Free Now- Lando Norris

9. Comfort

Lottie had watched the following race weekend, China, from her hospital bed as she started to recover from her surgery. Well, watches may not have been the most accurate description. She was on so many painkillers she'd been really struggling to even keep her eyes open, never mind actually focus on what was happening on the tv. As a result, somewhere alone the line she'd clearly nodded off, because she woke up with a jolt to realise the race was only a couple of laps from the end, Lando sitting down in fourth place when he had started in first.

It made her cringe, watching as he climbed out of the car at the end, walking off with his head down without even removing his helmet. Even from the small clip she saw of him, the camera being focused on the top three and Lando passing behind them, she could see from his body language he was devastated. She watched the small glimpse of that fluorescent helmet as he scurried off down the pit lane until he was completely out of view, before she picked up her phone to send him a message. Her fingers hovered over the keys, not knowing what to say. Where did she even start on trying to make him feel better?

The difficult thing was, it wasn't even a bad result. Admittedly, from where he'd qualified she was sure that both Lando and the team were probably expecting much better things, but as she watched the highlights play on the tv it was clear to see that he hadn't made any particularly big mistakes that he could blame for the less than ideal result. Instead a few little slip ups here and there, a slightly slow start, a couple of wide exits on turns and a slightly slow pit stop had been enough to tip the scales, and this time not in his favour.

The press conference made her cringe. The dejected look on his face, the dark circles under his eyes. At one point he'd looked close to tears as he'd given a rather diplomatic answer to the question of where it was all going wrong when last season had seemed to be such a strong one for him. The way he wearily ran his hand over his race, running his fingers through his curls before he sat his hat back on the top of his head, had her wishing she was there to give him a hug and tell him that it was all going to be okay, even if she knew that there was no way he was going to believe her.

The reporters went on and on about the fact that Max Verstappen was already pulling away in the race for the drivers championship, showing once again why Lando was not a match for him, just has he'd proven in the previous season. It was painful to hear, but even more painful to watch as one of them said to Lando's face. She watched on as the words seemed to catch Lando by surprise, and she caught the wince on his face at the directness of the statement being made. To his credit, and probably the credit of all the media training McLaren had done with him, he recovered well and gave a very diplomatic answer to the journalist who had asked the question.

The words he used stuck with her though. "It's my fault, I'm not good enough. The team deserved better today and I let them down." The way he'd looked at the floor as he said it, the slight shake of his head and the way his shoulders had dropped... she'd been expecting him to be beating himself up over what he could've done better, but something told her that it was worse than she'd expected.

She quickly typed a message, telling him to call her when he had time and sent it without giving it too much thought. She watched on the tv screen as he stood off to the side, but still in shot, as they moved onto the next interview and saw him pull his phone out of his pocket. She could've sworn she saw the faintest trace of a smile on his face as he looked at the screen, and then he vanished out of the shot. She stared at her phone for a minute, the three little dots to say he was typing a reply appearing, but then they disappeared again but no message appeared. She waited, watching the screen, but nothing ever came through. Eventually, she sunk back heavily against the pillows of the hospital bed and allowed her tired eyes to droop closed.

By the time she opened her eyes again, being disturbed by the nurse coming in to poke her and take her more blood from her, it was dark outside. A quick glance at her phone revealed that she'd actually slept for the majority of the day. She'd missed a few messages from Flo asking if she was up for a visit later and if she wanted her to bring anything with her. Lottie quickly replied, apologising for the fact that she'd slept through the messages, telling Flo she was still very welcome to visit if she had time. It wasn't the messages from Flo that really caught her attention though, it was the complete lack of response from the Norris sibling she'd been hoping to hear from. She pulled up the message again, just to check that she hadn't imagined sending it and that it had delivered, which it had. But there was still no answer from Lando.