….Sometimes
Rushing into General Hospital, the Commissioner was eager to locate someone with information on the whereabouts of Damian Spinelli. Mac Scorpio had barely been able to make it to the ambulance before they closed the doors and rushed off, carrying a very critical Spinelli. He'd been in bad shape when they found him about a mile and a half mile up river. Mac didn't waste time as he ran to his car, grabbing his cell phone as his foot slammed on the gas.
Finally making it to the nurse's station, he heard the news that he'd been praying wouldn't come. The tragic news startled Mac, who stumbled backwards a few steps and caught himself on the desk of the nurse's station. Spinelli had been pronounced while on route to the hospital, the nurse assuring him that they'd done absolutely everything they could have for him. Mac's first thought was of Maxie, in his haste, he'd phoned her and told her to meet him here thinking Spinelli was, at the very least, still going to be alive by the time they made it to the hospital.
"My God..." Was all he could think to say, just then, a pair of officers rounded the corner and walked over.
He informed the officers to be on alert for Maxie and to bring her to him immediately when she was located.
"You are not to inform her of the victim's condition. I'll be the one that tells my daughter" he spoke solemnly. Just then another officer on duty stepped off the freshly opened elevator and caught the last part of the Commissioners orders.
"Commissioner? I just came from the morgue and I'm sure I already saw your daughter down there." Mac felt a surge of something that felt a lot like anger mixed with dread.
"Who the hell told her already?" Mac thundered, already running to the elevator. He knew from past experience that handling grief was not Maxie's strong suit and the thought of her going through it alone made his chest hurt for her, doing the only thing he could think to do at the moment, he pushed himself to run faster. Finally reaching basement level, he made the long walk out of the elevator and to the end of the hall. Pushing the doors open he took a deep breath and walked in. He immediately spotted her, standing perfectly still, staring at the wall with all the metal doors used for housing the corpses. He stood there a moment, unable to find words suitable enough for the current situation, when suddenly he heard her speak.
"I can't bring myself to open the door." Her voice sounded as if those were the first words she'd uttered aloud in ages. With her back still to the entrance and Mac, she continued on, her voice cracking the more she endeavored to speak, "He's over there, in tha-….that drawer", she spoke knowingly. Licking her lower lip she tried her best to make her body do what was supposed to come naturally. Oxygen was in great demand and yet the air surrounding her seemed to be in short supply as she couldn't seem to catch her breath.
"And I can't even bring myself to take one stupid step. So simple, and yet it feels like the hardest thing in the world." Their breathing was the only sound made for the next few seconds as Maxie stayed focused on the metal doors and Mac kept his focus on her.
"Not so simple." Mac spoke aloud.
"No, not so simple. Not so simple at all. It's stupid, that's what it is. That's what all of this is, completely and utterly stupid." Maxie said sounding calmer than he thought she would, she hastily wiped at the pool of liquid that started to collect in the corner of her eye.
"Maxie….." Mac said sadly, "Come on, let's get you out of here."
"I had to see for myself." She continued, not hearing him.
"I thought you were at home. I never would have-" Mac used his hand to rub his forehead. "How did you get here so quickly?"
"I've been here, circling the halls. I couldn't bring myself to go home and I knew that when they found him, whether he was injured or…." She stopped not being able to finish the sentence, "I knew they'd come here. All roads lead to here." she spoke solemnly. "I'm sorry I lied to you. I just didn't want you to worry about me and I couldn't go home while he was out there, while I didn't know." She looked down and watched as her tiny hands dueled each other nervously.
"I was sitting in the lobby when I overheard some of the nurses. You can't really mishear the name Spinelli." She answered, a glimmer of a smile briefly appearing before quickly vanishing as if it'd never been there to begin with. Staring blankly ahead, Mac looked at the ground then back up again.
"I just keep going over it and over it in my head. He was right there, right in front of me. He looked so lost and I'll I wanted to do was help him but I screwed up. I froze, I tried talking to him but I should have done more."
"Don't do this Maxie." Mac spoke sadly.
