“The ambulance is on the way. I’m pretty sure her shoulder is dislocated, and her hand might need surgery, but from what I can tell, she didn’t hit her head very hard.” She flashes me a grim smile when all I do is blink at her. “I’m a nurse. I saw her get hit.”
“Hit?” I manage to croak after a moment.
Her eyes narrow in confusion, her crow’s feet deepening. She’s about fifty, with short silver hair.
“She got hit by that car a few minutes ago. I thought you must have been waiting for her to get the cab.”
“Cab?”
All I can do is echo her as I swivel my head to take in the scene around me. Matt and JP are standing a few feet away, and the woman I saw earlier is still crying nearby.
I can hear what she’s saying now, over and over: “I didn’t see her. I swear to God I just didn’t see her!”
My stomach rolls again, and I look back down at Paige. She’s blinking up at me, her eyebrows creased like she’s working on a really difficult puzzle.
The inexplicable urge to tip my head back and laugh so hard I can’t breathe takes hold of me, but it’s gone the instant she opens her mouth.
“Youssef?” My name is more of a wheeze. “What are you...? How...?”
I go to reach for her hand on impulse, but then I get a look at her right arm where it’s laying at her side next to me. The back of her hand is scraped and oozing blood, two of the fingers twisted in a direction fingers shouldn’t be able to go. It’s hard to tell given how huge her hoodie is, but something about her whole arm looks off.
I snap my attention back to her face. She winces and bites down on her bottom lip as she takes a few sharp, shallow breaths. Her eyes squeeze shut, her whole face pinching with pain.
“Shhh.” The woman holding her strokes her hair. “It’s okay. Help is coming. Just hold on a little more.”
After a few more agonizing seconds of watching her in pain, she opens her eyes again. The corners are pricked with tears. She looks straight at me.
“I’m scared.” I’ve never heard her sound so small. “It really hurts.”
My heart is splitting my chest open. I want to break something. I want to fight someone. I want to get up and run a thousand miles for her. I want to do anything besides sitting here feeling utterly helpless.
She’s hurt, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve never felt like this before: like all I want to do is scream and snap someone in half.
“Paige.” I take a shaking breath and swallow down all the rage boiling in me. I place my hand on her knee, since her legs seem to be fine, and brush my thumb over the fabric of her black jeans. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
None of this makes any sense. Half my brain is still back in the Uber, and it’s very possible I’m going to throw up from the vertigo of ricocheting between emotional extremes every few seconds, but I mean what I say.
I’ve got her.
I keep saying it over and over as we wait for help. I keep saying it when the paramedics show up and load her onto a gurney. I keep saying it while I follow her into the ambulance and give a distracted nod when they ask me if I’m her boyfriend.
I sit next to her while we drive and hold her undamaged hand while they do something to her other arm that makes her shriek and dig her nails into my knuckles.
I stay with her all the way until they’re pushing her through a set of doors in the hospital someone tells me I can’t go past.
Then I call out that I’ll be waiting for her, and as I stand there in the bright white hallway, the only person not moving amidst a flurry of doctors and nurses who all surge around me, it finally hits so hard I can’t ignore it or pretend I don’t know the truth:
I’vealwaysbeen waiting for her.
I always will be.
* * *
It’s nearlydawn by the time I’m allowed to see her again. I’ve spent all night sitting in the packed waiting room or pacing around outside. Every once in a while, I’d get an update.
She doesn’t have a concussion.
They’re just waiting to do an x-ray.
