Harris tried to hold on to the glimpses of his dad's face, but the black void swirled them away. They were so fleeting, he couldn't tell if it was memory or real.

This time, he would. He has to know.

Through the blur, he clings to dad's drooping eyelid, graying stubble, and a lot of domed forehead with wrinkles crossing it. Pressure releases in his chest. This can't be a memory, because in a memory, he'd see dad younger, with sparkling eyes and groomed, dark beard.

And his shoulder won't hurt. Dull at first, pain gnaws his shoulder. When this isn't enough, it spreads to his ribs and all the way down his side. Nausea brings up chemical bitterness to his throat, triggering a gagging reflex. Oblivion is seductive to be rid of the sick sensation, but he has to know if his dad is okay.

Wake up. Wake the hell up!

The world warps around him. The smells of antiseptics and bleach float on the surface of the heavier odor of sickness like oil on water. It's oddly sweet at first. Then—nauseating. He breaks through the unfocused layers to consciousness.

"Harris?" His dad leans forward in his wheelchair to be as close as possible to him. A hand without as much as a bandaid squeezes his wrist. Tears glisten in the already bright eyes that would never grow old.

The first word comes out of his mouth as a cough, so dad inserts a straw between his lips. Water... Harris waves him away without drinking. He'd hate to swallow the metallic bitterness filling his mouth. His hand is unsteady and trails IV tubes.

"How... how long was I out?" The words sound dope, but that will do. Dad'll understand.

Dad does. "Just over a week. They put you in a medically induced coma to help with pain."

A chuckle escapes Harris, then grows into laughter so free, it shakes something in his side loose. Damn thing hurts, but he's now awake for good.

His dad's sagging face pinches. "You freaked me out, son."

Harris lifts his hand again, grabs at dad's.

"I'm not crazy. Just... just drugged enough to find the role reversal hilarious." Dad wouldn't believe how many hours Harris sat in a chair like this one, thinking shitty thoughts. The memory sobers him up. "Happy to see you're still kicking."

He remembers what kind of bed this is and pats the handles until he finds the remote to lift himself into a sitting position.

"Harris?" Worry flickers over Sarkisian Senior's face. "Maybe we should ask your doctor—"

Dad's so unused to it, it's funny. "It's fine. I just... I need my phone for a second. Do you have it?"

Dad surreptitiously sticks his hand into the pocket of his unzipped hoodie and stops to lick his lips. "I should ask the doctor. Right?"

The hoodie, the Pretzel Fest 2012 t-shirt and the jeans are a little crumpled, but fresh. His hair is in its usual nimbus, but recently trimmed at the temples. He's been taking good care of himself.

"One quick text." Harris lifts his finger to show how short this one text would be.

Dad glances around and slips the phone into Harris' waiting hand. It's 80% charged and looks undamaged. Maybe his last memory of the burning house falling on top of him is an exaggeration of a panicked mind.

Agatha, please run. The man is dangerous. If you don't want to see me again, I get it, but please, listen to me. Please! Run.

It sounds melodramatic, but he doesn't hesitate before hitting send. Hopefully, Agatha didn't block him like Desiree. Hopefully, she'll save herself and run as far away from Oliver as she can. Because Oliver is behind the fire. There's nobody else good for it.

There, the message says, delivered. He warned Agatha. Sarkisian Senior is alive. Nothing else can or needs to be done. Tension drains from Harris' neck, shoulders sag—the oblivion can have him now.

"Was that Ablaze?"

"Her name is Agatha!" Harris jerks upright, sending a freaking blow-torch of stinging pain into his hip. The phone jumps out of his numb hand. It tumbles to the floor with a thud.

"Touchy, touchy..." Dad fumbles to lean far enough to pick up, but realizing the futility of his efforts, he straightens back. His eyes are glistening again. "Just look at us, the mighty Sarkisian breed!"

Warmth and guilt spread through Harris' chest. "Sorry..." he whispers. "I'm just worried about her. Sorry."

"No, no. It's good. I get it. And I'm glad you have someone you care about. Because..." Sarkisian Senior dabs the moisture from his eyelashes.

Oh. "The house?"

"It's gone, Harris. The Chief even gave me a funny word for it."

"Irreparable," Harris replies mechanically.

A property that will have to be demolished. After years of tinkering with absolutely everything in that house, fixing all the flaws, it's bitterly ironic. The official verdict to all his efforts, to putting his heart and soul into it—unfixable.

