my recovery and my health to this woman, who has asked for nothing in return, no promises I cannot fulfill, no broken vows of forever. No dissatisfied grimaces followed by a retreat to the wealthiest of Connecticut's gated enclaves. With Helen, there has only been the simplicity of an ear to listen, and a broken body that I allow her to heal. Perhaps in this moment, when the air is charged, positively crackling with this unacknowledged energy arching between us, we can both finally admit that this unspoken thing simmering between us, is simply everything.

It's been there for over a year now. Since I walked through the door, full of hubris, and armed with an unflinching desire to fix things. Something. Myself even. Over time maybe even her. The slight melancholy that always swims in the veins, dragging down the spirit found underneath the silky covering of her mocha tinged skin, urging me to make right whatever it is that rides her, bars her from joy. I know what it is. What I can do. What I can give her. Would I dare? Would she ever accept that it doesn't come from the same place my work here at the hospital does? That it's not conditioned by my oath to do no harm, to treat and care for the sick. This desire that pools in my heart for Helen is more urgent than anything I've ever felt. Even my feelings for Georgia.

Leaning up, straightening my back, I'm brushing my thumb across the apple of her cheek, and down, a feathery graze over her lips and chin. "Helen?"

Slowly, almost as though she's in pain, she drops her eyelids, the lashes delicately resting, sweeping in a gentle blink the tears that leak in tiny pulses down from her eyes. "Max?"

"I can make you happy too. If you let me."

"Max…"

"If you let me, I would make us both happy. We can make each other that way."

"You're not ready. Take this gift of remission first. Use it to fix what's already broken."

"I am. I'm ready for this, for you. For remission. To move on. To be happy again. For real this time. If you will let me. You and I are what's broken."

Helen doesn't speak. She doesn't have to. With slender, trembling fingers she reaches for me. It's not foreign to me. Her touch is welcoming, emitting a warmth that has comforted me as she has helped to treat my cancer over the last year. There is a tentative hesitance in the way her skin grazes mine. Haltingly approaching my cheeks as though to cup them, then dashing away, unsure of herself. But I'm not unsure. I've thought of this many days, many nights. Sometimes of nothing else as our friendship has blossomed over the last year. As she watched on as Georgia delivered my child, then summarily snatched her away from me, relegating me to an every other weekend parent.

Helen was there when the dean of the hospital finally, grudgingly, but with a modicum of pride, admitted that the changes I have made here at New Amsterdam have worked. Have positively altered the trajectory of the lives we touch, our own getting better, more fulfilled in correlation. So here we are in my office now, prepared to jump into the abyss of what this could mean for us. How this choice as well, might simply change everything.

Something in me wants to push her to choose me. To move aside the cloud of doubt that hides her feelings from me, to forge ahead and claim her. To pull her smaller form down onto mine, and shield her from her uncertainty. Cloak her in the absolute rightness of us. But I don't.

She's like a deer, a bit skittish. Unsteady even. A colt on new legs, but somewhat eager to rush ahead into the unknown. Instead I turn my head into her restless palm that hovers against my feverish skin, and allow my lips to settle there, placing delicate, encouraging pecks along the life lines that traverse her skin.

"Max, I do want…that."

"Me too, Helen. Me too."