Emma Carter slammed her hand against the pavement so hard the skin split and she didn't even feel it because the pain tearing through her ankle was so savage, so sudden that everything else went white. She couldn't stand, couldn't breathe. And when the man across the street walked out his front door and said, "Can I carry you?" The sound her ankle made was the kind you don't forget. It wasn't loud.
It was small, actually a soft, wet pop that seemed to come from inside her body rather than from any recognizable place. But the pain that followed it was enormous. It moved through Emma Carter's leg in a single violent wave from her ankle all the way up to the base of her jaw, and it knocked her straight to the ground. She went down on both knees first. Her palms hit the concrete half a second later.
Her canvas bag swung off her shoulder and landed sideways on the pavement, spilling her water bottle, her paperback, and three loose pens onto Maple Street like evidence of a crime. Her headphones yanked from her ears. The soft acoustic playlist she'd been listening to, the one she kept specifically because it asked nothing of her cut out. And then there was just the sound of the wind moving through the copper-colored leaves overhead, and Emma Carter sitting on the sidewalk with her eyes squeezed shut, her palms scraped open, and every carefully constructed piece of her carefully constructed life suddenly completely irrelevant. "Breathe," she told herself.
"You are fine." It was the same thing she'd been telling herself for 3 years. She was very good at it. But when she opened her eyes and looked down at her left ankle, already beginning to swell against the narrow strap of her shoe, she understood that this was not one of those situations where fine was going to be enough. She tried to stand.
Her ankle buckled the moment. It accepted any weight, and the sharp white flare of pain that shot up her leg was so severe that she made a sound she hadn't made since she was a child. Involuntary, unguarded, raw, half gasp, half sob. The kind of sound that escapes a person before they can stop it. The kind of sound Emma Carter had spent three years training herself not to make.
She sat back down on the pavement, pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and breathed very carefully through her nose. Around her, the street was quiet. It was a Tuesday afternoon in late September, the kind of afternoon that existed in a soft amber pocket between the school rush and the dinner hour. Most houses on Maple Street were buttoned up. Their occupants tucked away behind doors and routines.
The street was empty. Emma looked down at her bag. Her phone was somewhere inside it, probably pinned under the water bottle. She reached for it, and the small shift in her position sent another surge of pain through her ankle that made her eyes water. She blinked.
She did not cry. You are fine, she thought again. Call a car. Get yourself home. Put ice on it.
You've had bad sprains before. She hadn't actually not since junior year of college when she'd come down wrong at the edge of the dance studio and spent two weeks in a boot. But the memory of competently handling that injury was enough to keep her from the edge of panic. She was a competent woman. She had always been a competent woman.
She would locate her phone, summon a ride, and be home within 20 minutes. She reached for her bag again. Hey. The voice came from across the street low direct. No particular alarm in it, but moving fast.
Emma looked up. A man was crossing Maple Street toward her, and he was moving with the unhurried urgency of someone who has seen enough emergencies to know that running doesn't always help, but stopping definitely doesn't either. He was tall, not imposingly so, but tall enough that she registered it with broad shoulders under a faded green flannel shirt, dark skin, and hair that needed a cut in a way that suggested he'd been meaning to get to it for a while. He was carrying something in one hand. It took her a second to recognize it as a small first aid kit.
Red plastic, the kind kept in a kitchen drawer. He'd already had it. He'd grabbed it on the way out the door. Behind him, the front door of the house across the street stood open. A little girl, maybe five or six, with the same dark hair and wide, serious eyes was standing in the doorway in a pink shirt, watching.
I heard that, the man said, crouching down about 2 ft away from her. Not too close. The first aid kit resting on his knee. Your ankle? Yes.
Emma felt heat move into her face for no good reason. I found a crack. He looked at the sidewalk, then at her ankle, then back at her face. His eyes were dark brown, and they held the particular quality she'd come to associate with a certain kind of man. Not calm exactly, but steadied.
The kind of steady that comes from having had to be steady for someone else for a long time. How bad does it feel? She paused. “I tried to stand up.” “Don’t do that again.”
He wasn't unkind about it. Just matter of fact. Can you move your foot at all? Rotate it. She tried.
The effort produced another sharp spike of pain and a small sound. She immediately swallowed. “Okay.” He set the first aid kit down and opened it. That's a pretty clear answer.
Emma watched him pull out a compression bandage. Look at it. And then seemed to decide that wasn't the immediate priority. He looked up and found her watching him. And for a moment, neither of them said anything.
My name's Ethan, he said. Ethan Hail. I live across the street, Emma Carter. She paused. I walk this street every day.
I know. I've seen you. He said it without any particular weight to it. Not flirtatious, not uncomfortable, just factual. Then he looked at her ankle again.
You need ice on that before anything else. And you're not getting to your feet on your own. Nearest place is my house. That's about 30 ft. Emma looked toward his house.
She looked at the little girl still standing in the doorway. She looked at the quiet empty street in both directions. "Or I can call someone for you," Ethan added. "Either way is fine," she thought about her apartment. It was six blocks away.