Worse. Cold dread grips his insides, but his skin flushes. His heart pounds. He rubs his sweaty face with his hand. "The insurance... the insurance—"

In this imperfect world, a piece of paper can destroy those he loves. A fucking piece of paper!

Dad's fingers grip his shoulder. "I've been antsy about our finances since you went to Singapore. So, I went through the paperwork to see how much we were under."

How deep Harris sank them, chasing his desire to fix an inanimate thing. Because a house is a thing. Now, it's too late to walk away. "Sorry."

"No, no. Don't be! I needed a kick in the pants. You were doing your best and at your age, I would have probably done the same." Dad's fingers squeeze his shoulder again. "Anyway, the first thing I did was to reinstate the house insurance."

The grip on Harris' stomach eases, but only for a second. A kind of dull needle jams into his heart in place of the squeeze. He opens his mouth to ask where the money came from, but his Dad beats him to speaking.

"I told you to accept help. So, I followed my own goddamn advice. Once I sold a few things, I really didn't need..."

Some of dad's precious pots weren't there when Harris tramped through the burning kitchen, but... "It couldn't have been enough."

"Well, no. After I've gotten over my pique, I called your mother."

Somehow, this is still the last thing Harris has expected from his dad.

"I... I called her too. She was on vacation."

Dad's chuckle is dry. "I needed her help more, so I got through. And Shushana helped."

Sweat rolls down his face, yet he's freezing. "So, we have insurance?"

"Yes."

"Yes, but...?" The way his Dad is sucking on his teeth, there has to be a 'but'.

"We're under investigation, Harris. Understand the company's point for view... I've reinstated the coverage barely two weeks before a major fire broke out. It was arson, and..." He looks at Harris apologetically, then his shoulders slump. "And I wasn't at home that night."

Things click together. Dad—unharmed. His own blundering around the burning house calling for dad with no response.

The hiccups—hiccups, really?—shake him. Dad tries to stuff the stupid paper cup with a straw into his hands again, but he pushes it away again.

"Thank Heaven, you were out, but where did you go?"

"Lonita's place."

"In the middle of the night? What were you doing there?"

He's too old to remember the last time his voice pitched up like that. Probably they were working on one of their crime-and-chow blogs and... he should really take a deep breath. Mellow out. Suppress the hiccups. He shuts his mouth, holds his breath for a count of twenty, then opens it to apologize for being nosy.

Dad squirms in his chair, watching him. "You're a big boy, Harris, so I'll leave it to your imagination to come up with the details of what I was doing in a woman's house in the middle of the night."

The mighty Sarkisian breed. Fortunately, Harris hasn't closed his mouth yet, so his jaw hangs loose with a remarkable ease. Add hiccups to it, and he chatters like a demented squirrel. "D-do you mean what I think you mean?"

"Precisely." Sarkisian Senior's reply is prim and proper, gentlemanly. "For some time now, I've been spending all the nights you were on shift at Lonita's place."

Harris can't help it. He blushes.

"And that's where I live now, and fully intend to continue doing so. I'm wrestling with the insurance company to get a place for you."

"Drinking beer!" It all starts making sense. "Sending me out on stupid dates! Dad!"

A deep, long sigh lifts dad's chest. "My fault. Everything is my fault—"

"What are you talking about? I'm happy for you."

"Don't interrupt your elders. I taught you better than that." There's no snap in this admonition. Just sadness.

Empathic pang tugs at Harris' heart. Suddenly, he doesn't want to probe dad's silence. It has the feel of a shroud covering mummified remains of a monster.

But dad no longer needs his questions. "My biggest regret is that until I've gotten back with Lonita, I didn't stop to think of what I was doing to you. All I could do was sit in this damnable wheelchair! So I sat and navel-gazed."

Harris has decided not to interrupt, but a whispered 'dad' comes out of his mouth. He isn't a child any longer. He knew what he was doing. And... something else troubles him about dad's words. Namely, one paltry word. "You've gotten back with Lonita? Just... how far back?"

"A long way back."

"You mean... before? Before the divorce?" Before Jung and his mother picked his fire station's closet for their afternoon quickie?

"Before," his dad confirms dryly. "Harris, as a young man, I waited for love that never came. Your mother was everything your grandparents had wanted, and what I thought sufficed for a cloudless marriage. She laughed at my jokes after all. We made such good friends!"

Dad's voice is so bitter...

"And yes, yes... You might think I've pushed you to follow into my footsteps. None could be further from the truth!"

"I just... I always thought you were a perfect couple."

