Page 249 of Wild Card 13

“I could hop.”

Grandpa leaned down and murmured, “Let him have this.”

Grandma Ruth looked at him. “You too?”

“He looks ready to carry you through a wall.”

“Iamready to carry her through a wall,” I confirmed.

The waiting room smelled like disinfectant, wet wool, burnt coffee, and the particular fatigue of people who had been awake too early for bad reasons. A toddler cried near the vending machines. An older man in a Vikings hat slept with his mouth open beneath the television. Someone’s phone played a video too loud until a nurse at the desk looked up with one lethal eyebrow.

We checked in. We waited. Grandma Ruth told the intake nurse she was fine with the kind of conviction that made the nurse glance at me instead. “She tripped,” I said. “Left ankle. Swelling. Pain with weight bearing.”

Grandma muttered, “Show-off.”

The nurse smiled without looking up from the screen. “Athlete?”

“Unfortunately,” Grandma scoffed with a flawless eye roll.

I sat beside her wheelchair and tried to laugh when appropriate.

It was easier than admitting my hands still felt strange from the moment she fell. Like my body had caught the fear and had nowhere to put it now. I kept checking her face, her foot, Grandpa Hal’s posture. I kept standing and sitting and standing again until Grandma finally reached over and smacked the back of my hand.

“Sit down, Ty.”

The use of my name, quiet and firm, did what it had always done in my family. It pulled me back into my body.

Hours in hospitals moved strangely. Fast when someone asked questions. Slow when no one did. We got called back. We waited again. X-rays. More waiting. Grandma complaining about the possibility of a gown despite the fact that no one had asked her to change into one. Grandpa Hal reading every poster on the wall like blood pressure education might be on a test later.

The doctor finally came in with a tablet and a kind face. Hairline fracture. Left ankle. Boot. Rest. Ice. Follow-up if pain worsened, which Grandma Ruth acted like was a personal insult.

“A boot,” she repeated.

“For stability,” the doctor explained.

“I have stability.”

“Not in your ankle,” I interjected.

She pointed at me. “Quiet.”

By the time they fitted the boot and gave us instructions, thesharpest part of my fear had loosened. Not gone. Just no longer sitting on my throat. Grandma was embarrassed and cranky and already discussing how she could still make soup if someone moved the stockpot to the counter. Grandpa Hal looked ten years younger once the word fracture came with hairline in front of it and no surgery after it.

I pulled my phone out while Grandma argued politely with a nurse about whether she needed a second pair of non-slip socks.

Three missed calls from Coach.

Two from the staff coordinator.

One from Marco, which I ignored on principle because any voicemail from Marco during a family emergency would somehow involve an insult and sincere concern wearing the same hat.

A text from Naomi:

You are not dead, right?

My stomach dropped. The time at the top of the screen read 10:42.

The waiting room noise pressed in around me again, louder now. My thumb hovered over Lucy’s name. Then stopped.