Page 47 of The Fall

Erin’s voice comes through the phone, faint but frantic. Hayes’s eyes flick up, catching mine. “Is she okay?” His voice cracks, a sound I’ve never heard from him.

He stands. “Okay, I’m on my way right now. Hang in there, okay?” He hangs up and pockets his phone, and he’s already halfway across the cafeteria by the time I catch up to him.

“Ems?”

“It’s Lily. She broke her arm. I told her a million fucking times, don’t climb the fucking palm tree, and what does she do?” He groans through gritted teeth. “Erin’s at the ER with her.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Hayes is quiet; it’s the first time he’s run out of words.

We weave through streets and run lights, and finally he starts blowing off steam as he kneads the wheel.

“Erin doesn’t need this, man. She’s— fuck…

” He thumps his palm against the wheel. “Erin’s so fucking spent, Kicks.

The cancer shit— She’s trying to bounce back but it’s been?—”

He doesn’t talk about it much. If these treatments work the way they said they would, then maybe she’ll be cured. That’s a big word to use, and he’s only ever said it once.

“Erin is a trooper.” I sound super lame. “But, yeah. Fuck.”

He sucks down air and spits out a dead laugh. “If I never fucking walked into a hospital again…” His throat bobs but no more words follow.

Hospital is the one word you don’t use around him. I learned that loud and clear. Hospitals can break him. He’s been through too many sterile halls, heard too many sobs muffled behind curtains. There’s too much hovering helplessness there for him.

I have my own pocket of horror when it comes to hospitals; the thought of waking up in Vancouver is like swallowing broken glass. “You and me both,” I say softly.

“My kid’s seen enough hospitals. Broken bones shouldn’t be part of the deal.”

We skid into the ER’s drive; Hayes barely stops the car. “Go. I got this,” I tell him.

He leaves the keys, the engine still humming, and sprints inside.

The automatic doors swallow him whole, and I’m alone with the ticking engine and my own breathing. My hands grip the wheel, slide the gearshift into Park, kill the ignition.

The garage stretches in front of me, oil stains and painted lines blurring together.

Vancouver. Three days in that hospital bed, not knowing what world I was living in.

I remember my tears, how I thought I’d drown in them, how I wished I could close my eyes and never wake up.

Or wake up back in a life with Blair, because?—

I force myself out of the car. Lock it. The parking garage echoes my footsteps back at me.

I stop three spaces from the entrance. A woman pushes past me with a toddler on her hip, the kid’s face red and swollen from crying.

The doors part for them and they disappear into fluorescent light, swallowed by that heavy hush only hospitals can manage.

I take a breath, then another. I brace against the smell—too clean, chemical-sharp, antiseptic and always-waiting. It gets under my skin.

I rub a hand over my mouth, cursing under my breath. There’s a sign pointing toward the elevators and another to the gift shop. I veer left, toward the gift shop. It’s tiny and over-packed, and I don’t know why I’m drawn to it, except there’s a hook in me that tugs.

Water. Get water for Erin, for Hayes. Be helpful. I wander the cramped aisles, and underneath a haphazard pile of stuffed animals, candy bars, and keychains, I spy a flash of color: bright-blue plastic with neon-orange tips.

A Nerf gun.

— Blair laughing. Me ducking behind the couch, Lily on the hunt like a merciless little sniper.

Her Nerf bullets ricocheted off the ceiling, a fantastic spree of foam.

The click of plastic, the moment right before we’d dive back into war.

The soft hiss of air-pumped darts hitting drywall.

Her laugh, loud, untamed. The smell of chlorine and Erin laughing over the water.

We’d stormed castles of couch cushions, crossed the lava-pit living room, climbed the mountains of the staircase ? —

Next to the Nerf gun is a pink teddy bear.

—Lily tucking it under her arm, smiling when I pulled the blanket up to her chin ? —

The air shifts; it shifts back. It’s like slipping between worlds, like light bending through a prism, but whatever it was is gone before I’m done breathing in.

My hand hovers over the Nerf gun. These flashes keep happening, moments so real I could swear they happened, but they didn’t. They didn’t .

These feelings don’t belong to me. My hand moves on its own, closing around the Nerf gun’s grip.

I pick up the bear, too. Its fur is garishly pink, its eyes two black, plastic beads.

Holding them feels both ridiculous and necessary, like I’m collecting evidence.

Evidence of what, I don’t know. A glitch in my head.

I stand there, staring at the toys, trying to make sense of the impulse that made me grab them.

“Can I help you?” The clerk’s voice startles me. I fumble with the Nerf gun.

“No. Yes. I—” I swallow. “Just these.” I set the Nerf gun and the pink bear on the counter.

