Chapter Text
The ring almost stunned Helen out of her booties, and when she saw who was calling her stomach knotted. She proceeded to pick the call anyway.
“Max?”
“Umm, Helen?” He sounded frustrated above Luna’s ear-piercing cries.
Helen felt her breath hitch in her throat. “Max, what’s wrong?” she choked out. Because that was all Max seemed to inspire in her lately: fear and worry.
“A—actually, here’s the thing,” Max broke off with that casual laugh of his, when in reality there was nothing to laugh about.
From Helen’s little experience, baby Luna sounded terribly sleep deprived, as did Max. For how long Max had lived with that while managing to successfully ran New Amsterdam daily, she could not understand or imagine.
An awkward pause stretched from Max’s end of the line before his soft voice emerged again, this time with a less comic kick to it. “We need your help. You still there, Helen?”
She tried her best to ground herself in the moment. The cool night air, the honk of car horns, faceless pedestrians rushing past. But in the end it was all still surreal.
The proud, stubborn and often insufferable Max Goodwin actually wanted Helen’s help. He was admitting he needed it.
“Uhh…yes. Sorry,” Helen startled, just remembering it was her turn to talk.
“If you’re busy I could just…” Max begun.
“I’m on my way, Max. Don’t move!”
She instantly flagged down the first cab she could see after Max cut the call.
Help came in many forms. And maybe this time, it was Max and Luna who were about to help Helen.
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When Max opened the door, Luna was no longer crying.
“H—hey!” He blinked at her from behind puffy, bloodshot eyes, wide, as though he were seeing her for the first time in a long while.
Helen was blanketed with the same sensation looking up back at him. “Hey, Max,” she managed. She had ran her way there and her braids were askew somehow, brushing against one side of her face. “How’s Luna doing?”
The spell broke the moment she invoked Luna’s name, and Max moved so she could pass. “Well, she’s stopped crying just now. I was about to call… let you know everything’s OK. I’d been freaking out for nothing, honestly…”
As Max continued rambling on, Helen was struck with the memory of the last time she was at his house. The dreadful event that had befallen them soon after Luna’s birth.
Max was still keeping Georgia’s things. Her ballet shoes under a rustic shoe rack, the floral dresses still hung in an open wardrobe, a collection of odd-looking spices and herbs on the shelves in the kitchen area.
Helen swallowed, and her smile was shaky when Max shut the door.
“How are you guys?” she attempted a shot. “You been getting enough sleep last few nights?”
“It’s you we’re worried about,” Max surprised her. “How can you even stand there when you’ve been having triple shifts all week?”
She allowed him to relieve her of her Prada purse, which he placed on the kitchen counter before moving to a coffee maker. “Or should I make you tea?” He said, a soft, cautious look plastered on his face. “Better yet some herbal chai. Georgia enjoyed it—”
“Tea’s fine,” Helen cut in. Between the sofa and the white cot, the latter was so much more appealing. If just to ease her mind from the thoughts of death and losing her closest friend to grief.
Luna’s white cot was like a light in the dark, a haven in a rough place, the consoling white rose on a headstone.
She peered down at the baby-pink blankets and the alabaster side-cheek peeping from the folds of pink and baby-animal illustrations. “What you give her?” she asked, meaning baby Luna.
“Formula,” Max replied, scratching his mop of dark-brown hair. He looked around at various mason jars, confused, as a pot of water steamed on the cooker. “Homemade. I didn’t get time for the grocer’s.”
Helen took off her trench coat before throwing it onto the larger bed nearby. “You knocked her hard then?” she observed, crouching down on one knee to approach the baby-pink bundle. “Luna’s deep asleep.”
“That’s not right.”
Helen held her breath as Max’s towering frame suddenly stooped down to her left—the closest they had been to each other in a while.
“Luna rarely ever sleeps without Georgia’s lullaby.” His tone was soft and affectionate, like the old Max.
Helen tried not to think about it too much. “I bought some formula on my way here,” she remembered. “Could you please fetch me my bag?”
“Helen,” Max warned.
“Max, it’s not bad receiving help,” for the hundredth time, Helen reminded him.
And Max’s pointed silence was telling. He had not changed. Perhaps he did not even know why he had called for help in the first place.
Her blood boiling, Helen moved to peel the baby-pink covers from Luna’s body with care. “Max, I know you think I’m being pushy…”
“We don’t think you are.”
Again with the ‘we’, Helen thought with indignation. As if she had not realized that was the word he invoked to justify pushing her away lately; because for him it was just Max and Luna. No one else in the world meant them any good. Not anyone who wanted to help anyway.
“Well, I’m glad Luna agrees…” Helen begun to bite back.
But then the covers came off fully from Luna, and she noticed the sheen of sweat on the baby’s forehead, her feeble thoracic movement as well.
“Max,” Helen's said, as calmly as she could, “what was in Luna’s baby formula?”
“I never really….I lost the recipe,” Max paused, drawing closer. “Hey, is everything all right?”
Helen slid her fingers under the soft folds of baby Luna’s neck and gasped at the blistering heat there. “Luna’s having an allergic reaction, Max,” she answered to Max’s horror. “Get me a syringe, cold towels and anti-histamines, now!”
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