Purposefully Accidental: The Interlude

Chapter Six

The flu pandemic was worse than I thought.

I wasn't really aware of what was going on—my mind had already been occupied with the wedding and the scheduled treatments and worrying if my tumor was cancerous that I didn't have the mental space to tune into the news. I'd assumed that the whole lockdown thing was an exaggeration, that it was all just overblown panic. But it turned out that the whole city was almost completely shut down because it was near impossible to contain the flu.

The deadly flu, as it seemed.

People were dying left and right, within mere days of contracting the disease. There wasn't any cure or vaccine yet, and the survival rate were very low. This was all happening all over the world, every channel playing out the same awful reality. It was eerie, it was dystopian—it was as if we were going through a worldwide zombie apocalypse.

So many people died from the disease in a single day that morgues were running out of space to store bodies. Empty fields turning into mass graveyards because the dead couldn't all be buried properly. The more I heard about it, the scarier reality seemed.

It was its own kind of apocalypse.

I began to worry about my family back home. We lived in a small suburban town with great access to healthcare, but from what I'd seen in the news, most hospitals in the whole country were overwhelmed by the amount of Coronavirus patients.

I was glad to hear that Leann got to be home with my parents and Cole before the country went into lockdown... but I wished I could be home with them, too.

Dad had to close our family diner—with the lockdown, no one was going out to eat, anyway. I couldn't imagine how awful it must be for him. Rochelle's was his entire life—he hadn't ever missed a single day of work ever since he'd taken over the diner from Grandpa. Not only that, but without the diner, we lost the main source of income in the family.

Meanwhile, here I was—leeching off of a billionaire heir, living in his house, wearing his ring.

"How long do you think this lockdown's going to last?" I asked Freddie at dinnertime. "Do you think I could go home and see my family before the surgery?"

The chicken soup that our butler, Garcia, cooked tasted bland—but it wasn't his fault. My stomach didn't allow me to consume anything else without throwing up, and I needed fulfilling, nutritious meals to keep me healthy before my upcoming surgery. I felt sorry that Freddie had to eat the same shitty food that I'd been eating, but he didn't seem bothered.

Freddie frowned over his bowl. "I'm not sure, Han."

"You've only met my parents once, at Tony's wedding," I reminded him. "Don't you wanna see your new parents-in-law?"

"I do," he replied with a grimace. "Hopefully this all will be over soon. If I had to take another call saying that your surgery is postponed, I'm going to do something so drastic it would put me on national TV."

I chuckled at his tone. "No, you won't."

"Watch me."

"I—" I cut myself off when I heard a faint siren sound of an ambulance, getting louder as it got near, eventually passing by the house. I bit my lip, what little appetite I had now completely disappearing. "That's the fifth one today."

From my understanding, if you got sick enough from this virus to have an ambulance called on you, the chances of you getting out of the hospital alive were slim.

I hadn't been all that aware of the endless run of the ambulances in our street, not until recently. But now that I was, every time I noticed the siren coming closer, I could feel my heart dropping to my stomach. That sound meant that somewhere down the block, somebody was dying.

It was all so harrowing.

"It's getting late," Freddie said gently. "Let's get you to bed."

"I'm not a grandma," I said, keeping my tone light, though I accepted his hand and let him guide me upstairs to my bed. I was actually feeling tired already. I always was, these days.

He tucked me into my mountains of blankets, as he always did—ever since the chemotherapy, I always felt cold, no matter how many layers of clothing I wore. He also turned off my bedside lamp, but I stopped him before he left my room.

"Freddie, I—if I..." I trailed off.

He knelt next to my bed. "Yeah?"

"In case I... if I... died, here in New York," I paused, "do you think you could... um. I want to be home. Could you bring me home, if I... when I..."

Freddie's mouth gaped open, and then closed, repeating a few times wordlessly. He looked completely stupefied.

"I don't wanna be buried in a mass grave," I whispered. "Whether I die from this flu or from c-cancer, I don't—please don't let me be f-forgotten..."

"Hannah, I..." He gulped, and even without the lights on I could see his eyes glisten with unshed tears. He then sniffed, blinking away the tears, and shook his head. "You're not going to die. You'll get the surgery, and they'll take the tumor out and it won't be cancer, and you're going to get better, and this pandemic will end, and you'll fly home with me to see your parents. You hear me?"

"B-but if I—"

He clasped my fingers. "You'll be just fine. Okay? Nothing's going to happen."

I forced my own tears away, hating that I had put that look on his handsome, usually carefree face. I caused this—I brought this doom upon him. He'd already had too much on his plate and now he had to take care of me and listen to me ramble about fucking dying. This wasn't fair to him.

So I nodded, and pushed a shaky smile onto my face. "Yeah, you're right. It's all gonna be fine. Sorry."

He nodded back, and then let go of my hands. He stood up and left the room, gently closing the door behind him.

I didn't sleep a wink that night.