The Sinner's Saint

LET GO

Stone shifts to broken gravel, one of the old paths where the edge has crumbled away into the grass, and her foot drops where there should be something and her ankle rolls immediately. It's not a bad roll but it's enough to throw her completely off balance with no time to think.

Her arm shoots out on instinct, like her body is trying to save itself, her wrist meets the ground and the impact travels straight up through it like a current, sharp and complete. Nothing like the ankle, in a bad way. She knows immediately that something has gone wrong. With a fucked wrist, her shoulder follows and her head hits the stone border at the edge, not hard enough to knock her out but hard enough that the world goes blurry for a second and she just lies there, against cold stone, waiting for her vision to come back.

It comes back slowly. When she tries to push herself up the pain in her wrist prevents her immediately. The pain is so specific that she has to go still and her arm drops back against the ground. She just lies there on her back in the quiet. Reminiscing five minutes ago when she had all good limbs.

Now her ankle is the least of her problems.

"Okay," she says, mostly to herself. There's no one around and barely any lights so the shadow of an older woman with a dog scares her and the lady herself. The lady slows when she spots Alex, takes one look, and says in a very practical tone,

"Up you get, baby. Let's get you to the hospital." She doesn't ask too many questions and Alex doesn't argue.

⚬⚬⚬
The hospital is too bright after the dark outside. She sits on the bed and answers questions with the bare minimum,

yes.
No.
I fell.
I don't know.

While they wrap her arm from wrist to elbow and strap her ankle and shine a light in her eyes. There's a dull throbbing in her head that gets worse every time she moves too quickly. They ask if there's someone they can call and she realises her phone isn't here. She left it at home.

For a second it feels like that the thing that's finally going to make her cry, which she finds ridiculous. There's something about being stuck in a hospital bed somewhere you don't know, with a wrapped arm and a strapped ankle and no way to reach anyone that makes her feel like an actual kid.

There are only two numbers she actually knows off the top of her head, the owner of one lives too far away to make it so she gives the other one to the nurse and watches them leave with it.

KENDALL
She isn't worried at first because there's no reason to be. Alex had a free day, which means personal work then Lev and Lev means she disappears for a few hours and comes back like nothing happened. It's a whole thing. So when the door opens and it's Lev, Seb and Niko without her she doesn't even look up properly.

"What, did you forget her?" Lev is already scanning the room.

"Where is Alex?" Niko asks looking around too.

"With you?" She points at Lev. The way she says it makes it clear she already knows the answer isn't yes, and she's already not loving that. The silence of the boys confirms it. She's off the couch and already putting her shoes on before anyone says anything else.
"She left hours ago. I figured she went to yours." She grabs her jacket and grabs her piece putting it in her waist holster. "Nobody tracked her?" They did track her. Thats why they ended up there.

"Great," she says. "Cool. This is fine." They get outside and split up. Lev and Seb take one direction, Kendall and Niko take the other, and the call stays open between all of them because Kendall can't risk having another person going missing. She keeps track of who's where.

"Was something going on with her today?" she asks randomly everyone stops functioning for a second.

"She had a rough day."