Chapter 13
The One Who Left and the One Who'll Stay

Time had dissolved… It had ground to a halt. Maya stood at the door, staring back at her birth father, stood on their doormat, with a large cardboard box perched in his arms. She couldn't seem to put any kind of thought together for who knew how long. Her heart drummed in her chest, the only thing she could hear herself thinking being 'what's he doing here, what's he doing here, what's he doing here…' But then she could see the box in his hands, see the drawings on the front of it, on the top, and the words traced by her siblings. Happy birthday! These were her presents, delivered not by some mailman or delivery person but by Kermit. Had he really flown all this way just to…

He was looking at her. He wasn't saying a word, but he was looking at her, looking… Her hand went to her belly, feeling a rise of protection for her unborn child as they stood there, father and daughter, and he could see the evidence of her own impending motherhood. Was this what had brought him here?

Her voice returned at this, breaking her from the initial surprise to look up at his face again.

"What are you doing here?" It was what came from her, the first thing she could think to say, the thing she cared to know more than minding her manners and saying hello. She didn't know if she'd hoped to destabilise him, to rattle him. To his credit, he didn't look entirely thrown; he'd expected it.

"I, uh… The kids put this together for you," he showed the box, "Abigail put in a couple of things, too. And I… I did, too," he revealed.

"They don't have post offices in New York anymore?" she asked. She was trying to keep her voice even, trying not to dip into that pool of venom that sat alongside all those feelings he had cultivated in her heart over time, but it was stronger than her right now.

"They do," her father bowed his head. The box looked heavy in his arms, but he didn't make any move to come in or even put it down. "But I… I heard… That is, I saw, on your band's site, about… about…" His eyes drifted to her belly again. She crossed her arms over herself.

"So, you know I'm having a baby," she stated, shrugging her shoulders. So what do you expect? "You didn't want to be my dad, what makes you think you'll get to be grandpa all of a sudden?" Baby's already got two of those, and they'll be the best he or she could ask for.

"Maya, I…" Kermit shook his head.

"No," she cut him off. "I'm not a kid anymore, okay? Do you even know what you did to me, not being there? Not just leaving, but showing me time and again that I didn't matter to you. You came and saw me once, because it was convenient, because something brought you to Texas. Not me, your daughter, but some friend who was getting married. Even before all that though, you left us, me and Mom, and you went and became their…"

She stopped, had to catch her breath, had to collect herself. No, she wasn't going to bring them into this. Sam, Cara, Eliza, Wyatt… It wasn't their fault that he was a better father, that he was a father at all, to them and not to her…

"Are you…" Kermit balanced the box on to one arm so he could reach out to her. She flinched and stepped back.

"I'm fine, I… You should go," she sniffled, looking anywhere but at his face anymore.

"Maya…"

"No, I don't have to do this anymore. I get to decide now, and I decide that I'm not going to get pulled into this again. I have my brothers and my sisters and they've got me, but that's where it stops. I don't want you near my baby any more than I want you near me, so just…"

She'd been so caught up in telling him off, she didn't realize anything was wrong until all of a sudden the box slid out of his arms and landed with an even thud, even as he seemed to start to sway and lose his footing. Her reflexes were what managed to slow his collapse, as her arms shot out just in time to get a hold of his shoulders.

"Dad!" she heard herself shout, like everything in her brain had been locked out except for the basic and unavoidable truth that he had given her life and been half her world for those first formative years. Now he was laid out on her doorstep, and there was a rush of panic in her, of helplessness. She was the only one here, she couldn't even move him… She looked around for a moment, hoping one of her neighbors might have been around. What had just happened, what… What was she supposed to do?

She stuck her bare feet into her boots, sitting by the door, before grabbing her keys and her phone and moving around to check on him.

