Max and Megan Ch. 05

**A special thanks to bikoukumori for editing this chapter**

Max Roberts yawned. He was dead tired and completely worn out from worrying. His ass was numb from the uncomfortable plastic chair. It didn't help that Christian had been glued to him the whole time, he'd become used to it.

The elevator dinged and the door slid open. A skinny elderly woman with electric pink hair, sporting a black spandex dress walked out of it. Max choked back a laugh.

"LouLou, over here." Hal waved at the woman.

The obscenely bright red lipstick she wore illuminated her smile from across the room. She wiggled her fingers at him and sashayed over to them.

Max looked from Hal to her, then back to Hal. He was at a loss for words. She had to be in her sixties, dressed like a teenager from the seventies.

"How is she?" She asked in an obnoxious, high pitched tone.

"Really bad." Hal filled her in on what the doctors had told him.

"Can I see Mommy now?" Christian asked, yawning and stretching.

Hal hefted himself out of the chair. "I'll go and see Buddy." He walked over and said something to the receptionist. She giggled and picked up the phone. After a short conversation, she hung up. Hal returned to the group.

"They really don't want him in there. They said if one of us takes him he can go in for a few minutes." Hal held his hand out to Christian.

He shook his head 'no'. "I want Max to go with me."

Hal shrugged. "Then go with Max. I'll sit out here and cry about it."

"Girly." Christian giggled.

Max set him on the ground, rubbing his backside. "You'll have to walk. My butt is numb."

***

"We really do not want children back here." The nurse explained as she led them back to the same room Max had been in already. "It scares them."

"He's brave enough. Plus, she's all he has." Max said, feeling guilty that he couldn't say the same of himself. He wondered if that horrible nagging feeling would ever subside.

"I will be back in five minutes. That's all we can do." She said sternly.

Before Max opened the door for them, he wanted to warn him. He knelt down to his level. "There are lots of tubes and machines. They are helping to make your mom better. It might be a little scary."

Christian nodded and went in first. Max followed him in and shut the door behind them. Christian's eyes bounced from place to place in the room. Tears welled up in his eyes.

"Talk to her. She can hear you." Max held his hand.

"Mom?" When she didn't respond he started crying. "Why isn't she waking up?"

"She's very sick right now. She can hear you. When I was in here before, she squeezed my hand when I talked to her."

Christian walked closer and reached out to put his hand on hers. "Mom?"

Her eyes opened a little.

"She can't talk yet, so you'll just have to talk to her instead." Max told him quietly.

"Papa is here. LouLou is here. Max is here beside me." He sniffled. "I'm sorry. I wish you didn't get hurt." He leaned over the bed and laid his head near her hand. Megan's hand lifted enough to rest lightly on his hair.

"See? She knows you are here." Max spoke for her.

"I want you home."

"She will as soon as she's better, won't she?" He looked at her. Her eyes were little slits but he could see she was looking at him. Her eyelids drifted shut.

Suddenly, the machine on the right of her started screaming an angry high pitched tone. Max and Christian both jumped back, startled. Before they could comprehend what it was, several nurses and doctors ran in. One of the nurses ushered them out quickly.

"Mom!" Christian screamed as the door shut. "I didn't get to say I love you." He tried to yank the door open. A nurse told him to stay out of the room. "I forgot to say I love you!" He screamed at her.

Max grabbed him, dragging him away from the door. He hadn't remembered to say it either. Christian struggled to escape Max's hold. "Let me go! I want my mom!"

Max picked him up and began walking back towards the waiting room. He began kicking and screaming at him to let him go. When that didn't work, he started to hit Max.

"Christian, stop. I know you're scared. I didn't get to say it either." He struggled to not lose his grip on the boy. Seeing a chair in the hallway, he sat down on it before he accidentally dropped him. "I'm scared too."

"I didn't say it." He cried to Max. "Mom always said to make sure to say it. I forgot."

"It's alright." He hugged the boy tight, afraid he was going to lose what little control he had on his emotions. "She knows." He looked back at the room's door with a lump in his throat. No one had come out since they had been thrown out.

"I want my mom."

"I want your mom, too." He admitted, realizing for the first time in years just how much she had meant to him.

