Rachel's POV

I waited and waited in the hall of the hospital just outside the operating room, scribbling what I could recall from what the man had told me to write down on a piece of note paper in my bag. It had been nearly four hours since he was admitted, and things weren't about to get any better. The others at the beach were all pronounced dead at the scene. I brushed it away from my head, concentrating on what the man had told me to write down.

Clarine Sperling
Girlfriend??
Met at a bank
Went to Vegas
Smells like pine needles and mint
Likes honey puffs??
Blonde hair
Small — 5'2"
Police officer?
Meeting for gelato?

He didn't give me much to go on, but it was what I could extract. Harlow came from a corridor shortly after to notice me picking at the skin around my fingernails—a sure sign that something was bothering me.

"You know him or something?" he asked, making his way over to me and sitting down. He nudged his head in the direction of the operating room to indicate whom he was referring.

"No, I just...he told me to write something down for him," I replied quietly. Harlow inhaled a deep breath, then let out a slow exhale.

"He's...well he won't be able to walk again, that's for sure. He'll be out in a day or two."

"A day or two?"

"They found little electronic fragments in his bloodstream, and a spike in magnesium. He's gonna have a blood transfusion soon. He's lucky—the girl slowed the bullet down long enough for it to lodge right into the spinal column—"

"Did we get any more information on what happened?" I asked, interrupting his description—Harlow never had much of a filter for his mouth. Besides, I was dying to know anyway.

"I know just as much as you do, Rach. But he's the Harry Styles."

"Styles? Really?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't have guessed, huh? He looks so different."

"He does, yeah."

"You know, they're talking about lessening his sentence. It's down from ten years to four, apparently."

"Is that so?"

"The police said something about uncovering some big international thing. Don't know much about it though."

Both of us sat in silence for a bit. The Harry Styles? He made headlines for days with his breakout, and now he was pleading to be thrown back in jail in return for Clarine Sperling's safety.

"Rach, we're both thinking the same thing," Harlow suddenly said, shifting in his seat.

"We are?"

"About Styles back at the beach. That was fucking awful."

"What was?"

"How he was talking to her. Like he though she was actually just...just sleeping or something. Fuck man, that's just...I don't think I'll get over that. I mean, I've been a paramedic for as long as you've been a nurse and I've never seen someone so...so..."

"In love?"

"I was gonna say distraught, but in love works too."

Harlow was never good at making situations any lighter.

"Hey, do you think I could talk to him once he's conscious and stuff?"

"The police will probably—"

"C'mon, Harlow," I pleaded, "you heard him back there. I won't do anything—all I wanna do is talk to him."

Harlow frowned and looked around, then sighed and nodded.

"He'll need some rehabilitation and some mental assessments once he's done his surgery, so I guess you can take over that part. Don't talk about the girl."

"Why?"

"Magnesium does hell to your brain. The police have to evaluate him before we can have a go and even then, we'll have to be careful about what we say—you know how the Americans are with their CIA conspiracy shit. If you get me in shit, Rach, I swear—"

"I won't. I promise."

***

Harlow, as promised, assigned me to Harry's room, and, for the first bit, it was extremely easy. All I really had to do was check his magnesium readings every so often and massage his legs to keep the blood flowing.

The only time it got scary was when he woke up.

I remembered how it all went too; it was Tuesday morning, rainy outside, and I was busy with the daily routine of changing the I.V. bag and making sure everything was running smoothly. The news had come out about what really happened that night in White Rock—Clarine's family came forward with their side of the story and, after the police investigated a bit more, pieced together the connections between her, Harry, Bria Evans, Stanley Redmond and a man that had disappeared off the grid for several years by the name of Xander Winters; it was a complex system of events, but the most important part was that the police found the electronic fragments stashed under the pier in a box that matched the ones found in Harry's body and concluded that they were tracking devices with electrocution capabilities—something the Americans needed to keep out of the grasp of 'terrorists'. Harry breaking out of prison was the least of their worries. How Clarine and Harry met, however, was still a mystery.

I couldn't help but to run the story through my head again and again, and the more I did, the less of a criminal he was. There were still so many things that were unclear, but I didn't really think much of it; it was clear to me that though he wasn't an innocent man, he wasn't as guilty as the other two men were.

I started to massage his legs—a casual movement of my hands that my fiance said he enjoyed after a long day at the office—before I felt a strong grip take hold of my wrist. I gasped in shock, turning to see angry green eyes glaring back at me. At least I knew for certain that he didn't wake up because he felt me touching him.