"D… Kermit," she called, crouching over him. She could just see his chest rising and falling, he wasn't… But he wasn't conscious, and he had to… "Okay, okay…" she breathed, pulling herself together and dialling 911. "It's my… my father, he just collapsed, he's unconscious, I-I don't know what's wrong with him," she told the woman who answered. "Uh, he…h-he's thirty-nine, I… No, I mean I don't know, we're not close, he just showed up on my doorstep, we were talking and then he… Yeah, okay…" she nodded when the woman said they would send help. She gave her the address.

The woman stayed on the line with her as she waited. She did as she was told, doing her best to look after Kermit. She ended up telling the operator about the fact that she was four months pregnant. This was all so much, and she couldn't help worrying that the stress might harm her sprout… Breathe… breathe…

By the time the ambulance had arrived, their neighbors across the street had spotted Maya and Kermit outside the house. They'd come hurrying over, asking what had happened. She couldn't say much more than what she'd already told the woman on the phone, except that help was coming. That was when they'd started hearing the sirens, as the ambulance neared and finally pulled up. Maya stepped back with her neighbors. Mrs. Shaw looked at her, noticing her hair was wet, and she let herself through the open door to get Maya's coat and hat for her.

"Thanks, I…" she blinked, putting them on. The gesture had called up one thought and another, first Mom… and then Lucas… He was in Austin today, why did it have to be today, why… She looked to her phone, gripped in her hands, and then she was calling her mother. She needed to talk to her first, needed help to collect herself before she called Lucas or else he'd assume the worst and…

"Hey, baby girl, I was just…"

"Mom…" she cut in, her voice trembling.

"Maya, what's wrong?" Katy's voice changed at once.

"I'm fine, it's not me, it's… Kermit, he's here, he just showed up and…"

"What? Let me talk to him, I'll…"

"I can't. We were talking, o-or I was… I was talking, and then he passed out."

"What?"

"There's paramedics now, I think they're taking him to the hospital. I don't understand, I…"

"Maya, take a deep breath," her mother told her, and she did as told. "Okay, keep going like that, yeah? Look, I'll get there as soon as I can, you guys just…"

"They're not here," Maya cried, taking another breath. "The Shaws are with me, but there's no one else. Mom, Lucas is in Austin, he's at the house, with Dylan and Bishop, I…" I need him here…

"Alright, I'll stop over there on the way. Do you want me to call him?"

"No, I… He'll want to hear my voice," she shook her head. And try not to freak out when he hears it. "I have to go, they're loading him into the ambulance now…"

"I'll see you soon, baby girl, alright? Just…"

"Breathe, I know…" After they hung up, he thanked the Shaws and went with the paramedics, sitting in the back. They insisted on checking her out, which she suspected was partly in an effort to quell some of her fears. She was okay… they were okay… As they drove off and she started to find some of her normal breath again, she knew what she needed to do. She put in another call.

"Yup?" Dylan answered, the way he would when he didn't even check the caller ID.

"Hey, don't say my name just yet, okay?" There was a pause.

"Yeah?" he replied.

After the long drive into Austin, just getting to the house before they could so much as start getting any work done, the process had been a bit slow to start, but eventually Lucas and the guys had gotten the ball rolling. They were going to tackle one room at a time, that was the way to do it, wasn't it? Starting upstairs, they didn't know how much they'd get done today, but as much as they could get done and still have it in them to drive back…

"H-hey, Lucas?" Dylan stood just inside the door as Lucas and Bishop were returning from having carried an old dresser down from his father's old room and to the shed where they'd been storing everything they would try to donate or sell. He had a weird look on his face. Maybe he was a bit prone to jump to conclusions these days, but still it didn't mean he didn't strongly feel this had to do with Maya, or… "So, just to be clear, Maya's fine, the baby's fine," Dylan started, and Lucas tensed at once, like he already had one leg inside his car. "It's her father."

"Shawn?" Lucas blinked.

"No, the other one, the… you know," Dylan gave a dismissive gesture. Kermit.

"What about him?"

"Apparently he showed up at the house? And then he just keeled over. They're on their way to the hospital now, here," he held out his phone. Lucas all but leapt for it.

"Maya?" he spoke as soon as he had it pressed to his ear.

