Chapter 6
By the end of the day, Felicity’s neck and back were in serious trouble. She stood at the base of the outside stairs that led up to her apartment, steeling herself for the journey up. Did Nic really catch her from going over the balcony just this morning?
It had been a long time since she’d been in this amount of pain.
In the immediate aftermath of the “incident,” as her old hospital called it, even getting out of bed was excruciating.
Her whole body had been wrecked from the fall she didn’t remember, but her face had been worse. That part she did remember.
Most days, her pain was manageable and easy to ignore.
After all, it had been three years since the incident.
Since moving to Kansas, it had become even rarer to need the cocktail of prescriptions her doctor prescribed for spasms or pain flares.
This was lucky since, although the medications were effective, the side effects put her out of commission in a very particular way.
Tonight, she was supposed to be dealing with vendors and checking invoices while watching her favorite dance show’s finale.
She’d also planned on looking into Samantha’s suggestion about offering residential consulting services to make some extra cash.
And then she wanted to make some social media accounts for the store.
She also planned on completely ignoring how when she had seen Nic getting out of a car looking flushed and harried earlier this afternoon, a tall brunette had stopped him from running off and given him a hug.
It wasn’t exactly a schmexy hug, but it was certainly a familiar one, complete with a playful hair rustle from her.
She couldn’t blame Nic for going after a woman who looked like that.
She was artsy and beautiful in a way Felicity never had been.
After Nic’s hint that he’d talked to Wallace Randalls this morning, Felicity decided to stop by his law office, which, conveniently, was housed in the building next door.
She felt better after talking to him, but then worse during her walk back to the plant store on spotting the artsy woman Nic had hugged eating lunch with Courtney at the restaurant.
The woman was probably one of Courtney’s hot musician friends.
Maybe that was how Nic had heard about the job.
Not that Felicity was comparing herself to the woman.
Not that Felicity was jealous.
Sam must not know Nic had a girlfriend. She wouldn’t have been encouraging Felicity to flirt with Nic if she did.
Felicity rubbed at her shoulder, but the tightness was only getting worse.
Nope. None of her plans were happening tonight.
Felicity moaned as she took the last step, congratulating herself on making it to her apartment balcony without breaking down in tears.
After a tiny glance at the place where Nic caught her this morning, she went inside, grabbed the pill bottles from the cabinet, and refilled her water bottle.
After plugging her industrial-sized heating pad into a heavy-duty extension cord and arranging all of her couch cushions for optimal stabilization of her spine and shoulder, she lowered herself into place.
Fuck, she missed having a tub. The one at her brother Dylan’s house had been perfect.
Felicity had lived with her brother and his perfect husband for the first three months after the incident.
Despite the perfection of the tub situation there, she had moved out of their house as soon as she was physically capable of driving herself around again.
Dylan and Derek would be better off without Felicity’s still-healing-self lurking around their house and being awoken by frequent night terrors.
Also, would it have killed Dylan to add some stronger soundproofing when he remodeled that house? She was glad the pair still seemed to have a healthy physical relationship, but also, gross.
Since her brother-in-law was also a nurse, she could tolerate his help better than most people’s when she was recovering from her surgeries.
After moving out of Dylan and Derek’s house, she tried to go back to her downtown apartment.
She lasted two days. Her body refused to sleep six blocks away from the hospital ambulance bay where everything about her life had changed.
Moving into her parents’ house became the least bad option.
She trashed or sold most of her stuff as quickly as possible.
Everything she owned fit into fifteen boxes.
They fit easily stacked in the corner of her basement childhood bedroom.
The room was quiet and far enough away from her parents’ room that the severity of her mental health decline was easy to hide.
Felicity never wanted to be helpless. She had never been helpless in her life.
She had lived there up until finding out her aunt died and that she needed to move to Kansas.
She did the sixteen-hour drive from Maryland to Kansas in her old Subaru with nothing for company except the same fifteen boxes once moved out of a downtown Frederick apartment.
The fifteen unopened boxes that witnessed her wraith-like years in the basement.
The same fifteen unopened boxes packed into her tiny Kansas galley kitchen.
