Page 13 of Meet Me at the Metro (Gildenhill #1)

13

AND SO, I TREAD ON

E L L I E

I ’m jolted awake as a searing throb cuts through my ankle and travels up the side of my calf. I was hoping that a good night’s sleep would be enough to remedy most of the damage that came from my drunken fall last night, but as I sit up and see how swollen my ankle looks, I realize that my hours of dreaming didn’t do shit in healing my injury.

My fingers lightly brush against the purple, black, and blue bruising around the inflamed joint stretched out in front of me, and I choke on a gasp from the abrupt pain that follows.

I look over the rest of my limbs, groaning to myself with regret as my eyes lock onto my poorly bandaged arm. With a gentle finger, I carefully lift an edge of the taped gauze wrapped around my forearm, relieved to see that the wound underneath doesn’t look nearly as bad as I remembered it looking last night.

“ You clumsy idiot .” I scoot my body to the edge of the bed and allow my legs to hang for several long moments before feeling brave enough to test out how hurt my ankle truly is.

I place the soles of my feet flat against the hardwood floors beneath me and take a deep breath before finally finding the courage to stand. I’m immediately regretting my decision as a sharp, brutal pain bursts through my ankle and up the length of my leg.

“Oh, god!” I cry out, tears filling my eyes as I fall back onto my bed.

This is not good. This is really not good .

A thorough search on Google has me convinced that I’ve got a sprained ankle on my hands, and by the looks of how inflamed my ankle and foot are right now, it’s so much worse than I was anticipating it to be. I definitely need to go see a doctor about this, despite how badly I don’t want to do that—doing so would mean proving Theo exactly right.

And damn him for being right about this .

Using every bit of furniture in my room as an anchor, I pathetically hobble to my bedroom door, gritting my teeth with every wrong movement I make. Sticking my head out into the hallway, I call out into the quiet of the apartment.

“Evie?” Silence. “Harvey?” Absolute silence.

I groan at the quiet, filled with dread when neither one of my roommates answers back, and I just pray to myself that they’ll come walking through the front door at any moment. My faith in that prayer quickly dissipates as a bright, green sticky note posted against my door catches my eye.

‘Harvey and I went out for brunch this morning. Didn’t want to wake you. Be back sometime this evening. Pedaylite’s in the fridge. So is tequila... Pick your poison.

Signed, a hot ass bitch.’

The messily written note is able to put a smile on my face for a short moment before I’m reminded of the pain in my ankle. Falling back against the frame of the door, I tear my eyes away from the swollen and bruised flesh and let out a defeated groan.

I’ve got to get this thing looked at.

With a hobble in my step, I carefully make my way back into my room and head to my nightstand. I pull my phone from its charger and type out a message to the only person I can think of to help me at this moment.

Hey... sorry to bug you, but could you help me get to a doctor?

The examination room inside the immediate care clinic is bleak. The white walls around me feel suffocating, but I force myself to sit still against the cold, squeaky hospital bed and hope that today’s visit will be a quick one. To my right is a small countertop housing a sink, soap, blue latex gloves, a box of sterile needles, band-aids, and cotton balls. Connor sits beside it, his anxious gaze darting across the room.

He clears his throat, breaking the silence between us as he gives me a slight smile and teases, “No more alcohol for you.”

I laugh, appreciating his effort to bring a little light to this predicament of mine. He opens his mouth to speak again just as a knock sounds against the door.

It opens the very next moment, and a round woman with a tightly pulled black ponytail comes striding into the room. A red stethoscope hangs around the collar of her white lab coat and lavender button-up shirt.

“Hi, Miss Mattice; how are you doing today?” She greets softly.

“ Erm , I’m alright. I’ve had better days.”

“I would say so,” she jokes, wearing a sympathetic expression as her hazel eyes inspect my injury. She slips on a pair of latex gloves and sits down against the examination stool, rolling my way. “I’m Nurse Practitioner Sutton, and I’ll be taking care of you today. So the tech told me you hurt your foot pretty badly last night, huh?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “I had taken a fall and think I twisted my ankle when it happened. I was hoping it would maybe be better after a night’s rest, but when I woke up this morning, I couldn’t even stand to walk on it.”

“Yeah, you’ve got some pretty serious inflammation and bruising.” She carefully takes hold of my ankle for further inspection. With considerate gentleness, she attempts to turn the joint softly, but even the slight inch of movement has me flinching in pain.

