She stood above me, grinning. ‘I’d say I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m not.’
Then she looked around. ‘Actually, I am sorry,’ she said. ‘Where are the cameras?’
She offered me a hand, but I didn’t take it, clambering out of the water myself. ‘What the fuck?’ I snarled at her.
‘It’s for TV, obviously,’ she said, gesturing vaguely. ‘Nothing personal. That would have been great TV. Why didn’t they follow?’
All the other women and the cameras were clustered together in the middle of the field. ‘… so sorry!’ I heard someone saying as I got closer. ‘It was an accident, I swear!’
‘Move back.’ I recognised Hero Nurse Dylan’s voice. ‘Give her some room.’
Everyone shuffled back. In the middle of the cluster, Belinda was sitting on the ground, hands clasped to her mouth as blood poured down her face.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I heard Lily say behind me.
‘Belinda, I need you to take your hands away for a second, all right?’ Hero Nurse Dylan said. Her voice was steady and calming. ‘I need to see how bad it is.’
Belinda obeyed. ‘Ith it broken?’ she lisped. ‘Ith my tooth broken?’
‘It’s chipped,’ Hero Nurse Dylan said. ‘Murray? Carrie? Suzette? Someone? We need to get her to a dentist.’
‘We can’t,’ producer Carrie said. ‘The bubble.’
‘Come on, you can’t tell me there aren’t medical exemptions,’ Hero Nurse Dylan snapped. ‘Someone get me a clean towel. For fuck’s sake, get back!’
A figure broke off from the cluster. My Dylan. He turned away, put his hands on his knees, and started breathing deeply.
‘There are exemptions that would let us take her out,’ Carrie said, ‘but we couldn’t bring her back in again. We couldn’t bring back the crew member we sent with her either, and we’re short-staffed as it is.’
‘Fuck your short-staffing!’ Hero Nurse Dylan said. ‘She needs medical attention!’
A PA handed her a towel. ‘Thank you,’ she said, pressing the towel to Belinda’s mouth. Her hands were covered in blood.
‘Belinda,’ Carrie said, ‘this is up to you, all right?’
She kneeled on the ground beside them. ‘Do you understand?’ she said. ‘We can take you out to get your tooth fixed, but we can’t bring you back in again. You’d have to leave the competition. You’d lose your chance to be with Dylan. Or you can stay and we can patch you up as best as we can. What do you want to do?’
‘I want to thtay,’ Belinda said, almost immediately.
But I wasn’t really listening any more. ‘Hey,’ I said quietly, putting my hand on my Dylan’s back. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Cece,’ he said, looking up at me, wild-eyed. ‘Get me out of here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped over and over again, as I led him to the wardrobe tent. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay, Dylan,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to be sorry. Sit down.’
He sank down in a chair in front of the make-up table. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Hey, hey,’ I said. ‘I’m here, all right? I’ve got you.’
I looked around for some water. There was a case of bottles under the table. I had to crawl on my hands and knees to break open the plastic, and the ground squelched under my knees. It was gross, but it wasn’t like I could get that much muddier after my dip in the lake.
Dylan was trembling, his brow sweaty, his eyes squeezed closed. ‘You’re having a panic attack,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You’re having a panic attack. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘It’s okay. It’ll pass. It’s just a panic attack.’
It didn’t seem to help, because his breaths started coming in even deeper gasps, massive gulps, like he was a fish someone had pulled out of the water and dropped to the floor of a boat.
