The most boring thing in existence is recovering from illness. Pain hurts him less, his strength returns, so Harris stays awake more... to stare at the ceiling. His mind gnaws on his past and present woes like a puppy on a slipper.
Meanwhile, his dad's infuriatingly vague about his dealings with the insurance company. Or police investigation. Or Lonita. Because, he says, Harris should only worry about getting better.
Colin too wants him to 'get well' before facing the shitstorm at work. The nurses join the conspiracy with smiles and advice to rest and heal.
He's tired of resting. Tired of worrying about scarring or full motion range in his shoulder. Tired of everyone sounding upbeat around him.
Agatha is the icing on the cake of toxic positivity. Her social media feeds—yes, he peeked—overflow with wedding dresses, wedding makeup and wedding hairdos. Her followers can't get enough of her pictures in wedding dresses, when even one is a knife through the heart for him.
Five dresses per day is just a cruel and unusual punishment. It's not just a jilted lover talking.
No, it's a serious issue. The world has too many wedding dress' designers that oversupply the market. It's downright criminal how many wedding dresses are available to a single woman to try on!
As soon as he's not so depressed, he'd write a strongly worded letter about it. Right.
A glutton for punishment, he inhales her every post, stream and reel, hunting for raisins of non-wedding content in the bowl of the wedding flakes. There's an expose about the wedding industry. Then Agatha plays a mobile game for two hours straight, slaying monsters. And an oddball IG story on the weavers of Qing China.
He devours it all, since they don't let him attend to anything else and he can't reach her.
On the day Harris is checking out of the hospital, he's no closer to finding out where he's going to live than the day he woke up. Instead, he has his dad's assurance that someone will pick him up, and it will not be Sarkisian Senior. One guy in a wheelchair pushing another guy in a wheelchair is just too silly.
Despite his mounting anxiety, Harris smiles when he remembers this stupid joke. Too silly indeed... and it's good to see dad continuously in high spirits. If it took fire to make the old rogue whole again, maybe Harris needs to thank Oliver for torching his life... But no. Oliver has done nothing but destroy lives. It has to be Lonita's influence.
And it's likely to be Lonita on wheelchair duty today. It would be just like dad to concoct a grand plan for them to get more comfortable with one another. Dad, Lonita, Lonita's three kids and him under one roof. It's going to be tight, it's going to be awkward, but better than a homeless shelter.
The empty wheelchair rattles up the hall, coming toward his room.
Harris jumps off his bed, fully dressed, with a plastic bag containing donated clothes dad brought for him to the hospital. He doesn't need a wheelchair. It's just a weird formality the hospitals insist on, God knows why.
He yanks the white door open, swinging it all the way inward to accommodate the wheelchair.
"Good afternooo--" Words die on Harris' tongue. Numb fingers release the strap of his duffel and it thumps onto the floor. With a freed hand, he grabs the wall for support.
No, it's not a sudden dizziness. It's his heart. It runs so hot, each beat kicks so hard, he's afraid it's going to explode.
"Agatha." His brain shifts into autopilot. "G-good afternoon. How was... your..." The manners, drilled into him from an early age, demand a question about the turbulence during her flight or quality of her meal. But to Hell with that!
YOU ARE READING
Ablaze
Mystery / Thriller||Love Triangle between a Firefighter, an Arsonist and an Heiress ♡|| Deeply wounded by his mother's betrayal, Harris, a Milwaukee firefighter, doesn't accept human failings, including his own. That's until he saves a redhead from a burning hotel...