"I was so close to him. He was right here." She said extending her arm out in front of her, "If I just would have grabbed him. If I just would've done something…" she finished emphasizing her last word.
"No, Maxie. Please don't do this to yourself. You can't blame yourself for what happened. You did all you possibly could for him."
"I just stood there, Mac! He looked so lost, so broken. The things those monsters did to his body…" fresh tears welled up in her eyes, "…the animals that did this to him should be the ones in here, not him."
"This can't be happening. There is just no way this is happening. I thought that after Georgie….." Maxie trailed off, her emotions strangling the thoughts from her being before she could successfully articulate them, Mac closed his eyes painfully, hearing Georgie's name and being in this room was almost too much to endure but he wasn't going to leave Maxie. "I can't go through this again. This has to be some kind of a mistake. I keep waiting for him to walk through that door and laugh at me for thinking such a ridiculous possibility could ever be true. Because there is just no way he's in there, right?" Maxie turned to Mac with a look of pleading desperation. "Right?" she finished on a whisper.
"Maxie, honey" Mac approached the topic slowly, weary of her response, "You'll never know how sorry I am that you've lost someone else you care about and that you found out like this. I know this is hard to accept but in time it will get easier. I promise you that. But one thing's for sure, it's not going to get that way staying in here. Come on, let's get out of here and I'll take you back to the house."
"This isn't right. This doesn't feel right, any of it. I mean who is this Petrov guy? It's like he just appeared out of nowhere. Why would he do this to Spinelli? This doesn't make any sense."
"I don't know, sweetheart. But I promise you I will find out." He spoke with such seriousness that she believed he would.
"Listen, sweetheart, I don't think there is an exact way you're supposed to feel, you just let yourself feel what you're going to feel. I know it's going to take some time but you'll get through this. We'll get through this together. You are not alone, Maxie. I'm here for you and that's never going to change." Mac said tears welling up in his eyes.
"He was meant for so much more than this, definitely more than he got. More than I ever gave him." She finished with a self-deprecating half laugh. "This can't be how it ends for him. This can't be it. We never got to-…" she breaks off wiping at her tears. "We never will." The statement brought a fresh batch of tears to the surface, "I don't know what to do with that." She said in a tiny voice.
"I never told him how much I love him." Mac stood there at a loss for words. Wishing there was something he could do for her but knowing there was nothing.
"I never gave him credit for how brave he was because he was always so much braver than anybody ever knew. He saw through me, to who I really was, he saw me. A fact which absolutely terrified me because knowing me it was only a matter of time before I did something to completely screw it up and the thought of not having him in my life…it was just too much to risk." Mac opened his mouth to speak but was cut off.
"But Spinelli was brave. He was willing to risk it. The inevitable pain that comes with giving yourself to someone else, especially someone like me…"she flashed a sad smile, "…even after everything I've done, after finding out all the horrible things I've been capable of, he told me he loved me…" she stopped and tried to fight against the overwhelming hurt that had just boiled to the surface, "…and you know what I did?" She was breaking right in front of his very eyes and all he could do was let her.
"I told him to stop. I told him it would ruin everything because I ruin everything." She was speaking with such an anguished look of disgust on her face, as if the knowledge of how she'd reacted was too horrific to even speak about. "I told him I didn't love him. Can you believe that?" She wiped at her nose, which had taken on a deep pink hue. "He had the sweetest look in his eyes and somewhere inside of me I knew that I loved him, I knew…" she said angrily tearing herself apart, "… but you know me, can't make anything easy." She let the tears slip past her barriers.
"I lied to him. The last thing I ever said to him was a lie." She let the thought sink in and looked up with the purest form of panic in her eyes. "What have I done? This-…all of this is my fault. If I could have just been honest with him, with myself, he'd still be here." She finished the flood gates giving way.
"I don't know if I can do this."
"You don't have to, not right now." Maxie looked up narrowing her eyes on Mac as he finished speaking.
