Season 1: Max

1. How it All Started

I never wanted to feel this way about Georgia. I love her with everything I have. She's my wife, my lover, and the future mother of my child, but unfortunately, I don't think she's ever truly had my whole heart and soul.

Maybe she sees right through me. Maybe that's why she left me. She never seemed to come first.

Put aside my stupidly trying to hide a whole job from her, but it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that she must think that nothing she could do is ever really enough. She is beautiful, smart, and talented. Any man would envy my position in her life. Hell, I envy the image we portray when we're together. I just wish reality matched the facade.

When she moved out and it didn't change my plans, that should have been my first clue. If I truly loved her more than anything on this Earth and wanted her back, I would have called it all off. Turned down the job, mended my broken marriage, and lived my humdrum life, never climbing the Everest of my career. But New Amsterdam was too great a prize. One that overshadowed my vows and seemed impossible to ignore.

Not to mention the fact that this wasn't the first time our relationship has been stained. The last time I felt her slipping I proposed we start trying for a baby, thinking having someone I'm obligated to other than vows would force me to be more present. But I should know myself better than anyone, no one was going to slow my relentless urge to reform healthcare but myself.

I got to the hospital early, my throat stinging the entire morning run. My experience tells me that whatever this is, it is much more than just a sore throat. As I listen to the janitorial and maintenance workers in the locker room I'm intrigued. This really is Everest and many a man before me have tried and failed to scale it. I plan to change that narrative.

Dora, my new assistant finds me already exasperated, apparently, I'm late for everything and the day has only begun

As I'm introduced to everyone, I try to figure out how this place ticks. Sure, most hospitals are the same, there are procedures and policies germane to the profession, but New Amsterdam is different. Not just because it's the place where my sister took her last breath, but because it is the oldest and possibly most broken public hospital in the country.

Then there she was. Dr. Helen Sharpe. There was so much more to the brilliant doctor than her personnel files revealed. She was smart, confident, and admittedly drop-dead gorgeous. As she breezed by, luggage in hand I'm captivated by her bravado and self-assuredness. Yet someone that talented was wasted on the celebrity life she lived. She was more valuable at the hospital seeing patients and using her brilliance to make patients better, patients like me.

I watch her perform on the talk circuit while Dr. Bloom tries desperately to tame me for my biopsy, and I feel the uneasy sensation of something more than a professional curiosity about her. Attraction? I bat it away, with all the reasons that was impossible - married man, baby on the way, having what I suspected was cancer. All good reasons to nip this train of thought before it nested.

I ask Ron to bring Dr. Sharpe back to the hospital because I need her to understand why she needs to return to practicing medicine. She's a good doctor but I believe her talents are being misused. While previous medical directors were focused on funding, I want my focus to be on caring for our patients, those with the greatest access, but especially those with the least. With Dr. Sharpe at my side, I believe we can provide those things, or at least she can keep me alive long enough to get started.

I get a page to that Georgia has been admitted to the ED for excessive bleeding possibly a placenta previa and my nerves are shot. Between Ebola, telling a patient she was going to die and this, I have no idea how I'm functional at this point. One hell of a first day.

It's only when they can't locate the baby's heartbeat that my mind fully stops. Losing my daughter before she even arrives would be my luck. I'm the unluckiest person on the planet. But then the amazing echo of Luna's heartbeat staccatos through the room and my heart beats fast and slow at the same time. Dread turns to elation, then back to dread. Keeping Georgia and Luna alive and of course myself long enough to meet her has to be my goal. I sit with Georgia and let her cry tears of relief.

I really didn't expect her to come back. She probably gets dozens of offers from all over the world on a daily basis, begging her to be the public face of their hospitals. But when she says she returned admittedly because of me, because she wanted to be excited again, I feel the tingles roll up my spine. Those warm tingles of pure magnetism, but something more substantial than just desire.

I know that's she's going to tell me I have cancer. The look of sadness on her face isn't just a façade, she looks genuinely distressed that I might not be around long enough to make the changes she believes I'm capable of. I pray that this look is unfounded, but I know my chances are not the greatest. I look at her again and can't keep the look of slight hope from my features.

I can't slow down despite her request because I need to fulfill my promise to both of the Luna's in my life, and I have to make this place better before fate takes me away from everything

Intentions

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Now that Georgia is here with me, I should feel closer to her. We are physically closer, but I still feel the massive gulf in our relationship even while I sing to my daughter as her mother slumbers peacefully. I look up at my wife and feel a wave of guilt. How is it possible to love someone so much, and still not feel completely connected to them?

I know Georgia has good reason not to trust me. We've tried to make it work and I just can't seem to give her what she needs. Years ago I thought it was enough to ask her to marry me. Show her and her disapproving parents I was serious about being a good partner. But being MIA for her performances, leaving her to fly solo at family dinners with her parents in Connecticut (I hate Connecticut), and numerous missed date nights, I'd never given Georgia much faith that I'd change anytime soon.

After a bad dad joke and a song were over, I reluctantly leave Luna in the care of her mother and start my day, hoping it will be considerably less eventful than yesterday.

