Keep the Car Running (Zarry AU)

Chapter 41

Harry paces back and forth for a while before he finally takes a breath and goes through the double doors towards the ICU. The waiting room is busier than it was yesterday and that’s where everyone is, he realises, with their loved ones, not sitting in the canteen staring at a cup of tea.

He has to wait to use the phone, but when he asks if he can see his father, he’s surprised at how the muscles in his shoulders relax when the nurse tells him that he’s been moved to a ward. It takes Harry a while to find it, though, convinced that she told him the wrong one until he’s told that the man in the bed by the window is Terry Styles.

Harry approaches him with the sort of caution usually reserved for trying to lure a cat into it’s basket, trying not to stare as he looks for some trace of his father under the mess of cuts and bruises. But his face is so swollen, the right side of it so purple he can’t even imagine how much it hurts, that Harry is sure it isn’t him. It can’t be. He isn’t even wearing his St Christopher, the chain of which Harry snapped dozens of times as a child grabbing at, and his father never takes that off. Never. Even in the shower.

‘Terry?’ he says but even as he’s saying it, Harry knows it isn’t him. His father is a great Oak of a man with big hands and a bigger laugh, not this broken little man with swollen eyelids. But then he opens them and when Harry sees a familiar flash of blue, his heart hammers.

‘You alright, kid?’

Harry bites his tongue before he can ask if he’s okay, ignoring the tug of worry he feels as he puts the backpack on the bed. ‘Here you go.’

Terry looks at it then nods. ‘Is it all there?’

Harry shouldn’t be surprised, but he still is, worry giving way to annoyance as he puts his hands on his hips and stares at him. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask how I got it?’ When he doesn’t answer Harry shakes his head. ‘That’s thirty grand in cash.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’

‘Do you even care, Terry?’

He clearly doesn’t, his eyes on the backpack, and Harry gives up.

‘I’m a prostitute,’ he says at last. He’s never said that out loud before and he thought it would be more of a relief, but it feels more like letting go of a balloon and watching it float away. Even the sound of it, the syllables rubbing together so they come out with a hiss and a spit, is enough to turn his stomach, so he shouldn’t be offended when his father turns his face away, but it hurts more than any punch.

‘I know this is what we do.’ Harry walks around the bed to face him. When he turns his head the other way, Harry does it again, his hands balled into fists at his sides as his father gets the message and lifts his chin, even if he doesn’t quite look him in the eye. ‘I know this is what we do, pretend not to see stuff, but I need you to see this. I need you to take one last look at me because that thirty grand is how much this costs.’ Harry points at the space between them. ‘Because I am done. I know I say that every time, but I mean it this time. There’s nothing left.’ He presses his hands to his chest. ‘I have nothing left for you. I can’t keep waiting for you to call or to remember my birthday. And I can’t be any more than I am and if that isn’t good enough for you, then there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t love you any more or any harder and I’m done trying to.’

When Harry stops to suck in a breath, he can feel everyone on the ward looking at him, but he doesn’t care because that is a relief, saying it at last. But as he’s about to turn and walk away, Terry lifts his chin and looks him in the eye for the first time.

‘Did you know that you were two weeks early?’

Harry rolls his eyes and sighs because he knows this story. How the car broke down on the way to the hospital and he’s named after the paramedic with the steady hands and calm smile who delivered him and wrapped him up in his father’s jumper.

‘From the moment you were born, I couldn’t keep up with you.’ Terry chuckles and it sounds so genuine that it makes something in Harry soften. ‘I struggled with Gemma, but you.’ He shakes his head and suddenly he isn’t there any more, the corners of his mouth drooping. ‘You wouldn’t stay still when I changed your nappy or I’d put you on the sofa and you’d roll off and have a nasty bruise on your forehead for weeks.’

Terry stops and when he looks at him again, his eyes are wet. ‘Do you remember when you fell in the pond at the park?’

Harry frowns at him. ‘When?’

‘When you were four. I don’t even know how it happened. I was talking to our neighbour, Mrs Lawlor. Do you remember her?’ Harry nods. She was lovely but mad as a box of snakes. She used to walk to the supermarket in her pyjamas. ‘She was crying about losing her dog. She didn’t even have a dog, but I was trying to calm her down and you were right there, I swear. Then you weren’t and I heard this woman screaming and all I could think was, Please don’t be Harry. Please don’t be Harry. But it was you.’

‘I don’t remember it at all.’

‘Your mum was so mad.’ He chuckles again, but it’s sharper this time. ‘She kicked me out. Took you and Gem to Cyprus. Told me she wasn’t coming back.’

Harry notes the change in his tone and his spine tightens. ‘How is that my fault?’

‘I never said it was.’ He frowns then winces as it tugs on the stitches laced across his left cheek. Harry steps forward to do something, but doesn’t know what. ‘It was my fault,’ he admits, gingerly touching his cheek. ‘I’m a terrible father. Always have been. You’re better off without me.’

‘Is that what you think?’ Harry asks, the floor under his feet not as steady.

‘Robin’s a good man. He’s the father you should have had.’

Harry steps back and shakes his head. ‘The last time I saw you.’ He stops, to take the words wobbling as he remembers Terry counting through the holdall of cash he gave him and holding up one of the notes to the light as though he was at a till at Tesco. ‘You said you never wanted to see me again.’

‘I didn’t. I can’t fucking bear to look at you.’

‘But why?’ Harry can’t stop the tear that skids hot and fast down his cheek. ‘What did I do?’

Terry smiles for the first time. ‘You grew up to be a better man than me.’