Show me love.

Eight

"Frankie, you need to go." Dad pleas in desperation. "I'm going nowhere in a hurry and all you're doing in wasting your time looking at these four walls and turning your brain to mush with all those trashy magazines."

"I'm not turning it to mush." I defended stubbornly. "I do the crosswords."

He narrowed his eyes sternly. "Frankie."

I sigh in defeat, tossing the tattered magazine onto the growing pile and reminding myself to discard them later. I lean forward with elbows resting upon my knees and my knuckles tucked beneath my chin. 

"Jason understands." I tell him. "It's not like my job is going anywhere. My boyfriend owns the company, what is he going to do? Fire me?" 

"Now that's a conversation where I would love to be a fly on the wall." Flo laughs entering the room with a radiant little bundle of blonde. "What's going on?" 

Vivan scrambles from my hug to climb on the bed beside dad. Snuggling beneath his arm. 

It had been eight days since dad woke. It took him almost a full forty-eight hours to regain complete consciousness in which he wasn't drifting in and out. Every few hours doctors would come in and perform different tests on him from tickling the soles of his feet and tapping his knees with a small hammer-like tool, to getting him to clench their fingers and raise his shoulders. 

He had no feeling from his waist down. 

"What were you two arguing about?" Flo asks, shrugging of her coat. 

"He's pestering me about work."

"She's not listening to me about going to work."

We spoke in unison and shot each other the same squinty eyed glare. Flo laughed. "God if mom could see you two. She would definitely be saying you're too similar."

"But she would still take my side." I quipped. "She would understand."

"She would understand you being here while I was giving those big white doors at the top of the pearly stairs a knock, yes." He humours and I scold him in a hiss. "But she would be telling you the same thing. Get back to work."

"It's like you're trying to get rid of me." I mumble, sulking back in the high-back chair that had moulded to my body shape over the past few days. "Look, I'll call Jason and see if he wants me to come back-" 

"I agree with dad." Flo pipes up. "You should go back to work, even just for a few hours. It'll give you a break for a few hours, besides, won't Jason need help with the restaurant opening? Isn't it like three weeks away?" 

I frown. It was true. I had still yet to visit the restaurant, or speak to Jason or David about the layout of inside nevermind have a moment to draw anything up. There was still paint swatches, floor samples, fabric to process. 

"I guess, I mean I still have -" 

"Don't say you still have time." Flo interrupts. "Give me one reason why you can't go back?" 

I frown. I didn't want to speak about Matthew around dad, he didn't need the stress or the worry, and thankfully Flo and Paul agreed on that so we were keeping it between ourselves. 

"Exactly." She grins. "Now on you go - you might just catch Jason before he goes down to the restaurant. I'm sure he will be grateful to see you longer than ten minutes."

She wasn't wrong. Jason and I had been passing ships the past week. He left for work before I woke, I left for the hospital and returned to fall asleep ten minutes after coming home. On Tuesday I even fell asleep on the kitchen island midway through eating a bowl of cherries - we needed to do a food shop.