Chasing Fire: (Fire and Fury Book One)

by Avery Kingston

  “It smells good. Earthy. Like you.” Jane rubbed her arm.

  “I bet my plants are all dead.” Tori curled her nose.

  “Sis, your plants were dead far before you even went into the hospital.” Jane laughed. “I revived them for you, though.” Yeah, Tori was bad about neglecting her plants. God help her if she ever had kids—not that she actually would.

  Tori stood there, in her entryway, afraid to move, not really sure what to do next. Normally, she’d kick off her shoes at the door, drop her purse and belongings next to them, and sit on the sofa and catch up on TV. Now what?

  “So, I made you some meals and organized the place. Come here. I’ll show you,” Jane said, picking up on the fact that Tori had no clue what to do with herself. Jane drug her over to the fridge and opened it up. She grabbed Tori’s hand and placed it on a stack of containers. “These are your dinners. Just pull one out and heat it up in the microwave for four minutes.”

  “How am I supposed to even use the microwave?” Tori snarled.

  “I took care of that. Feel.” Jane ran her fingers over raised dots on the microwave. “I put a dot on the numbers and then another on the start button. It’s not actually braille, since you don’t know that yet.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Tori groaned, realizing she was going to have to learn braille, and she really didn’t want to think about that. “Ok, I got it. I’ll figure it out.” Tori dug into her freezer and rifled around. “Where’s my vodka?”

  “I dumped it.”

  “You dumped it?” Tori wanted to reach out and choke her. Two and a half weeks holed up in a ten by ten room, drugged up and bored out of her mind. All she wanted was a drink.

  “You can’t drink with the medication you’re on,” Jane said. “In fact, I’m taking the Xanax with me and leaving you enough for tomorrow. I’ll refill you each day when I come back.”

  Tori let out a large bull-like breath through her nose. “What, you think I’m gonna try and kill myself or something?” Tori pretended to be insulted, but she’d be lying if the thought hadn't crossed her mind. She was not proud of that.

  “I just don’t want you to get them mixed up, it’s safer this way,” Jane said, obviously lying.

  Jane spent the next thirty minutes showing her everything she’d done in her apartment to organize it and put things where she could find them.

  “Listen, I’ll be back in the morning after I drop the kids off at school.” After Jane got married, she popped out Hannah within the first year and Jacob three years later.

  “Who has them today?”

  “Tori, it’s Sunday, Darren has them. I told you that already.” Jane’s tone dropped an octave, and Tori could tell she was frowning with worry.

  “Oh. Yeah.” Tori nodded. Her short-term memory was still shit. She’d lost all track of time completely over the past few weeks.

  “Ya know, maybe I should just stay here tonight. I’ll get Darren to drop the kids off in the morning.”

  Tori shook her head. “No, you need to get home to your kids.” Jane had spent almost every waking hour she could at the hospital and not nearly enough time with her family. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I could call mom and see if she—”

  “No!” Tori said adamantly. “I can’t deal with mom right now.” It’s not like her mom would come anyway. She’d only been at the hospital three times in the past two and a half weeks to see Tori. Not that Tori gave a shit. Her mother was no way equipped emotionally to handle a blind daughter. It was best if Tori kept her distance. “Anyhow, Keith is going to stop by later.” This, of course, was a lie.

  “Ok.” Jane’s voice waivered. “You remember how to use the phone, right?” She asked as they stood in the entryway.

  Jane had set up her iPhone with VoiceOver so she could use it. “Yes, I have that down.” It was her only form of entertainment. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten how to use it.

  “Ok, deadbolt the door behind me.” Jane gave her a big hug, then the door clicked open.

  “Wait, Jane. What about food?” Tori asked, trying to not crack a smile.

  “Tori, I told you it was in the fridge.” The door shut and Jane’s purse flopped back down on the table. “That’s it. I’m staying here.”

  Tori started laughing. “I’m messing with you, Jane.”

  Jane grunted. “Bitch.”

  “One week, Jane. You only have to deal with me one more week, then I’m out of your hair for six months.”

