Addicted To You .L.S.

TwentyOne.

Three and a Half Years Ago
(Fourteen Years Old)

"Get up."
I pull the covers over my head. "Leave me alone," I moan. I've been home from the hospital for a week and I haven't left my bedroom. I've barely left my bed, the crutches just another reminder of how everything sucks. All I do is watch tv and take the handfuls of pain pills the doctors keep giving me, which leaves me so fuzzy, I don't want to do anything, anyway.

"Get up." Harry yanks at my blankets and I can't fight him with just one hand, the other still in a cast.
"You're mean," I tell him, rolling slowly to my other side, smashing my extra pillow over my head instead. The effort it takes just to rile over makes me groan. Even with the pills, everything hurts, weather I'm still or moving.

Harry plops down on the bed next to me, not bothering to be gentle. His weight jostles the mattress, making me rock back and forth. I wince. "Stop it."
"Get out of bed, then," he says.
"I don't want to."
"Too bad. Your mum says you won't leave your room. And when your mum starts calling me for help, I know there's a problem. So—up! You stink. You need to shower."

"No," I groan, pushing my face into the pillow. I have to use that stupid shower chair for old people with bad hips. Mum's hovered outside the door each time, basically worrying herself into a fit about weather or not I'll fall. "Just leave me alone."
"Yeah, right, that's really going to work on me." Harry roles his eyes. I still have the pillow over my head, so I feel, rather than see, him get up off the bed. I hear the sound of water being turned on. For a second I think he's turned the shower on in the bathroom, but the pillow I'm holding is yanked out of my hands, and when I open my mouth to protest, Harry dumps a glass of cold water over my head. I shriek, jerking up way to fast, and it hurts, oh shit, it hurts. I'm still not used to how I can't twist and move my spin like I used to. But I'm so angry at him that I don't care. I push up on the bed with my good arm, grabbing the remaining pillow, and hurl it at him.

Harry giggles, delighted, dancing out of the way and then back, tilting the empty glass in his hand teasingly at me.
"Bitch," I say, yanking my dripping hair out of my eyes.
"You can call me whatever you want, smelly, as long as you shower," Harry says. "Come on, get up."

He hold his hand out, and it's not like anyone else who's offered themselves to me as a temporary cane. Not like dad, who wants to carry me everywhere. Not like mum, who wants to wrap me in cotton and never let me go anywhere. Not like Gem, who wants so desperately to fix me.

He holds his hand out, and when I don't take it immediately, he snaps his fingers at me, pushy, inpatient.
Just like always.
I fold my hand into his, and when he smiles, it's sweet and soft and full of the relief that can only come after a lot of work.