Harper sat in the parking lot for another five minutes before dialing. The phone rang twice before Marcus picked up.

"Hey, how'd it go?" His voice was upbeat, casual. Marcus never worried about anything, which was either his greatest strength or his greatest liability depending on the situation.

Harper's throat felt dry. "I need to tell you something, and I need you to just listen without trying to fix it, okay?"

The tone shifted immediately. Marcus knew Harper well enough to recognize when the stakes had changed. "Okay. I'm listening."

"I have a metabolic disorder. It's autoimmune. The doctor said it's rare and it progresses fast if we don't do something about it." Harper paused, gathering the words like scattered tools. "They want to do bariatric surgery. Weight loss surgery. In two weeks."

There was silence on the other end. Not the comfortable kind.

"Two weeks?" Marcus finally said. "Harper, that's—"

"I know what it is. And there's more. I have to go on shelter-in-place for recovery. Twelve weeks minimum. No work. No contact with people."

Harper could hear Marcus processing this, the rapid mental calculation that came from years of working construction and electrical jobs together. Marcus was already doing the math on lost contracts, on the cascade of cancellations.

"Jesus," Marcus breathed. "Okay. Okay. We'll figure this out. You need me to come over? We should talk about this in person."

"I can't have visitors during recovery," Harper said flatly. "That's part of the protocol. No unnecessary contact. My immune system is compromised."

"But before surgery, right? I can come now? Tonight?"

Harper looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 4:47 PM. The day felt like it had already lasted forty-eight hours. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Come over. I need to tell you about the contracts anyway. We need to figure out how to handle this."

After they hung up, Harper started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. The drive home took fifteen minutes, and Harper spent the entire time trying not to think about what twelve weeks of isolation would feel like. Trying not to think about the forty thousand dollars disappearing. Trying not to think about the fact that they'd said yes to the surgery without actually saying yes.

By the time Harper reached home, the sun was already sliding toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that felt too beautiful for a day that had gone so wrong.

Marcus arrived forty minutes later with beer and concern in equal measure.