"I don't have to, Mac?" she spoke sarcastically as if a light bulb just went off in her mind, "You're right. You're exactly right. Just like I don't have to care that he's over there on some stupid pull out tray, I don't have to give a damn about tomorrow and the next day or the days after where I have to wake up to a world that he doesn't exist in anymore. I mean, how great is that? I don't have to do any of those things. Isn't that just the most fantastic thing you've ever heard?" She spoke harshly, emphasizing her 'I's'. She didn't mean to unleash her anger on him but it was beyond her control. Her anger was devouring her whole.
Mac made a move to step towards her but she shook her head suspending his movements and whispered "I let myself love him and now he's gone. How could I be so stupid? I was fine before he came along. I tried so hard not to feel anything, I really tried. " Maxie's expression played between anger and sadness as she continued, "I tried to stop, I didn't want to love him, I didn't want to love anyone. I know I'm too messed up for that. I get that, I've always gotten that. But I couldn't shake him, it didn't matter how hard I tried. He was always there when I needed him. And what did I do when he needed me? I let him jump off a damn bridge." Mac didn't say anything, realizing that all she needed right now was to be listened to.
"Do you….do you think this happened because of me?" Maxie said hesitantly, looking away in shame, the tears slowly beginning to overwhelm her vision. She fiercely wiped at the offending liquid that did nothing but show her weakness. "It's me..." she said her head shaking slowing, as if nodding in agreement, "…it's me." She spoke so softly, Mac wasn't positive she'd actually said anything at all.
"No, Maxie. This is not your fault. You couldn't have known this would happen, no one could."
"Yeah, and yet every time someone has needed me in return, what have I done? Nothing, I'm nowhere to be found. Because as long as I'm getting what I want, what does anything else matter? When Georgie or Coop or Jesse needed me, I let them all down. And now Spinelli…" Maxie turned her attention back to the stainless steel doors.
"He's really gone, isn't he?" Maxie soft voice was barely audible. Mac eyed her sadly, "Yes, he is." He saw her shoulders shake and wished he could take it back, that somehow it weren't true. The room lay silent for what seemed like an eternity before either spoke.
"You know, this is the second time I've been in here with him. Spinelli and I came down here once when we were tracking Devlin." Mac was suddenly startled at the sound of Maxie's laughter. "Spinelli completely passed out on me…." Her laugh soon turned solemn as she continued, "….and I sat there with his head in my lap and was just stroking my hand through his hair, looking at him" Maxie had a faraway look on her face as her hand slowly began to mimic her movements from that day, "I think that was one of the first times I felt it. Something about that moment, I can't explain it, I just knew." Mac sent her a gentle smile in understanding.
"So if you knew back then, what stopped you from telling him?" Maxie smiled sadly and took a second before she spoke.
"Turns out, there is quite a bit of distance between my heart and my head, plenty of room for baggage between here and there." Seeing that Maxie had finally let her guard down Mac closed the gap between them. He gently touched her shoulder and it was all she could do to not collapse into his arms. A fresh batch of tears pooled in her eyes as she spoke, "What am I going to do without him?"
"Maxie…" Spinelli's husky whisper came between their torrid kisses. Maxie's hands came up to Spinelli's face and gently pushed him away and she struggled to gain control of her breathing. Their foreheads softly collided as they stayed entwined. Spinelli gently reached up between them and moved the hair from her face. Their eyes locked on each other, they remained this way for some time, both lost in the eyes of the other. Then, suddenly, Maxie released her embrace and took a few steps back. Without word she turned around and started running through the park, away from Spinelli. Watching her in confusion it took him a moment to process what had just transpired, without another thought he quickly took off after her, unaware of what had caused her hasty retreat.
Spinelli was running at full speed and still he was unable to catch her. Finally bursting free from the park he caught a glimpse of her as she crossed the street. Taking his opportunity to catch her off guard he doubled his speed and caught her as she was stepping onto the sidewalk.
"Maximista, what happened? Why did you run?" Spinelli spoke between intakes of air.