Felicity swallowed the pills and cuddled deeper into her makeshift nest. Hoping to shake off the bitter memories by not actually shaking anything in her current condition, obviously, she turned on the reality dance competition.
At the first commercial break, she checked the time.
They should be around. She dialed her brother-in-law’s number because he usually had his phone on him, unlike her brother.
“Hey Felicity,” Derek said brightly. “Lemme get Dylan.”
“Sure.” She shifted, adjusting her heating pad placement toward her neck.
“What are you up to tonight?” Derek said.
“Lizarding.”
“Heating pad night?”
“Yep.”
“Ouch. That sucks. Sorry.” The grimace was clear in his voice.
“It’s fine. Are you watching this week’s episode?”
“No. I should turn it on if you’re watching though. We’ll get Dylan into it somehow.” He laughed.
“Hopefully. FYI I just took my basic spasm cocktail. So I’ll be delighting you with my unique observations soon.”
Derek chuckled. “Putting you on speaker.”
“Hi, Lissy,” her brother said. “Getting high and watching dancer dreams come true?”
“You know it.” She pulled up the episode. “Tell me when you’re ready.”
“I’m going to make popcorn first. Go ahead and start,” Dylan said.
“Is it because you know I’m going to be entertaining or because you want an excuse to miss a few minutes of the show?”
“Why not both? You want the snooty kind, right, babe?” Dylan asked his husband.
“It’s not snooty, it’s just not slathered in chemicals,” Derek said, sighing. She could imagine the look he was giving her brother. The same one he always had when he worried Dylan’s atrocious eating habits would lead to an untimely death.
“You know, like, water’s a chemical, right?” Felicity said. “The clean-eating movement is alarmist and classist and not based on science but fueled by—”
Derek grunted. “It’s not alarmist or classist to suggest that your brother eat some goddamn broccoli occasionally.”
Dylan’s voice was audible but muffled like he was a room away. “That wasn’t broccoli you ordered with our food yesterday. It was kale. Spinach? Sure. You won that round. Mixed greens. Fine. Chard. Tolerable. I draw the line at kale. I’m not eating leaves that taste like a rabbit already ate them.”
“With the right seasoning—”
“It will still taste like rabbit shit.”
“Guys. Dance show. Please? I need a distraction, and preferably one that doesn’t involve small mammal excrement salads.”
“Whose side are you on?” Derek said with a note of betrayal. “C’mon, Felicity. You said you wanted Dylan to take better care of himself.”
“I want him to stop drinking a gallon a week of Mountain Dew, but kale? That stuff’s gross.”
“I thought you liked leaves, plant shop girl,” Derek said.
“Every other kind.” Felicity dropped the remote on her coffee table. “Shit … leaves.”
“Uncalled-for,” Derek said.
“My sister said it, not me.”
“It was one salad. One single salad, Dylan.”
“Not shit-leaves. I was saying shit, leaves.” Felicity rubbed a spot at the center of her forehead.
“The meds are hitting your sister quick tonight.”
“You okay, Lissy?”
“I’m fine.” Felicity waved her hand as if they could see her through the phone.
“No. No. No. My friend brought over this plant today, and I completely forgot about the poor thing. Its leaves have black spots. It’s probably got major root rot and the quicker I can get it out of that pot and cut the dead parts off, the more likely it is to survive.
It’s this really gorgeous, rare type of monstera.
” She pulled off her blanket, fighting a whimper as her body left the heating pad.
“Should you be potting on pills?” Dylan asked.
“Potting on pills? Jesus Christ.” She snorted. “It won’t take long. I’ll survive. I’m not operating heavy machinery. I’m going to get it and see how bad it is.”
“Call us when you’re done so we know you made it back upstairs?” Dylan asked. “What? She’s still my baby sister,” he added as if Derek was giving him a pointed look.
“I’m just walking downstairs. I’ll be fine.” Her goodbye had more bite than she meant for it to, and she slipped her phone in her jogger pocket.
Normally, it took her body about forty-five minutes to feel the full effects of her medications.
She had time. She could still walk. She just couldn’t turn her neck or raise her arm until the meds kicked in.
She stopped at her apartment’s microwave to warm up her portable rice heating pad and then strapped it around her neck.