“Sorry,” she quickly apologizes, softening her grip on me. “How would you rate your pain on a scale of one through ten? ”

“Umm , maybe a six?” I confess, voice slightly trembling.

Because although the pain is completely intolerable to walk with, I can’t help but feel as though I might need to save my ten for another day.

“Does it hurt when I do this?” She asks as she maneuvers my toes to point toward the ground and then to the ceiling.

“Y-yes.” The muscles in my body quiver with overwhelming discomfort, and I bite onto my bottom lip to try and stifle it. “It hurts really bad.”

“Alright, so it’s very apparent to me that you have a stretched ligament somewhere,” she explains, mercifully releasing her hold on me. “But we’ll have to get an X-ray on it to rule out any possible fractures or anything.”

“O-okay,” I nod.

Opening the examination room door again, she disappears out of the room for a moment, and Connor’s brown eyes meet mine.

“It’s going to be alright, Ellie.”

“But what about dance? What if I—”

Nurse Sutton walks back into the room with a wheelchair, interrupting me. “You ready?”

So thoughtfully, Connor stands from his seat and offers me an arm for stability as he helps me into it. When he’s sure I’m situated and comfortable, he happily takes hold of the two handlebars behind me and pushes me down the hall, following close behind Nurse Sutton as she weaves us through the clinic. As my friend veers my wheelchair into a small, dimly lit room housing an X-ray machine, I mutter a quick prayer to myself and hope that this injury isn’t as bad as my gut is anticipating it to be.

An hour and a half passed, filled with X-ray scanning and overwhelming anticipation as we waited for my diagnosis. I’m relieved when the doctor finally enters the room again.

“Please, tell me some good news,” I half-joke as she makes her way over to me.

“Good news, it isn’t broken,” she tells me, throwing me a weak smile. “Bad news, you’ve got a grade-two sprain in your left foot. Which is surprising, considering you only rated your pain as a six.”

“Grade two?” I gulp, trying to slow my racing heart as Connor lets out a sigh beside me. “And that’s out of how many?”

“Grade two out of three. It’s a moderate sprain. You’ve got a partial tear in your ligament, and it’s causing it to stretch loose. You need to make sure to keep off of your ankle for the next few days, and once the swelling has gone down some, you can start doing small exercises to rotate your foot and get back its range of motion.”

“Okay,” I mutter, my mind piecing together all of the medical jargon and contemplating how much movement and progress this level of injury will hinder me in terms of classes. “How long is it going to take to recover?”

“It’s hard to say,” she shrugs. “I would wage about six to eight weeks until you’re able to move your foot fluidly.”

“Six to eight weeks?” I gasp. I look to Connor, gauging whether he heard the same thing I did. He returns me with a sad glance, immediately verifying my fears. “But that’s over half of the semester. I have a dance class three days a week. I can’t afford to fall behind. I can’t afford six to eight weeks.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she frowns. “You’re most likely going to need to figure out some sort of arrangement with your instructor or drop the course. If you don’t give that ankle proper time to heal, you could be looking at a permanent injury.”

My stomach twists into fierce knots as my mind sorts through the possible outcomes of all this. I’ve only been granted one school year here in London, and if I’m forced to drop out of my dance course, I won’t meet the credit hours I need to complete the term. This means my grant will be revoked, and I’ll be absolutely screwed .

“I’ve prescribed you some pain and anti-inflammatory medicine. You can take them as needed. The bruising will spread and look darker over the next two to three days, but if the pain or swelling worsens, please see us immediately.”

All I can manage to do is nod and hope that Connor remembers the nurse’s orders because I haven’t retained much of what’s been said outside of ‘sprained ankle’ and ‘six to eight weeks .’

“I hope the rest of your day starts to look up, Miss Mattice,” the nurse practitioner says as she heads to the doorway. “Please take it easy on that foot.”

“Will do.” I gulp as I watch the door click shut. For a long moment, my eyes are glued to the beige tiles of the clinic floors while I think over Theo’s words from last night. I once again curse the fact that his worry was right.

Connor’s brown eyes convey sincere sympathy as they glance toward my wrapped foot. Together, we sigh, and as the dread of today’s news soaks in and I come to terms with my new reality, I blurt out the only words my mind can form.

“What in the hell do I do now?”