"Spinelli, everything's fine. I'm going home. I'll talk to you tomorrow." Maxie spoke quickly barely even looking in Spin's direction.
"Oh, okay. So it's not about that incredibly passionate kiss we just shared?" Spinelli said looking at her, frustration evident on his face.
"Spinelli…" Maxie was cut off as Spinelli suddenly grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder and walked the few feet to the entrance of the building where he lived.
"Spinelli! What are you doing? Put me down!" Maxie said surprise obvious in her tone. Spinelli nodded at the doorman as he entered the lobby.
"Hey, Kevin. Crazy weather we're having tonight."He said as he strolled to the elevator.
"Mr. Spinelli…" he nodded back, "ye-ah…yeah, yes it is."The doorman answered looking on in confusion.
"I'm serious, Spinelli. Let me go." Maxie tried again.
"Nope, I'm afraid I can't do that, Maxie. We are going to talk about this and we are going to talk about it right now." Spinelli said stepping into the elevator and pressing the button for the penthouse.
"You can put me down at any time, Spinelli." Maxie said her anger beginning to show in her tone.
"Not until we are in the penthouse. You can't be trusted." Spinelli said matter of factly.
"You have got to be kidding me. You are way out of line here, Spinelli." Maxie said trying to wiggle free of his grasp.
"Be glad I don't have handcuffs." Spinelli said with a smirk, opening the door to the penthouse he stepped inside and set her down.
"Do you think this is funny? Who the hell do you think you are? Since when do you go around man handling women? Clearly you've spent too much time with Jason." Maxie said tearing off Spinelli's coat and throwing it at him. Spinelli caught the jacket without missing a beat and gently hung it over the back of the desk chair.
"Man handling? So you admit that I'm a man." Spinelli said with a smile, one that Maxie was trying very hard not to find sexy.
"Spinelli, what's going on? Why are you acting like this?" Maxie said confused as to why she was feeling nervous or why her stomach was doing flip flops.
"God, Maxie! Can't you see it? Can-can't you feel it? Feel me?" Spinelli said as he grabbed her arms with such desperation he thought he might break then and there. His eyes were dark and stormy much like the weather outside. They had come to the penthouse hoping to escape the storm only to find a fiercer one waiting just inside.
"I've been walking around for months now in this Maxie induced stupor and you..." he trailed off with a slight self deprecating chuckle, one that he had come to know as the sound of his heart breaking…
Walking into Kelly's Lulu spotted Maxie and joined her at her table, snapping her back to reality.
"Hi, Max. Coffee for your thoughts?" Lulu questioned, simultaneously offering her a cup.
"Oh, hey, Lu. Thanks. I owe you one." Maxie said unenthusiastically.
"That kind of morning, huh? Looks like I should have brought you a larger dose." Lulu said taking a seat, directly in front of her one time enemy turned friend, sliding the coffee her way. As if on cue, Mike walked to the front of the counter as Lulu turned around in her chair and got his attention.
"Hey, Mike? Turns out we are going to need the whole pot." Lulu smiled as Mike nodded in understanding.
"So what's up? Pull another all-nighter for Kate? You could have called me, I know how Kate can get carried away." Lulu said talking a sip of her hot coffee. When Maxie didn't answer right away, Lulu spoke up again.
"Oh, I see…" Lulu said staring at her friend. Still Maxie made no effort to speak instead she just stared at her coffee, gently moving it from side to side. "…one of those nights." Lulu said in a more subdued tone.
"Last night I went out to pick up some dinner and when I was ordering I must have absent mindedly asked for an orange soda." Maxie mouth curved into the slightest of smiles before vanishing, "When I dropped it, it got all over my new Manolo's and what's worse is I just didn't care." Maxie spoke with a sad smile, summoning all her strength not to break down and cry but her lip betrayed her and started to tremble.
"I don't even drink soda. You'd think that after all this time it'd be easier, you know?" Lulu eyed her friend sadly.
"It was just one set back. It'll pass and you'll keep moving forward." Lulu tried to reassure her.
