Chapter 7

Max comes out of the Hospital room and rounds the corner to the nurse's station.

He inquires of the person in that room, is it really her? They confirm her in that room as Sophia Giovanni-Stephenson, it's her, but where is she?! He makes his way back, smoothing his shirt down and pushing his hair back all the while fidgeting with the bouquet of flowers he brought, when he sees a likeness in a woman from a far.

Her eyes are dark, like coal and her hair is wavy and long, moving across the middle of her back. Her lips were not as cherry as he remembered nor was her smile where it was supposed to be. It was as if he stepped into a time machine and was standing before her so long ago at the pub where she worked. She stood there, looking in his eyes afresh with a fiery indignation, then, her facial expression softened at his stance, for she was humbled at looking in the eyes that beheld her, humbled looking on the face who envisioned seeing her a million times a day, and more, since all of this had taken place. ...humbled that he had come.

Max takes a step, and he is back in the hospital with the intercom up a head and beeps from various machines in rooms through out the floor. She was still as beautiful as he remembered her with her hair flowing loosely around her face, however, she looked tired and feeble. He was certain it was her, his heart pulled and tugged all around in his chest, telling him it was.

As he approached, the nurse helping her lets him take over her place pulling the IV machine considering him some type of family or friend.

"Sophia?" He called wracked full of nerves. When she looks up in to his eyes, its regret he sees, and not the happiness he envisioned. Regret and then repentance is what he sees in her eyes, and he as well, offers the same.

"Max…" she says with regards to him holding the IV machine, "Thank you."

Max wasn't sure what to do, whether to hug or not, but she moves in for a hug and it wasn't until flower petals flow and fall from their embrace did he notice to give her the flowers. "Oh! These are for you." She giggles gently, remembering how chivalrous he was. He was easy to forgive, she thought.

Quietly, they walk toward her room door, saying nothing but taking a quick glance toward the other as if to say something. It was inevitable the words between them, so before they dug in, it was complacency that held them at the place they were now.

Once in her room, he helps her into the hospital bed where she sighs, closes her eyes and begins. "Max-"

"Sophia, I-" They both begin, but it's he who allows her confessions.

"Why did you never come for me Max?" A sniffle escapes her throat and tears begin to well up. Were they the words she waited to tell him this whole time? Perhaps, they were the only words she could think of?

In his defense, he began, "I looked for you for months. I went to Italy for 5 years straight- and never found you…." His eyes gave a distant look, "I guess your pop was right." In his voice was the absence of the love she once knew. Robust and strong was his love for her, but she could tell that some where, maybe in his search for her, he'd lost that love, and she as well.

"Papa?" Her voice quickened, "What do you mean?!" Max went on to tell her of the day he came back, and the words her papa said. How he tried to talk to her brother and mother, at the grocery and at various places, but they would not tell him where she was. When he had gone to Italy, he had not even a photograph of her and she fit the description of many of the local girls there. How he wore his engagement ring until he gave up looking.

"…engagement ring?.." the words fell off her lips as a ghost floating in search of a home. All of this time, she thought he had left her where she was, with child and with out a hope. "I should thank you Max." Sophia says with an Italian accent.

Max stops looking at his abandoned ring finger long enough to look up at her, "Thank me?!...I don't understand."

"I've been so mad at you," she confesses, "that I made YOU the reason to succeed. I thought you had abandoned me because when I asked mama and papa if you had come back, they said you never came back for me...my brother Antonio passed away in a car accident before I could make him confess..." Now it was she who went back in time with a distant look, "..they died withholding the truth from me?...God, rest their souls..."

Max felt vigilant to come to their defense, "Perhaps they were only doing what they thought was right?"

Sophia looked at him with longing, "deny me of my deepest love?" Max ears began to ring, so it was true. She had loved him as well, and for this love, they paid the highest price.

"Sophia, I loved you too. Ya gotta know that." The gruffness in his voice tells her this is difficult for him, and the word loved was out there like a cliff, something to either hang on or throw yourself from.

Sophia sofly nods, "yah, yes." Neither of them the words to say.

"I looked for you for so long, Sophia!" Max was over come with grief and stopped talking from the lump growing in his throat.

Sophia was softly crying to herself, "I thought you were dead...I considered you dead...I wanted you dead...I wanted you to rescue me..."

"I know, I know. If I could have, I would have...you gotta know this." Tenderly and gingerly, she reaches up and touches his face. Something she had only dreamed of doing but wasn't sure why she was doing it.

He notices the ring finger that should have beheld his ring was now taken by another. He searches her eyes, and she smiles. "His name is Jim Stephenson." With his eyes, he questions her. She nods, "Yes, He's wonderful." Was it sadness she saw when he sat in the chair next to the bed? Surely, this was difficult for him too.

"I met Kristina." And finally, the subject at hand. "She has your fire."

"She has your bull headed-ness!" she adds. They both laugh, wondering how they came to this fork in the road.

