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“Where is she? What—“
“Easy,” her mother lulled. “The doctor here said you need time to heal.”
Maddie clenched her jaw, forcing away the nausea that rose in her throat as she rode the wave of dizziness that overcame her.
She forced a slow breath in, then back out. “Where is she?”
Her mom rubbed a soothing hand up and down her forearm. “Saff is here,” she answered. “They worked on her all night.”
Maddie blinked, her hand running up into her hair where the pain originated. Then a hand gripped her wrist, stopping it in place.
“You need to be careful with the stitches,” her mom urged, gently pulling her hand back down.
“What—what do you mean they worked on her?” Maddie asked, her throat grinding together like sandpaper. “Is she okay?”
Her mother wrapped both hands around her one, rubbing soothing circles into her palm.
“I’m not sure,” she answered carefully. “I haven’t heard anything more in the last few hours.”
Maddie took a few steadying breaths, then she used every ounce of energy she had to push back up again.
“Honey, you need to—“
“I want to see her,” she said, already throwing the blanket off of her legs.
“You need to—“
“Mom,” Maddie gritted out, trying her hardest to keep the vomit in her throat from exiting.
Her mother went quiet for a long moment. But when Maddie finally shifted her legs over the side of the bed, her cold feet meeting the floor, she heard her mother shifting. Then, a moment later, she took her arm.
And she didn’t say another word as she placed her white cane in her hand and slowly led her out of the room.
The air was colder as they moved step by step through the building. And it took them longer than Maddie expected, her legs and back aching with each step alongside her head.
But finally, her mother slowed, directing them to the left, through a small doorway.
Someone’s throat cleared ahead of them. “Is everything okay?” a man’s voice asked. “Do you need something?”
“We wanted to check on Saff,” her mother answered. “The woman we arrived here with.”
Maddie could hear the exhaustion in her voice, and she wondered if she’d rested at all since they’d arrived.
He hummed, then went quiet for a few moments. “Hard to tell right now,” he answered. “We did our best. She lost a lot of blood, and we couldn’t give her a transfusion.”
“What does that mean?” Maddie asked, her patience wearing thin as anxiety replaced it.
He went quiet again, then cleared his throat. “She’s stable, but all we can really do is monitor things for now.”
Maddie pursed her lips, closing her eyes as the torturing ache throbbed around them. “Where is she?” she gritted out.
“She’s in one of the rooms we have for recovery.”
“I want to see her,” Maddie said, not missing a beat.
“I don’t think—“
“Please,” she interrupted, trying and failing to add commanding strength behind the word.