  Jane sucked in a heavy breath, almost like she was going to say something, then stopped herself. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Door opening, door shutting, and Tori was alone in total darkness, and now also deafening silence. Tori locked the door, leaned her back against it, then slowly slumped down to the floor, tucking her knees into her chest.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, she begged herself. She took ten deep breaths, calming herself, then finally stood. She managed to microwave the food Jane had made for her. She didn’t even bother cleaning up her dishes. She tossed them into the sink with a clank for Jane to deal with in the morning.

  Well, now what?

  A nice, calm bath. Surely, she could handle that as long as she didn’t get her cast wet. She headed to the bedroom, using the furniture as a guide. She made it to the wall. Shit. She traced her hand to the left and reached the doorframe.

  Tori turned to her left and undershot the corner. Her dresser hit her smack dab in the gut, right where they’d sliced her open. She doubled over and winced, clutching her abdomen. “Fuck!” she screamed into the silence as warmth seeped through her shirt onto her fingers. God dammit.

  She hobbled to the bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and leaned against the wall, catching her breath from the pain. She ran her finger across her stomach as more slippery, warm blood coated her fingertips. Shit. She groped for the sink and turned on the water, letting it heat while she pulled out a washcloth from under the cabinet. She pressed it to the wound and waited a few minutes.

  Finally, it seemed that most of the bleeding stopped. She could FaceTime Jane and ask her to look, but Tori was too proud to do that, and Jane would just come running back. No, she’d handle this. She felt the tender, raised skin. Seemed like she just nicked it. It didn’t feel gaped open. There was a little moisture still trickling, but a bandage should do the trick.

  She opened her medicine cabinet and rifled around. Band-Aids. Come on, Band-Aids. She found the cardboard box and pulled it down, ripping a large one open with her right hand and her teeth, and slapped it over the wound. She cleaned up her garbage and shut the medicine cabinet mirror.

  She pressed her hand to the glass and then touched her face. She traced the healing wounds on her cheek, forehead, and middle of her nose. How bad were her scars? They felt enormous under her small fingertips. The surgeon promised her that her eye muscles moved normally now. Were they still as blue? Would the color dull after time? Her reflection was taunting her, telling her exactly what she looked like, but her eyes would never get the message.

  Never would she see herself grey-haired, older, wrinkled. She would forever be stuck at twenty-nine in her mind, dark red lipstick, staring at herself in the mirror while Nathaniel gazed over her shoulder. It was nauseating that the last image of herself was with that man. Her stomach churned, and she bent over the toilet and emptied the contents of her belly.

  Well, there went Jane’s dinner.

  She leaned her head back against the wall and wiped the vomit from her mouth.

  Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. “Text message from Keith Nielsen,” the speaker blared. Tori pulled out her phone and unlocked the screen.

  Day twenty. You know the drill. Tell me something beautiful.

  This was Keith’s thing he made her do. His attempt to help her find the beauty in life still. He texted her every day asking this question.

  Tori snorted and shook her head. “Nothing. Not a damn thing, Keith. It’s all black!” she shouted at her phone, as if it wa
s actually him in front of her. She tossed her phone haphazardly to her side.

  The hospital sent a psychiatrist into her room. Therapy. Yeah, that will bring my sight back. Tori recalled the military shrinks that tried to poke into Scott’s head after his injury. Therapy won’t bring my brothers back, or my fucking leg, he’d told her. How weird was it now that they were both disabled? Was this God’s sick, cruel joke or something?

  Everything happens for a reason. That’s the excuse she told herself anytime anything bad ever happened to her. Her dad dying had taught her to guard her heart. Her shitty childhood with an alcoholic mom taught her how to take care of herself. But losing her vision? If there was some subliminal message that the universe was trying to tell her, she didn’t want to understand. Fuck the universe.

  She sighed and picked her phone back up. Her thumb scrolled across the various apps each speaking aloud. Apple is the shit. She had to hand it to them.

