CHAPTER 2
Max

"Max? Maaax?"

Something was disturbing his nap.

"Wake up…"

He groaned and reluctantly opened one eye. His sister's face was about an inch from his.

"Iz…" he moaned annoyed, having the faint brain activity to curse himself for giving his sister the spare key to his apartment. "I've worked the night shift, why are you waking me up?"

Isabel sat back, seemingly unbothered by the fact that she had disturbed her younger brother's sleep, and looked at him patiently while he hauled himself up into a semi-seated position.

"Have you ever met a girl named Elizabeth Parker? From Chicago?"

Max yawned and tiredly rubbed his right eye. "Why?"

Isabel appeared to ponder this. "I just have this really strong feeling that I've met her, even though today was supposedly the first time I did. You know, kinda like when we met Michael. Like a…connection."

Max sighed. "If I answer your question will you leave my apartment and let me sleep?"

"Why are you so grumpy?" Isabel questioned, her mood turning a shade darker. Everyone who knew Isabel Evans knew that her mood could change quite rapidly from one extreme to the other.

But Max couldn't be bothered about not stepping on Isabel's feelings right now. He had to get to work in five hours and he'd only had two hours of sleep so far. "Because I'm tired, Iz."

"I thought you wanted me to tell you everything that might have a connection to our past," Isabel objected.

"It's been years since anything 'new' happened. Come to think of it, figuring out who Michael was was our last connection to our origin."

"So just because a certain amount of time has passed, new information is not allowed?"

Max sighed. "Could we please have this conversation some other time?"

"So you could get back to your dreams?" Isabel taunted. "Who is it this time? The blonde? Or the brunette?"

Max swiftly picked up his pillow and threw it at his slightly older sister with a groan. If giving Isabel a key to his apartment was number one on the list of 'Things Max Evans shouldn't have shared with his sister', number two on the list was sharing the contents of his dreams with her. "I haven't had those dreams for years, so shut up."

The dreams had been vivid, frightening, dark and suffocating. Most of them had his heart almost pumping out of his chest, some of them were more…romantic. Even though the essence of the dreams was the same, the lead characters were not. Some dreams portrayed a petite blonde with a seductive smile and alluring curves, while some portrayed a petite beautiful brunette with a soft demeanor and intelligent eyes.

"How about you meet this Elizabeth Parker before you discard the idea of a connection?" Isabel suggested tartly, interrupting Max's line of thought.

He sighed, rubbing his palms down his face. "She's in Chicago?"

"No, she's at my job. She just started."

Max glanced at the bedside clock, watching his minutes of sleep ticking away. If approving was the solution to getting his sister out of his bedroom, he would. "Fine. I'll meet with her."

"There's a party coming up soon, for the firm. I'll make sure she attends." Isabel looked so pleased with herself that Max couldn't help but smile.

"Fine. Let me know the details. Now, could I please get back to sleep?"

"Of course, dear brother," Isabel said with a warm smile and gave him a peck on the cheek. "I'll let myself out."

"Sure. You do that," Max grumbled, already halfway back into sleep.

"Ma'am? Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

The 83-year-old woman with the recently broken neck of the femoral head, known colloquially as a broken hip, replied with a weak and pained "Yes."

"We're going to put this oxygen mask over your mouth, so you can breathe a li- Max?"

Max had been working around the stretcher, clearing the way up to the ambulance when a wave of fatigue had swept through him. His colleague, momentarily distracted from her elderly patient, reached out with her hand in an attempt to steady Max.

Max waved her hand away. "I'm fine. Just haven't got enough sl-"

Melissa Meyer watched the 23-year-old fall like a brick of cards, his legs folding beneath his weight, his head falling heavily against the asphalted ground, and had instantly temporarily lost a member of her staff and acquired yet another patient.

Max initial thought was I'm blind, as he looked around himself. It was pitch dark and the ground beneath his fingers was slightly damp. There was a faint smell of urine and warm garbage, the kind that had been left in the sun for too long. He lifted his head off the ground, briefly wondering what had happened before his thoughts became occupied with trying to figure out where he was.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he became increasingly aware of the fact that he was no longer helping his colleague load an accident-prone retired woman into an ambulance at work. Neither Melissa nor the patient were anywhere in sight.

He was lying on the pavement, surrounded by tall buildings. The distant siren of a police car reached him as he struggled to get to his feet.

Where am I?

Down the road he heard a rhythmic clapping sound, the intervals between each clap decreasing as the sound grew closer. Someone was running, he could hear the person panting with the exertion. He could tell from the subtle smell of strawberries that swirled through the air when the person passed, without seeing her from his position on the ground, that it was a woman. Her running steps was a light sound compared to the harder steps of the dark figure following her.