"Where the hell am I?" he demanded, looking around but his gaze always returning back to me.

"Surrey Memorial Hospital," I stammered, my mouth getting dry. The urge to call out for help was becoming more and more tempting. "We're in Canada—"

"Why the fuck am I in Canada?"

"Do...do you not remember?"

"Remember what? I was sitting in a fucking jail cell just yesterday and—"

He broke off and looked at his legs, half uncovered by the blankets. His face turned in disbelief, touching his skin, then pinching, then patting them down, trying desperately hard to feel. He started to breathe heavier.

"What the hell happened to my legs?" he yelled, "Tell me what happened to my legs!"

"You were shot—"

"I was in a jail cell, how did I get shot?"

"Sir, please lower your voice—"

"I will not lower my voice until somebody tells me what the fuck is going on!"

"I can't—"

"What do you mean you can't?"

"I'm not authorized to!"

"Then who is?"

"The police, the police—"

"Police?" his voice returned to its feeble state as he sunk back into the mattress. I nodded and observed him withdrawing himself.

"Look, a lot has happened," I started, carefully picking out what I was going to say. "You're not in the best mental state—your brain's been tampered with—"

"Tampered with? Tampered? Who are you anyway? You're talking an awful lot of bullshit if you ask me."

"Rachel Sikora," I introduced myself bitterly, ignoring his comment. "I'm a psychiatric nurse."

"So I'm going crazy? You could've just told me—honestly I knew that spending all that time locked up would—"

"You're not crazy. There hasn't been much activity in my ward so my supervisor moved me here temporarily. I'll be working with you once the police have explained everything to you—"

"Shut up about the police!" he yelled. "I know you know exactly who I am, so I think it'd be a common courtesy not to mention the people who threw me in jail!"

I didn't have much of a response other than a bit of stammering in order to find my words. I decided it'd be best to leave until a later date where he was less hostile. I turned on my heels and started for the door, but paused when he let out one final, feeble call just before I made my way into the hall.

"I..."—he started loudly but his voice dissipated into a bare whisper—"I'm not going to walk again, am I?"

I couldn't even look him in the eyes. The amount of hurt in his voice surmounted anything I had heard before.

"I'm sorry," I replied quickly, stepping out. "I'm really sorry."

I heard him curse as the door shut behind me. I pressed my back against the wooden surface, sinking down to the ground as I heard weeping come from inside the room. How could I not have felt pity? He didn't even know what the hell was going on.

I was never the type to play upon sexism, but it was still peculiar to me to hear a grown man cry. I had seen him cry before, back at the beach all those days ago while hunched over Clarine's cold body, but not like this; it was the type of cry I'd often hear when family members of the patients in my ward went insane past the point of being treated—the weeping of the ones that had lost hope. It was a dangerous sound, and I started to regret asking Harlow for this position.

***

The next month of Harry staying at the hospital was every nurse's worst nightmare. The police talked to him a day after I had and he refused to believe anything they said about what had happened.

"Absolutely impossible. Even if the guards were as daft as they appeared, there's no way anybody could've broken out of prison," he scoffed.

They told him about how Bria had joined a company called Phoenix which provided safe houses to criminals. She was killed, along with the man that ran the company.

"Good," he replied. "Serves her right."

They didn't tell him about Clarine because they deemed his memory to be completely ridden of her. He had no recollection of any accomplices that just so happened to be officers.

"Do you think I'm stupid? Why the hell would I trust a cop? Nothing but a shitload of hypocrites, that's what they are."

And so I was forbidden to talk about it again. It was a shame, for the police had found a letter hand-written by Styles to Clarine in Bria's pocket, which they let me take a picture of before taking it back to figure out who to give it to, and it pained me to read such an articulate letter. Whatever love was, he certainly felt it for her. Clarine died in more ways than just physically; the part of her in him died too. It hurt the most when Hyacinth, sister to Clarine, came and requested that Harry attend the funeral. I told her that his memory had been so badly damaged that he wasn't able to remember her, but she insisted she speak to him anyway.

"I never said I wanted visitors," Harry grumbled, sitting in his wheelchair and staring out the window.

"Harry, it's me. Hyacinth? Hyacinth Sperling?"

"Sikora, if you're any good at your job, why don't you explain to me why everybody keeps mentioning the name 'Sperling'?"

I stammered to try and find an appropriate explanation that would satisfy both Harry and Hyacinth, but nothing could be produced.

