Max stood at the nursery door, watching his little girl for a few minutes. Normally she was as smiley as Georgia had been or her godmother could be, but since the emergency room earlier, she never seemed quite the same.

"Dr. Goodwin," the head nurse, Lydia, turned to see him standing there. "We weren't expecting you."

"I thought I'd come up and check." He couldn't say that Helen had told him too; it would seem absurd.

She nodded. "Dr. Frome told us what happened to Dr. Sharpe. I'm so sorry. She's a wonderful woman and I hope she recovers soon." Not only did Helen donate what little free time she had helping with the babies in the nursery and in NICU, but Lydia had seen firsthand how attached Luna was to her godmother, and vice versa.

Max felt the lump in his throat again, this time wishing for allergies. "She is. Luna was upset this morning. Is she feeling better now?"

Lydia shook her head. "No. She's not sick; we checked her temperature, but she's not herself either, is she?"

No one is, Max wanted to say. He felt as lost as his little girl did, as lost as they both had been without Georgia. "Would it be okay if I took her with me? Just for a little while."

"She'd like that." Everyone knew that Luna loved making the rounds as much as her dad did. If anything could cheer her up, that might.

Max strapped Luna back to his chest, feeling her warmth, her little heartbeat next to his. His sister Luna had died here. Georgia had died here. Bad things happened in threes. Helen was out of his hands at the moment, although he had faith in the doctors he'd left her with, he couldn't help but feel better when he could be near his baby girl.

Max had a plan when he entered Helen's office, turning on the light. He momentarily got distracted by their conversation earlier that week about Castro's leaving, the night his ring had nearly come off. He'd realized in that moment that he didn't have to forget Georgia to love someone else. He remembered walking to Helen, looking down at her, hearing those words. Why hadn't he kissed her? Why had he held back? What if, just like with Georgia, too much had waited until it was too late?

Luna's noises brought him back to the reality of the situation. They were shorthanded as it was with Castro gone, but with Helen gone as well, oncology was woefully understaffed. He needed to triage which cases could be seen by the other oncologists on staff, which could be rescheduled, and which could be routed to a sister hospital. He hated asking patients to go elsewhere, but in some situations, he just didn't have a choice.

Max sat behind Helen's desk, noticing the smile that came over his little girl's face as she looked at the pictures. He firmly believed that Luna could identify people in photographs; it's why he kept so many of Georgia and his little sister in her nursery. "Auntie Helen." He whispered to the little girl, stroking her cheek. He couldn't help but smile briefly as well, seeing the memories. He knew one to be of her and her late fiancée, one of her as a little girl with both her parents still alive, and a few had patients that had been close to her over the years. Three were hard to choose a favorite of: one with the hospital family at an event, a selfie of him and her celebrating his remission, and one with her and Luna at the park. Helen had volunteered to babysit so he could go to a meeting; his two girls had been laughing together as Helen pushed her on the baby swing. He'd taken the picture a full five minutes before either of them had even realized he was there.

"What are we going to do without you?" It was a thought he didn't even want to consider, but he had to. He couldn't stop his mind from going there.

He made himself sit down and look through her files, everything neatly labeled and documented, making notes of what he needed for triage. He stopped short when he found a folder, red, no label, totally unlike Helen. Hesitating first, he opened it slowly and then frowned, unable to stop reading once he'd started. It was a dozen patient files, but none of them were Helen's. They all seemed to be from Castro's cancer trial that he had been part of only a few months before. There was no reason for Helen to have them, until he saw what she had, putting it together with the talk earlier that week. Castro had quit so suddenly and it seemed wooden when she had, like both she and Helen were putting on a play and were very bad actors. It had been what he'd confronted Helen about that night.

"Damn it, Helen," he whispered.

She appeared again, sitting on the desk, smiling at Luna at first and then facing him seriously. "What?"

He studied her. "You promised you'd burden me. It's what we do. We both…we both promised." He put the folder down. "You lied to me."

"I never lied. I withheld some of the truth." She paused. "It was a bloody mess, an impossible position to put you in. And I owed her."

"You owed her?" Max looked incredulous at that. "For what?"

She continued like he hadn't said a word, "I made sure she could never do it again, I kept my records, and I'll be watching her very closely."

"If you wake up." He thought of the position Helen had put herself in and for what, Castro? It just didn't add up. "What did you owe her for, Helen?"

"Doing what I couldn't do!" She finally blurted out. "Saving you." She'd failed completely at every attempt and the only reason Max was alive was Valentina Castro. She'd saved him so Helen had saved her. "What would we do without you?"

"I was just thinking the same thing about you." He whispered as she disappeared again.

He closed his eyes, trying to think. He understood what Helen had been trying to do, protect him as well as the hospital. If he reported this, it would damage the hospital's ability to help others with clinical trials. If he didn't, was he putting patients at other hospitals at risk? He was living proof the trial helped people, but was it enough? He couldn't even turn to the one person he turned to above all else for advice. The rest of the 'family' he trusted with his life, with Luna's life, and now with Helen's life, but he wasn't sure he could trust them with this.

He told himself to focus, to prioritize. The patients they had already had to come first. They were down not just one but two oncologists and he knew firsthand how important the right treatment could be. He could focus on Helen and Castro later, when she was awake, when they could burden each other again. He made a mental note to put that on his ever-growing list, right up there with checking the security cameras. If Bloom was right, if Helen hadn't just tripped, maybe he could see symptoms of what had caused her to fall.

He got a 911 text from Bloom and his heart sank. He made himself take Luna back to the nursery first, not wanting to upset her again, and then raced back to the emergency department.