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i.
He could have kissed her tonight.
Max comes to the realisation with startling clarity, and it’s sudden and violent, as if he’s being hit repeatedly over the head with it.
He could have kissed Helen tonight. He would have, if not for—
He looks down at the wedding band on his left hand, and the guilt in his stomach curdles. A wave of nausea makes him sway on his feet. He can’t breathe for a moment, or forgets how to, it doesn’t matter. He’s surrounded by Helen, pinned down by her smile peering out from the framed pictures hanging on her walls and thrown off-kilter by the faint traces of perfume that she leaves behind in every room that she’s in, and he has to get out.
He keeps his pace regular as he escapes from her office, telling himself that he’s not running away even as he barrels past a pair of nurses with little more than a mumbled apology at their startled Doctor Goodwin’s. Max doesn’t really know where he’s going until he’s in the stairwell and halfway to the roof.
Winter in New York is winter in New York, and the cold hits him like a fist to the chest, stinging his lungs as he gasps in a breath. Still, it helps him focus on something other than his panic and by the time he makes it to the familiar little spot overlooking the street, he’s thinking more clearly.
Nothing happened.
He repeats it to himself like a mantra. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t cross that line.
Max is an expert at denial, at ignoring his problems until they’re so big and glaring that they threaten to overwhelm him. Even still, he’s not stupid enough to deny that he feels something for Helen.
Falling in love with Georgia was easy. Max knew from the first moment he met her that she would slot seamlessly into his life, and he sprinted headfirst into loving her.
But with Helen it’s something else. With Helen, there was no ready-made space for her to fill. She carved one out all on her own, fought and clawed and earned her place there.
It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t hate himself for feeling this way.
And he does. Hate himself.
He hates the way his ring becomes a physical weight whenever she’s nearby, hates that it feels like he’s betraying his dead wife with every lingering look, every brush of skin against skin, every time he sees their daughter with the woman that might be the love of his life and yearns. He hates the way he knows that he could have her if he were brave enough to reach out and take her.
And now he has Alice. Alice who is kind and pretty and uncomplicated and reminds him of his kind, pretty, uncomplicated dead wife.
Alice who smiles brightly when he kisses her as if taken by surprise every time.
Alice who turns her back to him at night and presses mournful tears into the sheets, stifling her sobs so that she doesn’t wake him with the force of her ever-present grief.
A siren wails on the street below. Max shuts his eyes and breathes.
ii.
He avoids her. It’s better like this.
Even though nothing happened, it’s better that Max keeps his distance from Helen, that they stop treading the line between co-workers and friends, and something more, and he takes a firm step back.
He ignores the confusion in her eyes when she calls out to him in the halls and he waves her away without pausing his long-legged stride.
He ignores the lurch in his stomach when his caller ID lights up with her face after a long shift and he lets it ring out, or when she texts him and he leaves her messages unanswered.
And he definitely, firmly ignores the crushed expression on Helen’s face when Alice appears at the gala in a sleek red dress and he welcomes her with a kiss and hand around her waist. Helen is quick to conceal the flash of emotion under an apathetic mask, but the momentary show of hurt plays on his mind for the rest of he night. He grits his teeth and pretends he doesn’t wish that the material under his hands was green instead.
That evening must have been the final straw, because they don’t talk much after, except through professionally worded emails signed off with her full name and title. She stops calling him and she no longer crosses the polite distance that he’s put between them, and it’s better like this.
He ignores the voice that tells him that's a lie.
iii.
It’s always been their place, this tiny corner overlooking the city, and it feels wrong to be up here with someone else, someone other than her, but—
—well, he’s here with Alice anyway.
Max exhales and ignores the feeling that he’s betraying Helen, betraying this private place that they created for themselves in amongst the chaos of the ‘Dam, because Helen isn’t who he should be worried about. He’s in a relationship. He’s with Alice.
He closes his eyes and wills his brain to shut up.
“It’s beautiful up here,” Alice says, breaking the silence between them, soft and gentle like she always is. Max’s skin feels stretched tight and wrong, and he swallows hard to rid himself of the guilt souring his tongue and clawing at his insides.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, and the conversation dies as quickly as it began.
iv.
A new doctor, Cassian, starts at New Amsterdam and he is nice, professional, experienced. Max pretends not to notice the interested glint in his eye whenever he looks at Helen.
v.
“You’re avoiding me,” Helen starts without preamble, and Max should have known that she’d know exactly where to look for him.
