“How is she?” Reese asked, her voice low and tight.
“She’s conscious,” Sloane said. “That part is huge. How are you?”
“I don’t even know. I can’t seem to get my brain to stop replaying the moment.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“Why don’t we sit?” Sloane turned to the others, who looked exhausted and unsure, caught between standing and falling apart. They dutifully assembled in the corner of the room away from the only other small group in the space.
“We heard from the doctor, and we’re in a wait and see. But the fact that she was awake is encouraging,” Veronica said, leading with the good news. The information had a collective impact as each one of them seemed to breathe a little deeper with the knowledge. Veronica updated them on all they’d learned from the doctor, and the wait and see hours ahead of them.
Sloane nodded, but her fingers twitched at her sides, brushing against her own pockets, then her jeans, then fidgeting with the hem of her jacket. She kept her eyes on the double doors, trying to even out her breathing, but it came in sharp, uneven bursts.
“She’s alive,” Sloane said, and her voice cracked on the wordalive, despite her best effort to keep it clipped and professional. She swallowed hard. “That’s what matters right now.” But inside, she was twisted and hollow because she knew very well what a risky game this whole thing was, and that the next time they could be sitting here for any one of the others. And that included Reese. The thought nearly strangled her. Yes, it was what they’d all signed up for, but for Sloane, for where she was in her life presently, maybe that was too high an ask.
Reese’s gaze kept flicking in her direction, an incognito check-in. She knew Sloane’s personal struggles, her triggers, and was making sure she wasn’t in distress. “I’m okay,” she mouthed to Reese, who looked at her like she didn’t quite believe it, which tracked because it was a lie. Sloane was held together by adrenaline and a sense of duty, but felt like a house of cards about to come tumbling down. That couldn’t happen here, not when these women needed her as much as she needed them.
They spent the next few hours talking and not talking. The vending machine got a workout. Someone ordered sandwiches. Coffee cups came and went. So did the roster of other drivers and crew members. They’d come in, stay awhile, and eventually head back out again when no word came. The five of them hadn’t discussed it outright, but no one seemed intent on going anywhere. How could they?
“I didn’t see it,” Marissa said, running a hand through her long curls, her hair extra unruly, a metaphor for the chaos. “They had to tell me on the radio.”
“I saw,” Delaney said. “The two cars had been battling. It was no one’s fault. Just scrapping for position. It’s what you do.”
“I feel like Greta’s going to take this hard,” Reese said. “I would.”
“That’s why it’s important that her community show up for her, just like we have for Cassidy,” Veronica said. The others nodded, valuing her wisdom. “You’re ready to tear each other up on the circuit, but off? No one knows your life like another driver.”
Reese nodded, her eyes pooling with tears. “Isn’t that the truth of it all? I feel like we’re all cut from the same cloth. That’s pretty special, if you ask me.”
“Even Danielle Todd?” Delaney asked with a sly grin.
“Let’s not get carried away,” Reese said, hand up. The comment had helped to break the tension, and they’d needed it.
Time lost its edges after that. Minutes stretched, then snapped back into place, marked only by the occasional opening of the trauma doors or the chime of the elevator. While the others slept or visited the cafeteria, Sloane paced the length of the glass-walled waiting area until Veronica gently steered her back to a chair, her hand firm at Sloane’s elbow.
“Sit,” Veronica said quietly. “You’re going to wear a trench in the floor.”
Sloane tried. She lasted maybe thirty seconds before she was on her feet again, heart thudding, every nerve buzzing as if she were waiting for impact instead of news.
When the doctor returned, it felt abrupt, like a door opening into cold air.
“She’s holding,” the doctor said, and Sloane hated how much she clung to the word. “Vitals are stable. The scans show internal bruising and some bleeding, but nothing that requires immediate surgery at this moment.”
At this moment.
Sloane caught that, the way you catch a loose thread and know better than to pull.
“She’s still disoriented,” the doctor continued. “That’s expected. We’ve got her sedated lightly now to let her rest. The next few hours are still critical, but right now, this is … cautiously positive.”
It was a good report.
Veronica asked the practical questions—ICU access, overnight protocols, when family could see her. Sloane stood there, arms crossed tight across her chest, the answers sliding past her without fully landing. She focused instead on the doctor’s face, on the absence of urgency in her posture, on the fact that she wasn’t rushing away this time.
That was something.
Cassidy’s parents arrived a few hours later, bleary-eyed, still wearing travel clothes, her mother clutching her phone like it was the only solid thing left in the world. Introductions were made softly, as if everyone was afraid of speaking too loudly in case it changed the outcome.
“I feel like I know each of you from all Cass has told us,” her mother said. She squeezed Marissa’s hand. “She sees you all as family, so we do, too.”
