Max focused his attention on her brain. No fracture lines on her skull. No tears on the gray cauliflowerlike surface. He went deeper, exploring the cranial vault. Searching the deepest, oldest ganglia where the brain becomes the spinal cord. Checking the blood vessels for tears.
Yes. He found it. A rip in one of the arteries was forming a blood clot. The brain tissue around it was swelling. And the pressure was forcing the brain stem down through the hole at the base of the skull.
She was going to be okay. He could fix this. He just had to concentrate.
Max nudged the molecules of blood with his mind, gently breaking the clot apart. Then he squeezed the cells of the damaged artery wall together, closing the rip. The brain stem shifted slightly, moving back into position.
Liz's eyes fluttered, then opened.
"Is she okay?" Isabel repeated, her voice high and shaky.
Max didn't answer. He stared down at Liz, watching as the color slowly returned to her face.
"What happened?" she mumbled. She struggled to sit up, and a few drops of blood ran out of her nose.
Max gently pushed her back to the floor and carefully blotted the blood away with his sleeve. He grabbed a pillow off the couch and slid it under her head. "Don't try to move yet."
"Max, what happened?" she repeated.
"Liz, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry," Isabel said softly.
"What do you remember?" Max asked Liz. He was stalling. He couldn't stand to tell her what Nikolas had done. It never should have happened. Max should have seen it coming. He should have stopped it.
"I remember telling you what happened with Valenti. I remember coming over here. I remember Nikolas saying no one was going to tell him… tell him any rules about how to use his power."
"Then he used his power on you. He knocked you out to demonstrate what he did to the guard," Max continued. He shot an angry look at Isabel, then returned his attention to Liz. "Except what he did to you must have been more severe. He gave you a blood clot that would have required neurosurgery."
"If you hadn't been here," Liz said. "You saved my life again. My hero." She smiled, and for a moment Max found it hard to breathe. The way she looked at him… it just made him go all weak inside.
Max shook his head. "Saving your life isn't very heroic when I'm the one who put your life in danger. I should have stopped this," he told her. "I should have-"
Liz reached out and pressed her fingers against his lips. "No," she said simply.
Max kissed her fingertips. He knew he shouldn't touch her. Not like that. But he couldn't stop himself.
"Should I get her some water, or-" Isabel began.
He sprang to his feet. "You have done enough," he yelled. "This wouldn't have happened if you'd stayed away from Nikolas."
"You're blaming me?" Isabel cried. "I didn't do anything."
"You went out with him after we all told you he was dangerous," Max shot back. "We knew he was going to bring Valenti down on us. But you had to go chasing after him, anyway."
"Nikolas says we don't have to worry about Valenti," Isabel protested. "And he's right. With our power we can get rid of him so easily."
"Kill him, you mean?" Max demanded. "Suddenly you have no problem with murder?"
"Not if it means saving our lives," Isabel exclaimed, her blue eyes bright with anger.
"Our lives weren't in danger, remember?" Max asked. "We found a way to get rid of Valenti-without hurting anyone. At least until you and Nikolas started playing around with your power. I hope you had fun, Isabel."
Liz pushed herself to her feet. "Don't do this, you guys. Let's just figure out what to do."
Max slid his arm around her waist. She didn't look too steady on her feet yet. "Isabel obviously needs help figuring out what to do, so I'm going to tell her." He turned to his sister and said every word slowly and deliberately. "Isabel is not going to see Nikolas again. Isabel is not going to use her power. Isabel is-"
"Isabel is leaving!" she screamed. She ran out of the room. A moment later Max heard the front door slam. Great, he thought. I handled that real well.
"She'll cool down," Liz said. "What Nikolas did to me got her thinking, I could tell. She'll figure out the right thing to do."
Max suddenly realized he was alone with Liz, holding her in his arms. It would be so easy just to pull her close to him and bury his face in her hair. That's all he wanted to do.
But he couldn't. Being close to him was dangerous for Liz. Everything that had happened to her today just proved that.
Max slowly eased his arm away from her. "I better take you home."
"I brought a couple of boxes. I wasn't sure if you had enough," Maria said.
"I don't really have a ton of stuff," Michael replied.
He's not kidding, Maria thought, glancing around his room. Michael had his clothes in neat stacks on his bed. A pair of sneakers and a pair of hiking boots were in one corner. A box of CDs and a Walkman sat on the dresser next to a pile of books on the Roswell Incident, a couple of maps, a compass, and a thick binder.
And that was it. Maria had more junk on the top shelf of her closet than Michael had in his entire room.
A picture of her memory box flashed into Maria's mind. It was a big cardboard box covered with flowers that had all these things from Maria's childhood in it. Baby shoes and crayon drawings and old report cards. Even little notes that Maria had left her parents on the fridge. Her parents had saved all of it for her because they knew she would want it someday, maybe when she had kids of her own.
Actually, that was the thing they'd had the biggest fight over when her dad moved out. He'd wanted to take Maria's and Kevin's memory boxes with him. Maria's mom said no way. They ended up giving the boxes to Maria and Kevin right then, although they had planned to keep them until the kids were ready to move away from home. Her parents still liked to add little things once in a while. Or at least they used to B.D., Before Divorce.
Maria grabbed one of the boxes and started packing the books. Did Michael ever wish he had something from elementary school? Some science project or book report? Or maybe even some special toy. She smiled as she imagined Michael playing with those Trans Formers practically every boy had at least one of.
"What?" Michael asked.
"Huh?"
"You're over there grinning like an idiot," he teased.
No way was she going to tell Michael that she'd been noticing he didn't have any stuff from when he was little. It would probably come out sounding all sentimental or like she pitied him or something, and he would totally hate that.
"Okay, I admit it. I was sort of daydreaming I was the heroine in one of those romance novels," Maria said. She figured the best thing she could do for Michael right now was keep the mood light. It had to hurt packing up your stuff-your really little piles of stuff-for the millionth time and getting shuffled off to another group of strangers.
Michael snorted. "You mean one of those girls in those long dresses with their ya-yas hanging out?"
Maria added the CDs and the Walkman to her box. "Yeah, one of those girls," she answered. "But I have to tell you, no romantic hero in those books ever uses the expression ya-yas."
"What do they call them, then?" He unzipped a gym bag and stuffed his clothes inside.
"They call them orbs," Maria said primly.
"Oh, baby. You don't know what it does to me when you say the word orb," Michael joked.