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Rachel's total life implosion came about in this way: one Wednesday morning in early April, she tripped and broke her ankle.

She didn’t remember falling. One minute she’d been rushing to finish her drill on the agility ladder, and the next, she was going down hard. Her scream covered the sound of the snapping bone—a sickening little snick—and she found herself lying flat on her back on the gym mats, right leg elevated, foot lolling strangely. Somehow her foot had looped through the ladder on the way down, and now she rolled on the floor in a snarl of straps and plastic rungs.

This couldn’t be happening.

Coach Donovan whooped. Then, there he was, dropping down beside her, so close that she could feel the heat radiating off him. One of his giant hands cupped her calf to stabilize her leg while the other hovered in the air, poised to intercede if necessary.

“I think I’m hurt,” Rachel said, alarmed to hear her voice wobbling strangely. Not that her ankle actually hurt, though. Not exactly. It just felt wrong somehow.

The buzzer went off across the room to signal the end of the final round. If she were to have even a prayer of showering and getting into her classroom before her students showed up, she needed to pack her gym bag and jump into the car immediately. Instead, she lay writhing on the floor of the gym tangled in the agility ladder, leg cradled awkwardly by her coach, heart still hammering from the final cardio push.

Rachel turned her head to the side and saw a set of feet approaching. She looked up and beheld her sister’s face, dripping sweat. “What happened to you?” Ann asked.

“She rolled her ankle,” Donovan said.

Rachel felt thankful that she and Ann worked out with Donovan privately instead of as part of his workout classes. This scenario was embarrassing enough with only two witnesses.

Rachel winced as the pads of Donovan’s fingers pressed against her foot to keep it from listing to starboard. She blinked through the mist and reached a hand to swipe back gobs of clumpy red hair from her forehead. “I hope it isn’t sprained,” she moaned.

Ann grunted dispassionately, using her teeth to pull away the hook and loop strips of her boxing gloves. She pulled off the gloves and swiped her forearms across her face. She leaned down to take a closer look at Rachel’s ankle. “Yikes.”

“Ann,” Rachel gasped, “do something.” Although what exactly she wanted her sister to do, she wasn’t sure.

“There are cold packs in the mini fridge in the office,” Donovan said.

Ann jogged away and Donovan tightened his hands around Rachel’s leg. He narrowed his eyes. “Lie still.”

Rachel curled an arm over her eyes. “This is the worst,” she moaned. She could feel her heartbeat everywhere: behind her eyeballs, down her legs, through her toes, and in the tips of her fingers. “Let go of my foot for a minute.” Cautiously, she rotated her elevated foot in tiny spirals, breathing a sigh of relief when it moved. Surely if she could move it, it couldn’t be too badly hurt.

Ann reappeared, threaded her arm around Donovan’s, and pressed an ice pack against the quickly-swelling ankle.

“I think it’s OK,” Rachel said, ignoring the looks that Donovan and Ann gave her. She looked away and concentrated on keeping her breathing even. “Let me see if I can stand.”

“You’ll have to get untangled first,” Ann said. She squatted and began to tug at the straps to the agility ladder. “Scoot your hips up,” she told Rachel.

Donovan shook his head. “I don’t know, Rachel. If your ankle’s broken, you could do some real damage by trying to walk.” He moved the flat of his hand against the sole of her foot to provide further stability. “Just stay put for a few minutes until we see if—”

“I’m fine.” As Rachel struggled up to her elbows, her arms trembled beneath her. “It’s not broken.” Her sore abs convulsed in protest, and she subsided against the mats, panting slightly.

Ann worked the rest of the ladder free and pulled it off to the side, straightening it out neatly before coming back to stand over her sister, hands on hips.

“You should still have an X-ray,” Ann said, frowning.

“There’s a walk-in clinic down the road.” Donovan squatted back on his heels. “But it’ll be closed at this hour.”

“I don’t need that. I’m fine.”

“So,” Donovan said to Ann, ignoring Rachel completely. “X-rays?”

Donovan scooped his arms under Rachel, lifting her. She could no more have stopped herself from squawking than she could have reversed the flow of time. This was to remain etched in her memory as one of the least dignified moments of her life.

Given Rachel’s life, that was saying something.

~*~

The sweep of early-morning air felt divine against Rachel’s clammy face. Heavy with humidity as it was, it still felt blessedly cool when compared with the swampy atmosphere inside the gym. She closed her eyes and savored a moment of stillness as she and Donovan waited for Ann to pull the truck around.

Donovan hitched Rachel higher against his perfect chest, and she felt herself blushing. Had this been a romance novel, one of her arms would have been flung around Donovan’s neck, while the other would have rested against his strong chest. Instead, Rachel’s arms had been near her sides when he’d picked her up, and now they lay folded over her stomach. One of her shoulders dug into his chest. In a book, of course, Donovan would not have been so sweaty, and Rachel would have been less frazzled. Her hair would not have been this angry shade of red, nor would her cheeks have been as splotchy.

She prayed for Ann to hurry up with the truck—or for a crack in the sidewalk to open and swallow her completely, putting an end to this humiliating experience.

Ann pulled to the curb, hopped out, and jogged around to hold the passenger door open while Donovan set Rachel in the cab. He stepped back, and Ann draped a hoodie over Rachel’s torso and tucked the ends around her shoulders. Startled, Rachel realized she was shivering. This was strange considering how long it generally took her to cool down after a Coach Donovan workout. The arrival of April meant that even in early mornings, Florida temperatures quickly gave way to pre-summer heat. Before sunrise, Rachel often drove home from the gym with the A/C on max.

She definitely should not be shivering.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, light edged up the eastern horizon, tinging the sky with pale pinks and blues. The clouds, soft and pillowy, had gone slightly gold around the edges. It would have been a perfect moment. Perfect, except that Rachel’s life was over. She glared down at her swollen limb. “This is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened,” she said.

“Really?” Ann checked her mirrors and flicked on the turn signal. “You think this is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened?”

“Well, OK. Maybe not the stupidest. But it’s close. People are supposed to break their bones when they’re little kids, not when they’re thirty-four years old.” Rachel was rendered momentarily speechless as the truck bounced over a speed bump. “Ow.”

“There’s a bottle of aspirin in the glove compartment,” Ann told her, “but I think it’s mostly disintegrated.”

“Disintegrated?”

“It’s been in here for a while.”

Rachel flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out a clear plastic bottle filled with a clumpy white powder. She switched on the overhead dome light to check for an expiration date but found the label too cracked and faded to be helpful.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked. “Snort it?” She shook the bottle. Most of the powder stayed glued to the sides.

Ann puffed out a breath, her patience with Rachel’s injury obviously extending only so far. “Wait until we get to the hospital, then. You’ll only have to pay eighteen dollars a pill or whatever.”

“Good point.” Rachel snapped off the cap and stuck an index finger inside to poke at the clumps. “It’s probably not wise to keep mysterious bottles of white powder in your truck,” she advised her sister. “If you ever get pulled over and searched, you’re going to have some explaining to do.”

Ann ignored this.

Rachel continued. “Police officers always have their eyes open for stuff like this, you know. That’s because random traffic stops often turn up all sorts of other crimes. Like how they caught Ted Bundy during a routine traffic stop.”

“Thank you for the lesson in criminology.”

“All I’m saying is that maybe the Memento Killer will run a few red lights on the way to visit his next victim, and then we’ll all be able to sleep better at night.”

“You and your killers,” Ann said, shaking her head.

“You really should take crime more seriously,” Rachel told her. “One day you might find my advice helpful.”