Hi!

I'm back with a new chapter :-)

Tinz and Charisma4 – Thank you so much for the feedback!!!

Charisma wrote: "Now my only question is what your obsession with describing fly movement at the beginning of chapters?"

Lol! Well, I wouldn't call it an obsession with flies (maybe an obsession with animals…). I want to show what's happening from another person's perspective, and since other animals are too large to do that inconspicuously enough, insects is the best choice. But I'm open to suggestions *grins*

Let's move on to the new chapter…

Chapter 14


"Oh my God! Did you feel that?"
She smiled and nodded, watching with warmth as his eyes danced with joy. His hand jerked and he laughed. "There. Did you feel that?"
"Yes, Max," she laughed. "Believe me, I can feel that."
"That's amazing," Max whispered, mostly to himself. His hand lightly traced around her bellybutton, when her stomach once again moved under his fingers.
"He's gonna be something, isn't he?" Max said.
She raised an amused eyebrow. "He?"
He put his ear on her stomach to listen and her smile widened.
"Why do you think it's a boy?" she asked.
Max raised his head slightly from her stomach and looked at her, a look of awe and confusion on his face. "Huh?"
She rolled her eyes at his complete inability to focus on anything else but the child growing inside of her.
"You are so cute, you know that?"
She smiled warmly as his ears turned a slight hint of red, and reached out with her hand to sift her hand through his dark hair.
"You are going to be such a great dad."

"Uncle Max! Uncle Max! Uncle Max! Uncle Maaaaax!"
Tess' face dimmed in front of him, its form disintegrating into nothingness. He looked down into the brown eyes of his niece, slowly trying to return to reality.
"Was you sleepin'?" Michelle asked, looking at him with the type of excited curiosity only a child could muster.
"No, Michelle," Max answered, taking a deep breath to clear his mind.
Michelle pulled her lips together in a thoughtful expression and her forehead furrowed as she squinted with her eyes. "But Uncle Max, can you sleep with your eyes open?"
Max looked at Michelle, feeling the void and coldness in his heart slowly warming up. He reached out and picked her up, placing her in his lap.
"No, you can't sleep with your eyes open, but sometimes you think so hard that it's almost like you are asleep."
Michelle looked at him seriously, biting her bottom lip. "I's don't understand."
"Okay," Max said, "Then let's do it like this. Think about your favorite thing."
"My favowit fing?"

"Yep," Max smiled at her excited facial expression.
"'Kay," Michelle agreed and the small frown on her forehead reappeared. She started chewing on her upper lip as she stared off into the distance.
"'Kay," she said then.
"What are you thinking about?" Max asked.
"Lucy," Michelle answered with a big smile stretching from ear to ear. Lucy was Michelle's beloved doll. It had been with her since she was one year old.
"Okay, think really hard about Lucy now."
Michelle giggled and nodded. Her face scrunched up into a thoughtful expression again. Then a puzzled frown fell over her. "What is she doing?"
"Whatever you want," Max said.
"'Kay," Michelle said and started to think again, now looking very determined. Max waited a couple of minutes, giving Michelle's livid imagination a chance to come to life.
"Michelle…" he said gently.
After a few seconds delay, she glanced up with him with a big smile on her face. "I's was sleepin'! Wif my eyes cwosed."
Max grinned. "You sure were."

"Uncle Max…" Michelle looked up at him expectantly.
Max absently pushed a few of Michelle's blonde hair behind her ear. "What is it, honey?"
"Will you tell me a stwory?"
"Sure," Max smiled. "What do you want to hear?"
Michelle cuddled closer to him, her small fingers fingering on the buttons of his shirt. "Cindella."
"Cinderella it is."
The thoughtful expression on Michelle's face returned and she bit her lip in deep concentration. "Can I's change Cindella's name?"
Max looked at her surprised. "You want to change Cinderella's name?"
Michelle turned serious. "Can I's do that?"
Max looked at her and felt himself melt. A slow smile started to form on his lips and he leaned forward and placed a kiss on her forehead. "This is your story, pumpkin. You can do whatever you want with it."
Michelle's face lightened up like a child on Christmas morning. "I's can?!"
Max nodded seriously. "Absolutely."
"Yay!!"
"What do you want to call your Cinderella?" Max asked, wondering just what Michelle had in mind for this story time.
"Liz."