While he was away, he thought about her every day. He cherished every letter she had sent to him. He had picked up a pen on several occasions to write Megan a letter, but when the pen touched the paper, he lost all words to explain why he had been so terrible to her. The same thing happened when he read her emails. He couldn't find the words to say to her.

He couldn't say why he had acted the way he had. Maybe it was fear that like his father, he would end up regretting being a dad to anyone. His father had never really spent one-on-one time with him as a child. With Christian clinging to him, he began to think it might not be so bad. His thoughts wandered to all he had missed in his son's life.

He'd missed the first steps his own baby had taken, the grins and giggles, even his first day of kindergarten. His first scrape or cut that needed a kiss to cure. He didn't even know his favorite color or toys. That was something every good father knew.

"I'm sorry." He said aloud without thinking.

Christian stirred in his lap. "Huh?"

Max glanced down at him. "I'm just sorry." He hugged him and lapsed back into a silence, unsure of what to say or do.

***

A few days had passed since Megan's heart had stopped while Max and Christian were in with her. The doctors had managed to successfully revive her, and she eventually became somewhat stable. She was still not out of the danger zone, but they were no longer telling them to call in her family.

The nurses helped move her into the Intensive Care Unit, where she would be monitored almost twenty-four seven. To Max, the room appeared the same as the last. There were new doctors and nurses to care for her. Some were talkative, asking how they were related, some assumed they were married. He'd corrected them, knowing she'd probably smack him if he didn't.

The ICU's rules were a bit more lax, which meant that one family member could be in there from seven in the morning until nine at night. While Max was not technically family, Hal had made it seem that way to let him stay with her.

"Why don't you want to be in with her?" Max asked Hal, after he had come back from taking a shower at the house.

Hal ran his chubby hand through his short grey hair. "It reminds me of her mother. I love my daughter, I really do, but it is still hard to be in this setting." His eyes stared sadly off in the distance, before returning to Max. "I need to go get Christian's homework from the school, and see what the damage is at the house."

Max nodded in reply. "I'll sign in and go sit with her."

He walked over to the nurses' station. They handed him a sticker with large blue print stating he was a visitor. He slapped it on his shirt, and headed towards the corridor that led to the room she was in. After a short walk he reached room 111.

Opening the door, he was semi surprised to see her almost fully awake. The last few days she awoke very few times, a few blinks of her eyes and she'd go back to sleep. Her color was slightly better, the grey tone in her skin more subtle.

"Hey beautiful." He smiled.

Megan rolled her eyes, unable to talk because the tracheotomy tube was still in place. Her oxygen levels were not high enough to satisfy the doctors. Instead, she flipped him the bird.

"Now is that any way to treat a guest." He joked, pulling a chair that sat in the room closer and sat next to the bed.

She grinned. When she did, the weight of the three days of worrying incessantly seemed to fall off his shoulders. There was hope for her after all.

She tried to say something, but it came out garbled.

"Don't talk." Max reprimanded her sternly. "You aren't supposed to talk."

She closed her eyes, clearly frustrated. Max had an idea. He searched around and found a notepad and pen. He grabbed her hand and put the pen in it and sat the pad in her lap. "Write it."

Megan opened her eyes and shakily attempted to write. It looked like a bunch of squiggles.

"I've seen your kid write better than that." He teased. After pondering the wiggly lines, he realized it said Christian.

"He's with your Dad. They are picking up his homework from the classes he's missed this week."

She wrote a few more squiggles, but before she was finished he knew what it said. Jordan. "He's still hanging out in the county jail. I haven't heard anything since they picked him up."

She looked horrified. More wiggly lines were written in haste. Max took the pad and read it.

'Bail him out.'

"Megan, you are on a million different drugs, you don't know what you are saying." Max was getting angry. How could she just want him back, for God's sake he was the reason she was shot in the neck!

She yanked the pad away from him and wrote "Fuck you". She threw it on the bed and closed her eyes, unable to look at him.

