Counting Stars

Six: The Clinic

"If um, if I can't find him then I'll be there, okay?" Liam reassures as he sits across from her at his tiny dining table, struggling to get down the Captain Crunch his son had picked out while also watching Lidia fall apart in front of him.

She hasn't said or done anything, but he knows just from the lost expression on her face. He knows by how frantic she'd been when she first woke up and Harry was gone. He'd even had to talk sense into her when she was shoving her feet into her shoes and throwing her jacket on to go look for him. When he'd told her that he'd go out and find Harry after breakfast, that she didn't need the added stress or to be walking in the areas of town Liam knew Harry to inhabit sometimes when he got bad and she just sat there nodding with a blank expression.

Because of all days for Harry to disappear, it had to be today.

She understood why he took off. Maybe he couldn't handle it, he didn't want to be around when she took care of what they'd done. Maybe he left because if he didn't, he knew he would try everything to change her mind. And he also knew that changing her mind would be a worse idea.

She nods in response to Liam, staring at his cereal and completely lost in her own thoughts. Maybe looking for Harry would be added stress she doesn't need, but not having him here to go with her to the clinic feels a million times more stressful.

"Ten o'clock right?" Liam asks, glancing at the clock on his secondhand microwave to find that he has a little less than two hours to find Harry.

"Yeah," she squeaks out in a weary tone before standing and moving back to the couch where they had slept. She keeps racking her brain to remember when he'd left last night. Surely she would have felt him get up, but she can't remember a thing. And when she isn't thinking about that, she's wondering where in the hell he's at. She'd already exhausted her list of possibilities to Liam, who had assured he'd look everywhere. There's nothing else she can do besides wait for him to turn up and pray to god he isn't dead in some alleyway.

"Okay, I'm going to head out. If I'm not back before you leave, you'll make it there okay right?"

She just stares at the carpet and nods because she doesn't want Liam to see the tears welling up again. Just the thought of doing this alone terrifies her. And she can't wait for Harry to get his shit together. It has to be done with or without him. And if she does do it without him, she's not sure if she can ever look him in the face again, which is another thought that makes her panic.

Liam gives her one last sympathetic look over his shoulder before he pulls the door handle and makes his way downstairs to the street. He pulls the list of places Harry might be from his pocket, some quick notes he'd written on a napkin that Lidia had brought up.

There's the McDonald's they always go to in the mornings for cheap breakfast and free Wifi. There's the rooftop of the Klein. Maybe even the club she'd been working at. Maybe his typical corner where he swore he always got the most tips at.

But there is also places Lidia doesn't know about. Places Liam remembered Harry going to when they had split up. When Harry was really really messed up without Lidia and ventured into the really rough sides of town. The outskirts of the city. Houses that held drug addicts instead of families. Parties he used to go to and wouldn't return for days, sometimes even weeks.

He checks all the obvious spots Lidia had mentioned first because some part of him hopes Harry is at any one of them rather than where Liam fears he might be. But after his last stop scoping the entire premises of their frequently habited McDonalds as his last stop on Lidia's list and coming up short, he knows wherever Harry is isn't good.

Checking his watch, he hails a cab. It's almost nine o'clock by the time he slides into the back of the yellow taxi that reads of cigarettes and feet. The first place that comes to mind is the house on Jackson street, about ten minutes outside of the city where he'd rescued Harry from a couple times in the past.