He suppresses the voice that tells him that he did.
Helen’s heels crunch against the loose gravel as she approaches their corner. Max flushes beneath the collar of his scrubs, nervous under the heat of her penetrating stare. She looks upset, and his heart feels like it’s beating out of his chest.
“I-” he starts, stumbling over himself and gesturing ineffectually with his left hand “-of course not. Why would you think that?”
Helen responds with a raised eyebrow. Max turns away so that he doesn’t have to see the look on her face.
“Max, what’s going on?”
He hears her take a single step closer.
“Nothing,” he mumbles, but he can’t meet her eyes.
“Did something happen? Is it Luna?”
He shakes his head, jaw locking. “She’s fine. Everything is fine.”
A beat of silence. Rain clouds darken the horizon.
“Is it me?” Helen asks, uncharacteristically vulnerable. Max’s hands fist at his sides. She takes another step.
“Helen,” he starts, and it sounds like something between a warning and a plea.
“Have I done something?” She comes closer still, until she’s leaning up against the wall, looking up at the side of his face even as he stares resolutely ahead.
Max’s heart is thudding hard, and he can’t think about anything but her fingers mere inches from his own and how much he wants to intertwine them and pull her closer, and he feels sick with it because he has Alice and Georgia, except he thinks of it more like AliceandGeorgia, and he’s panicking, struggling to separate the two women in his head, and it’s all a jumbled mess and he needs space to breathe and organise his thoughts for one second, just one second.
“Max-”
“Enough, Helen,” he finally breaks, and she flinches back. He wants to apologise, god, he’s so sorry, but his brain can’t keep up with his mouth and he’s putting his foot in it before he can stop himself.
“You’re not my wife, and you aren’t Luna’s mother, so stop concerning yourself with us and focus on your job.”
He feels it before he’s even finished the ugly sentence spewing from his mouth. Helen swallows. She’s breathing hard. Her hand falls from its position on the wall.
She steps away.
“Helen,” he starts, fog clearing, and he knows he’s messed up. She turns around and walks away without letting him finish.
He feels their friendship crack and splinter and crumble at his feet.
vi.
He doesn’t have her anymore.
Two weeks after their disastrous rooftop conversation and it’s a blow to the ribs every time Helen looks straight through him in the halls. He isn’t quite okay with it, but he will be, he’s sure. He just has to get used to it.
It’s exactly what he wanted anyway, exactly why he pushed her away. It’s strange, then, the crippling fear that they might not come back from this.
vii.
Max catches Helen with the new doctor, and it feels like punishment, like he defiled the sanctity of their spot with Alice and now he has to pay for it.
He didn’t mean to interrupt them. It’s a coincidence. A classic case of wrong time, wrong place. It’s bad luck, but his luck has been bad for a long time now.
Their corner of the roof is illuminated by the smudged lights from the city around them. Helen is looking up at Cassian and her smile is the brightest of them all. They’re standing a little too close to be casual and, oh, his hand is resting lightly on the back of her neck.
Max can’t hear their conversation from where he hovers halfway out of the stairwell doorway, but he can hear the bright peal of laughter that Helen lets out. It’s so much more than the amused snort reserved for him, and he feels like that means something.
It occurs to Max then that watching her slip away hurts more than when Georgia left him, and that’s a terrifying thought.
Cassian leans down and Max’s chest suddenly feels like it weighs much more than the rest of his body. He escapes back the way he came before their lips meet, but it hurts all the same. He doesn’t make it down the first flight of stairs before he slumps to the ground.
Being apart from her wasn’t meant to be like this. It was meant to be better. He doesn’t want to admit that he might have made a mistake, but this is worse. Much worse.
viii.
Alice asks him what he wants and the first thing that crosses his mind is Helen’s face.
He tries to form words to reassure or placate her, tries to find an answer that will hold together the tumbling house of cards that is this relationship, but he can see in Alice’s expression that she already knows. She’s always been perceptive.
Alice smiles and it’s soft and full of understanding and Max couldn’t feel guiltier. She walks out of his place wordlessly, shutting the door carefully behind her and that’s it.
ix.
It’s Bloom that finally calls Max out.
He’s been terrorising his staff for days, micromanaging and criticising and interfering with everyone and everything. He’s honestly been expecting the moment when they have enough and send a representative to plead with him. He knows it’s stupid to hope for Helen when the door to the roof squeals open behind him, but he still wilts with disappointment when Lauren steps out instead.
