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Chapter 17
- HARRIS -
I blame my parents for my immaculate apartment right now.
The bathroom glistens, the carpet is vacuumed within an inch of its life, and you could safely perform surgery on my kitchen floor.
When I was a kid, if I misbehaved, my parents would always punish me by making me clean, following it up with the words, “And while you clean up, you just think—really think—about what you did, young man!”
To this day, the smell of Lysol or the sound of a vacuum makes methink… hard.
I feel the need to do a lot of thinking right now.
I think about the time Ava and I have spent together and the boy who right now is in an ER when he should be making another snowman or playing with the new stuff he got under the Christmas tree a few days ago.
I hear the echo of Ava’s words she said to me that first night she stayed at my place.
She had said that we lived in two different realities.
I hadn’t really known what she meant by that until I saw the fear in her eyes when she heard her son was in the ER.
I’ve done a lot of things in the military that probably gave my parents gray hairs.Looking back, I should probably be prematurely gray, too.
A lot of military guys will tell you they don’t feel fear or worry when they’re in the middle of the action.They’ll tell you that the training combined with the adrenaline rush makes them immune.
They’re usually lying.
Fear?Stress?
Yep.Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
So, I honestly thought that I’d be able to relate toanykind of fear that Ava might go through as the mother of a kid who’s got heart defects.
I was dead wrong.
It’s different when it’s yourkidrather than yourself.I could see that the instant my eyes met Ava’s, just after she heard about Nicholas.
I remember a few years back when I was at Walter Reed getting the second surgery to repair the function of my arm.My mom and dad came to visit.Even as drugged as I was after the surgery, I remember the feel of my mother’s skin against my palm as she slipped my hand into her own and said, “I’d give anything for it to be me in this hospital bed rather than you.”
It’s the kind of thing that moms say.
But I never really thought about it much until now.I never reallygotit.
What Ava is experiencing right now isn’t like anything I can relate to.Not until I have a child of my own.Not until I can say without hesitation that my entire existence is wrapped up in someone else’s safety, health, and happiness—that I hold their well-being echelons above my own.
She’s right; her reality is completely different from mine.
But it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be a part of it.
I pick up my phone and open my texts, even though I know there’s nothing new to see.I look at the last words she sent me sometime after she arrived in the ER.
“I’m here” is all she wrote.
“Update me when you can,” I wrote back.“I’m worried about you both.”
Four hours later, I still am.Selfishly, I’m also worried about the shift I felt between us in that instant she saw her ex-husband’s text.
It’s like she was a different person suddenly—as her features hardened and she summoned the strength to do exactly what her son needed.
