4. If You've Got Something to Hide, Make Sure You're Not on TV.
“No. Absolutely not.”
Harry sighed. “Get in the wheelchair, angel.”
A wheelchair. Since when had I turned one hundred and eleven?
“I’m not getting into that thing! I can walk just fine.”
He eyed me dubiously. “You’ve sprained your ankle, passed out at least twice today already and when we got here, you looked like you were about to throw up.”
“Yeah, well, people have been known to throw up and walk at the same time.”
Harry snorted and slapped the seat of the wheelchair adamantly. “Sit.”
I was being a stubborn ass, I knew that. But right now, being difficult was coming more naturally to me than I’d like, courtesy of the fact that I’d almost had a panic attack in front of Harry Styles. Harry Styles, of all people. This day couldn’t get any worse.
“Thanks.” Harry had said, after I’d handed him his phone back in the van.
I’d clenched my fists tightly - watched as the hospital doors loomed closer and closer. Ellie was going to be here in a few short minutes. I huffed out a breath. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could really go inside, just this once.
St John’s wasn’t the worst hospital that I remembered. We’d only been there a couple of times, but the nurses had been nice. They’d let me visit my dad before his operation... before they’d wheeled him through those double doors - a tray table of jars and masks, of scalpels and syringes following him inside.
I’d gasped at the memory, felt my chest constrict.
“No. No, I’m not going in there, Harry.” I’d panicked. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Shhh,” Harry soothed. I’d felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder and watched him unlatch his seatbelt.
I was ready for a barrage of questions - for him to ask me what was wrong with me, for him to ask me why... this perfect stranger that I’d only met a few short hours ago. My brain was already sifting through a flood of excuses, a thousand reasons why I couldn’t go inside – grasping for any lie that would make him listen. I’d kick and scream if I had to.
But the questions didn’t come. Instead, Harry’s eyes searched mine for a split second, before he got up abruptly and weaved through the front seats towards the driver. I bit my bottom lip hopefully, as they spoke in hushed tones. I heard the driver mumble into a walkie-talkie.
Then the van rumbled to a stop.
“What’s going on?” I asked, wide-eyed. The engine whirred back to life as the van began to reverse, before turning down a different route and crunching onto a gravel road.
“You said you couldn’t go inside.” Harry loomed over me, bent slightly at the waist so that his head didn’t hit the van's roof. “They’re going to send a nurse outside and fix you up the hospital gardens.” He said it as if it were obvious.
The hospital gardens? I straightened a little in my seat and watched a sea of green shrubbery roll by, its leaves dotted with multi-coloured flowers of pink, yellow and white. Tall, drooping maple trees bowed above the van, their branches curving to create a subtle archway over the gravel road as we drove past.
I turned back to Harry. He watched me intently, probably to make sure that I wasn’t about to throw up on his shoes.
“Thank you.”
YOU ARE READING
Chasing Blue Roses
Humor"He was the type of guy who would break your heart into thirty million pieces and make sure you had the time of your life while he was doing it. It was the kind of heartbreak where after he was done, you'd drag yourself up off the ground, compl...