"You don't mean that." She had never in the whole time he'd known her said those words to him. Her icy silence towards him did not help ease his mind that she did not mean it. Maybe she really did mean it. After all, he had left her, not helped with their child, and treated her terribly by leaving.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry for leaving you. I never should have." He rambled. "I shouldn't have walked out. I was angry you hid the kid from me. When you said that you didn't want me to hurt him, I knew we had grown apart. I walked out and refused to come back to you two. I didn't want you to have to worry about me hurting your son, or even you." Max didn't even know if she was listening. The thought that she may not even remember what he was saying seemed to make him relax.

"I remember when we were little, the summer your aunt asked you to go to her house a whole state away for a month. I was so lonely without you to get into mischief with me. You called me up and told me how you missed me and wished you could come home." He paused. "I felt that way the whole time I was away from you."

"I lost my best friend. I lost the love of my life. I lost out on watching my own child, our child, growing up. I missed out on everything because I was stupid and ran from them. I made excuses to cover up my own cowardice."

Max looked at her, falling into a silence. Her eyes were open, she was looking at him. "You will never know just how much I loved you. The thing is, I still do." He said so quietly she barely heard him.

He watched a single tear roll out of the corner of her eye and run down her cheek. "Don't cry." He grabbed her hand gently in his.

Max could tell she was drained, emotionally and physically. She closed her eyes and fell back asleep. He sat there staring at their joined hands. He wanted to scoop her up and hold her, never letting go, but he knew her heart really belonged to someone else now. He had missed his chance; he would have to settle with chastely holding her hand, being there for her until the other man could be.

***

"Mom! I got an A on my science test!" Christian nearly ran across the hospital room to her bed. Max stood back, letting them have their time alone.

"That's very good." She smiled.

"Max helped me study." He beamed.

Megan had been improving little by little. Her oxygen levels had normalized enough for the breathing tube to come out. Her voice was scratchy and quiet, but she could at least say a few things. Her gunshot wound had begun to heal. The doctors moved her out of the ICU to a normal hospital room with less supervision.

"He taught me a silly saying for planets. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies. Except Max said that the Pie planet, Pluto, is not one anymore." Christian told her. "He said it was one when he was growing up."

Megan nodded gingerly, her neck was still sore.

Jordan walked through the door carrying a bouquet of flowers in a glass vase. It looked out of place and mildly cheesy. "I got these for you."

Max glowered. What the hell was he doing there? He was supposed to be in jail.

"Thank you." Megan smiled up at him, admiring the flowers as he set them on the bedside table.

Max kicked himself mentally for not thinking of it first. Then he kicked himself for being jealous of the loser. He almost felt like running to the hospital gift shop and buying one of the three-foot-tall teddy bears to outdo him.

"Anything for you, baby cakes." Jordan sat on the bed near her. "Miss me?"

Max couldn't watch him any longer or he'd be sick. "Hey Meg, I'm going to get going. Do you want me to leave Christian?"

"I want to go with you." Christian answered himself. Megan smiled at him and nodded that it was alright. "Bye Mom, I love you."

"I love you, too."

***

"I'm named after you, you know." Christian told Max matter-of-factly as they drove out of the hospital parking lot.

"How do you figure?"

"My real name is Maxwell." He made a disgusted face. "So is yours. See?" He held up Max's wallet which contained his license.

"Guess that's the last time I let you hold my wallet. How much did you take out of it?" Max kidded as he stopped for a red light.

"Five dollars." He grinned, waving the bill in the air.

Max pulled into a park they had frequented as kids. He shut the car engine off and climbed out. They walked to a picnic table and sat down.

"Why aren't you with my Mom, you love her." Christian asked innocently.

"It's complicated. Grown up stuff." He left it at that.

The sound of some kids singing some odd song started to play near them. Max looked under the table.

"Hello?" Christian had produced a black cell phone from his pocket. Max was perplexed that a seven year old would be carrying a cell phone around. "Dad took me to a park." Max could hear a sharp noise come from the phone. Christian held it out to him, the caller still screeching. "Mom wants to talk to you, and I think she's mad."

Max took the cell and held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Why is he calling you Dad?" Jordan's voice answered. "You aren't his dad."

"The hell I'm not."

"Look, I don't know who you think you are, but you need to bring him to me. Right now."

"Put Megan on the phone, please." Max said simply instead of answering him.

"No."