"She's someone that you used to know, Harry—" I started.

"I can assure you I don't know anybody by that name," he replied, but was interrupted by Hyacinth in disbelief.

"Used to know? No, you know her! Her name was—"

"Miss Sperling, you have to leave," I urged, silencing her before Clarine's name could be said out loud. I was under strict oath to never speak of Clarine, and the fact that I told him he was someone he used to know was already pushing it. Hyacinth cursed Harry out and stormed out of the room, leaving Harry and I alone and in silence.

"I don't want anymore visitors," he said sternly. "And certainly not ones that try to shove memories into my head."

"She wasn't shoving memories in," I spoke harshly, shutting the door so no one could hear our conversation. "You really did know her, and you cared—"

"If I cared about whoever it was she was talking about, don't you think I'd remember? Maybe her name at the least? There has never been a Sperling in my life, and, by the looks of it, there will never be a Sperling in my life, so I suggest you drop it and do your job properly."

I pursed my lips and bit my tongue. Fighting the urge to just tell him became much harder that I had anticipated it to be. It was to my surprise that a week after Hyacinth left the building, news came to us that they had paid the four-thousand dollar bail attached to Harry's name (Harlow told me the Oregon Police gave the letter to the Sperlings because they had no intention of keeping the heartfelt piece in their possession). He was a free man, but once he was told, all he did was shrug it off.

After he was debriefed (though it wasn't very helpful by the fact he didn't want to believe any of it), Harry remained quiet and reserved, keeping to himself in the lunchroom and during therapy sessions. He didn't care enough to shave, so the stubble was starting to come back in patchy growths. He rarely slept, the deep circles under his eyes illustrating it, and when he did, he only remained asleep for no more than four hours at a time. He had a habit of propping the bedroom chair against the door so that I had difficulty getting into his room until such time that he removed the chair. We took the chair from his room not long after.

"I can't help you unless you let me, Harry," I sighed one afternoon, sticking my pen and notepad down in my lap and crossing my arms.

"I never asked you to help me, Miss Sikora. It'd be much more productive if you just helped someone else."

"Well unfortunately, I was assigned to you, so unless you'd like to spend the rest of your says sitting in that goddamn wheelchair and moping about your life while staring out the window for hours on end, I'd advise you to give me something to work with," I snapped. He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"I didn't think it'd take a psychologist to figure out that I just want to be left alone."

"Why?"

"Because you're irritating and I'd rather look out my window than talk to you."

"The sooner you let me help you, the sooner you can get out of here—"

"Get out of here? Did you really just say that? Let me tell you something, Sikora: the sooner you get off my back and tell them I'm fine—and trust me, I'm completely fine—the sooner you'll be done with me."

He broke off and turned away from me, resuming the exciting act of staring at the rain falling outside. He didn't reply to any of my questions after that until I left. It wasn't as if I was trying to make it hard for him or anything; I really did want him to talk to me so I could provide some support, but it seemed that he had nothing to say to me. I couldn't even help him learn how to learn how to use his wheelchair because he figured that one on his own. Nothing about this was easy, and having to work with someone so closed off and difficult wasn't making it any better.

***

He sat at the same table every day during lunch—three tables from the closest vending machine, five from the lunch line, and directly facing the window that gave a beautiful view of shrubs and the parking lot beyond that. Harry had gotten a bit nicer, occasionally answering my questions vaguely and remembering to thank me when I came in to help him into bed and such, but he was still recluse, preferring to be alone more than anything. He'd sit alone with a pen and some napkins, scribbling away, hunched over what he was writing. He was very conscious of who was around him however; whenever I came within ten feet of him, he'd tuck the napkins under his plate and continue eating. One day, three months after he told me I was irritating and would rather look out the window than engage in conversation with me, I decided I had had enough with his secrecy. I took a brisk walk and sat right across from him; he didn't move, still scrawling on the napkin.

"Afternoon," I greeted bluntly. His hand blocked the words.

"Afternoon."

What now? I expected him to flip me off and leave.

"How...how are you?"

"Fine."

"Why are you only giving me one-word answers?"

"Why are you trying to look at what I'm writing?"

My neck went hot and I peeked once more at the napkin, which he had removed his hand from, to see "I HATE THE FUCKING SOUP" in big, bold letters. Sure enough, he hadn't touched the ratty, "mushroom"-flavoured stew. He only consumed saltine crackers and the glass of juice he was given.

