Life isn't a Rubik's cube, not even a game of chess. Even if this life is only twenty-four years short. Fifteen minutes is laughably inadequate for Harris to reassess all his memories. For most of it, the nurse bumbles around his room as well, checking his vitals and making him swallow pills. So long as she doesn't prattle, making it harder for him to think and gives his phone back to him, he doesn't mind her presence.
Once he does everything she commands, he clears his throat. He can have his reward now, right? "Ma'am, can I trouble you for—"
Her ears prick to the sound of someone else's voice calling from the hallway—so much for Sarkisian's charm. She sticks her head through the door, leaving Harris with a view of scrubs stretched over her headless torso, butt and legs. "—my phone," he whispers to her behind.
"Yes, he is awake. You can talk to him, but don't tire him out," the nurse says to someone out there. Talk to him, yes. Listen to him, nope. It sounds like an official visit, though, so the nurse is understandably more invested in it than a patient from room 23.
Maybe it's more interesting than his phone, anyway. The police could be clamoring to chat about Oliver. What if they're already on his trail, and only Harris' crucial testimony stops them from grabbing him? He should have asked dad if Lonita was working this angle, but it felt out of place after his confession.
"My phone?" Harris pipes up anyway, but the nurse squeezes herself out, admitting—no, not the police—the visitor into Harris' room.
Police, huh? What was he thinking? Nobody is this lucky, least of all him!
It's Lt. Jung who saunters in, jovial, fresh-shaven, and contributing the waft of Old Spice to the hospital bouquet of fine bleach and antiseptic. Instead of flowers, Harris' boss carries a small laptop. "Good morning, Sarkisian."
Harris glances around at the unadorned walls, the IV tubes and the thin blue blanket over his legs. "Is it?"
"Better than dead, eh?" Jung dives to pluck Harris' phone from the floor, despite it not being in clear view. "Where do you want it?"
"Anywhere I can reach it." This little gesture warms Harris to Jung more than learning his parents' marriage was a Titanic, rather than the sunset cruise he imagined it to be. "Ah... thanks."
Jung stuffs the phone into the holder of necessities on the bed's side. Harris caresses it with his glance. Are there any messages waiting—say, from a certain social influencer? However, he fights the temptation to reach for it. Jung didn't come to the hospital to pick up the phones for him. The phone, it can wait. There's probably nothing from Agatha anyway, because it's a late night in Singapore. Singapore is eleven hours ahead, so—
Stop it! She didn't message you yet, so why should she message you now?
He forces all of his attention to his boss.
"Sarkisian, I'll level with you. I hate kicking a man when he is down, but you're in for it this time." Jung drops into the only chair in the hospital room. The small space is almost as claustrophobic as an elevator. There's no avoiding Jung's gaze. He looks hard at Harris, very hard. No wonder steel has the same color as his eyes. It even has that same metallic glint!
Since Harris has nothing to say to that, he doesn't. His throat hurts. He's tired. So, yes, he has nothing to say.
"I covered for you a lot. All the dumb shit we all do when we're green, and full of piss and blaster. I know your situation, and I empathize," Jung says after the pause runs its course.
And you banged my mother. Harris tries not to think this too loudly, because through an irritating flaw of his appearance, his thoughts reflect on his face, particularly in his eyes.
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...