As Dora sidles up to me in the hall to run down all my missed obligations, I see her. Dr. Sharpe in all her intense and beautiful glory, stalking after me like a principal towards a naughty child. I know I'm in for a scolding. I missed our appointment, but I kind of look forward to her not giving me an inch of leeway. To see all that fiery passion in her eyes directed at no one other than me, of course not for any reasons that are good, I can't help to enjoy it.

She looks at me sternly, her dark eyes full of warning. Why are we talking about apples? Is this some kind of metaphor? However, her parting words are like a gut punch.

Time. It's a concept that I can never seem to master. I hope that this is one of the occasions that my good intentions can help me bargain a little more of it.

It's lunchtime so I go to Georgia's room to drop off her tray. I know she hates green jello but it's part of my apology. She once told me it reminded her of a fruitcake-looking moulid her grandmother made her when she was six. She ate it and promptly threw up, vowing to never eat the green wiggly stuff on account of the lime-colored mess that she saw in reverse. Right now, I know I'm better than green jello, even if only just a bit.

I tell her that it's not going to be the same as it was last time. The Chinatown clinic had less leadership so it required me to be more hands-on, but I can be less involved here, I can be present. I had good people in charge of these departments.

Then she calls me out, rightly and much to my chagrin, that no matter where I'm working, even when I was physically present my mind was often somewhere else.

She dismisses me playfully to go tend to more important patients, but I know she's hurt. I don't have time for her, and she's accepted that. Most people would appreciate that their spouse is being so understanding, but I know it's because she's defeated and tired of fighting what she sees as a losing battle. I walk away feeling heavier than before, knowing that I have singlehandedly broken my wife's spirit.

No matter what I do I feel pulled into a knot by all the people demanding my attention or contrition and I need to get out. It's all too much. I escape towards the roof. I had the overwhelming urge to go to Dr. Sharpe's office and vent. But who does that to a new work colleague? Perhaps it's because she knows something no one else does. She'd understand better than most, that crushing feeling of helplessness that oncologists seem to have to endure more than any other specialty.

Then I hear her, in the last place I'd ever thought she'd be. She calls dibs on this hideout and I can't help but smile, there stands, solemn, yet gorgeous standing strikingly against the New York City skyline. I move in closer trying to balm her hurt with proximity. Her feelings were raw, much like my own. Kindred in our intent to make a difference and yet meeting headwinds at every turn. We are both trying to escape the messy pileup of patients, doctors, or in my case spouses that were unintendedly making us feel completely inadequate.

Her presence feels safe, and since she is the person I was supposed to be meeting with anyway, it only seems only fair that I unload my emotional baggage on her. She stares at me expectantly and I can't keep it under wraps any longer. Like an impromptu therapy session, I tell her how I almost broke up my marriage the last go-round, asked my wife to give up her dancing career, get pregnant, and then turned around and betrayed her.

But the words that resonate to the depths of my soul were "just because you betrayed her, doesn't mean you don't belong here". At that moment an ember of hope rekindles in my chest. Dr. Sharpe's words are so sincere, but I can see the lost look in her eyes. Like she knows there's an upside to our challenges but the path to get there wasn't clear. Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around these days.

Then she reminds me that the changes I'm making are part of the reason she's back, trying to be a real doctor again and I feel that ember grow. Dr. Sharpe believes in me. Trusts me. It's a heavy feeling, but not unpleasant. Despite having no idea about my past, she somehow understands what I'm trying to do, sees the good in my intentions while not labeling it as selfish. Her words go right to my heart.

Dr. Sharpe's voice is firm and heartfelt trying to push me towards revealing the truth outside our two-person bubble. In effect letting Georgia in. While logically I can see why my wife needs to know, I just can't bring myself to do that to her. One more disappointment and then I'll abandon her for good this time. I will tell her. Just not yet, not until she's feeling better. Even I can admit to myself that it's a cowardly move, not the selfless one I'm trying to convince myself it is.

I stare out into the skyline and my chest feels heavy. What if this cancer catches me and takes me from all the plans I have for this hospital, leaves my child fatherless, lets Dr. Sharpe down, and widows my wife? The order in which I considered these things wasn't lost on me.

With a dash of courage gained from Dr. Sharpe's urging, I steel myself to tell Georgia the worst thing I could ever utter aloud. Then Georgia's OB solidifies my spinelessness. I know she has no idea the gravity of the earth-shattering news I need to impart. She probably thinks my whirlwind nature would upset Georgia. I haven't exactly garnered a lot of assurance that my presence doesn't cause my wife stress.

I walk in and I know my expression betrays my forced cheer. She can tell. She can always tell when I'm hiding something from her, and she reminds me that I promised that'd let her in. But I can't do this to her.

My truth is that I love her, but I can tell it's not enough of a reveal to make her feel like I love her. I hide my shame in the ever-growing belly that housed my future.

I'm failing as a husband more each day and I can't really blame the cancer for this one.

Chapter End Notes

Thanks for all the comments and kudos. I haven't written a fic in a few years so I appreciate the warm welcome back. I hadn't planned on each chapter being so long, but after rewatching season 1, I started seeing some of the reasons Max wore that ring for so long. Thanks for coming along for the ride, I hope you all enjoy Laid Plans