He doesn’t watch her approach, turning his gaze back out over the city as her footsteps come to a stop beside him. They’re both quiet.
“She sent you up here, right?”
He feels rather than sees Lauren shrug.
“Everyone’s worried.”
Max laughs mirthlessly, shaking his head. “She shouldn’t have bothered.”
“That’s not fair.”
He knows that. He knows that.
“I keep,” he sighs, shrugging, “screwing things up. I screwed things up with her and Alice and,” he falters, “and with Georgia. And now I’m screwing up my job, too.”
They both fall quiet again and he blinks rapidly against the tightness that builds in the corner of his eyes, keeping his gaze turned away now out of necessity.
“I’m going to tell you something as your friend right now, and I want you to listen to me.”
Max frowns, and Lauren takes that as an indication to go on.
“You’re being really shitty.”
Max laughs, a surprised, miserable sound. “Yeah,” he nods, “I know.”
“She deserves better from you than whatever this is.”
“I know.”
“So do something about it,” she finally snaps, one hand slapping down against the top of the brick wall. “Or leave her alone because this ‘trying to protect her’ bullshit,” she uses her fingers to punctuate her point, “is offensive and cruel and more about you than her.”
His stomach tightens, and he finally looks down at Bloom. She’s scowling, face flushed and windswept and practically brimming with displeasure.
“Bloom, I didn’t-”
“It isn’t just about you. She’s your friend,” Lauren says, placing a hand on his forearm. “Your friend who held you up through everything. Are you really the guy who isn’t there for the people who are there for him?”
He feels nauseous because he never looked at it like that. Is that what they think of him? Is that what Helen thinks of him?
“I said awful things to her,” Max forces out, and from the look on her face he thinks Lauren knows exactly the things he’s referring to.
“I know,” she parrots his words back to him now.
“She won’t forgive me.”
Bloom shrugs. “Maybe not. It doesn’t mean you don’t try.”
He thinks he might be sick. She squeezes his arm, and he blows out a breath, and they dwell in the relative quiet up here and contemplate what an idiot he is.
“Is-” he struggles with his words, “-is she okay?”
“She’s…trying to be.”
An image of her with Cassian flashes through his mind. Max nods. “I’m glad.”
Bloom scoffs. “We both know that isn’t true.”
There’s a look in her eye when he turns to her, and they both know. Lauren scrutinises him for a moment longer, taking a step back with a short nod and he doesn’t know what she saw in his face, but she drops her tone to something graver, more serious.
“You’re being a fool, Max, and if I didn’t care about you both, I’d let you. But if you keep at this, you’re going to lose her and you’re going to deserve to.”
x.
He takes off his ring. It isn't the only thing he finally has the courage to let go of.
xi.
Max hears about Helen’s day while he just so happens to be passing by the nurses’ station on the oncology floor, about the little girl with acute lymphocytic leukaemia who was alive at the start of their shift and wasn’t by the end.
He finds her on the roof huddled against the side of the building, stocking-clad legs outstretched in front of her. She doesn’t notice him approach because she’s staring unseeingly ahead. It hits Max that this is the first time they’ve been truly alone in weeks.
He slides to the floor beside her, appreciating the heat radiating from her and the tendrils of floral perfume that wrap around him. Neither of them speaks. There’s a swish of liquid and Helen’s bringing an already half-empty bottle of wine up to her lips to take a swig from it.
“Helen,” Max whispers, because he’s never seen her like this.
She doesn’t respond and he didn’t expect her to, instead using the back of her hand to swipe at her lips. Helen still doesn’t look at him, and it burns in his stomach. He wants to reach out to her; he wants to comfort her.
He wants her.
“Helen,” he tries again, tentative, and even though she swings her unfocused gaze to him, it isn’t any better than when she wasn’t looking at him at all.
For the first time since he’s known her, Helen looks frazzled, hair spilling from atop her head, eyes glassy with tears, jacket askew and half-falling from her shoulder.
“Doctor Goodwin,” she says, and it’s sardonic and mean and designed to hurt him. It works.
“Are you okay?”
Helen shrugs, lifting the bottle to her lips again. “Great.”
She sniffs and it could be blamed on the brisk April wind, but then a tear slips from the corner of her eye and it makes him ache.
“You did everything you cou-”
“Don’t,” she says, and it’s a rough sound that comes from her core. She looks away again, but he sees the tears that are now falling in earnest and he marvels at how badly he’s screwed this, them, up.