The curtain around Lily’s bed isn’t thick enough to dull her wailing. “But I have to play soccer! And swim! And you said I could do gymnastics this year! You said !”

Erin’s voice frays, and Hayes is saying everything he can. “I know, honey. I know.”

I hesitate outside the curtain, stuck between going in and staying out, clutching the plastic bag with the Nerf gun and teddy bear.

I’m ridiculous. A toy won’t fix a broken arm, and a stuffed animal can’t replace a lost summer of sports and swimming pools.

It’s not my place to be here. I’m a teammate, an outsider. Not family.

The curtain ripples from inside. Someone’s shadow passes close to where I stand. Lily hiccups, gasping, sobbing.

I take a deep breath, clutch the bag tighter, and push the curtain aside.

Erin looks exhausted. She’s mother, fortress, and survivor, and the strain of each role shows.

Lily’s heels kick the bed. She’s four-and-a-half and she’s afraid, but that fear is coming out as rage and desperation.

Hayes is unnaturally frazzled, and his hands are laced behind his neck beneath the brim of his backwards ball cap.

His eyebrows are pinched and his eyes are wide, and he’s rocking from foot to foot as he looks helplessly at me.

“Hey, Lily.” I have no idea what I’m doing. “I’m Torey. I play with your dad. This arm thing sucks, huh? I’ve been benched with injuries before, too.”

She glares at me, huffing in a shuddering breath.

There’s a tired nurse sitting on a stool in the corner of the curtained-off room, waiting for Lily to calm down enough to begin the cast process. I sit beside Lily on the gurney and turn to the nurse.

“What color options do we have for casts these days?”

The nurse blinks at me, then at Lily, whose sobs have quieted to sniffles. “Pink, blue, green, purple?—”

“Pink’s perfect.” I roll up my sleeve, extending my perfectly healthy left arm toward the nurse. “I’ll take pink.”

The nurse’s eyebrows shoot up. She’s frozen between professional protocol and whatever madness she thinks she’s witnessing. “You don’t have a broken arm,” she says.

I wiggle my fingers at the nurse. “We can’t let Lily be the only one rocking a cast.” I smile at her, a little sheepish. “If we’re both stuck in casts, we can be cast buddies. Compare battle scars. See whose gets more signatures.”

Lily’s wet eyes lock onto mine, confused but curious. Her good hand wipes at her nose.

The nurse hasn’t moved.

Hayes frowns. He’s not sure what the hell’s going on, and neither am I, but Lily isn’t screaming anymore. The bag with the Nerf gun and the bear is tucked at my side, still closed. Lily doesn’t know what I have.

The nurse is staring like I’m about to pull a prank or, worse, waste her time, but she shrugs as if to say, “your funeral,” and gets to work wrapping me up.

The wet plaster is cold and heavier than I expected. The nurse’s hands wrap layer after layer around my perfectly healthy arm. “Pink is the best color,” I tell Lily as the nurse works. “Scientific fact. Makes you at least thirty percent faster on the ice.”

She sniffles, her eyes on the nurse’s hands as they circle my wrist. “You don’t play with a cast.”

“Not usually, no. But I bet I could still beat your dad in a race.”

Hayes snorts behind me. “In your dreams.”

The nurse smooths the final layer. My arm feels foreign already, trapped in this shell I’ve volunteered for.

“Does it hurt?” Lily’s voice is small.

“Nah. Feels weird, though. Like my arm’s wearing a really, really ugly sweater.”

That gets the tiniest smile from her, a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Erin’s shoulders drop a fraction, and Hayes’s breathing evens out behind me. Hayes slides in between his daughter and his wife, and he rubs a hand down each of their backs.

I wiggle my fingers when the nurse is done.

“This is actually awesome.” I stretch, and then quickly reach into the gift shop bag.

Thank God, I can still get my hand around the Nerf gun.

It’s awkward, no lie, but I manage to whip it out and take aim at Lily’s knee.

Pop. The soft click precedes the hush of a dart popping free. “I can still do cool stuff, too.”

Her eyes widen.

“Do you think you’d stand a chance in a cast Nerf war?” I ask her, as serious as Clint Eastwood at high noon.

The gears turn behind her eyes: anger transmutes into curiosity, into competition. She is her father’s daughter through and through. The trembling in her lower lip stills as she considers my challenge. Her gaze flicks from my pink-wrapped arm to the Nerf gun and back to my face.

“I could beat you with both arms in casts,” she declares, voice still watery but gaining strength.

I raise an eyebrow, fighting to keep my expression deadpan. “Bold claim from a warrior who hasn’t even got her first cast yet.”

“Daddy!” Lily whips her head around. “I need one!”