Ian waited until the others returned to campus for curfew before visiting Emily, just to be safe. Settling into the chair beside her bed, he reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. "What were you thinking, Em?" he murmured, "A Produnova Vault?" He shook his head. "You weren't ready for something that difficult. Why did you do it?"
"You didn't see the way she was looking at me," Emily insisted, "Like she was gloating, waiting for me to fail. I had to show her she was wrong..."
"You risked everything because of Chloe Donaghy?" he asked incredulously. "Emily, that's..."
"I did it because of you!" she interrupted.
For a moment, he just stared at her, mouth hanging open slightly. "What?"
"You were all over her," she scoffed. "I mean, I know you've got a history, but God..."
"Emily, you're being ridiculous!"
"I broke my fucking neck, Ian!" she shouted. "I think I'm allowed to be!"
"We just talked about this, Emily!" he snapped. "We just had a conversation about jealousy and being mature and reasonable!"
"Yeah, when it involves someone you haven't been involved with," she retorted.
"I never said I was involved with Chloe," he insisted.
"But you were, weren't you? You fucked her too, didn't you?" she demanded.
"Goddammit, Emily! My past with Chloe has nothing to do with you or your accident!" He let out a long slow exhale through his nose, trying to calm himself. "Let's just take a moment, be reasonable..." He reached out to stroke her cheek.
She batted away his hand at the last moment. "Fuck you," she hissed. "It has everything to do with it!"
"Watch your tone, Emily," he warned. "I don't have to sit here and take this, let you blame me for your own poor decisions."
"Fine! Leave! If you're not going to be a supportive fiance, then you can go straight to hell!" she shouted.
He scoffed, rolled his eyes. "Emily, please, be..."
"Be what, Ian? Be reasonable? Obedient? The perfect 1950's housewife you wish I was? Leave, Ian! Or I swear to God I will have you kicked out of this hospital room..."
"Fine." He tossed his hands in the air. "Be as unreasonable as you like!" With that, he stalked off, slamming the door behind him.
Emily counted to a hundred, waiting for him to be out of earshot, waiting for her angry racing pulse to slow. Then, still fuming with anger, counted a hundred more. Still seething, she grabbed her pillow, pressed it to her face, and screamed into it with all her pent up frustration and fear and anger.
There was a tentative knock on the door and, thinking it was Ian come to grovel, Emily tossed the pillow aside and readied herself to lash out, but instead found a doctor peering into the room looking rather concerned and Emily couldn't help but wonder just how much of the argument she'd overheard.
"Is now a bad time?" the doctor asked with that tone that all the doctors and nurses had been using with her – the 'kid gloves' tone, like somehow having a broken neck made her fragile.
Emily shook her head, but didn't comment on the tone, even though she'd rather eat scissors than hear one more person talk to her like she was four.
"Sounds like you've had quite a day..." the doctor remarked, coming into the room and glancing at her chart. Obviously, she had heard at least some of the argument...
"You can say that again," she said with a humourless laugh, falling back into her pattern of sarcasm and deadpan humour when all else failed her.
The doctor extended a hand for her to shake, offering a warm maternal smile. "I'm Dr. Blake – you can call me Alex. I'm the lead orthopod, I'll be in charge of your case because of the complex nature of your injury and the location of the fracture. Rest assured that our hospital is a pioneer in spinal healing and reconstruction – you're in the best possible hands."
"Great!" Emily exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "When can I get out of here?"
"It's not quite that simple, I'm afraid," Alex said gently. "You were extremely lucky, Miss Prentiss – you could have been paralyzed for life, if not killed..."
"But?" Emily prompted, sensing that there was more to her statement.
Alex sighed. "But your CT scan shows no signs of spinal cord injury."
"That's good, right?"
"It's very good. As far as cervical fractures go," she conceded. "Your C5 is fractured, but I'm hopeful that it will heal up without surgical intervention."
"Great," Emily repeated. "So, if you could just sign the discharge papers..."
"Not so fast," Alex said with a click of her tongue. "To ensure that your spine heals properly, you will have to wear a cervical collar for the next six to eight weeks."
"But..." she started to protest.
As if reading her mind, Alex said, "That mean absolutely no gymnastics."
"I can't just miss two months of training!"
"You can if the alternative is a lifetime of paralysis," she countered. "You need to take this recovery process very seriously, Emily. That means wearing the brace, going to physio, and staying out of the gym.
Emily heaved a weary sigh. "Could this day get any worse?"
Alex chose to ignore that. "It says in your chart that your mother couldn't be reached when you were admitted?"
She rolled her eyes. Of course at a moment like this, her mother was MIA...she probably didn't even care that Emily was in the worst pain of her life, facing the worst possible outcome. "She's in Paris. But I'm sixteen, I can..."
"What about your father?" Alex pressed. "Wasn't he just here?"
"No!" she exclaimed, a little too loudly. "No – that was my...coach." She emphasized the last word deliberately.
Alex nodded slowly. "He seems like a real hard ass."
Emily gave a small snort of laughter. "You could say that..." She let out a shaky breath, chewed a thumb nail anxiously afraid that Alex knew more than she was letting on...
"Listen, Emily," Alex said slowly, reading her obvious anxiety like a book. "If there's ever anything you'd like to talk about..."
"I, umm," she stammered, "I'm actually really tired, if I could please just rest for awhile..."
Alex nodded, brow creased with concern.