"We did our best to fool everyone, including ourselves. And you. Actually, it's not even difficult to fool everyone, when you're basically friends with benefits, a mortgage and a baby, and don't give a damn beyond that. And... Harris, don't chew on your nails!"

Harris barks out a laugh. Half his body is scorched, his parents' love was a sham, and dad still worries about the beauty of his nails?

Dad laughs as well, a full, happy sound. "That's parental instinct for you. The same reason Shushana and I planned on staying together until you've moved out. Only, I foolishly assumed we had certain freedoms."

"Let me guess. You didn't tell mom of this assumption?"

Sarkisian's shrugs can be more evocative than words. "When Shushana found out about Lonita, it blew into my face. Suddenly, our marriage had no end of passion... only the wrong kind. She got a lawyer, the divorce shark type."

"What?" How did he miss all that? He was right there!

"You studied at the Academy. Dreamt of saving people. We weren't so deranged as to destroy that for you."

Separate bedrooms. Chilling silences. Fake cheerfulness, when they ate together... the tension was there. He just... he ignored it. "Maybe I was like the three monkeys: saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing. Because I didn't want to."

"Who knows? But unlike us..." Sarkisian Senior waves a hand in the air, a gesture so full of regret, it plucks at Harris' heartstrings. He gets it. He's accumulated plenty of regrets of his own since the Hotel Avantgarde's fire.

"To cut the long story short, the lawyer wasn't content with just spearing me. He demanded Lonita to be in the hot seat too. Lonita couldn't do that, not with her plans to make a detective, then push for a place at the City Council. She broke it off with me. I was miserable."

"I'm sorry..." He doesn't know why he is sorry. His dad looks too pitiful and his heart goes out to him. He can't help it. "I'm so sorry."

Dad glances at him with a sharp warning. The story is far from over.

"That day in the car, I begged your mother to call off her bloody hound. To part on friendly terms... but she was like a flint. When that truck cut us off, I swerved, and then... It was like a dark spell, Harris. But I didn't black out. I knew exactly what I was doing, when I stepped on the gas to throw our car at that barrier."

This can't be true! He's hearing things, imagining them. That must be it, a delusion, because his head swims. Everything in the room swings so much, the world might as well go topsy-turvy.

"I don't believe this," he whispers.

"You should. And I should have told you back then. I should have told you I begged Jung to save Shushana. The impact knocked her out, but I was conscious. By then it sank in what I had done. So, yes, I begged Jung."

Harris drops his head to his chest. He should have known that Jung would never do the wrong thing on the job!

"After the surgery... Well, I suppose, Shushana had finally felt satisfied. Our drama rested like a roast and we got the non-combative divorce I wanted all along. I've grown wiser, since, but with you..."

"Dad!"

"Let me speak! It's long overdue."

Harris gapes. It's so unlike his dad to be this forceful.

"I sat there, stuck like a duck in the muck. I watched you make the tales and did nothing." Sarkisian Senior shakes his head, in dismay.

"Mom was with Jung. I saw them together," he mumbles.

"I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if she'd slept with every man in Wisconsin, so long as she let me go. It was stupid to find someone from your Station, let alone do it where you would see it, but... that's water under the bridge, Harris."

It was. And it still hits him like a truck. How could he have been so blind!

"Dad, I don't know what to say. I need... where is that damned water?"

Sarkisian Senior inserts the paper cup into his hand again. The ice in it has melted. Tepid water tastes and smells faintly of antiseptic, but he guzzles it, down to the last drop. He wishes it was something stronger than water. Much, much stronger.

"I need time to process. Do you mind... Can you give me some time alone?"

Harris doesn't know how he's scored a private room and who's paying for it. Frankly, he's afraid to ask, because all his answers have been screwy lately. But he's glad he has a room to himself, because he needs it desperately.

"Process and file it, Harris, that's my late advice. Shred it. I almost lost you because of my baggage and one moment of insanity."

Out of habit, the grin lifts only the right corner of his mouth—on the burned side, so it hurts. He winces instead of a chuckle. "I had plenty of those lately."

"Noble moments! That's the difference between you and me, and as a father I don't mind that one bit." A squint doesn't quite hide the sheen of tears in Sarkisian Senior's eyes. He clears his throat. "Hmm. You deserve happiness."

Maybe he does. First, he has to earn it. As his dad wheels out of his room, Harris eyes the phone on the floor. The phone call with his mom would be exponentially more difficult. His life no longer has backward compatibility. He needs to relive it in his head and set things right. Without it, he can't move forward.