"She's strong," Mara said, her eyes on the road, her hands steady on the wheel. "She's the strongest person I know."
Elise couldn't respond. Her throat was closed and her eyes were burning and the tears were there, pressing behind her eyes, but they wouldn't fall because falling would mean accepting and she couldn't accept this.
Phoenix Ridge Hospital appeared. The same building where they'd come for Elise's scan eight weeks ago. The same entrance. The same automatic doors. Mara parked and came around and opened Elise's door and Elise got out and her legs were functioning but barely.
Inside, the air-conditioned chill hit her like a wall. The hospital smelled of disinfectant and floor wax and stale, recycled air that existed only in places where people waited for terrible news. A nurse met them at the entrance and led them through double doors and down a corridor that was long and white and silent except for the squeak of shoes on linoleum.
Intensive care. The words on the door. Blue letters on white plastic.
The nurse pushed through and Elise followed and there she was.
Sienna was on a bed in the middle of the room, surrounded by machines. A ventilator tube ran to her mouth. IV lines trailed from both arms. Monitors beeped in a steady, mechanical rhythm. Her dark hair was spread on the white pillow and her face was pale and still and there were cuts and bruises on her forehead and jaw and her left arm was splinted and her eyes were closed.
She looked small. In the medical room at the stadium she'd looked authoritative, composed, the calm centre of every crisis.Here, surrounded by machines keeping her alive, she looked small and fragile and very, very still. Her glasses were gone. The mole near her left ear was barely visible beneath a strip of surgical tape that held a sensor to her skin. This was the woman who'd taped Elise's shoulder with steady hands and kissed her on a bench and cried in her arms and sat across from her on a table at Lavender's less than twenty-four hours ago, and now she was unconscious and breathing through a machine.
Elise's legs gave out.
Frankie caught her. Strong arms around her waist, holding her up, and Elise gripped Frankie's forearm and a sound came from her chest that was not a word, it was a raw, animal sound of pain that she didn't know she could make. The tears came then, hot and sudden and violent, and she couldn't see and she couldn't breathe and she couldn't stop.
Mara pulled a chair to the bedside. Frankie and Lou guided Elise into it. She reached for Sienna's hand, the right one, the one without the IV, and held it. The hand was warm. That meant blood was flowing. That meant the heart was beating. The monitors confirmed it, the green line tracing its peaks and valleys, but Elise needed the living heat of Sienna's skin against her palm, the physical proof that she was alive.
"Please," Elise whispered. "Please don't leave me."
The monitors beeped steadily on. Sienna didn't respond.
The team filled the room and the corridor outside. Lou stood by the window, arms crossed, her jaw tight. Camille was beside her, gripping her arm. Frankie stayed close to Elise. Dani stood in the doorway, her grey eyes steady, a sentinel. Rowan sat on the floor in the corridor with her knees pulled up and her face white. Lex paced.
Mara made phone calls in the corridor, her voice low and controlled, the head coach holding everything together because that was what Mara did. Elise heard fragments. Astoria's name.Helen's name. Insurance. Coaching cover. The words drifted past in fragments that didn't assemble into meaning.
Helen arrived twenty minutes later. She came through the door in her grey cardigan, her dark eyes sweeping the room, taking in the monitors and the machines and Elise's tear-streaked face, and she went straight to Elise and put her hand on her shoulder and didn't say anything. She just stood there. Her hand was a point of contact with a world that had stopped making sense.
Time passed. An hour. Maybe more. The monitors beeped. Nurses came and went. Elise held Sienna's hand and stared at her face and willed her to open her eyes and the eyes stayed closed.
Footsteps in the corridor. A small figure in a white coat, sandy hair pinned back, moving with urgent purpose. Dr. Josephine Mars.
She came into the room and her face was grave and composed and she went straight to the monitors, scanning them with quick, practised eyes. She looked at Sienna's chart. She looked at the imaging on the wall screen that Elise couldn't read. Then she turned to Elise and her expression was kind but serious.
"Elise. I'm glad you're here." Her voice was steady, the voice of someone who delivered terrible news for a living and had learned to do it with compassion. "Sienna has sustained significant injuries from the impact. Fractured ribs, a collapsed lung that's been stabilised, and internal bleeding that we need to address surgically. She needs an operation. My team is preparing the theatre now."
"Is she going to die?" The words came out flat and bare and Elise heard them and hated them and needed to know.
Dr. Mars held her gaze. "The injuries are serious but she's young and fit and that matters enormously. I'm going to take herto surgery and I'm going to do everything I can. I need you to know that."
Elise's fingers dug into the arm of the chair. "Please. Please save her."
"That's exactly what I intend to do." Dr. Mars put her hand on Elise's shoulder, a brief, firm touch. Then she was gone, moving to the bed, issuing quiet instructions to the nurses, and the machinery of a hospital engaged around Sienna's still body and the bed began to move.
Elise stood. She kept hold of Sienna's hand until the bed reached the corridor and the nurse gently detached her fingers. The bed turned the corner and disappear through double doors and the doors swung shut and Sienna was gone.
Frankie put her arm around Elise's shoulders. Lou stood on her other side. Camille reached for her hand. Mara stood behind her, solid and immovable. Helen was there, her calm presence a steady counterweight to the chaos in Elise's chest.
Elise stared at the double doors Sienna had disappeared through and her body shook with sobs she couldn't control. The team held her up. They formed a wall around her, these women who had started as teammates and become her family, and they held her up while the world fell apart.
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against Frankie's shoulder and said Sienna's name under her breath, over and over, like a prayer, like a promise, like the only word she had left.
They waited.
19
