Chapter 9
Hazel
"When we feel weak, we drop our heads on the shoulders of others. Don't get mad when someone does that. Be honored. For that person trusted you enough to, even if subtly, ask you for help."
― Lori Goodwin
Starting off, I apologize for the long wait for this chapter. I had lost my Kindle Fire that I use to type this story for nearly a week and wasn't able to write anything! So, I decided to get this chapter out quick, even though it might not be as long as I had originally wanted it to be. I will try and make the next chapter much longer to make up for the lacking length in this one. So, sorry again!
Enjoy!
Hazel's POV
Hazel sat awkwardly alone inside of Savannah Central's 'Crane Cafè', tapping her foot quietly as time continued to pass slowly by. She wore a pair of tight, but comfortable, jeans and a clean, tan T-Shirt to complete her relaxed outfit. Her tail flicked in growing annoyance as she groaned and stuffed a white paw into her blue shorts pocket to grab her phone. After a split second of struggle, she tugged the device from her shorts and rested her elbows on the wooden table she sat at, glancing up at the empty black cushioned chair across from her before looking back at her phone.
She pressed the home button and watched the screen pulse into life, emitting the time, '6:44 PM', on the screen over a romantic background picture of her and her boyfriend Jack. She sighed at the cute scene of the hoodie-wearing Coyote holding her in his arms in front of a beautiful clear blue lake that matched the glowing sky. Jack had bright white smile across his muzzle and his blue eyes shined just as happily as hers as she rested her head against his shoulder.
Hazel tapped the home button once more and the screen cleanly transitioned into a text message display that she had opened and checked every five minutes since she had arrived at the café. The white heading read "Jackie" with three red heart emojis placed after her boyfriends name. She growled in slight frustration as she noticed no new messages had been received, even after Hazel had sent multiple nagging texts to grab his attention.
- "Hey! Where are you?"
- "Hello?"
- "?"
- "I've been here for an hour!"
- "Did you forget about our date?"
- "Jack!"
Hazel groaned and let her phone fall screen first on the table, ignoring the loud smack it made as it collided with the wood. She crossed her forearms along the lonely table and let her head rest on them angrily. Her tail flicked in annoyance as she could feel the confused gazes of other mammals dig into her back.
The café was moderately busy with mammals sitting quietly at tables or ordering their coffee and food to go. The building was very simple, but very comfortable in its wide design. The wooden front counter was placed in the direct forward view of the clear class front doors as they opened up into the café's soothing moss green painted interior. Circular oak tables were placed into two separate living room-like spaces on both sides of the front counter with clear views to a smart Tv and a gas fireplace on the farthest walls. Wide Windows allowed clear views into the bustling, but oddly beautiful, Zootpian roads as the sun slowly began to slip behind the tall skyscrapers that towered into the darkening atmosphere. All in all, it gave the Café a vacation cabin feel inside of a tight city square.
Hazel's ears suddenly perked and her head poked out from her arms as she felt and heard the familiar vibration and gentle buzz of her phone on the table as it received a text message. Her fidgety paws quickly took hold of her seizing device and flipped it around to view the now brightly illuminated screen. Her heart dropped almost as far as her expression and heavy ears as she read the first few lines of the text message that the cramped notification allowed her view.
"Hey babe! I know we had date night but the band..."
Hazel pinned her brows together and swiped her thumb along the screen, opening the notification in a flash of spiked agitation. The phones screen pulsed into a bright white before dissipating into the previously quiet text message display. A small white chat bubble emitted from the left side of the screen holding the contents of an apologetic sentence from Jack.
"Hey babe! I know we had date night but the band and i came up with an AMAZING new song idea! i know youll love it so plz forgive me and we'll plan another date this weekend?" The message was then followed by a stack of heart emojis and kissy faces that almost made the whole text adorable and tolerable.
Almost.
Hazel growled silently as she read her boyfriends text. She was both angry at his dismissal of their planned date night and the fact that he hadn't put enough time into typing his excuse to even fix the poor punctuation. Her thumbs immediately began to tap away at the abused phone screen as she vented out her impatience and irritation in a flurry of rapid text messages.
"What?! You're serious?"
"This was planned three days in advance!"
"I've been waiting here for an hour!"
"Fix your punctuation!"
"Damnit!"
Hazel then proceeded to add on a base of angry emojis before slapping her phone screen back against the table with an exaggerated groan. If mammals weren't looking at the salty vixen before, they had now definitely given her at least a small confused glance.
This is the third time in the past two weeks! Why the fuck am I still dating him if he won't show up to any dates?
Hazel slumped down in her chair, letting her arms dangle from her shoulders and off the table while her head rested depressingly on the hard wooden platform. Her ears covered the back of her head like a protective shield from curious eyes as she struggled to hold back fits of anger while she tried to suppress her own angry thoughts and stay calm.
North got out of the hospital today! I could've been there instead of at this stupid date!
