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“Miss Sutton?”
Ally slowly opened her eyes. It took a couple of attempts because they were stuck together with gunk. “What?” she said, frowning as she looked around. Oh yeah, she was in the hospital, with a foot that hurt like hell…
Except it didn’t any more. Well that was interesting.
A woman was leaning over her, dressed in green scrubs. “I’m Doctor Southern,” she said. “How are your pain levels on a scale of 1 to 10?”
Ally thought for a moment. Yeah, the excruciating pain in her leg had gone, but she could feel her whole body throb with a dull ache. “Um, two or three.”
“That’s good. We’re pumping some pretty heavy painkillers into you right now, so I’m glad to hear they’re working. As you can probably feel, we’ve put your leg in a temporary cast. The x-rays show a clean break in your ankle. I’m hoping you won’t need surgical intervention, but we won’t know until the swelling goes down and we give you a CAT scan.”
“I had an x-ray?” Ally asked, frowning. “Was I unconscious?”
Doctor Southern smiled. “Not unconscious, but you were a little out of it. It’ll probably come back to you slowly.” She picked up the white pad at the end of Ally’s bed and scribbled something on it. “We also had to put a couple of stitches in your head. There’s no permanent damage there, but there’s always the danger of concussion. Do you have somebody who can sit with you tonight?”
“You’re releasing me?” Well that wasn’t so bad. At least she wouldn’t have to stay here any longer. Ally couldn’t wait to get back home.
“Yes, if you have someone to take care of you. Then you can come back tomorrow for us to fix you up.”
She considered lying. Inventing a friend or a family member who wouldn’t mind dropping everything and sitting by her bed all night to make sure she was breathing.
But what if she actually stopped breathing and nobody was there?
“I live alone,” she said. “And everybody I know works. I couldn’t ask them to do that.”
The doctor looked way too sympathetic for Ally’s comfort. “It’s not like I don’t have any friends,” Ally added. “I’m not a loser or anything. I’m just very independent.”
“I’d like to keep you overnight then, just to be safe,” the doctor said. “But you’re really going to need somebody to support you when you go home. You could be in a cast for up to twelve weeks, and using crutches, too. It takes some time to get used to the decreased mobility.”
“Twelve weeks,” Ally repeated, her voice faint.
“It might be less. We’ll know more when the swelling goes down.” She hooked the clipboard back in place. “Now, try to get some rest and I’ll arrange for you to stay the night. Oh, and you have a couple of friends asking about you. Is it okay if I let them know how you’re doing?”
“Sure,” Ally agreed, letting her head fall back on the pillow. She really did feel drowsy. Maybe it was something to do with the painkillers. Whatever it was, her eyelids were fluttering before Doctor Southern made it out of the door.
And as she heard the creak of the hinges and the door close behind the doctor, the last thought that made its way through Ally’s conscious mind made her want to shiver.
She wasn’t going to be able to do any running at all for the next three months, right when she needed the distraction the most.
9
“Oh sweetie, you look awful. How are you feeling?” Brooke sat down in the chair next to Ally’s hospital bed, wincing as she took everything in. “I can’t believe you did all this just from tripping over a rock. It must have been so painful.”
“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” Ally said, her voice croaky. She took a sip of water from the cup next to her bed. “But the painkillers are great. I don’t feel a thing right now.”
“Only you would go out running in the rain,” Ember said. She’d taken the chair on the other side of Ally. Her fiancé, Lucas, was sitting at the end of the bed, and gave Ally a reassuring smile when she looked over at him.
“I wasn’t doing it for fun,” Ally pointed out. “I was trying to stop Riley from jumping off the cliff.”
Lucas sat straight up at that. Always the firefighter, he was alert at the first sign of danger. “It’s okay, Lucas,” Ally told him. “She didn’t jump.”
“I’ll never get why kids do stuff like that,” he said, shaking his head. “As if there aren’t enough dangers around already, they have to invent some more.”
“As I recall, you liked a little bit of danger yourself when you were younger,” Ember pointed out, her eyes soft as she smiled at him. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. There were always more injuries on the sports field than anywhere else at school. Didn’t you break your arm once?”
“Yeah, but that was football. It’s different.”
