After an almost three month leave of absence Max was all set for his first day back to work and the babysitter turns out to be a no-show. Max cursed under his breath, in part for the situation with the sitter and in part because he couldn’t get Claudia to sit still long enough to tie her hair into a ponytail. Finally, he gave up, scooping Claudia’s curls up in his hand and rubber banding them to the top of her head. She looked up at him with round eyes. Her hair resembled a small tree sprouting from the crown of her head. Max tipped his head to the side, eyeing her quizzically. “It’ll have to do,” he muttered to himself.

Max had come a long way in the weeks since Isabel had visited him. He felt that time had been one of maturation for him. He had realized that whenever adversity had struck between he and Liz he had always seemed content to hide from the problem and pretend it didn’t exist. But since he and Isabel talked Max had decided to face his problems head on. And yes, the sadness was still there and Max supposed it would always be. Liz was still unresponsive toward him, still locked away from him. But Max didn’t allow the negativities in his life to bring him down. He couldn’t afford to. Taking Isabel’s advice he had focused on Claudia and her well-being.

Before Liz had withdrawn Max had taken so many things for granted where his daughter was concerned. He had never given a second thought to Claudia’s hair or dressing her. Liz had always taken care of those things. However, Liz was incapable, if unwilling, to do those things now. Max had been left with no other option but to take responsibility for those things and as a result he’d grown, as a father and as a man. It was true that Claudia’s hair didn’t always look the best and more often than not her clothing was severely unmatched. Still the point was that Max put forth the effort and that spoke volumes.

Thus having come so far Max didn’t want to begin his fresh start at life with being late for work. He cast a woeful look toward the staircase that led to the upstairs bedroom. He couldn’t very well ask Liz to watch Claudia. He only other recourse, because he absolutely refused to bother Alex and Isabel, was to beg Maria’s help. It wasn’t that Max doubted for a moment that Maria would help him if he asked. It was just that he hated the idea of asking. Maria had enough to deal with already.

News of her impending motherhood and break-up with Michael had already become fodder for the tabloids. She spent most of her time ducking the paparazzi or encamped in her penthouse apartment. And since she announced her intention to take a hiatus from singing to “find herself” the media had been all over her in a virtual frenzy, painting her as everything from a heartbroken waif to a temperamental bitch. Max wanted nothing less than to add to her burden, but at the moment he felt as if he’d been left with little choice. He clicked on the phone and reluctantly dialed her number. After the fourth ring he heard a mumbled, sleepy “hello.”

“Maria, it’s me Max. Sorry to wake you.”

“Max!” Maria grumbled into the phone, as she struggled into a sitting position. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked him crankily and because she didn’t know she glared at the digital clock beside her bed. The glowing red numbers red 7:32. Maria yawned. “You may get up with the chickens but that doesn’t mean everyone else does, too.”

“You know I wouldn’t call you if I didn’t have a good reason.”

Maria eyed the phone suspiciously before asking, “What’s the reason?”

“I need a favor.”

“I knew it!”

“Come on, Maria, don’t be like that. Joanna flaked out on me and I need a sitter for Claudia. I’ve got to be at work in half an hour.”

“If I’m supposed to fight the rabid reporters camped outside my apartment to do you a favor what’s in it for me?”

“Chinese,” Max supplied quickly.

Maria was unimpressed. “I had Chinese last week.”

“Okay, how about Greek?”

“Last night”

“God, Maria! What do you want? My kidney?”

“Hmm,” Maria hummed, pretending to consider his offer.

“Maria, don’t be glib. I’m really in a bind.”

“Fine. But you owe me soooo big. Just give me fifteen to get there.”

“Make it ten.”

“Max!” Maria cried in warning exasperation.

“Okay, okay…..twelve then.”

****************************

“….and I’ve told him over and over not to leave the toilet seat up and still he does it,” Mrs. Bradshaw griped, glaring daggers at her husband, “It’s spite, pure spite!”

“Oh, blow it out your ear, Lois!” Mr. Bradshaw responded with equal heat.

Max suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and instead leaned back onto his elbow, supporting his chin with his thumb. “Good, good,” he said, “you two are expressing your anger. Now let’s proceed from there. Lois, why do you feel that Sam is being intentionally spiteful towards you?”

“Well just look at him!” Lois Bradshaw replied with a look of distaste mixed with disgust, “The man is Satan incarnate!” And with that began another endless round of bickering.