"Very well." Max pressed the red 'END' button and handed it back to Christian. He didn't feel like listening to idle threats from the punk.

"Want to get some ice cream and eat 'til we get fat? Then, we'll have a discussion on why you have a cell phone at your age."

Christian giggled and said yes. Max could get used to hanging out with Christian and being a real father. Maybe it wasn't as difficult as he had originally thought. He seemed to be doing alright with it.

***

Max knocked lightly on the hospital room door. He opened it and walked in. Megan sat in a chair across from the door.

"Hi, glad to see you up."

"Hey."

He crossed the room. He sat on the edge of the bed. "I have great news."

"Like what?" She asked.

"I am moving out of your house. I found an apartment across town." He explained, shrugging. "It's small, but it's a place to live."

"That's great." She smiled, happy for him.

"Christian loves it. There's a playground and a pool. I promised I'd take him when I get unpacked. I got a two bedroom so maybe in the summer and on weekends he could stay with me." He added.

"Max," She paused. "I think you shouldn't spend so much time with him. He thinks you're his father." Her green eyes locked with his.

"I am his father."

"Jordan is. He has been for over a year now. He may not be his biological father, but in essence he is. He was there for us." She would have hurt him less if she'd have stabbed him with a knife in the chest.

"Do you even hear what you are saying? That guy you think is so great - he nearly got you killed. He was going to kill me. And you want someone like that raising our son?" Max nearly yelled at her.

"He made a mistake." She answered simply. "He didn't mean to."

"I saved your life. The least you could do is let me be in my own child's life." He glared at her.

"What do you expect, Max? That you would come back and everything would be alright? You left us. I needed someone constantly there for me and Christian, and Jordan came into our lives and did that." Megan said quietly, her voice still raw.

"You want to throw away twenty years of friendship for him? For someone who you've known a year. How long was it before you married him?"

"It isn't any of your-" He cut her off before she could finish.

"Just answer the damn question!" Max asked, restraining himself from screaming at her. "How long did you know him before you married him?"

"Six months," she clarified. "we dated for six months before we got married."

"Six months?" Max repeated incredulously. "That's not even enough time to get to know someone."

"It was enough time for us."

"He is a replacement, isn't he?" It dawned on Max why she might have rushed into such a committed relationship so quickly. "That's what it is, you were mad and hurt by me, so you got a new boy toy to fill the gaps."

"No, I love Jordan." She didn't sound so certain. "He was not a replacement."

"Bull." Max countered. "I've known you for all but six years of your life, and you would never shack up with some random dude unless something pushed you into it. Well, guess what honey? I'm home, I'm not going anywhere, so you can ditch the loser and be with me."

Megan didn't reply. Instead she just stared at the white speckled tiles on the floor. After a long time she finally spoke up. "Don't make me choose." She said so quietly it was almost a whisper.

"You have to choose, Meg. But if you choose him, I will take you to court for rights to see my son." He wanted to be in his life in some shape or form. The boy had really grown on him the last few weeks.

"Max," She paused. "You don't understand. How can I ever trust that you wouldn't take off and leave us again?"

"Just by trusting me, and letting me show you." He shrugged. There really was no way of proving her wrong, other than by showing her he meant what he was saying this time.

"I always trusted you. You let me down. Twice. Trust is fragile."

"Tell me what I need to do to earn it back." He rushed. "How can I fix this?" If he had any chance, he'd walk through hell to get her back. She meant more to him then she would ever comprehend.

She was quiet for a few minutes, driving him mad. "Maybe you can't fix it." She said at last.

"Megan, you don't get it. What do you want? I'll do anything for you." He begged, trying to hold back the emotions that threatened to boil over.

"Please, think about it. We can be a family, you, me, and Christian. We were meant to be together forever, and I know I screwed that up by hurting you. I can admit that. I'm here now, and I'm not going to leave you or our son."

He leaned over and grabbed her hand in his. "Please? Pretty please with lots of cheese and a cherry on top?"

She made a disgusted face at the sound of cheese and cherries being together. Then she laughed. He wasn't exactly a Master Chef. One time he tried to be cool in the kitchen and flip a grilled cheese sandwich without a spatula...it resulted in a cheese stain on the ceiling that finally had to be painted over.