Chapter 1: Crash back to reality
"What's it like in New York City? I'm a thousand miles away but girl tonight you look so pretty."
Hey there Delilah, Plain White T's
Harry
You are walking along the road with your back feeling the breeze behind you. In this one moment of contemplation you start to picture all the things about life that you could not live without.
Nikki. The first person who immediately springs to mind and strangely this feels utterly natural to you. Beautiful, honest yet vulnerable Dr Nikki Alexander, who just some months ago you left behind in England to pursue the career drive of your life in New York. Somehow she matters to you more than anyone else but the distance is such an immeasurable barrier that makes the only place where your heart feels at home seem like a million miles away. You clutch your phone, gazing at the screen's picture of you, Nikki and Leo when for some inexplicable reason you find your finger hovering over the call button with her name selected.
A sudden blaze of horns sends you crashing down to reality (quite literally too). Suddenly you feel like you have had a ton of bricks dropped onto your back and your body feels numb, trapped in a kind of illusion that means moving is physically impossible. Just before you fall into an abyss of unconsciousness you remember what you were thinking about before this wave of weight knocked you down. And somehow, just somehow, the thought of Nikki places a smile etched so deep on your face that not even the consequences of these events can erase it.
Nikki
'Or a crispy realisation… It's the sound of the unlocking and lift away. Your love will be safe with me.'
re: stacks, Bon Iver
It's one o'clock in the morning. Your clock gently beeps as a reminder that yet another hour has passed without you falling asleep. You turn over restlessly and try to imagine something happy which would hopefully spark your mind into sleep mode. Instantly a happy memory of you and Harry glides into your head. It's the day when he's invited to a party and you tag along as a 'friend'. You remember the moment when the host assumes you are "Mrs C" and Harry is quick to correct him - you're just his friend and colleague. However what Leo would say about this is another matter. Whilst hoping the later memory of this event, with both of you dancing without a care in the world, will prompt your much needed sleep: your ringing phone takes your much needed rest and promptly puts it out of the window.
Fumbling by the side of the bed you reach for the annoying sleep-depriving contraption, ready to throw it to the other side of the room if it means someone is in need of a pathologist at this time of night. Glancing at the caller ID you nearly drop the phone in shock. Harry. Instinctively you hit answer despite your brain screaming at you to leave the bloody deserter to wallow in his own misery in New York. Your throat feels slightly dry as you tentatively say his name and wait for the pathetic excuse he will give for phoning at such an hour. But before you can start your diatribe on his selfishness and point out that there is a time difference across the Atlantic, you hear nothing from him. Then 'Nikki' is said in his distinctive voice but somehow Harry's breath is ragged and immediately you can sense something is not right.
You can hear a car horn in the background and the swerve of a car and suddenly you shout 'Harry! Are you okay?'
But all that responds is the sound of traffic and you begin to fear the worst. Say if Harry had wanted to urgently speak to you? Did he lose his awareness of his surroundings for simply one second enough for some crazed driver knock him over? Horrible scenarios lurch around in your head as you realise you are powerless to do anything to help him. This same feeling of losing him mirrors the terror you felt when he was in Hungary and was almost killed.
You pluck up the courage to scream his name again, putting aside the terse emotions of the last three months, where you felt you had already lost most of your friendship when he chose his career over you. 'Oh shit,' you think. What if the last time you ever saw him was when you said goodbye to him at the airport and pretended (after a big argument with him) that you had got over the fact that he was leaving and hoped he had a good life away from her?
The silence that still remains is particularly ominous. You pray that you have got the wrong end of the stick and Harry accidently hit call when he was rushing over to play hero in a traffic accident.
And then there is a distant whir of sirens and a scuffle as you hear someone picking up his phone and saying 'Hello?'