"Do you want mine?" I asked, pushing my tray towards him. The staff soup-of-the-day was chicken noodle, something I noted that Harry quite enjoyed (whereas I didn't; it was far too salty for my liking). He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.

"Are you trying to bribe me with soup?"

"Only if it's working."

He smirked and took the soup from me. "You know, that's a good conning tactic, bribery."

"Is it really?"

"Mhm. Say if I were selling you a car, right? And the car's worth...oh, let's say...ten thousand dollars. I'll bribe you with lower monthly rates, free accessories and oil changes, all of that stuff until a year later, after you've purchased your car, your bill will say that you owe double that of which you used to pay because—surprise, surprise—I tucked a fluctuating interest rate into the fine print of your paperwork."

"Isn't that how car dealerships work?" I questioned, puzzled.

"All salesmen are con artists. Ironic how they don't get arrested, huh?" he chuckled, almost bitterly, and drank the soup summer down his hatred. "Prison's the worst, you know. Well, you wouldn't know, but it's the worst."

Was he actually having a conversation with me?

"What about it?"

"It was so fucking boring. The food tasted like plastic. And orange jumpsuits never complimented my skin tone," he teased, eliciting a laugh from me. I brushed some hair out of my face and his eyes focused on my hand—my engagement ring in particular. "You married?"

"Engaged," I corrected. I glanced at it again; still, after being engaged for almost a year, I still wasn't used to having it on my finger. Harry gently took my hand and looked at the stone, then set my hand down again.

"I proposed to someone once. Didn't go very well."

"I'm sor—"

"Don't apologize to me. I hate it when people apologize for things that aren't their fault."

I stayed quiet, figuring that apologizing for apologizing wasn't going to help.

"Does it...does it bother you? Your proposal?"

"Nah," he said nonchalantly, scratching his neck. "I don't know why, but I feel like I was a lot more bothered by it before I ended up here."

"What do you mean?"

"Like, I think I was a lot more concerned with Bria before I woke up here. Now I just..." he trailed off, staring down at his soup.

"What is it?" I coaxed cautiously. He sighed and reached down under the seat of his wheelchair and pulled napkins—some folded, others with coffee stains, several crumpled up as if they were meant to be discarded—out. He pushed away the trays and set them on the table one by one, chronologically, and once he was done, he looked up at me with exhausted eyes and finally gave in.

"I wrote these. They were kind of in-the-moment things, so they're not very good, but you can read them, I guess," he said, adding, "It's not like you didn't know about me writing these anyway," for good measure to make it seem like he couldn't care less.

My eyes scanned over each one, taking in the curve and lines of his lettering, along with the preciseness of his words.

i realized i loved you
not how a romantic would;
i am a shame—
brooding, yet thoughtless, shame—
and i fail to see anything
though rose-coloured
glasses.
i realized i loved you
when seeing that
the weather outside
was 44.6 degrees fahrenheit,
yet thinking,
"huh. it feels warmer
than i thought it would feel."

she is the kind of person that fate (or destiny or whatever the fuck it's called) gives you while you're young, so you know loss for the rest of your fucking life.

i have a million exclamation points painted on the inside of my skull, and one giant ass question mark constantly scrubbing away with paint thinner.

being with you made me feel closer to home than open fires and handmade sweaters and home cooked meals this is fucking stupid.

when she's drunk she'll dress up in lace and garter stockings—black or light pink—something so, so good—and then she'll dress down—or get me to dress her down—to skin, skin, skin.

i like her. i want to make her scream my name. i want to kiss her neck.

i keep writing letters i can't even fucking send.

i loved her while she was mine. she left before i knew i had her.

i adorn this absence with everything i've got, but i still feel like something's fucking missing.

My breath hitched in my throat as tears welled up in my eyes. I pushed them away before I could cry all over them.

"Are these for Bria?"

"What? God no. I...I don't really know who they're for. I just wrote them, that's all."

He felt something. He wasn't sure of what he felt, nor whom he felt it for, but he felt something.

"They're not that bad, are they?" he groaned, gathering them up into his hands. I pleaded for him to keep them out.

"No, no, they're beautiful," I assured, wiping my eyes and getting a hold of myself. I had a sudden idea—one that would surely give me a step forward in helping Harry recover. "Harry, have you ever considered writing...like...a book? Or a short story or something like that?"

He looked at me uneasily and set his writing aside. "I...well I don't have paper—"

"I'll get you some. Would you like me to do that? I could help you get it started if you'd like."