  “Text messages.” She double-clicked it and scrolled through the names. “Keith Nielsen, Jane Sullivan,” the list went on for a bit until it spoke “Scott Harris.”

  She double-tapped it and ran her fingers over the last text message he’d sent. It was a photo he sent the night of her exhibition, right as she was climbing into the car with Nathaniel. She never even looked at it. Oh, the irony.

  She could just text him, say hello, see if he chimes back.

  Instead, she scrolled through her phone. “Photos, albums, videos.” Double click. The video she was searching for was sent exactly six years after Scott had lost his leg. Tori had committed the date to memory when they were in Amsterdam. They were in the tattoo parlor, and she’d drawn the tattoo that now adorned his right calf. She dubbed that day Scott’s legiversary, a day that he wouldn’t grieve, but celebrate the loss of his leg by doing something fun and incredible. “Video April 5, two thousand sixteen.” She double-clicked the saved video and turned up the volume. Scott’s voice poured through her speakers.

  “Today is my sixth legiversary, and per the promise to you I made, I’m sending you proof of its celebration.” The sound of his smooth, deep voice was like calming music to her ears. “I’m in Greece, specifically, Kalymnos. Behind me, you can see the beast, and I shall climb up it in all its glory, with this.” Tori could recall, on the video, he lifted up some type of special climbing leg. She remembered that damn, crooked grin of his spreading from ear to ear as he showed it off. “Wish me luck, Tori. Aw, hell. You know I don’t need luck. I’ve got this.” His laugh bellowed through the speakers, then the video went silent. Tori smiled and clutched the phone to her chest as a tear trickled down her cheek.

  Call him. Tell him.

  The one person in the world that could understand her, she couldn’t muster the courage to call. Scott would move heaven and earth to be by her side, and she couldn’t ask him to do that. She didn’t want him there out of obligation or pity. She was too raw, too vulnerable. Just like he was after his injury, when the lines in their “friendship” got blurred.

  What she did do was voice text Keith and tell him what she found beautiful today. “Scott’s laugh,” she spoke, then commanded the message to send. Tori straightened her spine and dusted herself up off the bathroom floor.

  For the next hour, she walked every path in her home. Bed to bathroom, bathroom to office, office to living, living to kitchen, and so on. She repeated this again and again until she got it perfect. She was certain that her shins were bloody and she was black and blue all over, but it didn’t matter.

  She flopped down onto her bed, grabbed her pillow, and curled up in a ball. Tomorrow, she’d do it again.

  Tori opened her eyes and blinked. Her stomach knotted, just like it did every time she woke and remembered this was not a bad dream. She was trapped in a hellish nightmare, utterly and totally fucked.

  Three weeks, two days. It may as well have been months with the way the days dragged on in the darkness. She slept most of the time, unable to figure out her internal clock that was seriously screwed.

  She rolled over and tapped her phone. The time is now eight thirty-three. At least she got a full night sleep for once. Jane would be there soon, as she had been every day for the past week. Thankfully, today was the last day she’d need to rely on her sister. She dug her toes into the shag rug under her feet, enjoying the soft texture.

  She pressed the home button on her phone. “Text Keith Nielsen.”

  “What should I text Keith Nielsen?”

  “The furry shag rug under my feet. I never noticed how soft it was. Send.”

  She went to her bathroom and drew a bath, sticking her legs into the water to gauge how high it was. She and sunk down in when it was nearly full, making sure to keep her left arm propped so her cast wouldn’t get wet.

  She reached for the bottles on the caddy beside the tub. Shave cream. That one was easy; it was the shampoo and conditioner that gave her fits at first. Jane had poured them into different shaped containers for her, a little trick her sister learned taking care of elderly people as a home health care nurse.

  Part of her wanted to curl in a ball and die, take the easy way out. She gripped the razor tightly in her hand as she finished shaving her legs. I’d need something sharper anyway.

  “Stop it. Stop it now,” she ordered her brain.

  The door to her apartment squeaked open and shut, causing Tori to jolt out of her trance. Every creak, every groan in her home startled her. Noise was her friend and enemy at the same time.

