“Are you okay?”
She draws in a ragged breath and nods. “It’s my ankle. I think it might be broken.”
“Oh God.” I drop to my knees and look at her foot. Her skin is pale and swollen, her ankle now the size of a softball.
“Can you move it?”
She wiggles her toes. “Kind of. It hurts really bad.”
I look around. “Let me guess. You were standing on a stepladder on top of your mattress trying to hang twinkly lights on the wall?
She looks chagrined as she nods. “I just wanted them way up high, so I stood on the stepladder.”
“A stepladder on a mattress is not a good idea.”
“Trust me, I know that now.”
She sighs and looks back at her ankle. “I’ve been here for about two hours. My phone is over there and I didn’t have the energy to get it. I just kept waiting for you to get home.”
“Belle, I’m so sorry.” I sweep my arms out, trying to round up as many thumbtacks as I can. Before either one of us moves around too much, this floor needs to be cleaned.
“What’d you leave outside?” she asks.
“Oh crap, the food.” I rush back and get it, grateful that I’d piled all our food containers into a plastic bag for the walk home. Sometimes I just carry them without a bag, but I’m not sure I’d want to eat food that had been on the floor without the extra layer of protection. “You hungry?”
She nods, and then winces again.
After the thumbtacks are cleaned up, I sit on the floor with my cousin and we eat dinner. I try to examine her ankle, even though I’m nowhere near being a doctor, so I don’t know what I’m looking at. The swelling is only getting worse, and now her skin is a little bruised. She’s able to get up with my help, but she can’t put any weight on her foot.
“Belle…” I say, as I help her sit on her bed. Tears stream down her cheeks. “I think you need a doctor.”
“No, I’m fine.”
I give her a look. She blinks and more tears fall from her eyes. I don’t know if they’re from the pain, or her fear of leaving her room. “I don’t want to leave,” she whispers.
“I’m calling Aunt Kate.”
“No!” Belle says.
But it’s too late. Her safety is at risk here, and I’m calling. I press the phone to my ear and it rings. Several moments pass and Aunt Kate doesn’t answer the phone.
“We have to do something,” I say. “You need a hospital. If it’s broken, you’ll need a cast.”
She shakes her head. “Let’s just hang out a few days and see what happens. I might get all better.”
“Or you might get worse,” I say. “Let me call an ambulance.”
“No way. That’s way too much attention. Everyone will see.”
“Not if they drive up to our dorms. I’ll ask that they keep the lights off. Maybe no one will see you. It is late, after all.”
“But if they do see me, it’ll be even more humiliating than if someone saw me normally. And I can’t even do normally right now, Sophia.”
I heave a sigh. “What if I snuck you out? Just like we’ve talked about. It’s almost dark, anyway. We’ll wait until after curfew and sneak out through the gardens, then walk to your mom’s house.”
Belle considers this for a long moment. “But I can’t walk.”
“I’ll help you.”