Max hand froze in the unconscious sifting through her hair and it took him a couple of seconds before he recuperated. "Liz?"
"She was dis bootiful lady saving me in the big shopping store," Michelle explained, giving him a very explicit 'duh' look. "Don't you 'member?"
Max's heart was beating faster and suddenly his mouth had gone dry. "The woman at the mall…" His eyes involuntarily drifted to the small note on the kitchen table. He had found it earlier in his pocket. Someone had slipped it to him, without him noticing. His best guess was Maria.
"She come to my house," Michelle continued to explain, "She knowed my name! She liked Lucy!"
"I remember," Max said quietly. "Why do you want your Cinderella to be called Liz instead?"
"'Cause all pwincesses is bootiful and Liz is bootiful…" Max's face took on a distant expression as his thoughts turned to the one person he had tried so hard not to think about. The dark-haired petite woman, who had captured him and held him captive ever since he had first laid eyes on her. "And…and… Liz saved me and dat's what pwincesses do."
Max did his best to turn back his focus to his niece. Smiling, he playfully rumbled her hair. "I thought that was the princes' job."

Michelle thought about that for a couple of second before answering. "Pwincesses can save someone too. Someone's gotta save the pwince sometime, wight?"
Max shook his head in wonder at the intelligent little girl in his arms. "You're right, sweetheart. Sometimes the prince needs to be saved too."

--------------------------------------------------



Liz fingers finally found what they were looking for and she pressed the connection button.
"Hello?" Her voice was quite breathless, having had to find the cell phone in the enormous bag Maria had packed for her, before it stopped ringing.
"Liz?"
The voice sounded familiar, but her mind was too fuzzy to put all the pieces together. "Yes?"
"This is Max."
Joy spread in her chest and she smiled. "Max…"
"Yeah, you know, from the party and the-"
Liz's smile deepened. "I remember you."
"Oh…" came the somewhat embarrassed reply.
Scooting further up against the head of the bed, she pulled the comforter closer around her and waited to hear his voice again. She hadn't realized it before, most obviously because too much had happened to her since Max had dropped her off at her house the night before, for her to have a clear thought, but she had missed his voice. She hadn't really thought about it before, but hearing it now, it was almost ridiculous that she hadn't noticed before the softness of his voice. The warmth in which he uttered every syllable. How he spoke her name.
"How did you get my number?" Her answer was underlined with the smile on her lips and the amused surprise at having him call her.
"I don't know actually," Max answered and Liz could easily picture his embarrassed lost boy expression.
She raised an eyebrow. "You don't know?"
"I found your number in my pocket. I guess someone gave it to me without me noticing. My first guess would be Mar-"
"Maria."
The shared a soft laugh as they simultaneously blurted out the name of the obvious organizer of the situation.

"So, what are you up to?" Liz asked. She was dying to talk about something normal. Hear inane details about someone's normal life. She had been craving to talk to someone who didn't fuss about her health and consequently barely talked about anything else than what she should and shouldn't do.
"I'm sitting in this big black armchair right now, protected by an angel," Max answered cryptically. She could hear the smile in his voice and the special softness with which she had already recognized he used when he talked about the person who meant most to him.
"You need protection?"
"There was this big dragon outside, but she promised me that she would keep me safe."
Liz bit her lower lip, the gentleness in his voice bringing tears to her eyes. "What's the angel's name?"
"Liz…"
The one-word syllable caused goose bumps to break out on her skin. She swallowed. "Liz?"
"Yes," Max answered, "Liz is this really beautiful princess, who knows all the right tricks to lure a dragon away. She saves princes, too."
Liz laughed softly. "She does?"
"Uh-huh. Princes can need protection. Princes get scared, too, sometimes."
She sobered at the hidden meanings behind his words. "But she saved her prince?"
"She is doing a great job so far," Max answered.

