“Salsa, Elliot.” She shimmied her shoulders. “Let’s salsa.”
I glowered at her, but couldn’t stop my lips from twitching when Noah laughed.
“I swear,” I growled. “I’ll get ye back for this, baby.”
Bailey clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait.”
Looking from her to Noah, I grumbled, “She always has to get the last fuckin’ word.”
My girlfriend wiggled her eyebrows. “Let’s salsa.”
I groaned as Noah laughed and got us back into our starting position. I was a truly horrible dancer – even the instructor told me that to my face halfway through the class, and I was certain she was meant to keep comments like that to herself for the amount of money I was paying her.
“Sorry,” I said for the tenth time as I stepped on Noah’s foot. “I’m so fuckin’ bad at this.”
“Stop concentrating on your feet and focus on rolling your hips. Your feet will follow.”
“The only thing I know how to do good and well with my hips is thrust back and forward. I never learned how to roll anything other than a blunt.”
Noah tipped her head back and laughed, and that was it – that was the moment we lost our balance.
One second we were dancing, or trying to dance, the next I was running through the doors of the ER with Bailey hot on my heels, as Noah was wheeled in ahead of us on a trolley with her foot twisted at an unnatural angle. It was broken, I knew it from the second I saw it. My sister was sobbing and had been since the moment I tripped Noah up and we both fell to the ground and she’d heard that godawful crunch.
I jumped when Noah screamed.
“Deep inhales,” the paramedic said as he held the tube for the gas back up to her mouth. “Nice, big inhales, Noah.”
She listened to him as she was wheeled into a cubicle at the 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