Max sighed deeply. He was seriously beginning to doubt his career choice. The couple before him was completely hopeless. All they did was fight and complain, neither one taking the time to listen to the other. Personally, Max thought it was a waste of time for them to even attempt to stay together and he wanted nothing more than to tell them so. But that wasn’t his job. His job was to give them reason to stay together, to give them hope…. However, at the moment that was an especially difficult thing for Max to do considering the problems he was having in his own marriage.

His wife hadn’t spoken to him in over two months, closer to three if you counted having a conversation that required more than a yes or no response. Despite the painful reality that they had lost a child together Liz had cut herself off from him emotionally, which in some ways, was more agonizing than Jeffrey’s death. He needed so desperately to have his wife back, to grieve in her arms and have her grieve in his. Max firmly believed that if Liz were willing to demolish the barrier she had erected against him she could heal….they could heal together. But she couldn’t…or at least she wouldn’t. And Max tended to lean toward the latter.

However, Isabel had been of the mindset that Liz needed help, that she was suffering some sort of breakdown. She had suggested to Max that he actually consider committing Liz to a mental facility. Max had looked at her as if she were the one who had gone insane. Liz was just sad and depressed, maybe a little distant, but definitely not….crazy. The idea that Liz needed to be put away was completely ludicrous to Max. But that was Isabel’s take on the situation. However, Max did not allow her opinion or Alex’s, who ironically supported Isabel’s idea, dissuade him. He firmly believed with time and love he could crack the shell that Liz had built around herself. He just had to be patient.

Max looked again to the fighting couple before him and admitted to himself that he felt just a tiny bit of envy. It was true that the Bradshaws had a great deal to learn about respect for one another, but underneath it all Max knew that they wanted their marriage to work. They would have never sought out his help otherwise. Max could see that they loved each other and wanted desperately to hold onto their marriage. Despite the bickering and the hurtful words they were still desperately holding on. Max couldn’t say the same thing about his own marriage.

It was true that he was willing to do everything and anything to fight for his relationship with Liz, however, the question was whether Liz was willing to do the same. She didn’t seem so far inclined. Maria said that it was only due to grief, that maybe Liz blamed herself for the baby dying and that somewhere inside her she was terrified that Max would blame her, too. And so she shut him out, because, although she had survived the agony of losing her baby, if Max were to hold her responsible it would kill her. Max mentally shook his head in bitter amusement. Maria and her cork-brained ideas, he thought, where did she come up with all this stuff?

But at least she didn’t believe that Liz was crazy and needed to be committed to a mental hospital. That was a plus. In the last passing weeks, though, Max had to acknowledge that Maria had been a wonderful friend to him. Despite her burgeoning personal problems, and they were mountainous, she had never failed to make time for Max. He could call her up at 3:00 in the morning and she would listen to him sound off. She always made him feel as if she had time for him, as if she understood him and all this sometimes without ever uttering a word. Sometimes they would have lunch together, when the media wasn’t pounding her too hard, and she would make his sides ache from laughing so hard at her antics. Now he understood why Liz had always described every lunch date she’d had with Maria as a “riot.”

Before the baby died, Max had always thought of Maria as more of Liz’s friend and his best friend’s girlfriend. He had never considered what Maria had been to him personally. But in the last three months she had proved herself to Max time and time again. His relationship with Maria had evolved from something he had shared vicariously through his wife into something that was exclusively his own. Max marveled over the fact that he had never considered her before but now that he had he realized that he had a friend for life. And for that Max was grateful beyond words.

The sudden and unexpected ringing of the phone jarred Max out of his thoughts. The Bradshaws paused in mid-sentence. The three of them glared in displeasure at the phone. Max jerked up the receiver and swiveled around in his chair so that his back was to the Bradshaws. “Theresa,” he chided his secretary in a furious underbreath, “I thought we had established that you are never to call me when I’m in a session.”

“Yes, Mr. Evans,” Theresa acknowledged with a slight tremble in her voice, “But Ms. DeLuca insisted. She said that it was urgent.”

Max rolled his eyes at the thought. Urgent to Maria could be any number of things, all of which, when you came right down to it, weren’t urgent at all. Max sighed heavily, “Oh just put her through.” When he heard the transfer click of the telephone he said, “Okay, Maria, what’s happened now?”

“Max, you need to get to St. Joseph’s hospital right away.”

Her trembling words caused Max to sit up straight in his seat. “Why? What’s happened?”