"Why didn't you tell her about me?"

Max had asked the question she wasn't sure she could answer, but she tries, "I met Jim before she was born, he and I married and decided to never tell her. My attempts at finding you went unanswered. Then, it wasn't until this point..." her voice trails off thinking of her obscure situation. "I never would have dreamed..."

"No one would have, Sophia."

Sophia closes her eyes for the moment and takes in his voice saying her name. She tried to envision the love she had for him to build on something, strong but she could find none. She loved Jim with her every fiber of her being, and Max had only become a dream to her...

Sensing a change in her, Max goes on. "She followed me into a store the other day. She's a strong one, that one."

Sophia smiles, "She is smart like you Maxie." Maxie...he snaps his head toward her remembering her pet name for him, but the nostalgia makes her correct her words, "..Max...And she loves numbers..just like you. I couldn't get rid of you all together."

They laugh together, feeling more comfortable with each other. How could one blame the other when the situation was out of their hands from the beginning. Was it some sick joke of the God's that their fate would end as differently as it did?

"...This was all meant to be Maxie. She is what we are seperately, and what we are together. She makes up the best parts of us. The other part is her father Jim..."

Her father.

Max didn't know what to call himself to her. But Sophia wanted to address that issue as well, "We might as well talk about it. YOU are her father Max. But, Jim raised her and fathered her since before her birth." Max had no right to want to be in the picture but he wasn't going to let her go now that he found her, he wasn't that type of man.

"You know I won't just wave good bye, Sophie. That's not my style."

Sophia knew it too, "No, it is not is it Maxie?"

"Her first impression of me, sorry to say, isn't exactly the one I would have liked to have given my daughter. She probably thinks I'm some old guy digging after young chicks." Which wasn't too far from the truth, but it gave him the willies to think about it regarding her. "Think she'd want to meet me, again?"

She doesn't think of her self only his words, "I'm not sure what she's bound to do...she hasn't come to see me in 3 days since hearing the news. Everyday has been touch and go with the surgery, and she still hasn't returned. Her father tells me she hasn't shown up at home the times he's been there, and no messages either." Sophia's voice trails off, her voice becomes stiff, "and I don't know what I will do should she not forgive me Maxie!" her voice deeps and the Italian accent shows up, right on time with her emotions, threatening to break her.

Max goes to her bedside, "She'll come around. If I know you, and you say this Stephenson guy is good, she's got good up bringing." It was killing him knowing he hadn't been apart of it, knowing he could have made a good father...no, a great father. "She'll come around little Sophia." Those words stung her hard, reminding of her of a time she was free, yet bound she was. And she let go of the dam she tried to supress.

In his arms she pours her heart out, for all the nights she cried alone with a child growing in her belly. For the grand parents her baby never really knew. For the lies her parents told her to keep her safe from the likes of Max. And for Kristina, finding out, only to turn her back, when she needed her most. It all came crashing down on Sophia. She sobbed in Max's arms, wishing none of this were happening. "Max, find her for me...make it right, Maxie...bring her to me...Max." With barely a whisper left, Sophia falls into blackness in the confines of Max's arms. He lays her back on the bed and screams for a nurse...

Jonathan and Jennifer find their friend in the waiting room, just as he instructed them. He had found Sophia after all of this time, but still no sign of Kristina. They see him, disheveled and hurting. A Max they were not accustomed in finding. Hugging him, they arm him with their support, which brings color back into his face. "Are you a sight for sore eyes...I came here, and wanted to talk to her, but she passed out, and she told me everything.." Max was not making sense to them, however, intently they offered their shoulder, and their arms. Touching his arm to help him go on. "...and that's when she passed out, she told me to find her."

Jennifer was in tears at hearing Max so torn, however strong she was, and for his sake, she remained calm enough to offer assistance, "Max, Stanely Friesen is contacting her father, we may have found her."

Just then Doctor Thadmor comes in the waiting area, "Are you friends of Sophia Stephenson?" they nod, but it was Max who broke the silent communication, "I'm the father of her child Kristina."

"Hello, I'm sorry to inform you, but we had to take Sophia back into an emergency surgery. She knew this was coming, but her white blood cells never reached the point we needed them to, infact," the doctor goes on, visibly concerned for the family, chosing his words impeccably, "they began to decline leaving us no choice but to proceed with the surgery at the levels they were at. Please contact Kristina and Mr. Stephenson and ask them to come right away."

"Doc, we'd love to, but we can't get in touch with either of them!"

"See the nurses station, I will give them authority to release the information on my way into surgery, but sir."

"Max."

"Max. Find them quickly as you can, she's very weak." With that, the doctor nods in understanding to them all that this could be too much for Sophia, and she might not make it through.

As the doctor walks away, Max yells back, "You have my word." A quick nod from Doctor Thadmor tells him he leaves it in Max's hands.

With information in hand, Max makes his way over to the Stephenson home and the Harts to Kristina's.