"Lucas…" she replied, and he could hear it all in that one utterance of his name, how scared she was, how hearing his voice had just given her what little comfort she had been seeking. "It all happened so fast, I don't know how he… He hasn't woken up, and I…" She let out a frustrated sort of sigh, warbled through tears and making him guess she was wiping at her eyes right about now. "He flew all this way to bring my presents from Sam and the others, and because he found out about the baby, and I just let him have it, told him I didn't want him around, and then he dropped… Did I do this to him?" her voice grew small. He had never felt those two hours so painfully. If they ever needed any further incentive to move back and be close to their families…

"Maya, this wasn't you, okay? I'm going to come and meet you, I just need to…"

"No, I don't want you driving right now," she cut in with renewed decisiveness. "My mother's on her way to you now, she'll drive you."

"Maya…"

"No driving," she pressed on. "Do it for me, I'm stressed enough as it is without thinking you could rush to get here and have an accident, okay?" He let out a breath.

"Alright, fine, I'll wait for your mother," he vowed. "But you let me know if there's any changes."

"I will," she promised.

Katy arrived a little over ten minutes later. Lucas just jogged over and got into the passenger seat, and then they were off. Dylan and Bishop would stay here and keep working through the house and then they'll drive his car back to Houston.

The drive was as tense as they would have expected. Lucas and Katy didn't speak much after they'd exchanged information from their respective calls. They only wanted to get to Houston as soon as possible, get to Maya. Shawn was back home with the little kids, and from what Katy told Lucas, he only did so out of a need to keep the twins and MJ as untouched by whatever was going on if it could be helped. He wanted to be with his daughter as much as the rest of them. The only break in the silence after this had come from a call Lucas received from Riley.

She had returned to the house with Chiara after their pit stop at the bakery, only to find an empty house and a box addressed to Maya with a crushed corner like it had been dropped. They had been visited by the Shaws, who told them about Kermit, and the ambulance… Lucas told her about how he and Katy were driving back as they spoke, and that Maya should be at the hospital now with her birth father. He didn't have to say much more. The girls would go to her and stay with her until they made it back to Houston.

When they had arrived at the hospital, Maya had trailed after the gurney and stood nearby as a doctor and a couple of nurses moved around her father. She felt so confused, helpless. They would ask her questions, but she couldn't answer, how could she? The man was as much a stranger to her in a lot of ways as any of them were. Finally, she'd had the presence of mind to call up Abigail in New York. When she told her about what had happened, Abigail had asked to speak to the doctor. Something in her voice was so solid in the face of this news, and it took some time but Maya eventually understood…

Maya wasn't aware of any situation that might have caused this fall, but Abigail knew, which meant it had been going on… What was wrong with him? Something was wrong with him. Whatever she'd told the doctor, his whole demeanor had changed, like someone had rearranged the pieces of a jagged puzzle and suddenly the image was revealing itself. He mentioned something about having some files sent over, and he'd taken down Abigail's number, and then he'd hung up and given Maya her phone back.

"I'll be back to see you later," he told her, and then he was gone. Maya blinked, looking back to the nurses. They weren't saying anything. They just finished doing a couple things, settling Kermit in, examining him, and then they were gone.

Under normal circumstances, she would have gone after them, she wouldn't have let them out of her sight until someone told her what was going on, but now… It was just too much all at once, she was overwhelmed, and all she could do was pull a nearby chair up to the side of the bed and have a seat. She pressed a hand to her belly, breathed deep, breathed, and breathed…

She'd been sitting like that for a few minutes, she couldn't say how many, when she looked up and realized Kermit's eyes were open. She stood up and moved to where he could see her. His whole face seemed to change. Relief… He reached up his hand, and in that moment she didn't have it in her to be angry. It would have been cruel not to take his hand, and for all he'd done to her, he hadn't made her like that. So she took hold of those fingers. His grasp wasn't so strong, and it rattled something from her she couldn't name.