  “Tori, it’s me!” Jane hollered.

  “I’m in the bath!” Tori yelled back.

  “Hey,” Jane’s voice came through clear now as she walked into the bathroom. “Need help with your hair?”

  “No, I’m not washing it today.” Tori pulled the plug on the drain and stood, reaching for her towel on the rack.

  “I’ll put some clothes out for you on the bed,” Jane offered kindly.

  “I’ll dress myself, Jane.” Tori gritted her teeth.

  “I’m sorry. Of course you can.”

  “Now you’re just patronizing me. Please just treat me like a normal human.” Jane was talking to Tori as if she was five, like her nice Hannah. In addition to her own grief, she had to deal with the endless pity from others.

  Tori dressed and made her calls. Phone call after phone call to work and friends…the same questions, the same answers, and always, the pity.

  Tori shoved her phone in her back pocket after the call to her boss. “How about a mass Facebook post? I tell everyone at once and get it over with?” she bitched. “Would that be tacky? Status update: Victoria Johnson is blind. Feeling despair. Zero likes, five thousand comments.” She rubbed her temple.

  “Nice to see your sense of humor and sarcasm is still intact.” Jane let out a wry laugh as the dishwasher slammed shut. Jane’s footsteps shuffled to the sofa. “I guess these days, though, a Facebook post would be appropriate. I mean… Good grief, you can’t call everyone in the world. You do need to tell those closest to you, though,” Jane urged as the sofa cushion sunk down.

  Tori’s entire body stiffened, knowing where she was headed.

  “Have you called Scott yet?”

  Tori reached for her drink on the coffee table and gulped the last bit of her vodka. Tori went to set it down, undershot the distance, and missed. The glass tumbled onto the floor. “God dammit,” Tori cursed, flopped backward on the sofa, and laughed and cried at the same time.

  “I’ve got it, sis.” The cubes chimed, one by one, back into the glass. Footsteps went into the kitchen, dropping the cup into the sink with a clank. “You need to cool it with the drinking. How did you even get the liquor?”

  “Stores do deliver, you know.” Tori clenched her jaw. “I’m not completely inept.”

  “Tori, I’m worried about you,” Jane began. “Between the painkillers, the Xanax, and the drinking, you’re headed down a slippery slope.”

  “When you go blind, then and only then, you may tell me how much I ca
n drink,” Tori bit back. The thought of calling Scott made Tori’s stomach go into a knot.

  Jane was a hopeless romantic who married her high school sweetheart Darren—the only man she’d ever slept with—then quickly started popping out kids. Jane just didn’t get the dynamic between Tori and Scott.

  “You can’t let him show up here one day for a booty call and find out about all this.” Jane’s voice dripped with condemnation.

  Tori groaned at her sister. “Stop judging my relationship with Scott.”

  “What relationship?” Jane spat. “Apparently, according to everything you’ve ever said, there isn’t a relationship.”

  Scott was not anywhere near ready to settle down. Tori thought he may have been years ago, after he lost his leg, but he took the job as a private military contractor and skipped town. The man was in DC once, maybe twice, a year. When he was in town, they’d have mind-blowing sex, then he’d move on. It’s how things had always worked between them.

  “Jane, I’ve told you a hundred times. We’re friends who just so happen to fuck. Now stop it.”

  “If you’re such good friends, then call him!”

  “I will when I’m ready.”

  “Is this about you still being worried about how you look?” Jane snorted. “You look fine.” Other than some bruising and scars that would fade, Jane promised she was starting to look like her old self again. “You have to rip this Band-Aid off sooner or later. He is going to hear about it anyway, whether you tell him or not.”

  Jane had a point. The news had been all over the accident. Because Nathaniel was a congressman, the media was having a field day with his death. Thankfully, police hadn’t released her name yet as the “unidentified female” in the vehicle with him, but it was bound to release soon.

  Why was she having such a hard time coming to grips with calling him? Scott was missing a leg, after all. This really shouldn’t be a big deal.