Liz closed her eyes, and there was a few seconds of silence, before Max spoke. "Liz? Are you there?"
Liz nodded, before realizing that he couldn't see that. "Yes." Her voice was breaking. This was all too much for her. The things that she was feeling… She didn't know what to do. What she was feeling. What it meant… "Yes, I'm here."
A breathless moment and then her eyes closed with guilt as his voice changed to worried. "Are you okay?"
She didn't want this. She didn't want to pull another person into her misery. She didn't want to be pampered by one more. She wanted to be treated like a person. Not a patient. She ignored the fact that Max's concern didn't at all feel as wrong as Kevin's did. Max's concern made her want to cry. Made her want to confide in him, talk to him about everything between heaven and earth. She brushed some traitorous tears off her cheeks and answered stoically, "I'm fine, Max."
"I hope that you didn't catch a cold," Max said and she could hear the guilt in his voice. Something she instinctively wanted to remove.
"I'm perfectly fine, Max," Liz tried to assure him.
There was some more seconds of silence and Liz spent the seconds wondering what was going through Max's head at the moment. Did he doubt her? Was he feeling guilty for giving her the best day in her life? Was he worried about her? Was he regretting that he called?
"Okay," Max said, his voice much lighter. "I just wanted to…" He hesitated and Liz clung to the phone desperately, wondering what he was going to say. Would he cross the invisible line between them?
"I just wanted to… to see how you were doing," Max said and somehow Liz knew that wasn't what he had intended to say. Not at all.

"Thank you, Max," Liz said warmly. "Thank you for calling." She meant it even more than she could tell him. To hear his voice had lifted her spirits, given her new strength.
"Liz…"
"Yes?"
"You wouldn't want to… um… Could I… Could I call you some other time?"
Liz closed her eyes at the tears welling up in her eyes and immediately admonished herself for being so emotional. But she realized that Max wasn't really asking if he could call her some other time. There was so much more he was really asking, and they both knew it.
"I'd love that," Liz whispered.
"Okay," Max said softly. "We'll talk later then."
"Yes," Liz agreed. "Yes, we'll do that."
"Bye."
Liz swallowed back the grief of hanging up and whispered a broken, "Bye."
She didn't hang up immediately and she could still hear his presence at the other end of the line. It took a few seconds before he hung up and the call disconnected.

---------------------------------------------------



Michael opened the door to find his girlfriend on the other side, looking up at him with a small smile. He immediately pulled her into a hug.
"Hey."
"Hey," she murmured against his chest.
"Are you okay?"
She nodded.
"And Liz? How is she doing?"
Maria took a deep breath and stepped out of his arms, absently fixing her hair. "She's doing fine. She will be going home today."
Michael smiled. "That's great."
Maria nodded and walked past him. Michael furrowed his forehead at her distant behavior. "Maria, is there something else?"

She looked at him innocently. "Something else?"
"Yeah, it seems like your mind is somewhere else."
"Nah," she shook her head in denial and pulled out a glass from the cabinet in the kitchen, "This whole thing just scared me, you know? We had been lulled into this false sense of security. I guess I wasn't the only one who was surprised that Liz had a relapse." Maria sat down on one of the high stools at the counter, her fingers tracing the still empty glass. "When she had the transplant-"
Michael stopped short. "She had a heart transplant?"
Maria met his eyes. "She would've died without one."
"Okay," Michael said and slowly lowered himself on the other stool beside her. He wasn't sure why he had such a strong reaction to that. It might be that it all sounded so serious, or it might just be that Tess' heart had been given to someone in the need of a new heart. It was just too close to home.
"The doctors told us that she would be as healthy as anyone else after the transplant. As long as she took her pills to lessen the risk of her body rejecting the new heart."
"Right," Michael nodded, "So what went wrong?"