"I've been walking around in a daze ever since, I don't really even know how I ended up here." Maxie said looking at Lulu for the first time, trying her best to keep her tears at bay.
"It takes time, Maxie. No one knows how long but one day you'll wake up and realize that it doesn't hurt so much. I promise you, it won't always be this hard." Maxie started shaking her head in disagreement.
"I don't know that I believe that anymore. It's something I can't help, I don't know if it will ever get easier. It's like you can go all this time and not think about it but then out of nowhere you do…and you're right back there. I think I'm finally getting somewhere and then I glance at that table in the corner and remember how sweet he was when we were tracking the TMK, or when the heel of my shoe gets stuck in that steel street grate on Main and I remember when we were trapped in that storm drain together…everything reminds me of him and it's like I'm right back there on that bridge. Anything short of him coming back, well, then yeah, it's just too hard to face."
"You can't even bring yourself to say his name anymore, Maxie. I remember when you couldn't stop saying his name and I know that you think that if you pretend like he never existed it would make things easier, but that's not how it works. You can't run from it Maxie, that's just not the way it works. ." Maxie simply flashed her a toothy grin.
"You don't think I know that, Lulu?" Maxie said her name with malicious intent. "You don't think I know he's gone? That he's never coming back? I long for the day, for the minute, the instant when I don't know that. I keep trying to imagine him behind some computer screen on some remote beach somewhere, anywhere really, just living his life. Because only when I do that does it feel like maybe I stand a fighting chance at living some semblance of a normal life, one that isn't spent dwelling in regret, living out different versions of the past. Praying that one of those fairy tale times that things will change and he'll be here again." Maxie got up from her seat and turned to stare out the window.
"But he is gone, Maxie-" Lulu tried to interject.
"Gee thanks, Lulu. I had no idea." At that Maxie spun around, tears defiantly running down her face. She was shaky as she found it incredibly hard to think about Spinelli let alone talk about him. How could Lulu possibly understand that for her denial was a blessed getaway from the harsh reality that was now her life? She'd had him. The person that made love and happiness exist for her. He was the one thing that brought it all together, it was all too clear now that she was left with a life without him. A life that would be spent in regret, regret that she'd been too scared to follow her heart. To grab onto him for dear life and show him that he made her life worth living. That he was all she would ever need. Words that she now choked on, these words, these simple syllables that once held so much promise were now left to seep in and devastate.
"Maxie, I'm sorry. You know I am and if there was anything I could do to make this better for you, if I could bring Spinelli back, you know I would. But you can't expect me to watch you do this to yourself. You're my best friend and I care about you, I can't be expected to sit by and just watch as you tear yourself apart. Is this really what you want? I can't believe that this is it, that this is how you want your life to be. What happened to the girl who was going to take the fashion world by storm? Spinelli wouldn't want this for you. It's like you've been in the middle of breaking for over a year now and I just can't bear to watch it any longer."
Maxie turned slowly on her heel, silently seething with unresolved anger. Anger for the love that was lost to her, anger for a best friend who was finding it harder to stay silent under the weight of her growing dysfunction. It took her a moment to capture her stampeding thoughts.
"Yes, Lulu, yes. This is it. Standing by be. That is what this is. I'm breaking? Been in the middle of breaking for over a year now? Maybe you haven't been looking close enough, I'm broken, Lulu. I snapped in half the moment Spinelli didn't make it out of that damn river. And if this is what I need, if this is what it takes for me to just keep taking that next breath, if I have to baby step the rest of my life and still end up in the same damn place then that is what I need you to let me do. Loving Spinelli came as just as much a surprise to me as it did to anyone. You're my best friend, the only one I've got left, and…I don't know that I can do this without you." Maxie finished as tears over took her eyes. Lulu looked at her wilted friend in front of her and immediately regretted pushing her so hard. A tear slipped down her cheek as she got up from her seat and crossed the room and wrapped, an at first unwilling Maxie, in her arms.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have pushed you. I know you are doing your best. It's going to be okay." Lulu spoke hugging her friend a little tighter. "You don't have to defend yourself to me and I shouldn't have tried to make you. You'll get there in your own time, Maxie. I promise it won't always hurt this much."After a while, Maxie gently eased out of the hug and started to speak.
