Second Arrangement

CHAPTER 7 - BLACKMAILED

ELLIE

I sighed as I massaged my aching shoulder and neck. Today's surgery was a difficult one. Thankfully we managed to pull through. Now we just had to pray and waited until his condition stabilized. After showering and changing back to my clothes, I fished my phone out from my bag. I frowned when I saw a message notification from Instagram. I took me a few seconds to remember that it must've been Jackson.

[When do you have time to eat lunch if you scheduled your surgery back to back since 11 AM?]

He replied to my story that I uploaded earlier before I went into surgery. I checked my photo again and I realized that he could see the time of the surgery, so he knew that I was probably skipping lunch since I had surgery back to back around lunch time. I could feel a scolding coming if only he could call me. Luckily, there weren't other messages or missed calls from him, so he must've been busy himself.

[I already ate before surgery and I'm going to get dinner now. Just finished surgery. How about you? Got dinner already?]

It wasn't entirely a lie. I did eat a little bit before I went into surgery, but it wouldn't fall into a lunch category in his mind and I did plan to grab some food before heading back home. I had finished dinner when he finally replied my text, informing me that he just got back from dinner with his team, that was why he replied my message so late. I told him that it was okay and bid him good night. I patted myself when the next day I didn't forget to upload a story before I went on with my day.

[Cute shoes. Is it yours or the hospital's?]

Once again, he replied to my story when I uploaded my crocs that I used in the OR. He told me he would buy me some pins to put on my crocs when I told him that the crocs were mine.

I was proud that for almost the entire week I remembered to upload stories daily. But then I started to run out of ideas of what to upload. It wasn't like my life was that interesting, so I had no clue on what to capture to show him. I just posted random things, perhaps even boring things, but they were related to me. Like the schedule board or my shoes. But I saw him do the same thing. Sometimes he just uploaded his mic that he used for recording with that tiny text in italic that I hated. It was hard to read the text but I noticed that he always used that font, so probably it was his signature? Anyway, today was a different story. The two weeks long distance was going to end tonight. Jackson was flying back to Korea tonight but he knew that I would be busy all day. I've texted him before I went to the hospital and he seemed pretty okay with it. It was quite surprising considering during two weeks he was away, he never missed a day not complaining about the distance.

But I didn't have the time to ponder on his weirdness as I was swamped with work. There were several emergencies coming through the ER and two of the cases needed emergency surgery. We had to work with other departments on those cases. And I still had my scheduled surgeries on top of those emergencies, thus I forgot everything. After I got off the last surgery, which ended at dawn the next day, I remembered that I haven't checked my phone at all since I put it away before my first surgery. Aside from several work-related messages, I didn't have anything else, except for that notification from Instagram. I frowned when this time, it read, Jackson Wang posted something instead of the usual when he replied to my story. I immediately opened my apps and found out that he posted something on his feed, the picture that he blackmailed me with! I squinted at the picture and noticed that he cropped the picture smartly so my hand almost invisible. I checked the comments and mostly they didn't realize that he was holding my hand. Fuming, I picked up my phone and called the culprit. (The rest you can read on my one shots collection – Dropping Crumbs, Jackson).

Thirty minutes later, I was waiting for him to pick me up and drove me home. He knew I was awake all night so he gave stern warning not to drive back home myself. I argued that people would spot him, but his word was final so I hoped that he put up a good disguise that people couldn't recognize him. While waiting, even though I was still mad at him, I couldn't deny that I did miss him as well. Even though we texted and video called often while he was away, it wasn't enough. When he was at my place last time, he hugged me. That was the only time that he initiated physical contact after we agreed to get back together but in that short time, he managed to get me addicted to the feeling of comfort that his hug brought. I forgot how comforting his hug could be, how it reminded me of home.