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THE day had finally come. Michelle and Henry were coming from America to visit. And Lottie was oh so excited. She had missed her mother and baby brother dearly. They spoke all the time on the phone, but it wasn't the same as seeing them in person.
Lottie and Ted were walking into the facility as Higgins was saying goodbye to his family who were dropping him off at work.
"Morning, Ted. Morning, Lottie," he called out to them as they passed.
"Mornin', Higgins," Lottie greeted with a weak smile. She was still dressed in her fancy outfits as always, today in a dark green dress that stopped at her mid-calf and had a leg split that reached her thigh paired with an oversized black leather jacket and matching black heels, but something about her energy was off.
"Hey, Higgins," Ted greeted without looking up from his phone. Ted had been anxiously tracking Michelle and Henry's flight all morning, which was driving Lottie insane. Unfortunately, in her tired mind, Lottie didn't have enough time to yank her father back before he slammed into the security gate above the door frame. It was usually raised higher than it was that morning – chalk it up to sheer dumb luck – so Ted had not been expecting it. Lottie gasped as her father collapsed to the floor.
From the car, Higgins's family had been watching, including all four of his sons, and they all witnessed the incident. Lottie could hear one of the son's ask, "Is he dead?"
Lottie quickly helped her father to his feet and checked his head for anything that would require her immediate attention. She saw no blood, miraculously, so she had Higgins help her father while she hurried down to the locker rooms to grab an ice pack.
She then rejoined her father in Rebecca's office for their daily morning check-in, though she was still wary of them. She found him in the middle of talking about both the incident and the family.
"I mean, you know, it's my fault for starin' at my phone. I just can't stop checkin' on my family's flight. You know, I haven't shared this with too many folks, but, um, Michelle and I, we've been havin' some marital issues."
Lottie sat down beside her father and pressed the ice pack to where his forehead was beginning to bruise.
"Ted, you really don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," Rebecca told him as she ate her daily biscuits.
"I don't mind," Ted insisted. "Tried couples therapy. Didn't like the other couple though." He chuckled and Lottie smiled weakly beside him. She knew that her father was trying to make light of the disheartening situation through his jokes as a means of coping. She only worried that once he had to confront everything that was going on, he would spiral. "Oh, it feels good to laugh. Yeah, you know, our therapist gave us this code word to use. So if either of us says 'Oklahoma,' the other one has to tell the God's honest truth. Yeah, you know, it's pretty helpful."