Max got to his feet and yelled at the masculine shape as he passed him, "Hey!" He reached through the air with the purpose of stopping the man who was obviously following the woman, whose shape had held a twinge of desperation and a bucket of fear, but his hand waved through the fabric of the man's dark leather jacket as if it consisted of nothing more than air. Max paused and looked at his empty hand, having the oddest Patrick Swayze-in-'Ghost'-sensation. Am I dead?

"Help! Please! Somebody help me!" The woman's desperate cry echoed off the empty street and Max looked up to see her turning into an alley. The man, whom he had been unsuccessful in stopping, was closing in on her.

Dead or not, Max couldn't just sit by and watch. He scrambled to his feet and started down the street, not far behind the man he had just seen turning the same corner as the woman. The alley was narrow, positioned behind a Chinese restaurant, cluttered with garbage containers and fire ladders. But even though there ought to be people around, no one was looking out their apartment window or opening their back door to the alley at the woman's pleas for help. He saw the two people at the dead end of the alley. She was now on the ground, flat on her back, with her perpetrator straddling her waist.

"No, please. No, don't. Pleasedon'thurtmepleasedon'thurtmepleasedon'thurtme." Her frantic mumblings were not quiet but not loud enough to be heard above the first level of the surrounding buildings.

"Hey! Get off her!" Max shouted and started running for the couple. Neither of them turned their heads at his command.

Max could see her light pink lacy bra, the man having ripped open her blouse, but his focus went to the blood slowly trickling down her throat, pooling between her collarbones. The man had struck her, a redness and swelling already spreading across the female's left cheek, the blood originating from the corner of her mouth.

Max made a new attempt at pushing the man off the woman, pulling him, hitting him. He only succeeded in looking like a cartoon character exhibiting an elaborate dance with an invisible imaginary foe. It was as if he was not there.

In horror, he helplessly witnessed the tears of fear, humiliation and desperation drip down the woman's cheeks as he could only watch as the man continued to tear at the woman's clothes. At first she did her best to push him off her, her voice occasionally cutting through the desolate alley only to be cut off with a strike to the mouth, a punch across her cheek. Adrenaline, hot and painful, burned through Max's veins as he could do nothing but watch. The bitter metallic taste of blood lingered in his mouth as he bit his lip in futility, continuing his air-fighting even though neither the woman, whose efforts to fight back were waning, nor the woman's assailant were aware of his existence.

As the man pulled on the woman's jeans, barely stopping to unzip them but instead forcing them down her ice-cold thighs, and she stopped her struggling and let her head loll to the side in resignation, Max sank into a seated position with tears streaking his own face.

"Make it stop," Max whispered, his weight falling back on the heels of his feet. His hand closed in the space where he were supposed to feel the woman's right hand and imagined holding it for comfort. His eyes were on her brown empty ones as he heard the perpetrator tear her panties.

He leaned over her, wishing for her to be able to see him, unconsciously trying to shield her from the man lying on top of her and whispered against her cheek. "Don't be afraid. Fight. Fight him."

But of course, she couldn't hear him. He was nothing but air to her.

He lingered in the space above her tear-streaked face and pleaded, "Make it stop. Make it stop."

It felt like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The air around him made an odd whooshing sound and then he was back on the ground. In broad daylight. Next to the rear tire of the ambulance.

"Jesus. Max."

He met the concerned eyes of his colleague Melissa and inhaled sharply. Before he had time to say anything, Melissa pressed his efforts to stand up to the ground. "Stay down. You had a seizure."

"A seizure?" he stammered and became aware of the wet spot of saliva on his chin. He brushed it off with the back of his hand.

"Foaming at the mouth and everything," Melissa murmured. She seemed pretty shaken up.

"I'm fine," Max mumbled. Or was he?

"Have you ever had a seizure before?" Melissa asked.

Max swallowed and attempted to sit up again. This time Melissa let him. Instantly shame hit him as he noticed the damp patch on the front of his pants. He had lost control of his bladder. A seizure, of course. All the symptoms made sense.

"How long was I…" he swallowed again, his mouth uncomfortably dry, "…seizing?"

"About two minutes. Grand mal." Melissa was temporarily distracted by something, looking over her shoulder, before she turned back to Max. "I had to call another ambulance to take care of our patient. We were just about to get you onto a bed and load you… Christ, Max. You scared the living shit out of me."

Max brushed a hand down his face. Ditto.

TBC...