This was a waste of my time!
Stupid band!
He's so cute though...
Should I buy a coffee?
Ugh, this is so annoying!
Relax...
"Hazel?"
A friendly and seemingly familiar female voice interrupted Hazel's erupting thoughts. Her ears quickly perked up and she lifted her head away from the tables gravity to lift her confused gaze at the purple-eyed bunny that suddenly stood in front of her quiet table.
"Officer Hopps! What are you doing here?" Hazel widened her eyes as she recognized the friendly police officer she had spoken to days previously about the 'workplace incident' and smiled in surprise at the unexpected meeting.
Judy wore a casual grey, small V-neck T-shirt with comfortable looking blue jeans that reached almost down past her ankles. The outline of her phone protruded from her pants pocket and a pair of crumpled up headphones barely poked out from the top of her device. If Hazel didn't know that Judy was a cop, she would have never been able to guess the officer's line of work.
"I'm off duty so I'd thought I'd grab myself a cup of coffee, and call me Judy, please!" Hopps smiled as she flicked her ears and pointed at the empty chair across from the arctic vixen with a quizzical frown. "Is this spot taken?"
Hazel pressed her back against the backrest of her chair as she quickly shook her head in response to the question. "Not anymore! My date decided not to show up tonight, so be my guest and sit down, Judy." She crossed her arms, releasing her right paw to momentarily motion towards the open chair as she spoke before sighing almost silently.
Judy smiled happily and nodded with a cheery, "Thank you," as she hopped up onto the cushion of the chair, her fluffy tail fidgeting gratefully. "So your date ditched you?"
Hazel pressed her brows together and nodded frustrated as the suddenly curious bunny leaned back against the slightly oversized backrest of the chair.
"Mhm. He's with his dumb band! All like," she paused for a flash of a second and lowered her voice as if to imitate Jack, "The band's got this new song, you'll love it babe!" Her paws flicked in the air in a jazzy spasm before she allowed them to flop back into the table with a groan.
Judy simply nodded in response, soaking up Hazel's rants as she vented out her current personal struggles.
"I was planning on visiting North out of the hospital today, but I had this date, and now he's already at home, and he's probably asleep, and I don't want to be annoying. . ." Hazel shook her head before pressing her back against the sturdy backrest of her chair and glancing across the table at the quiet bunny who had now crossed her arms and had her ears perked like trees in the air.
"Speaking of North. . ." Judy budged in her quick topic as the subject produced itself naturally out of Hazel's situation and she rested her paws along the wooden edge of the circular table, holding her gaze professionally with Hazel's. "I know I'm off duty, but I've got a few more questions about the workplace incident regarding him and his 'panic attack'."
Hazel flattened her ears and raised a brow at Judy, suddenly curious about why the officer needed to know more about North's strange reaction to the fireworks. Her tail flicked smoothly to her side as her previous frustrations were shuffled into the back of her mind.
"Oh? Didn't he tell you his part of what happened?" Hazel shuffled forward in her seat and rested her elbows back down onto the table as Judy shook her head in response, her eyes closing for a moment as she did so. The bunny lifted a palm of her paw into the air as her elbows also rested gently on the table.
"He didn't say anything about his panic attack, and he acted as if nothing like that had happened." Judy titled her head to the side as Hazel shrugged and twitched her ears with response.
"Most likely, North left it out because it's a touchy subject," She lifted her right paw in the air as if she were holding up her suggestion, "or he just forgot." She rose her left paw in the air the same way she had her right paw as she finished, both of her palms open and facing the sky.
Judy raised a brow at Hazel, shaking her head quickly. "Nick and I thought the most logical reason for him skipping the event in his story was due to it being 'touchy', like you just said." She hesitated for a moment, her nose quivering and her eyes blinking before she spoke again a second later. "Do you have any idea as to why it would be a difficult subject for him to talk about?"
The vixen paused for a moment, her ears flicking against the back of her head as she slowly recollected the conversation she and North had. Hazel averted her eyes from Judy as if looking at the ceiling would help her remember what he had said. She sigh slowly, closing her eyes as she leaned back against her chair. "Well, I found out that he has a military background. He didn't really want to talk much about it." She opened her eyes to see Judy nod slowly, seeming to memorize what Hazel had said instead of pull out her carrot pen and paper.
"I saw that on a file." Judy's nose twitched again as she clearly began to work her mind for possible solutions. Hazel crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her gaze to the wooden table in front of her as pretended to do the same, though her thoughts seemed to be hitting a large and impenetrable wall. Her attention was quickly taken by the sudden flick of grey ears perking into the air in her upper peripheral vision as Judy sat up straight and clapped her paws together in a sign of possible success.