"Any infection is particularly dangerous to her. She got a cold, a very dangerous cold. According to the doctor, she was close to getting pneumonia. And she was upset right as the infection was beginning to root inside of her. It just became too much for her heart. But that's not the point. The point is that she is still acting as if everything is okay, and it's pissing me off."
"Why?" Michael asked honestly.
Maria frustrated threw her hands up in the air. "Because…because… I'm not sure that she is taking care of herself. It's like she doesn't care. She just laughs and tells everyone that she's okay, when I can clearly see that she isn't."
"It's her life you are talking about," Michael said. "I'm sure she wouldn't be careless with her own life."

His thoughts wandered to the woman he had met two days ago, at Isabel's. The picture he was getting from Maria now, a really sick woman, did not fit the picture he had built up at dinner. The woman he had met there had been independent, albeit a little shy. But she had been happy in a way that he never had seen anyone before. Her happiness hadn't been of the exuberant kind, but more of the calm kind. Still, it hadn't taken a scientist to understand that she wasn't only going through the motions of life, she was cherishing every breath, devouring every second. Now he knew why. She had been handed another chance in life and she was doing everything she had ever wanted to do. Maybe that was why Max had taken such an instant liking in her. She was the total opposite of what he had become. While Liz probably woke up with a smile every day because she was so excited about what the new day was going to bring her, Max woke up wanting to go back to sleep and never wake up again. Liz exhibited the qualities that Max craved.

"I don't know…" Maria murmured. "I mean, of course she wouldn't be careless about her life. She has waited for this life for too long. I just… Something is wrong."
"As I've understood it," Michael mused, "She was basically given a second chance to live. It's only natural that she would change."
"But it's only lately that she has changed," Maria said.
Michael looked at her for a few seconds in contemplation, before he decided to be very honest with her. "Maybe what irks you is that she has changed and you haven't."
Maria stared at him and then snorted to show how ridiculous she thought that was. "What are you saying?"
Michael took a deep breath, knowing that he might be threading thin ice, and raked his hand through his hair. "All I'm saying is… Do you treat Liz as the new Liz, or as the old Liz?"
"What are you talking about?" Michael could hear the irritation in her voice and knew that he had stepped on some toes.
"She still needs you to care for her and support her, but she doesn't really need you to take care of her any longer. She doesn't need your help to the same degree any longer."
Maria's mouth thinned out in anger. Michael's eyes glanced at the finger quickly tapping against the surface of the counter. "She's in the hospital, Michael. As far as I can see it, she still needs our help."

"Why was she upset?"
"What?"
"That night when she had that…um…that artial fabril-thingy," Michael scratched his head. Medical terms had never been his strong side. "Why was she upset?"
Maria hopped off the stool. "You know what, don't bother. Liz is my problem-"
Michael grabbed a hold of her wrist, putting a stop to her escape. Looking her firmly in the eyes, he said gently, "Maria, I'm not trying to insult you or butt into a friendship you truly know more about than I. I just wanted to give you a new perspective-"
"Whatever," Maria said and looked away.
"Look at me," Michael said. With a sigh, Maria turned to look at him, "I want to be here for you, Maria. I want to listen to you. And I also want to be honest with you. When I think something, I want to be able to tell you that and I want you to feel that you can do the same."
Maria swallowed at his honest admission. That had to be the most beautiful thing someone has ever said to her. But pride stopped her from admitting that to him.
"To be honest," she looked at him surly, "You're pissing me off right now."
He grinned at that, which made her snatch her arm out of his grip.
"I'm leaving," she said curtly.
"Maria," Michael begged, silent laughter in his voice. He hadn't meant to upset her like that. "Can we just…"

Maria stopped by the door and whipped around to face him. "No, Michael. I need some fresh air." Before he was given the opportunity to protest, she had opened the door and slammed it shut behind her. He stared at the door in disbelief, wondering what just had happened. It didn't take many seconds until the door opened again and Maria poked her head in. "Thank you for, you know, for listening."
It was obvious that it was hard for her to admit that she had appreciated him. Her expression was fighting to remain cool and nonchalant.
"You're welcome," Michael smiled.
"Okay," she said, "But I'm still angry with you."
"Okay," Michael said calmly.
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Okay, then I'm just gonna…" And with that she slammed the door again, leaving Michael behind with a big grin on his face.