Three days later, Clarke is taking advantage of the fact that it's her day off, and sleeping in. She was at the hospital until two-thirty in the morning, so when she hears the banging on her door, she tries to ignore it.
"Go away!" She shouts, but either they don't hear her, or they ignore her, and the banging continues. Groaning, she slides out of bed, stumbling toward the front door with a rapidly growing hatred for whoever is on the other side of it.
"What the fuck do you-" she begins, swinging the door open, and then she sees who it is, and stops. "Bellamy?"
"What the hell is this?" He thrusts a piece of paper at her. Clarke just stands there, gawping and confused, until he waves the paper in front of her face again. Recovering from the shock, she snatches it out of his hand. She squints down at it, but it's useless without her contacts in.
"I need my glasses. I guess you might as well come in." She marches toward her bedroom, hearing the door close behind him. She grabs the tortoiseshell frames from her bedside table, and turns her attention to the piece of paper in her hand.
"It's an invoice," she rasps, eyes scanning the page. "It's from the hospital."
Back in the foyer, Bellamy nods, crossing his arms over his chest. For the first time that morning, Clarke actually looks at him. His eyes are bright with anger, finger tapping irritably on his bicep.
"Yeah. Read the total at the bottom."
She does.
"Six hundred dollars." Then she looks up, nonplussed. "So?"
He barks out a short, bitter laugh.
"Two years ago, I was working for a nursery. The plant kind." He pauses and Clarke nods. "One day I was on a job, trimming this massive old maple so we could fit a new oak beside it. I fell out of the tree and I dislocated my shoulder."
She isn't sure if it's just the fact that she barely got any sleep, or that she's only been awake for about five minutes, or if it's Bellamy, but she doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
"Um," she clears her throat. "That sucks?"
He glares at her, and she falls silent.
"The hospital put it in a sling, gave me some painkillers, and sent me on my way. I was only there for like three hours."
"I'm still lost," Clarke mumbles sleepily, moving toward the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.
"They charged me ten grand."
Ah. She's beginning to see where this is headed.
"You don't have insurance," she pretends to realize, pouring half the bag of coffee grinds into the brewer before turning it on.
"No, I don't have insurance."
Slowly, she turns around, leaning against the counter and looking at him.
"Okay." There doesn't seem to be any benefit to antagonizing him, but on the off chance she's wrong about why he's upset, Clarke decides to let him lead the conversation.
"So why," he wonders, nodding at the invoice sitting beside her on the counter, "is Octavia's invoice, which I know should include a CT and at least a couple X-rays, only six hundred dollars?"
"I'm guessing you already know the answer to that," Clarke suggests, "considering you're here banging on my door at seven in the morning on my day off."
"What did you do?" His voice is deadly quiet.
"I pulled some strings," she retorts, firmly returning his stare. "I do work at the hospital, you realize. There are perks."
His nostrils flare.
"Clarke. What did you do?"
Giving in, she sighs.
"It's called a sidewalk consult. I was Octavia's primary physician, and I just didn't charge for my services. All you got charged for was the painkillers, basically. And admitting, but not overnight." When he continues to stare her down, she rolls her eyes. "I told them I had a family member in there."
A few minutes go by, only the gurgling of the coffeemaker breaking the silence as he looks at her, obviously having some kind of internal debate.
Finally, he speaks.
"Did she say something to you?"
Clarke blinks.
"Octavia? No."
"Was it…" He hesitates. "Was it the truck?"
She's confused for a moment, and then she remembers the truck he drove her home in.
"No," she says softly. "I just remembered what you told me about taking care of her, and I figured you probably don't have insurance through your work. It made sense, the way Octavia reacted when I was talking about months of physiotherapy. She was worried about how much it would cost."
Still glowering, Bellamy drops into one of the stools at her kitchen island. He glances around, at the granite countertops, the high end appliances, the view out her floor to ceiling windows. She wonders exactly how much that bothers him in the moment, as he sits in the apartment she knows she takes for granted and yells at a veritable stranger for getting rid of expenses she knew he couldn't afford. Probably a lot.
"I don't want O to worry about money."
She looks at him.
"She's supposed to just be focused on getting better, and, I don't know. I'm supposed to protect her, not make her feel like a burden."
"Well," Clarke slides into the seat next to him. "I don't think she feels like a burden. Siblings worry about each other, you don't get to have a monopoly on that."
"How would you know?" he asks, and he winces when she stiffens. "I didn't mean-"
"No," she cuts him off, standing up to pour herself a cup of coffee. "You're right. I don't have any siblings."
"Yeah, but I shouldn't have said that. I think you get it. You seem to get a lot of things." He sounds wistful now, as Clarke turns her head to look at him.
"Coffee?" She asks, hoping a change of subject will help. He nods sheepishly, then shakes his head when she holds up the creamer and sugar.
She sits back down beside him, and they slurp quietly.
"She had a CT, right?"
Clarke groans, hopes of finally talking about something else dashed.
"Yes."
"And?"
"Bellamy," she sighs. "Who is this going to help?"
He fixes her with a determined stare, and she relents.
"We gave her two CTs, a handful of X-Rays, and an MRI."
This seems to surprise him.
"I didn't…" His hand curls around the mug in front of him defensively. "How much?"
Clarke wants to bang her head on the counter.
"Including all the scans, her hydrocodone, and the semi-private room overnight…twenty thousand dollars."
That's still a conservative number, and it probably would have cost less if Octavia had ended up almost anywhere other than NYP, but she doesn't have the heart to tell him that.
The quiet is different this time, and it takes a minute for Clarke to realize that he's holding his breath.
"Bellamy," she says, a little alarmed.
He breathes out all at once, cheeks flushed.
"Jesus Christ."
Clarke drains the last of her coffee, keeping one eye on him.
"You still mad at me?"
"Yes," he says. Then, "no."
"Okay."
He stands up suddenly, startling Clarke.
"I should probably go."
"Uh," mind reeling, she tries to keep up. "Alright."
He turns sharply toward the door, and she pads after him.
He hesitates, hand on the doorknob.
"I'm sorry I woke you up on your day off. And interrogated you. And yelled at you." He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.
"Yeah." Clarke folds her arms across her chest, mimicking his earlier stance. "You've been quite the asshole today."
His eyebrows shoot up, lips quirking in the closest thing to a smile he's displayed all morning.
"I'm also sorry I called you a stuck up bitch."
It's her turn to raise her eyebrows.
"I must have missed that part," she mutters.
He grins, the last of the anger dissolving from his face.
"Well, I said it in the car on the way over here."
"Hmm." Clarke just purses her lips. "How did you get in here, anyways?" The door to her front building should have been locked. He looks caught, eyes darting toward the door.
"I waited outside until someone left," he admits. She gapes at him.
"Who does that?"
He's about to say something, defend himself probably, but they're interrupted by a knock on the door Bellamy is still resting his hand on. He looks at Clarke, who just shrugs.
"Clarke." The voice floats in under the door. "It's Finn. Your neighbour let me in."
She stares at the door, wondering if this morning could possibly get any more bizarre.
"Well," says Bellamy, glancing between her and the door, bemused. "Apparently more people than you'd think."