Heartbreak Girl

Chapter Eleven: Injury

 Jeriah clenched his jaw so hard he thought it would break. "Now this may hurt a bit," the nurse said sweetly. Her grey hair braided in one singular braid as she gripped his broken arm. "One..." Jeriah squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the hand holding his uninjured arm. "Two..." Here it comes. "Three!"

Nothing happened. He opened his eyes just in time to see the old nurse place the bone against where it should have been. "Shit!" Jeriah spat through clenched teeth. Breathing through his teeth as the doctor placed his injured, and now very angry, arm inside of the mold for the cast.

Shaye held on tightly to his other hand, almost injuring the uninjured hand. Matching arm casts, every guy's dream. "How are you doing?" She asked in a nervous voice. Almost as if she was worried he would lash out and hit her for bringing him to the hospital against his wishes.

"Fine," Jeriah said grumpily as they encased his arm in the cast. They had checked him over for worse injuries. Besides an out of place knee, of which they popped into place at the count of one, other injuries were minor. Bruises that will hurt in the morning. But after nearly taking out a doctor with his fist, they had called Shaye in to make sure Jeriah didn't take another swing at a bystander.

She ran her tongue over her lip piercing as she rolled her tongue against the roof of her mouth. He remembered that he didn't go with her to get her lip pierced, and she regretted not bringing him with her. So much, that he was there for when she got her tongue pierced with a large metal ball. She played with her piercings when she was nervous.

"Why are you so nervous? I'm the one that has to explain this to my parents," Jeriah grumbled.

Pausing the rolling of the piercing in the center of her tongue to sigh. "I know. But I hate seeing you this way."

Jeriah's disgruntlement subsided to sympathy. "I know what you mean." He would lay his life on the line for her if she asked him to, without a second thought.

He turned back to the molding forming around his arm. He felt his arms tingling as if hot blisters were forming under the cast. Tightening his lips to keep from yelling at them to take it off, Jeriah took his hand out of Shaye's small pale ones and gripped the edge of the table. Take a little longer, won't you? Jeriah thought at the doctor. At last, the doctor told Jeriah to remove the arm from the molding.

Pulling away, Jeriah looked down at his arm, a white cast. "Would you like a color on the cast?" Jeriah shook his head and grabbed at his bag strap. "Alright. But no water on the cast or else it may lead to infection. Understand?"

Jeriah nodded as Shaye slung the bag over her shoulder before he could. She glared at him through narrowed eyes. Jeriah nodded, knowing that this was what was going to happen for a while.

Jeriah led the way out of the hospital, feeling a nervous Shaye staring at him. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, he saw Shaye staring down his limp with a worried expression.

He stopped once outside the sliding doors and turned to face her. "Hey," he said. Jeriah spread his arms, his injured arm weighing heavy on his body. She looked at him with tears brimming her black-rimmed eyes and silently moved into his arms, wrapping her arms around his waist. He wrapped his arms around her small body and tucked his head in the crook of her neck.

Breathing in, he could smell her lavender shampoo and cheap laundry detergent. She would hate it if he told her that, or maybe she would laugh and tell him to shove off. At that point, he didn't really know anything anymore. Not even himself.

People were streaming out of the hospital, giving them sideways glances as they passed. Under different circumstances, Jeraih would have taken the opportunity to whisper those three nerve-racking words he would have loved to hear coming from her pierced lips. But being in reality, he held her closer and relished the feeling of her arms around him.