Helen takes another gulp of wine, using her sleeve to wipe roughly at her cheeks. Max holds back the urge to reach for her, folding his arms atop his bent knees and resting his chin on them. Helen sniffs again.
“She was six,” she suddenly whispers, hoarse and distressed. “We thought she'd have more time.”
The pain in her voice grips Max, claws that dig into his heart and wrench it from his chest.
“I let her die.”
“Helen, no.” He reaches out to grasp her wrist, jostling the wine bottle which falls from her lap and spills a puddle of crimson on the ground. “You are an exceptional doctor, and you did everything you could. This is not on you.”
Bloom’s words ring in his ears, and he pulls Helen into his chest, wrapping his arms around her. Her body shakes in his grip. He drops a kiss to the top of her head, breathing her in.
He’s here for her, even if he’s the one that’s brought them to this point.
Max holds Helen to him until she stops trembling and starts to shift in his arms. He lets her move away a fraction, arms still banded loosely around her.
She’s looking at him with watery eyes one moment, and the next she’s right there, mouth mere inches from his own and Max’s breath catches, and he barely has time to register what’s going on before she’s closing the scant distance between them.
Helen presses her lips to his and he could lose himself in this, in her, but for the sweet echo of wine on her tongue that pulls him sharply back to reality.
“Stop,” he grits out, bringing his hands up to push gently against her shoulders. “Helen, stop. You don’t want this.”
Max has thought a lot about how their first kiss would go, and he never considered that it would happen sitting on the uneven ground on the roof of the hospital with Helen tipsy and sad.
She pulls back abruptly, hand going to her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she gasps, and the words come out slurred and clunky. “I’m so sorry.”
“Wait,” he says, but she’s already shaking her head and struggling to her feet.
“I have to go,” she mumbles, and is gone by the time he’s even halfway to standing.
xii.
This time it’s Helen running away from him. The most he sees of her is the ends of her long hair disappearing around a corner or the hem of her white coat as she ducks into a doorway or the fading musk of her perfume after she abruptly vacates a room that he enters.
He gets it now that the shoe is on the other foot. This isn’t better.
xiii.
She’s the first to slip from the department chair meeting, gone almost as soon as he’s finished talking. Max excuses himself from his conversation with the head of obstetrics, haphazardly grabbing for his stack of papers and following Helen from the room.
He loses her at the elevators, and she isn’t in her office when he finally makes it up there. Max panics for a second, frustrated. And then it occurs to him.
The city is in the midst of a surprise warm spell, and the weather is pleasant when he gets up to the roof. Helen is looking out from their spot over the streets below, arms wide where she’s half-resting against the low brick wall.
She turns when the hinges of the door whine as it swings shut. Her relaxed expression shutters, and she turns back the way she was facing when she notices him. Max hesitates, shoving his clammy hands into his pockets. When Helen doesn’t make a move to escape, he forces his feet to move in her direction.
She doesn’t react to his presence, and the silence while he lurks anxiously behind her is tense and stifling. Max hates that he’s ruined them, hates even more that there’s no reprieve to be found even in their secret little hiding place, but he’s going to fix this.
“You ran out of there pretty quickly.”
“My apologies, I thought the meeting was finished. Was there something else you wanted to speak with me about?” Her expression is blank, and her words are curt and professional.
“Helen.”
She blows out a breath, fingers flexing against the brick, and then finally, finally turns to face him.
“Can we talk?”
He can read the irritation on her face, can tell that she’s fighting off the urge to reply with something snarky and cutting, and he almost wishes she would just for a sign that things between them aren’t all bad. But she doesn’t.
Helen nods, a single, sharp jerk of her head. Max’s palms sweat.
“Good, good,” he mumbles to himself and his heart is beating a drumbeat in his throat.
She looks at him expectantly, eyes giving nothing away, and Max clears his throat uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t react. It’s not going to be that easy.
“What I said was,” he shakes his head, “out of line and nasty-”
She aims a glare at him that is pure fire.
“-and you didn’t deserve it. I should have apologised a long time ago. No, I never should have said it in the first place.”
Still nothing. Max knows what she expects from him, knows that it isn’t enough to apologise or promise not to do it again. She wants an explanation, and as terrifying as it is, he’s going to give her one.
All he can do is hope that he doesn’t do any more damage than he already has.
“I said those things because,” Max swallows and shakes his head, “because I’m an idiot. I pushed you away because I thought I was protecting you.”
