#pod squad

The tires of the jeep squeal to a halt in the Roswell Community Medical parking lot. Max reaches for his door before he even puts it in park.

“Wait, Max.” Isobel throws out her arm to stop him from getting out, and he leans back in his seat.

She hates the way her voice shakes. She blows out a breath, puts down her arm, and silently tells herself to get a grip.

When Isobel looks up, Max is staring at her with an eyebrow raised.

“Iz." He sounds annoyed. "What? We have to go in there -”

“Not before we talk about this. I mean, what if Mom is really sick?”

“We don’t know that yet. All we know is that she went to the Emergency Room, and they admitted her. Dad said they don’t even have a diagnosis yet.”

Isobel shakes her head and crosses her arms.

“I know what Dad said. But he might not be telling us everything,” she says, squinting at him like this point should have been obvious already.

Max gestures out his window. “Okay, but the only way to find out is if we go inside.”

“You’re not getting it, Max.” Isobel drops her voice before she continues. “I think we should make a plan. If this is serious.”

Max huffs. “What does that mean? What plan? We aren’t doctors.”

Isobel throws up her hands in a way that she hopes clearly conveys how stupid she thinks he’s still being.

“Are you fucking serious right now? You can heal people with your hands, Max,” she hisses.

Max’s eyes widen as realization dawns on him. It must not have occurred to him that he could use his powers. She could laugh, considering it was the first thing she thought of when her Dad called her and told her to come to the hospital. It had been on her mind the entire anxious wait in the high school parking lot as she paced up and down on the unseasonably hot pavement. When Max finally arrived from god knows where to pick her up in his jeep, they hadn’t said a word to each other. But Isobel had been thinking about it then, too. She figured Max would have been, too.

“We aren’t there yet. Mom is going to be fine.” Max’s voice goes uncharacteristically high at the end. He clenches his hands on his steering wheel.

“You don’t know that,” Isobel says through gritted teeth. She thinks this is the moment where they need to be absolutely honest about how different they are from humans, and how far they’d go for their family. Isobel thinks talking about this is just being realistic. She’s never been a true optimist, anyway.

“I know I said before that we should do everything to protect our secret. But she’s the exception. Look, I’ll figure out a way to cover for you. A diversion or something.”

Max glances over at her, his eyes wet at the corners. She can hear how shallow he’s breathing.

“I don’t know if I agree.”

The words hit Isobel like a punch to the gut. She gasps. It’s almost incomprehensible to her that Max would be the one to refuse to do this. Saving their mom is the right thing to do, damn the consequences.

Max is usually all about that kind of morality.

“She’s the one who saved us, Max. She’s the one who gave us a home when we thought we’d never fit in. You can’t be serious right now.”

“I’m not saying I won’t do it,” Max hisses. “I’m just saying we should think about this a little more.”

Isobel sighs and leans back against the passenger seat.

“Okay, fine. I guess I’m just… I’m worried we won’t have time to talk in there. Like what if they’re wheeling her into surgery or something? God this fucking sucks.”

Isobel runs her fingers through her hair and feels tears pricking the corners of her eyes. She refuses to look over at Max. She knows she shouldn’t be angry at him, not when he hasn’t even made a decision. But it sort of feels like he has.

She hears him exhale, and then he puts his arm around her. She doesn’t move away, even though that’s her first impulse. She can feel his fear now that he’s so close, rolling down his skin like invisible beads of sweat. At least he’s not angry at her.

“I’m scared too, Max. I shouldn’t have… we should go see her first.”

Max hugs her tighter before he lets her go.

“Iz, I trust you. I just hope we don’t have to make any decisions like that today.”

When Max starts being the more logical one, Isobel knows she needs to real herself back in. Maybe she was panicking just a little. At least he had said we. That's probably a good sign.

Her lashes feel wet, so she flips down the visor to check her make up in the mirror as she says, “Yeah, okay. One step at a time.”

“Let’s go,” Max says as he opens the door. She lets him get out this time. ---

It turns out that no one needs to expose their alien powers. Ann Evans just has an ordinary human infection, treatable with ordinary human antibiotics.

Isobel is relieved and delighted, and that mollifies her temporarily. But later, when she’s home and laying on her bed thinking about human mortality, she can’t believe she’s never given Max’s extraordinary God-like ability more thought until now. She wants to know where the line is when it comes to saving people, and why he didn’t want to cross it for their adopted mother. Would he even cross it for her?

She supposes it’s better this way, not knowing what Max would do. Even though it’s technically Max’s burden to bear and not hers, it feels like another terrible secret they must share. He has the power to save, but he shouldn’t. Not if it costs them everything.