"You're in the ER," she told him. "You fell, you passed out, so I called an ambulance." He nodded, he understood. "This isn't new to you, is it?" she slowly asked. He shook his head. "What's going on?" He looked up to the ceiling, quietly breathing for a moment. "Are you sick? Are you…"

"I was…" he told her, giving a small shrug. "A few times. I've been told I was doing better, but that only accounts for so much. I'm not going to bounce back a hundred percent like before."

"How long have you…" she started to ask, but then there was a memory and she closed her eyes. "That Christmas, Sam and the others were supposed to visit, you cancelled…" He nodded. She took a few deep breaths, wiped at her eyes, looking around for a moment, unable to meet his eye. "Do they know? Sam, Cara…"

"Sammy… He knows, not the others. Please…"

"I won't tell them, I…" She sighed, making herself look at him again. "You get that this is a lot."

"I do. I never meant to drop all that on you today, I wasn't even sure you'd let me through the door, not that… not that I would have held it against you if you didn't."

"I should hope not, I…" she felt those old feelings surge again, and she closed her eyes to try and push them down again. This wasn't the time… or it was, but…

"When I saw… about the baby… I was already trying to work up the courage, to… make contact. I told you, there's something in that box, from me. After everything, the illness, I just… I needed to take a chance, I needed to make things right with you… if you'd let me. And if you didn't, well, I'd have that coming, but at least I would have tried. But the baby…" his voice softened, and there was a glistening at his eyes. He was welling up, and damn it if it didn't get her started, too. Next thing I knew, I was buying a plane ticket. I couldn't do it over the phone or the computer, I had to see you. I came for you, Maya," he squeezed her hand, and she was blinking against tears. "I think about that time I saw you last, in Austin… and I'm so ashamed, you have to know. You don't owe me anything, okay? If you want me gone, I'm gone, I just… I'm trying… It won't make up for the last fifteen years, but I'm trying."

For about half a minute after that neither of them spoke. There were beeps from machines near and far, the rumble of voices beyond the area where they'd settled him, and there were her sniffles… Finally, she looked at him again.

"I'm not leaving you on your own out here, alright?" she told him. He nodded. "For now, I'll just… call it a truce. It's not one thing or another thing. I'm here."

"Thank you," Kermit told her.

"I called Abigail," she informed him. "I don't know if she's trying to fly over right now, you can call her yourself," she offered out her phone. "My mother's on her way, too, with my fiancé, I…"

"You're getting married," her father had this small smile on him, and she couldn't help but see how his face reminded her of her own in that moment.

"Yeah," she told him, showing the ring on the chain around her neck. It sort of felt awkward now to bring it up with him, with how categorical she was about the fact that he wasn't invited. He didn't inquire, and she didn't say anything about it.

"You should sit," he released his hold on her hand and indicated the chair. She might have said she was fine standing, but right now she wasn't going to take any chances of exerting herself.

"Did you just come from the airport or do you have a room somewhere? Did you drive?"

"I took a cab from the hotel."

"I… I can go, if you want some of your things with you. Or I can send someone…"

Before he could reply, a rush of movement made her look up. Riley and Chiara were coming toward her, and she stood at once, moments before being enveloped in her oldest friend's arms. Maya hugged her back, thinking surely this only came second to the moment she had learned Riley had moved to Texas, too. She had needed her, too.

"The Shaws told us what happened," Riley told her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Maya smiled. They pulled apart and Riley looked to the bed.

"Hi…" She didn't know how to behave around him any more than Maya had done. She'd barely ever had any contact with the man, but she knew what he represented in her best friend's life and that was enough.

"And that's Chiara, another of my roommates," Maya pointed to her.

"Hello," Chiara spoke, and by the awkward tone in her voice, Maya guessed she'd been getting an earful or two from Riley on the way over from the house. "We, ah… we brought you a cupcake from the bakery," she held up a small pink box. "Sophie insisted. It was before we knew…" Maya gladly took it. Now that everything had slowed down just a bit, she felt like she could devour a whole box of these. She looked to her father, who gestured as though to say 'go ahead,' guessing she'd felt uneasy about eating this in front of him. How had this come so easily when all of an hour ago she was spitting fire at him? She guessed it was hard to be upset when he was lying there looking so on the weak side.

