back of the ER. Bailey gripped my hand tightly as we hovered outside the now-closed curtain. I knew each patient was only allowed to have one visitor in the ER, but I wasn’t leaving my sister outside on her own so I avoided a few of the nurses’ gazes and hugged Bailey to me. She was so short that the top of her head stopped at my chest.
I’d had to leave Noah to go in the ambulance on her own so I could drive my car to the hospital, and Bailey was too terrified to go with her.
“Stop cryin’,” I’d told her as they put Noah in the ambulance. “She’ll be okay.”
“Stop doing that!” Noah moaned. “Oh! I sound like a man . . . why do I sound like a man?”
Bailey had looked up at me, her blue eyes wide with worry.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“It’s the gas,” I answered. “It’s numbin’ the pain, but it’s makin’ her all loopy. It’s normal.”
Now, the paramedics completed their handover of Noah to the care of the hospital, and once they left the cubicle with their gear, Bailey and I hustled inside. Noah was waving her hand in front of her face and staring at it with non-blinking eyes.
“This is insane,” she shouted. “I’ve got seventy-four fucking fingers!”
One of the nurses snorted as she cleaned one of Noah’s arms and inserted an IV line. Noah didn’t flinch, she didn’t even notice what the nurse was doing. I was glad of it; she wasn’t the best when it came to needles.
“Noah,” Bailey said tentatively, her arms still tight around me. “Are ye okay?”
Noah was too wrapped up in her imaginary seventy-four fingers to pay my sister any attention.
“I’m sorry.” Bailey rubbed her eyes. “Noah, I’m so sorry.”
Noah looked at her and grinned. “What for? I’m having a great time. I love you, baby.”
She was so stoned.
“I love ye too,” my sister said, trying not to laugh as she sniffled.
I rubbed my hand up and down Bailey’s back and looked at Noah’s leg. Once I looked at it, I couldn’t look away. Her foot was kind of twisted upwards, and it almost made me gag. Her shoe had been cut off back at the dance studio, and a brace of some sort was around her leg and foot to protect it. I didn’t know what further damage had been done, but it looked like her leg was fucked.
I straightened when a doctor entered the cubicle followed by two nurses.
“We’ll be resetting the foot and taking her for an X-ray to assess the damage. We’ll be giving her a local . . . the gas won’t be sufficient during this process.”
Bailey began to sob as Noah began to sing after she sucked in some more gas.
“I have the X factor,” she announced. “Where’s Simon Cowell when you need him?”
She was a terrible singer.
Bailey and I had to wait outside while Noah was given a local anaesthetic and her foot was reset. I walked Bailey down the hall just so neither of us would hear the noises her leg might make. I could still hear the crunch of the initial injury and it made me feel sick.
We were sitting back in the cubicle an hour later. Noah’s foot was reset with a cast plastered on her lower leg. She had inhaled so much gas that she was in and out of consciousness, and when she was awake, she was high as hell from the morphine she was given. She said a lot of weird shit.
A lot.
I looked down at Bailey and glared for the hundredth time when Noah groaned a little in pain as she woke up from another little slumber. My sister turned her eyes to me and sighed. “I said I was sorry . . . How was I supposed to know that this day would end with Noah in the hospital with a broken foot?”
“Ye should’ve guessed what would happen when ye made me dance.”
Bailey bit her lower lip. “Da did always say ye were a weapon on the dance floor.”
I raised my hand, pretending I was going to whack her, and she laughed and ducked against me. She put her arms around my waist and hugged me. She was tense until I rested my arm around her shoulders.
“You’re both so cute,” Noah said from her bed. “My likkle wikkle babies.”
“Oh God,” I grumbled. “Go back to sleep, love. Ye need your rest, okay?”
“Why would I sleep when I feel this powerful?” She suddenly