Page 7 of Sean's Sunshine

It’s a gluten free

Ensemble feed….

Make you a frittata!

He finished the song as he turned on the burner and started cracking eggs. Behind him he heard Kryzynski’s rusty chuckle and figured he’d dodged the intimacy bullet using quick thinking and bad singing.

A few minutes later he dished up a plate full of eggs and cheese for Kryzynski and a much smaller plate of egg whites, tomatoes, and chives for himself.

His patient looked happily at his own breakfast and then eyed Billy’s plate with surprise.

“That’s it?” he rasped. “That’s all you’re going to eat?”

Oh no. They had to get this all out of the way right quick. “Look, before you ask or it’s a thing?” Billy said. “Yes, we all have eating disorders. Yes, it’s because we’re naked on camera and we read the comments where people start discussing our BMI and giving us tips on living on iced tea and good wishes. No, I’m not going to change it just for you. And yes, I am getting treatment. You eat your frittata, and I’ll eat mine, and we won’t talk about it, okay?”

“Fine,” Kryzynski muttered. “Great. Ketchup?”

Billy felt his professional pride as a frittata maker assaulted. “You taste that first,” he ordered, stung. “And while it’s hot!”

Kryzynski gave him a vaguely uncomfortable look. “I… I’m having flashbacks to living with my mother,” he said, sounding baffled. “And it’s delicious. But I still want ketchup because I’m a barbarian. I’m sorry. The heart wants what it wants. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Billy took a bite of his own and sighed. “You’re right. Garlic salt, Detective Kryzynski. And chili powder. Your whole world would be so much tastier with a few more spices. I’m saying.”

“Please?” Kryzynski begged.

“Fine.” Billy stood up and grabbed the ketchup bottle from the fridge. And then a jar of salsa, which he preferred.

He handed Sean his bottle and grabbed his jar, doctoring his own food before he ate. He took his second bite and made a much more satisfied sound.

“And for the record,” he said, after swallowing and savoring another mouthful, “if you have salsaandhot sauce, like you do, you’re not a barbarian. Misguided, yes, but still kind of civilized. We won’t have to throw you on your own island yet.”

Kryzynski swallowed his own bite and grinned. “Good to know,” he said.

Billy winked at him, feeling pleased with himself, and once the coffee was done, he really did feel like a brand-new person.

He settled his patient on the couch while he finished the breakfast dishes and ran to take a quick shower. When he returned, Kryzynski was falling asleep in front of an action flick and struggling to sit up.

“What are you doing?” Billy snapped. He’d timed himself. Between breakfast dishes and the world’s fastest shower, the man had been on the couch for twenty minutes. “Why are you—are you trying to stand?”

“I can stand.” Sean Kryzynski had, on the surface, a little boy’s face, with a square jaw but a smaller nose and a vulnerable mouth. And, of course, the big baby blues. The almost perpetual scowl Billy had seen on that face made him look like a grumpy little man, and it was hard for Billy to take him seriously when he said things like that.

“Yes, you can. I’ve seen it. But why? Why do you have to stand now? You had a bowel movement, you had breakfast, you walked down the hall. You’ve been a productive little soldier, and now it’s time to kick back and let your body heal. Why is this a problem?”

Kryzynski squinted at him. “Aren’t I supposed to get better every day? I have a list of exercises I’m supposed to do. Shouldn’t I, you know, do those next?”

Billy was going to smack him. “I have the list. But first kick back and rest for an hour. Trust me. It’s like working out. You work out, you rest. When you work out hard, you literally give your muscles little tears and shit, and when you rest, they heal back together stronger. That’s how you bulk up. This is the same thing, but the muscles you’re building are all the things that let you pull air into your lungs.”

That squint turned into a glare.

“What did I say?”

“I know how to work out.”

In response, Billy ran a critical eye over Kryzynski’s body, sweeping him from head to toe with enough blatant assessment to make the man’s cheeks turn pink.

Good.

What he saw wasn’t bad, really. The cop kept himself in good shape—lots of toned runner’s muscle, some gym bulk, but mostly the sort of body that was kept tight and fed well in order to make it a more efficient machine. The runner’s muscle was probably to catch bad guys. The gym bulk was probably to make sure Kryzynski had some power in a fight. Yeah, the guy had been in the hospital for nearly two weeks, and he had lost some mass, but once he got his wind back, he’d recover.