"I...I guess, yeah. Okay."

I excused myself and rushed over to the nearest printer and grabbed paper from it before racing back.

"Why're you in such a rush?"

"I'm"—lie, I told myself, lie—"just excited you're finally talking. It means I'm doing a decent job."

He nodded and pulled the papers towards him. For the first few moments and racked his brain for ideas, pondering all the parts of his latest creation, before turning to me and groaning, "I can't think with you sitting there and watching me."

"I thought you wanted me to help you?"

"With what?"

This was my chance.

"I don't know...start with the characters or something?"

"Oh. Okay."

Harry took the pen and uncapped it, drumming his fingertips against the table in thought. Before long, he looked up at me again and told me that he just couldn't write with an audience. I nodded and left him alone to work his magic. After a couple of weeks—two months, to be exact—he approached me while I was filling out paperwork at the main desk and handed me a rough outline of his work. He looked much better than he had when he and I first worked together; his face was clean shaven, he looked well rested, and his eyes gained back the colour they were supposed to have possessed—a lovely, piercing green. Harry and I would go on walks around the hospital, insisting he roll himself around, and we would talk and talk—the saddest part was that I knew our time together was coming to an end. He had made a significant improvement since the day he was admitted.

"Is this it?" I asked, taking the papers from his extended arm.

"Do...do you think we could go out for a bit? Can I do that?" he asked, ignoring my previous question.

"Yeah. Yeah, you can. I'll take you. Where to?"

"I...you're probably going to think I'm stupid—" he started.

"No, tell me. I'll take you wherever."

"I'd like to get some gelato," he said. "Can't remember why, but I feel like there's something significant about it. Or maybe I'm just really craving gelato. Either way—"

Speechless. Absolutely speechless.

"Are you sure you don't want ice cream?" I asked, my mouth dry. I couldn't believe what I was hearing at all.

"No, I want gelato. I hope I don't sound pushy or anything."

"I...I, uh...sure, Harry, sure. I'll take you for gelato in a bit after I fill out my paperwork. Why don't you tell me about your work?" I held my composure and handed him back his rough draft. My heart raced in my chest.

"Okay, so I started with the characters like you suggested and I came up with two really great ones."

"We're they based off of other people?"

"The first one's name is Brandon and he's super picky—you know like the people you see in the lunch line that spend ten minutes trying to choose between the Waldorf and Caesar salads? He's one of those. I based him off of a bunch of people I saw in the cafeteria lineups."

"Sounds interesting! I like the flaw—makes him seem more realistic."

"Right. And the second one is my own creation. I think she's rather perfect, to be honest...just...I really like her. She's going to be a great character, I know it. She's kind of clumsy and stubborn, but in a good way, you know? Her name's pretty too."

"What is it?"

I scanned the pages and found the character planning he did, and sure enough, the name sat there like a pile of gold in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. It was much neater than that of his other words, as if he took pride and joy in writing the name down. I looked at how he described this character of his and it didn't fail to floor me when I read that she had wispy, blonde hair, a cute, pixie nose, an impeccable taste in fashion, and perfectly winged eyeliner. My heart clenched as he cluelessly grinned when he answered me; his voice when saying it was that of utter idolization and, I dare say, happiness, as if there were nothing else in the world that made him prouder of this.

It was then and there that I knew love existed ceaselessly into the realms of space and time that were impossible to be observed by the human eye. It wasn't a roar of understanding; rather, a quiescent fluttering—a euphonious, sempiternal susurrus—that carefully reminded us that love—whatever the hell it was—existed. It existed, and kept us crawling back to whomever held us by the hand and bade us farewell only with the intention of seeing us again in another life, another time, some other galaxy, unknown by us, but there, existing, forevermore.

"Clarine."

THE END

***

Thank you so much for reading Coalescence! This is the first story I've written by myself and despite all the sad parts, I'm really happy with the ending. I really, REALLY hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Much love to everybody that took the time to comment, vote, read, put up with the occasional error in text, and inspire me to keep writing. You are the best audience any writer could ever ask for. Thank you so, so much.

Please vote for this story for Best Feels and Best Smut (LMAO) in @CrissCrossDirection's 1D Watty Awards contest on Wattpad, and look out for my new fic, Holga, which will be coming out very soon, Detached, which I'll be writing with Candice and will be coming out at the end of June/beginning of July, and possibly another fic written as a collaboration with @rue_by_another_name (it'll be badass, I'm telling you now).

Love from Melissa xx

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