The cupcake was a distant memory of about an hour by the time Maya looked up, like some instinct in her had flexed, and she spotted Lucas and her mother making their way across the ER and toward them. She got up from her chair at once, taking what felt like three steps before Lucas had crossed what should have been three times that. In the next moment, she was in his arms, and the tension she'd carried beneath her skin from the moment she'd known she needed to call him finally just fell away. Going by the way he held on to her, he'd been having some of that tension, too. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and held it there for something like twenty seconds before they could look up to one another's face and he stroked her cheek.

"I know you're probably tired of people asking…"

"I'm okay, we're okay… Better now," she smiled at him and he smiled back. She watched him turn his eyes up to the man in the hospital bed, and she could see how, if not for their present location, he might have given the man a piece or five of his mind. "Lucas," she whispered, and he looked back to her, eyes softening again. "Truce," she told him, and that was all he needed to know. He let out a breath.

"Sir," he tipped his head. "Lucas Friar, I'm…"

"I know," Kermit nodded slowly. "It's nice to meet you." Maya and Lucas both turned to look at Katy as she stepped forward.

"Kermit," she greeted her ex. In that instant, it was hard to forget she had known him the longest of all of them, that of all the hurt he'd caused, she'd been the first to feel any of it.

"Hello, Katy," he replied, with the look of someone who knew he was happier to see someone than to be seen by them. "This wasn't exactly how I thought I…"

"What are you doing in Texas, Kermit?" she asked.

"Mom," Maya spoke first. Katy looked at her. "He's sick," she told her, her tone telling plainly what her words didn't. Lucas looked down to Maya in surprise, while Katy turned to her ex with stunned eyes.

"It's been on and off for a long while now," Kermit admitted. "It was supposed to be 'off' right about now, but after what happened earlier… I don't know."

"Damn it, Kermit…" Maya thought she heard mother mumble under her breath. "What did the doctor say?" she asked now, out loud.

"Not much," Maya was the one to reply. "They said they were trying to get in touch with his doctor in New York, we haven't seen him again since."

"Yeah, we'll see about that," Katy went to move off but paused in front of her daughter. Lucas let her go and Maya folded herself into her mother's arms. "You okay, baby girl?" she asked quietly.

"Loaded question," Maya replied.

"Right," Katy rubbed at her back. "Maybe you should go home for now, get some rest. I'll stay with him." Maya hesitated, looking to her father.

"Go, it's alright," he told her. "Thank you for staying. You have no idea how much it means to me that you did, even if on a truce." Maya looked to him, to her mother, to her Lucas. Finally, she stepped back up to the bed.

"I… I'll come back, okay? If they let you out of here before tomorrow… you can come to the house. We can talk… I'll even let you get a word in this time." That made him chuckle.

"I'd like that."

"Right… okay… Later," she touched his hand. He turned it, clasped her fingers for a moment.

"Later."

Moving off hand in hand with Lucas, she let out a few deep breaths. She'd already sent Riley and Chiara back on home. They'd wanted to stay with her, but it wouldn't have done much, and besides… It had felt to her like it needed to be the two of them alone, until her mother and Lucas had arrived. Now that she was leaving, she could really feel she'd be dozing off before they even left the hospital parking lot if she let it happen.

"Sorry I had to pull you away from the house," she told Lucas as they got in the car. He shook his head. Don't worry about it. "I didn't want to worry you," she pointed out.

"It really doesn't take much these days," he admitted, recalling how endless the drive back had felt. She reached out for his hand, brought it to lie over her belly. It made him smile.

"In a perfect world, we'd feel something right about now," she sighed, setting both hands over his. "How about it, Sprout? Anything? Mama really needs it today… No pressure." They waited for a few seconds. "Didn't think so. That's alright."

"Home?" Lucas asked.

"Nook, then home?" she countered and he smiled. Deal.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners