Baby Steps - Blog Posts

D4 - Rooster Hair

Anxiety isn't drama...it's data.

Chiharu Shiota: Stairway (2012)

01.25.2022

100 days of productivity: 1/100

looked through all my syllabuses

planned and reorganized my calendars/agendas

started reviewing ochem 1 for ochem 2

went to work

not a lot done today, but I’m very proud that I least got out of bed and attend class !!

Baby Polar Bear is aww as fuck.

People think that it’s easy to overcome depression and other types of mental illness. It’s really not. It takes time, a lot of it sometimes. People shouldn’t feel shame for taking baby steps so that they can feel better. :(

x

This is exactly why I'm pushing myself to read as much as I can this year. It's giving me an outlet where I can be active and still rest. Keeping up an activity that brings me constant joy has been terribly difficult but reading has helped get out of that lazy/ mopey feeling. I truly hope that others can find a hobby that will bring them joy the way reading has done for me.

I been so depressed not even in the terribly sad and emotional sense but more in the lazy and mopey sense where nothing is fun or interesting and I am so tired I can't force myself to do anything :-|

Can't wait to read the next chapters 😍😍

Poor Steve freaked out there for a moment.

Eddieee 🤏🤏

If you do a tag list, can I please be added to it? Thanks! Continue with the great work 😍

Chapter 1: The Beighton Score

Summary: Steve’s new patient is full of surprises.

Word count: 5.1k

A/N: Howdy. Please enjoy part one based on the unfortunate way people with chronic illnesses are treated by the American healthcare system. This is my first Steve fic, so please let me know if I am doing it right! Also: I’m not a Billy Anti. So let’s keep things respectful to all favorites.

1997

The Health Institute of Indiana had been Steve’s home away from home for the last few years. After surviving the upside down, the party had to move on. Steve never had much direction as far as a career was concerned, but he knew he didn’t want to be rewinding video tapes for the rest of his life.

Academically inclined was not a phrase generally used to describe Steve. Math, English, history—none of these subjects ever received higher than a well fought for ‘C’ on his report card. This left him very little hope in the way of a college education, but with some help, he figured out what he wanted to do.

What Steve lacked in book smarts, he made up for in athleticism. So he decided he’d do the one thing he knew how: sports.

More specifically, sports medicine. He thought it would be easy as pie, but like usual, he was wrong. Without Lucas and Dustin’s help with pharmacology and biomechanics, Steve would have never made it through his prerequisite courses. But, by the skin of his teeth, he did. He gave the boys fifty bucks each as a reward with his very first paycheck as a bonafide Physical Therapist Assistant. Dustin said he required more compensation than that, so Steve promised him a shitty Gremlin from his dad’s lot when he turned 21. Steve still had a year before he had to make good on that particular promise.

His dad didn’t like the idea of Steve being an assistant to anyone or anything, and constantly pushed Steve to become a full fledged physical therapist, but Steve was just happy to have gotten this far. He wasn’t going to pursue anything further unless he felt he needed to. He was happy where he was for now.

Well, he wished Robin was here. About as graceful as a newborn foal, she didn’t follow him in his employment—not completely. She was here at the Health Institute as a music therapist. Robin replaced him with Eddie fucking Munson as her new partner in crime while on the clock. The two went floor to floor through the pediatric ward playing music to cheer up the kids. If Steve knew anything about music, he would have followed along with them. Instead, he was put in a makeshift gym that reeks of feet and menthol without his friend to make the time fly by. He missed her, and sometimes Eddie, too.

But it wasn’t all bad. He enjoyed his work quite a bit. The kids who came in were often in really rough shape. Some had to learn how to live without their freshly amputated limb, build dexterity and balance with the new hardware sticking out of their skin that helped straighten the bones in their bowed legs, or trying to help keep what strength they had as Muscular Dystrophy stole their mobility little by little. Steve liked to make them feel better, both physically and emotionally. Usually when they first come in, the kids look like wilted flowers—slumped over, tired, without hope. But after a few sessions of encouragement and sometimes a little tough love, they perked right up and their personalities start to show. In his gym, they’re not sickly and helpless. They’re people who are capable of doing whatever they set their mind to once they learn the tricks that help them do so.

Today would be a light one. He had six patients with only one of them being new. New patients were either scheduled at the first or last appointment of the day to ensure they had enough time to go over the exercises, explain why each one was necessary and what they did for their body, and mostly to answer all the questions parents had, and that was usually enough to have to add an 25th hour to the day to address them all.

Marcy Hargrove, a 12 year old female with unspecified joint instability and inflammation, was due any moment. He received the chart with her detailed evaluation and care plan. It didn’t seem like the kid really needed to be here based on the PT’s evaluation. She had all her limbs, balance was only slightly below normal, no recent surgeries or injury, and did not have any degenerative disease. She seemed like a normal twelve year old.

Steve wiped down the exam table with a bleached rag before gathering the weights and resistance bands he would need when you and Marcy walked into the gym.

“Steve?” you asked with visible shock.

Steve smiled politely, not really sure of the reason behind your bulging eyes and slack jaw. You seemed much too young to be the mother, but he didn’t want to make any assumptions. Last time he misspoke like that he got a smack across the cheek.

“That would be me. Are you sister or Mrs. Hargrove?”

You snorted and sat in the chair by the exam table. “No. Never. It’s Ms. Y/L/N. And this is my daughter Marcy.” You put your hand on the girl’s shoulder and nudged her forward.

Marcy seemed quite normal—short stature with long hair that hid part of her face, which started to break out in angry red zits. Like all his first timers, Marcy seemed very timid. Folded in on herself and fidgeting with the sleeves of her shirt, she kept her eyes trained on the floor.

Steve crouched on his knees to try and be within her line of sight. “Hey, Marcy. I’m Steve.” He held out his hand for her to shake, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she looked at his face—not quite meeting his eyes—and gave a small nod.

“Right!” Steve exclaimed, extending back to his full height. “Why don’t you get up here on the table and show me what brings you in.”

Marcy hesitantly did as Steve instructed as you began to rattle off her ailments.

“She’s got problems with her knees, elbows, wrists, ankl—“

“Hold on, hoooooold on,” Steve held his hands up in a time -out T and shook his head. “I would like Marcy to tell me what’s going on. That way I can get a sense on where to start.”

Taken back by his request, you scoffed and made a show of zipping your lips and throwing away the key before crossing your arms over your chest. Marcy, on the other hand, looked as if she was physically trying to bite back a grin.

Steve honestly expected more of a fight from you. Kids were the easy part of the job. Training the parents was the real challenge. Most of the parents he encountered would take up all the air in the room and never let their child speakat all. Steve could understand that the overbearing came from good intentions—the kids were deficient in one way or another and needed an advocate. But here, Steve wanted to teach the kids that even though they were different, they could still be more than sickly and had the ability to speak for themselves. Almost all the parents had a hard time being shushed, often calling him rude and arrogant, but by the third session, the kids were the ones talking so much that the parents were the ones who couldn’t get a word in. It made Steve glow with pride.

He pulled up his rolling stool and took a seat next to the bedside and instructed Marcy to scoot until she could sit flat against the backrest of the table. She did as she was told, and for the first time she was able to meet Steve’s eyes.

“Alright, tell me what’s going on,” Steve prodded.

Marcy chewed the inside of her cheek for a few beats before answering. Stretching her arms to touch her knee caps, she said, “My knees hurt on this side and they pop in and out of place all the time.”

Steve hummed to himself and pinched either side of Marcy’s kneecap before giving it a tentative wiggle.

Marcy immediately flinched away from him with a strangled squeal. “Don’t do that!” she demanded through gritted teeth. The cold glare she was giving him seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

“Sorry, Marcy, but I’ve got to see if your kneecap is where it’s supposed to be. So I’m gonna move it around a little. Try to stay still but if it hurts too much, tell me and I’ll stop, okay? Relax for me.” Steve once again pushed the kneecap to the right, waiting to feel the resistance of the ligament that kept the bone in place. However, the resistance never came, and the small disc of Marcy’s kneecap popped out of place, completely dislocating from its socket.

Steve couldn’t hold back the “Holy shit!” that came bursting from his lips as the patella stayed in an unnatural position. He tried to push it back into place, but Marcy whacked his hands away in a flurry of slaps. He watched in awestruck horror as she pushed the kneecap back into its place with little more than a wince.

Steve met the piercing and unhappy gaze of Marcy Hargrove, her chapped lips twisted into an angry frown. “You’re saying this happens a lot?” he questioned.

“All the time,” she snapped, gently massaging the side of her leg. “My left shoulder and knee more than my right. My right ankle and elbow more than my left, and my jaw.”

“All the time?” Steve repeated in awe.

“All. The. Time,” Marcy huffed. “I don’t have to do anything and things will just pop out. My jaw gets stuck when I try to take too big of a bite. If I run, my ankles give out and I fall, and then my knee buckles. If I fall too hard and try to catch myself, my shoulder will go out, too.” She exhaled sharply and looked over at you for reassurance. You gave her a sad smile and nodded.

Steve flipped through the chart again to see if he missed something. As he skimmed over the notes from Ori, the physical therapist who examined her, he saw no mention of dislocations or subluxations of any of her joints. Confused, Steve tossed the chart towards the other bed and turned back to Marcy.

“Have you ever been in a car accident or injured your knee somehow?” he asked.

Marcy shook her head no. “Never. No accident. I didn’t fall off of a trampoline or anything. It just happens and it really hurts.”

Steve stared into Marcy’s alarmingly blue eyes as if they held the answer. The only thing he could think of was hypermobility, but that just meant she was a little more flexible than the norm and did nothing to explain how easily she could dislocate in multiple places. .

“Okay, I’m going to check something,” Steve announced. “Can you touch your thumb to your forearm?”

Marcy looked at him as if he asked if she could spell her own name. With ease, she pressed her thumb to her forearm, her wrist completely hyperextended.

“On both hands?”

Without blinking, Marcy did the same with her right hand.

“How far can you bend your pinky?”

She laid her hand flat on the table and pulled her pinky back, stretching it far beyond a 90 degree angle. She did the same to her other pinky without Steve asking.

He asked her to stand to her feet, and she did gingerly to avoid further agitating the leg he just injured. When she stood, her knees snapped back, locking and curved like a banana in the wrong direction. He had her hold her arms stretched out at her sides, and noticed that again, her elbows sunk in much farther than they were supposed to, almost creating a fulcrum in the center of her arms. The last test he could think of was to see if Marcy could touch the floor with her palms completely flat. It didn’t come as a shock when she did it without struggle.

What did shock him was when she returned to her full height, Marcy suddenly swayed uneasily and dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Steve caught her by the shirt in order to stop her from cracking her skull on the tile.

“Marcy?!” he shouted, watching her clench her eyes shut. She wasn’t unconscious, but she wasn’t responsive either. “Kid, are you with me?”

Marcy didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“Is she a diabetic?” he panicked. “I have orange juice in that cabinet there!” He had never seen anything like this before, and it was scaring him. In ten minutes he managed to dislocate her knee and make her pass out. He looked to you for help, but you were already by Marcy’s side.

“She’s not a diabetic and orange juice won’t help. Help me put her on the table,” you instructed.

Steve was thrown off by your calm demeanor. He’s had kids puke before and the parents nearly gave themselves heart attacks over it. How were you not freaking out?

He picked Marcy up and laid her on her belly just as you instructed. She folded her arms under her chest and rested her forehead against the blue vinyl of the table. Marcy’s breathing started to slow and stabilize the longer she laid there.

Professionalism be damned, Steve was scared. “What the hell is going on?” he shrieked.

You crossed your arms over your chest and glowered at him. “If you had let me speak earlier, I could have told you that when she changes positions too fast, she passes out. Sometimes she knocks out cold and sometimes, like now, it’s just dizziness that will turn into syncope if she doesn’t lay down.”

Steve looked at you with utter confusion, not totally understanding what you were saying. “What?”

You rolled your eyes and snorted. “You never were a bright one, were you, King Steve?”

Bewildered, Steve gawked. How in the hell did you know about his high school nickname. He stared at your face intently, trying to place you within the halls of Hawkins High School, but nothing clicked. “Do I know you?”

Again, you scoffed at him. “Y/F/N Y/L/N. I went to Hawkins until junior year. We were in O’Donell’s together? Sixth period? I was dating Billy? Billy Hargrove?”

Without thinking, Steve laughed. “All the girls thought they were dating Billy Har—“ Steve’s eyes widened as he looked over Marcy’s still figure. “—grove. Hargrove.” Steve turned to you and blinked, once again trying to find some familiarity in your face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t conjure up an image of you at all. Not in class, the cafeteria, underneath Billy’s stupid denim clad arm, not even at a par—

“Tina’s Halloween party!” Steve yelled, clapping his hands together as the realization hit him. “You were Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie!”

He remembered that costume in embarrassing detail. Nancy had just ripped him a new one in the bathroom and Steve came storming down the stairs, nearly knocking you over. He caught you by the wrist and was taken back by the exposed expense of your belly in the pink sheer costume. He thought about getting Nancy back. Maybe let her see him make out with Jeanine and show her that she’s the one that’s bullshit, but he didn’t. He tried not to be that guy anymore, and let you go with a half-assed apology.

You were clearly unimpressed at how long it took him to figure out who you were. “That’s all you remember about me?”

“Uh, yeah? I don’t think I saw you ever again,” he answered with a shrug.

“Yeah, well,” you sighed. “My mom moved us here when I got pregnant.”

Suddenly remembering there was a kid in the room, Steve’s eyes snapped back to Marcy. He didn’t exactly know Hargrove on a friendly level, and what Steve did know about him, he didn’t like at all. Max was terrified of him, he beat the shit out of Steve, went after Lucas, disrespected everyone and everything he came across. But even through all of that, Steve couldn’t hate the guy. He sacrificed himself to the Mindflayer and basically saved the entire town, Steve included.

Wordlessly, Steve mouthed, “Did he know you were pregnant?”

Shifting Your weight from one leg to the other, your mouth turned down into a frown. “Yes,” you mouthed back.

“Was he around?” Steve pressed.

You shook your head no, even though the words you said loud enough for Marcy to hear contradicted your movement. “Billy was with us until he came back home for the Fourth of July. I’m sure you heard what happened. So many people died in the fire.”

It took a second for Steve to catch on. He knew damn well Billy was still whoring around until the day he died. He finally understood what you were saying by the look of frustration you were giving him, nodding your head towards Marcy with wide eyes.

“Oh,” Steve gasped. Billy wasn’t there, but Marcy didn’t know that—thinking Billy was only gone because of his untimely death and not because he was, indeed, an asshole. “Yeah, I remember that. Horrible stuff..”

Marcy started to stir, flipping herself over and slowly sitting up. Steve cleared his throat and asked if she was okay.

“Fine,” she answered miserably. “Happens.”

“What do the doctors say about all this?” he questioned.

“They think I’m full of shit!” Marcy spat venomously.

“Marcy—!”

The angry preteen paid no attention to you. “They say they don’t know what it is! They think I’m lying! They say I don’t have enough muscle to support being double jointed because I’m lazy! That I pass out because I just want attention!” She hastily wiped away the tears of frustration from their path down her cheek. “They’re wrong! It’s real and it hurts and I hate it!”

Within a blink, you were sitting on the exam table and holding Marcy into your chest as she cried. You kissed the top of her head and whispered soothing words to her in an attempt to calm her down.

Steve was at a complete loss, unable to really process what was happening right in front of him. For the third time that day, he reviewed Marcy L. Hargrove’s chart for a clue as to what the hell he was supposed to do to help her. There was nothing more detailed than the very vague “unspecified joint instability” which made Steve scoff. Ori’s plan of care was to increase muscle mass through weights, resistance bands, and strengthening exercises. While Steve wasn’t as educated as Ori, he didn’t think fifty repetitions of leg presses were going to cure her with how lax her ligaments were.

Sighing deeply, he went to the cabinets and dug around until he found what he was looking for. He wasn’t sure this was going to work either, but it was worth a shot if it could stop Marcy from crying and feeling unheard.

“Have you tried either of these before?” Steve asked, holding up a roll of multicolored tape and a hinged knee brace.

Marcy pulled her tear stained face from your chest. “I’ve only used ace wraps, but they hurt after a while.”

“Alright, so here’s what we’re gonna do,” Steve began, resuming his spot on his rolling chair. “We were supposed to start with some exercises today, but we’ll settle for the fun stuff first.” He pulled off some sticky adhesive pads from under the table and placed them on both sides of each knee, making Marcy flinch at his touch. “It’s alright,” he reassured her. “I think you’ll like this.”

He untangled the wires from the behemoth of a machine tucked against the wall and plugged the pegs into the channels of the sticky pads. “This is an electrical stimulator. The electric pulses are gonna interrupt the pain signals to your brain. It’s gonna tingle, but it shouldn’t hurt. I usually do this after we finish our sessions, but you’re getting spoiled today, Hargrove.”

God, it felt so fucking weird to say that name again. Billy had been gone for almost ten years now, and Steve only spared him a second thought whenever Max brought it up once in a blue moon. He wondered if she knew about her niece.

As he looked at Marcy, he could see Billy plain as day. The blue eyes, the sharpness in her scowl, the shape of her chin. Never in a million years did Steve except to be treating the spawn of Billy Hargrove. He felt a little guilty for being the one to care for her when Billy couldn’t. Or wouldn’t even if he could by what you were hinting to earlier.

“I’m gonna turn it on now. I can keep raising the intensity until you tell me to stop. Remember, it’s supposed to tingle, not hurt, okay?” Steve turned on the machine and pressed the up button when Marcy nodded in agreement. He kept pressing the up button, waiting for her to tell him to stop. She seemed unphased and kept jerking her thumb up as a signal for him to keep going.

“We’re at 54. You’re sure you're okay?” Steve asked tentatively. He himself couldn’t take more than 62 hertz without crossing over into the threshold of pain.

“Keep going,” Marcy answered encouragingly.

He followed her lead until she told him to stop at 70 hertz. She let out a long sigh of content and smiled at you. “Feels good, mommy.”

You grinned. Genuinely, truly grinned at her. “It must if you’re calling me mommy instead of mom.”

Marcy sneered playfully at you before nestling further down into the exam table. “How long do I get to have this on?”

“Fifteen minutes,” Steve answered, mindlessly spinning around in circles on his rolling stool. “If you want me to turn it up or down just let me know. Then we’ll lather you up with MintFreeze, tape up your joints, and send you on your way.”

If Steve didn’t know any better, he would say Marcy was almost smiling at him as the corners of her mouth twitched upward. “You knew my dad?”

Caught off guard by the question, Steve ceased his spinning with a loud stomp.

He wanted to tell her the truth about Billy, but the ghost of a smile on her face killed that train of thought. He quickly spared you a glance, silently asking what he should say to that, and received a wordless “Be Nice.” in return.

Steve didn’t see a reason to be nice, given that there was only one good thing he could say about the guy, but he legally couldn’t do that either.

“We were at school together,” Steve answered honestly. “He was in my gym class and used to beat me in basketball all the time.”

Marcy’s face lit up like a sunbeam. “What else? Were you friends?”

From the look of adoration on the girl’s face, Steve suddenly understood why you were lying to her about Billy’s true nature. The hope and unadulterated love sparkling in her eyes was almost too painful to look at. Billy Hargrove alive was an asshat. But Billy Hargrove’s ghost could be whatever you said he was, and to Marcy, he was a guy who loved her and was only away from her because he wasn’t among the living anymore.

“He had this really, really loud Camaro that he liked to show off. Drove it like a madman. You could hear him coming from two miles away. Two!”

They spent the rest of the time talking about the very limited knowledge Steve had about Billy. He didn’t have much to share, but that didn’t seem to matter to Marcy at all. She absorbed everything he said like her life depended on it. Steve didn’t think Billy being a lifeguard at the pool was particularly interesting, but it sent Marcy down a rabbit hole. “If Dad was a lifeguard, that meant he could swim, maybe even be a really good swimmer. Did he teach lessons? He probably taught little kids how to swim, too! And trained other lifeguards in CPR and stuff!”

Steve’s chest ached as he watched you smile at your daughter. While it was wide, it didn’t quite reach your eyes. There was a sadness there that even he, as emotionally stunted he was, could see.

Steve unhooked Marcy from the machine and asked her to tell him where she hurt. He applied a generous amount of the menthol based lotion to her knees, ankles, and elbows, making sure to be gentle around the spots that made her flinch whenever he ran his hand over it. She let out another happy sigh as the tingling of the cream soaked into her skin.

“Now this is kinetic tape. I’m gonna put it on your knees and elbows,” Steve announced. He cut off long strips of the multicolored tape and peeled the paper to reveal the adhesive. “This is going to act as extra support and help keep things where they’re supposed to be. It’s also been proven that the tape helps reduce swelling, so that could help with your pain, too.”

You watched him stretch the tape over Marcy’s knees, asking where such a thing could be purchased for future use. Steve listed a few special stores he ordered supplies from and recommended keeping the tape on for three days at a time.

“You can keep these on until we meet again on Wednesday,” Steve said, flattening the adhesive to secure Marcy’s elbow. “Ori has you down three times a week for the next six weeks, so save any tape you buy on your own for weekends if you need it.”

Satisfied with his work, Steve patted Marcy’s shoulder as a signal to get off the table. She winced and said that she could feel her shoulder start to give when he did that, and asked far too politely for a Hargrove to not do it again.

“You got it,” Steve agreed. He held up the hinged brace and raised his eyebrows at Marcy. “You should wear this at school or whenever you’re gonna be active just for extra security, but don’t wear it all the time. Braces stabilize, but they also let the muscles rest a little too much, and we’re trying to make you the next Kerri Strug, okay?”

Marcy nodded and carefully climbed off of the table. Steve tried not to react to the sickening crack of her ankles when she made it to the floor.

“Why don’t you go get a sucker or something from Alice at the front desk? I’ll put you on the schedule for Wednesday.”

Marcy smiled at you and took off towards the crochet old woman who snoozed on the job.

Steve turned to you and put his hands on his hips. “Look, if you’re gonna have me lie about what Billy was really like, you need to clue me in on what you’ve been telling her.”

Your eyes narrowed in disgust. “Are you judging me, Harrington?”

“Wha-? No!” Steve answered with exasperation. “I just don’t want to say something to confuse her. Like Max. Does she even know Billy has a sister?”

Clearly bringing up his redheaded friend was the wrong thing to do. Your lips twisted into a vicious scowl. “Billy didn’t have a sister.”

“See!” Steve exclaimed. “This is exactly what I’m talking about! If you don’t tell me what to say, I’ll confuse her, and I really don’t think you want that.”

“Or, we could just not talk about him,” you offered rather unhelpfully. “You’re supposed to be working with her, not socializing.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Come on. You saw how she lit up thinking he was teaching kids how to swim when we both know he was probably drowning them to see if the fat ones could float.”

You peered at him through narrowed eyes with so much intensity that Steve thought you could see his bones like an x-ray.

He sighed in defeat and rubbed his palm over his forehead when you didn’t answer him after a while. “Fine. It’s not my business. We’ll just steer the conversation away from Billy if she asks, alright?”

You rocked onto the balls of your feet. “I get out of work at six tomorrow evening. Meet me at Fuji’s Bistro by 6:15 and we’ll talk,” you said uneasily.

“No, really, it’s fine,” Steve argued, walking towards the open gym door. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”

You followed him. “I don’t. But I will.”

He nodded slowly. “Fuji’s. 6:15 tomorrow.”

“If you’re not there by 6:30 I’m bolting and we let it go—Eddie Munson as I live and breathe! It’s a damn Hawkins reunion here today!”

Steve snapped his neck in the direction of your gaze and saw Eddie grin and wave like an idiot at you.

“Y/N!” he exclaimed, pulling you into a sideways one armed hug. “Like seeing a ghost!”

Steve felt like a bigger ass for not knowing who you were if even Eddie knew you from looks alone. “You know each other?”

“Pfft. Yeah,” Eddie chortled. “Spent a whole weekend together trying to keep Hargrove from climbing the walls on a bad trip. That kind of war experience creates a lifelong bond, Steve.“

“Like I don’t already know that,” Steve muttered to himself.

Eddie ignored Steve and pressed on. “What brings you to our neck of the woods after all the time?”

You leaned around Eddie to call Marcy over. When the young girl left her spot at the front desk, looking like maybe she was bending all the paper clips into straight lines and rendering them useless, she came to stand by you.

Eddie gasped as he eyed the last Hargrove. “No! Way!” He stared at you with an open mouth. “That’s why you moved!”

Steve felt even more annoyed that Eddie could spot the resemblance without being told when he couldn’t.

“Marcy, this is Eddie, Eddie this is my daughter Marcy,” you introduced them. “Eddie went to school with us.”

“You knew my dad, too?!” she squealed.

“Sure did, kid,” Eddie laughed. “I could tell you some stories, but I’m not sure your mom here would let me live if I did.”

You whacked Eddie in the chest with the back of your hand. “We’ve got to get going. It was really nice seeing you. We should catch up sometime.” You steered Marcy gently by the shoulders towards the lobby exit. “6:15, Harrington. Don’t be late,” you said with a final nod and disappeared into the hall.

Steve let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in and collapsed onto the lobby couch. Of all the things he thought would happen today, Marcy Hargrove was not one of them.