"I get it. Trust me, Lulu, I get it. He's gone and I've accepted that." Lulu gave Maxie a look. "I have." Maxie countered. "I've moved on and to that end, I actually have a date tonight." She said her voice rising in a semi excited fashion. Lulu pulled back to look her in the eyes and gave a little laugh.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll believe that when I see it." Lulu said giving her a smile.
"I thought I saw you again last night." Maxie spoke into the still night air. She'd meant to drive to the restaurant where she was meeting her date but she'd somehow ended up here, her cold hands resting against the same spot where he last stood. She struggled with herself to keep from scanning the area for him like she'd done on so many of her previous nights spent here. Somewhere inside of her she knew that he wasn't going to be there but in the time since he'd been gone she'd been desperate to feel a connection to him again. And out of her desperation she'd clung to this spot on the bridge, the last place she saw him, the last place they were together.
"Only this time it made sense, which is to say it could have been you. It wasn't at some fashion conference or in my kitchen in the middle of one of my sleepless nights but on the streets of Port Charles. I saw you and then you were gone, I tried to run after you but you disappeared in to the crowd." Maxie kept looking straight ahead, her knuckles turning white from the tight grip she had on the railing.
"I have dreams about you. I fall asleep and I dream that you come and rescue me from whatever trouble I've managed to get myself into, whether it's serious and life threatening or just some malfunction at Crimson. Sometimes it's the slightest of things, we bump into each other on the street or we're at Kelly's and I'm looking through the latest copy of Vanity Fair and you're on your computer but most of the time I dream about the little things. Your arms around me, holding me, making me feel safe. Most of the time we're dancing or we're making dinner, even grocery shopping, most of the time we aren't doing anything spectacular, or even dream worthy, it's just you and me. That's the only constant it's always you and me. That's how it was always supposed to be. I get so mad thinking about all the time we lost, all that time I wasted because I couldn't stop letting my fears control me. Sometimes it's a whole lifetime in a dream. An-and…and I hate that that's what you've become, a compilation of memories….the past."
"I sit here and envision that night and I imagine you being found. You're all right and you run to me and I run to you because we can't bear to be apart for even a second longer. We hold each other and I press my head against your chest and I can feel the beating of your heat against my cheek, the heart that belongs to me."
"And I know that's crazy, I know it is. I spend my time here hoping against hope that one of these nights you'll just magically appear."Maxie said tears beginning to form.
"But what's crazier? That you'll show up? Or that I've been waiting for you to? Maxie spoke her eyes taking on a far-away look.
!*!*!*!*Somewhere on the outside of town*!*!*!*!*!
"So, give it to me straight, doc, where we at?" the younger gentleman asked the salt and peppered haired older gentleman. Taking off his glasses, he used his hand to rub the bridge of his nose.
"As I told you before, the odds that this boy will make a full recovery are not good. Not putting into context the damage that was done to his body before he went in the water, taking into account the time he spent in that cold water, his brain deprived of oxygen for God knows how long….it's going to take a miracle for this kid to open his eyes again." He finished lighting his cigarette with a match.
"I'm confused…isn't that what I pay you for, miracle man?" The younger man said coming to stand next to him but facing the opposite direction. The older of the two laughed and flicked the burnt match into the trash can.
"I'll do the best that your money can buy." The older man smirked as he looked at the younger man.
The younger man reached for the door and opened it. Turning back, he spoke, "The best that the Petrov money can buy. My father wanted this man for a reason. And I've got to say, I don't see the family resemblance." The younger man laughed as he was about to walk out of the room. The bandages that covered Spinelli's face masked his features but soon enough, the family resemblance would be impossible to ignore.
"Where are you going? This is serious work we are undertaking here."
"You just make sure he stays alive. I'll be back soon enough. I've got a date tonight."
