"Lilo!" Bay gasped before running up the next few steps to me. "What happened?...Are you okay?" She crouched next to me and grabbed a silk scarf out of her bag, she wadded it up and pressed it against the bleeding gash of the cut on my forehead.
"I tripped. I'm fine" I tried to smile it off but she looked at me dubiously.
"I phoned an ambulance as I left, they'll be here soon. Don't worry" She busied herself wiping blood off my cheeks and pushing my hair back from my face so it wouldn't get matted in blood. "I'll phone Harry once we get to the hospital"
"No!" I said, my voice was too loud for the quiet hall. "Don't tell Harry. Please. They can't come back from tour again just because I'm a klutz" I squeezed her hand. "I can't keep messing up their tours because I can't look after myself."
"Okay" she sighed. "I won't call him, but you have to let him know."
"Okay, I will"
"Good." She checked the time on her phone. "The ambulance will be here soon. I can't believe you were here for nearly an hour and nobody noticed!"
"People take the lift" I smiled weakly.
"Pah, yeah. Why didn't you?" She asked.
"I felt like a change of scenery"
"Well, next time look out of a window, don't throw yourself down the stairs" she smiled.
"Bay" I whispered. "What about the baby? I landed on my ribs"
She was silent as she looked at the time on her phone again. "I don't know Lilo" she said, her voice low and quiet. "We'll see what the paramedics say, but I'm sure it's fine." She squeezed my hand and looked up at the sound of the door opening below us.
"Hello?" a man's voice called.
"We're up here!" Bay yelled back. As she said that their fluorescent jackets came into view. There were two people, a large man, the source of the deep voice, with a large bald patch and trendy thick rimmed glasses and a woman, with her hair in bunches, tied up with blue fluffy bobbles came towards us.
"Here we are" the man smiled. "I'm Greg, this is Ellen. This must be our patient." He crouched down next to me and lifted s hand and the blood soaked scarf away from my head. "Nasty cut you've got there Ellen, slide me my bag please." Ellen pushed it over to him and came around behind him. Greg pulled out a white pad and placed it over the cut before securing it on with white tape that reminded me of masking tape. It was something a decorator would use. "Who do we have here then?" He asked, looking at me.
"Lilo Styles" Bay said before I could. "She fell down the stairs."
"Can you speak?" He asked me, after smiling and nodding at Bay.
"Yeah" I smiled. "I'm 7 months pregnant too. Will the baby be okay?" I asked.
"I'm not sure yet love, we'll see. It should be though now, where does it hurt? Besides that lovely gash you have on your head."
"My ribs, I landed on them when I fell."
"Okay, we'll get you up, I'll check your ribs in the van and then we'll get you to the hospital to stitch up that wound and check out your baby. You're going to be okay" He turned away from me and shoved his bloodied, blue rubber gloves into his bag. "Ellen, help me get her up please." Bay stood back as both paramedics stood next to me, one each side, and hooked their arms under my shoulders. "On three" Greg said. "One. Two. Three" They both lifted me up, I pushed up with my feet, and gasped as pain attacked my ribs and my ankle protested. "There's a wheel chair at the bottom of the steps, there's only a few, if you can get down them we'll get you to the ambulance." Greg said encouragingly.
We made our way down the last three steps and they carefully seated me into the wheel chair. "Lets get you to the hospital" It was the first thing Ellen said to me. They pushed me out of the complex and towards the large, yellow ambulance waiting on the drive. They pushed me up the ramp into the white, sterile back of the van, the fluorescent lights light the place up. They put my chair into position and started fussing about my head. Bay climbed in after Ellen jumped out and jogged around to the front. The engine started and the back doors were pulled shut. The ambulance started to move and the sirens blasted as we sped through the streets to the hospital.
I was wheeled into A&E and taken straight to a room. A nurse rushed in with ultra sound equipment whilst another nurse stitched up my forehead. "Once we've checked the baby we'll take a look at your ribs" the nurse smiled.
They rubbed the cold gel onto my stomach and then used the machine to check my child. I gripped the edge of the bed, automatically thinking the worst and beginning to panic when a loud thumping noise filled the curtained off room. "There we are" The nurse smiled. "That's the baby's heart beat. He or she is perfectly fine. There's no need to worry. Look" she twisted the screen around and showed me the grainy shape of my baby. "They're sucking their thumb" she smiled. I couldn't help but cry, knowing that my baby was okay made me feel so relieved. "It's alright hun, I know it's scary when you have a fall and you're pregnant. I remember tripping at 8 and a half months and being paranoid that my baby would be premature, he was fine, fortunately, and now he's a boisterous 16 year old. No harm done." She patted my hand and started to wipe off the goo. "Shelly, you can check her ribs now" she called.
Another nurse pushed the curtains aside to come in. She came over to me and prodded my ribs and felt them. She didn't say anything, just grunted if I whimpered in pain. Eventually she stopped prodding me and wrote on my notes. "They're not broken" she said. "Just bruised. You'll be fine." She left. She was in and out within 5 minutes.
"Lilo?" Bay called softly. She poked her head around the curtain and looked at me. "Everything okay? The nurse told me the baby is fine. That's great news." She stepped into the room and sat next to the bed.
"Yeah, my ribs aren't broken, just bruised and my ankle's twisted, I'll be able to walk out of here."
"That's great news" she smiled. "When are you going to ring Harry?"
"I'll tell him when he gets home." She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
"Why?"
"I don't want him to worry. There are no problems so he doesn't need to know just yet." I twisted the cotton blanket that I was lying on in my fingers as I waited for her to speak.
"Okay" she sighed. "The nurse said you can leave whenever, you need to check out or whatever and then go home and rest."
"Okay. Thanks." I slipped off the bed, wincing with pain, and grabbed my jacket and bag from the table next to the bed. "Let's go then. Then we need to talk" I gave her a look so she knew she had some explaining to do.
