Page 107 of The Fall
“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 withthe 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!”
Hayes ruffles her hair and kisses the top of her head. “Yeah, tiger, you do.”
The nurse clears her throat. “I can put it on for you now, hmm?”
Lily thrusts out her injured arm, and her eyes never leave the Nerf gun in my awkward, cast-encased grip. Hayes catches my eye over his daughter’s head. I think he might cry. He mouths a silent “thank you” as Erin sinks into a chair beside the bed, shoulders dropping as the tension bleeds out of the room.