Helen lets out a derisive huff of air, eyes rolling as she moves to step around him. He reaches out to stop her, panicked.
“No, wait, that was a lie. I was trying to protect myself.”
She pulls her arm from his grip, eyes flashing dangerously, but she doesn’t make any more moves to leave and Max takes that as a win.
“I was scared.” His heart feels like it’s about to beat its way through his chest. He exhales. Presses his eyes shut. Starts speaking before he has a chance to psych himself out. “I was scared because I love you.”
He opens his eyes in time to see Helen’s stoic expression vanish instantaneously.
Her eyes grow wide and her lips part. “What?” She’s barely loud enough to be heard over the traffic on the street below.
“I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone the way I love you,” Max says, swallowing around the lump in his throat, “and I felt so guilty because what kind of person does that make me? What kind of husband did that make me?”
Helen is gaping at him, taking shallow little breaths, and Max has to get this all out before he can’t. “And I was scared because I think you may have loved me too, and all I could worry about was what would happen if I lost you like…” He trails off.
It sits unspoken between them. He lost her anyway.
“Max-”
“And I used Alice and I hurt you,” he interrupts her before she has the chance to speak, before she breaks his heart like he knows she will, because she deserves this apology, “and it was awful and selfish and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Helen.”
Her hand comes up to her mouth and the tips of her fingers press shakily against her lips. Max smiles at the stricken look on her face, a weak, tremulous thing.
“You had to have known,” he whispers. His voice sounds thick even to his own ears.
Helen exhales unevenly, mouth opening and closing as she searches for what to say. This is more painful than even the worst of Max’s predictions.
“And you have Cassian now,” he steamrollers on, “and that’s great. I’m not trying to get in between that and I’m not looking to excuse what I said to you. I just wanted to explain. Because I miss you.”
The silence that follows is stunned, and it stretches to the point of being unbearable. Max doesn’t know what else to say or how to act now that he’s spilled his guts for her. He flushes with embarrassment, but stands his ground. He’s done enough running.
“I’m not with Cassian,” Helen finally says, and it’s the opposite of what he was expecting from her.
“What?” he says, thrown off.
“We aren’t together. I mean, we went on a few dates, and we kissed but,” she tries for a casual shrug, “he said he didn’t think I was really in it with him.”
The relief is overwhelming, but Max schools his expression into something resembling sympathy. “Oh, I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Really?”
He shakes his head ruefully. “No.”
For the first time in what feels like an age, Helen smiles at him, little more than a grudging quirk of her lips, but the warmth of it sinks into his bones. He plucks up the courage to take a step closer to her, folding his arms on the wall beside her.
“I don’t ever want you to think you aren’t important to me,” he says lowly, “or to Luna. You’re the most important person in our lives. I’m sorry if I made you think any differently.”
Helen props herself up beside him. “Thank you.”
Max looks out at the view, content, and maybe they won’t get back to where they were before, but-
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel about you?”
Max tilts his head at her, curious frown creasing his forehead, and hums a noise of enquiry.
“You told me you loved me,” Helen starts, and she ducks her head, a ruddy flush staining her cheeks. “Don’t you want to know if I feel the same?”
“Helen,” Max breathes out straightening up, and his heart is galloping again.
“Because I do,” she says, and she looks nervous, but she sounds sure. “I’m completely in love with you, and with Luna, and you’re the most important people to me too.”
For a second, Max stops breathing. This isn’t at all where he expected their conversation to go; the most he’d dared hope for was a tenuous restoration to their friendship, and now Helen is looking at him like that again and he can barely believe that they’re here. It all feels too profound for the middle of shift on a random Wednesday afternoon.
He takes a step towards her. She takes one too.
Max blots out the memory of their messy first kiss, eyes on nothing but her as he bends low, hands going to the sides of her face and mouth hovering over hers for a long moment as they breathe each other in. And then he kisses her.
It’s like being shocked, like he can feel the electricity rushing from where their lips are connected down his neck and into his spine. He sighs into her mouth, everything but the taste and feel and scent of her forgotten, and he thinks he could get drunk on her even without the bite of red wine lingering on her lips.
The kiss is gentle, tentative, exploratory, until it’s not, until he slides a hand into her hair and tilts her head and heat blooms between them.
They should really get back to work, but they don’t. Max kisses her slow, deep, draws it out like they have all the time in the world to make this last. And they do.
xiv.
He was wrong. Loving Helen Sharpe is the easiest thing he’s ever done.