"Oh! Hazel, has North ever told you anything about his military career, or just anything significant in general, that could be related to some type of. . ." Judy swung her hands around in the air around her face as if she were searching for the right choice of words in an invisible haystack, her eyes rolling slightly as she became irritated with her sudden caution. "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Now I'm not saying he has PTSD! I've just heard multiple stories, and seen many police records, of vets and other military persons breaking down in public places due to a 'panicked' and instinctive response to something happening around him or her." Judy seemed to speak with her hands, waving them around gently as she tried to explain her thought process to Hazel as the fox's eyes widened at the thought the bunny brought up.
It made logical sense, at least to Hazel it did. North was clearly irritated when Hazel prodded on about his military career when they had last spoken to each other. If he had a form of PTSD he was dealing with, then that could explain his distaste of his past. Though she couldn't truly believe that his disorder, if he had one, would be severe enough to cause him to mentally break down like he had done during the incident at the coffee shop. North had never publicly shown signs to Hazel that he was internally struggling, which made it hard for her to fully believe that he had PTSD.
"You get what I'm saying, right?"
Hazel had been so caught up on her own thoughts that she had forgotten to reply back to Judy who was now tilting her head to the side as she examined Hazel in front of her. Hazel perked her ears up quickly and nodded in response, not wanting Judy to think that she wasn't listening.
"Y-Yeah, I get it. It's just hard for me to believe that North could have anything like that. " Hazel rested her elbows back on the table as she leaned back on the circular surface. "He's never done anything like this before, or at least I've never seen him do anything like this before. I mean," she paused for a small second, shrugging as she fought internally about what to believe," it would explain why he got upset with me for trying to talk about his past career."
Judy nodded in response, absorbing the information Hazel gave to her as she spoke her thoughts on the subject. "We won't know for sure unless we find a way to have him talk about his break down." Both of the mammals ears twitched into the sky at the sound of a phone buzzing from a text message, both of them glancing down and away from each other to check their devices. Hazel frowned as she noticed that she had received no new messages, lifting her gaze back up to Judy who was already hurriedly tapping her thumbs away on her phone screen. The sound of tiny clicks from the phone's digital keyboard being pressed filled up the small silence between the two females as Hazel patiently waited for Judy to finish her return message.
The sound of a quiet 'woosh' from the phone sending the text message helped end the silence as Judy smiled and raised her attention back to Hazel, who instinctively smiled back in return.
"That was just Nick. I swear he never stops texting me!" Judy spoke as she stuffed her phone back in her pocket while Hazel laughed quietly in her seat.
"I wish my boyfriend was the same, I swear he never texts me enough." Hazel smiled, making her statement seem like a friendly joke towards Jack, even though she truly wished for him to communicate with her on a much higher scale than he did now. Judy let out a friendly chuckle as she slowly began to stand up from her seat.
"I should probably head out. If you'd like, I can try and search up a few files on North's history? If he is struggling from PTSD, he isn't telling anyone we know of. If nobody helps him it could get much worse." Judy hopped over to Hazel and sticking out a polite paw towards her. Hazel accepted the pawshake with a slow nod, her curiosity about what happened to North overtaking her concerns about his overall privacy.
"Sure. Anything to help, right?"
Judy released another one of her contagious smiles, nodding quickly in response as she put her paws on her hips. "Of course! Hopefully we'll find that he doesn't have any type of disorder at all." She turned and began to migrate towards the café's front door, waving a paw behind her in farewell. "Enjoy the rest of your night, Hazel!"
Hazel returned the wave, holding her own smile as she watched the bunny leave. "I'll try! See ya' Judy!" She didn't bother to stop Judy to give the officer her number, remembering that she had given it to the officer's during their first meeting a few days earlier.
She watched as the off-duty officer strolled out of the building before turning back to stare at the now empty seat across from her. Her brows pinched together as thoughts of North and Jack swam in her head, both positive and negative.
North'll be fine. . . Maybe I can visit him tomorrow? Should I buy him a 'welcome home' card?
Nah. . .
Ugh, I need to talk with Jack.
Damnit, I'm gonna be up all night thinking about all of this. . .
Hazel groaned as she pushed her chair back, standing up and sliding her hands around her pockets to check if she had everything she had brought. She pulled out her phone to check the time. The digital time display on the screen flicked from "7:34" to "7:35" as she pushed the home button to turn on her phone. Her eyes widened as she noticed that she had been at the Café for nearly another hour.
"At least I didn't completely waste my time." She mumbled to herself as she stuffed her phone back in her pocket and turned to leave the café. Having bought nothing to eat or drink, she decided that it was best for her to head home and make herself her own meal instead of stay in the emptying shop any longer.
I have to get my mind off of all of this! If I find this stressful, I can't imagine what North could be going through.
That's it! Again, sorry for the lack of length in this chapter. I felt as if I had taken way to long to post this due to me unfortunately losing my device for awhile and that this chapter accomplished what I wanted it to. I hope you enjoyed it, I'll do my best to write the next chapter in the best quality and speed I can. Have a good one!
