Ramona POV
"Jackson, Ramona, come down here!" DJ shouts up the stairs while I'm dancing around my room for the fun of it. Whatever she needs must be important, so I turn off my music and leave my room, closing the door behind me.
Jackson and I come out of our rooms at the exact same time, colliding and falling down the stairs, entangling out limbs together. When we reach the bottom, I realize that I'm fine, no damage done to me. However, the same cannot be said for Jackson, who is clutching his wrist in pain. "DJ, come quick!" I yell while disentangling myself from him.
"Ramona, what's wrong?" DJ asks me in a worried voice, somehow not seeing Jackson behind me, clutching his wrist.
"Jackson and I fell down the stairs, and he hit his wrist and I think we need to go to the hospital for an x-ray. " I say, pointing at the injured Jackson behind me for emphasis.
"Oh my Lanta! Ramona, get my purse. Call Steph and Kimmy, tell them to meet us at the hospital as soon as possible, and help Jackson to the car please," DJ exclaims worriedly.
After relaying the message to Kimmy and Steph, I run to the kitchen for DJ's purse. Grabbing the whole thing, I quickly locate the keys and bring them to the front door. Lucky for me, the car is parked out front, so just as soon as I figure out how to get Jackson up off the ground without further injuring him, we can go to the car.
"Can you give your bad hand to me and stand up, using your good hand for balance?" I ask him, extending my hand out to meet his.
"Okay. Can we get this over with?" Jackson says, wincing in pain as he slowly stands. Reaching into my pocket, I find the keys and unlock the car doors, yelling to DJ that we're leaving.
Slowly but surely, I get Jackson buckled into the passenger seat. "Whew!" I say, wiping my brow for added effect while buckling into the backseat.
"Ramona. My wrist hurts," he complains like I could fix that. I had to roll my eyes at that; Jackson knows that's out of my control, and I tell him that.
DJ enters the car, still in her frenzied state. "Ramona, what did Steph and Kimmy say?" she asks me.
"They said that after Max and Tommy's classes at the community center are done, they'll meet us there with Fernando and Steve." I said.
"Oh good. I'm going to need them there for moral support. Let's get to the hospital, kids." she says in her normal tone of voice.
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*At the hospital*
The emergency room is packed, so Jackson and I have to share a seat. Why DJ wouldn't let him sit with her, I will never know, but this is very uncomfortable. Do I like him? Yes. Is this uncomfortable and awkward? Yes. I really hope that the doctor comes in here to see him soon, so that I don't have to sit like this anymore. As soon as I think it, a nurse comes in and says, "Jackson Fuller, follow me." Finally, that took long enough. Oh crap, now I have to get up so that he can. "Deej, can you help me out here?" I say, while pointing to Jackson, still sitting on me. "Oh sure, honey, " she says, gently pulling Jackson off of me so that we can go into the room with him.
Following the nurse's lead, the three of us walk into a small, green room with a sign that says: WAIT HERE FOR X-RAY MACHINE. Immediately, a nice lady with pink hair comes up to us and says, "Jackson, right? My name is Renee, and I will be doing your x-ray today. Come with me while they sit over here, okay?" Without another word out of us, she leads Jackson to the other room for x-rays.
Kimmy, Steph, Tommy, Fernando, Max, and Steve all enter the waiting room, joining us on the large couch. Max comes running over to me, showing me the new book he got while while waiting for Tommy to finish his class. "That's awesome, Max! Why don't you sit over there and read it?" I say while pointing at a seat a few feet away. "Okay, Mona." Max says while running over there to read. Gosh, this kid is seriously obsessed with reading.
While Max is reading his book and Tommy is sitting next to him, playing with his toys, the adults and I are sitting on the couch talking. "I hope Jackson's okay. Especially with football season right around the corner, this is not the time to be injured." Steve says.
Before he can go into detail about one of his wrestling injuries, Steph says, "Yeah, I agree. Though I have a feeling that Jackson might have broken his wrist if it's taking that long to get x-rays. I mean, when I broke my foot, the x-ray took what seemed like days, but in reality was an hour."
"I don't know. I mean, he's only been in there for x-rays for 15 minutes." I say.
"Ramona, could you please tell us what exactly happened that caused you and Jackson to fall down the stairs?" DJ asks, receiving an eager nod from the others.
"When you called us for whatever it was you needed, Jackson and I left our rooms at the exact same time and ended up falling down the stairs together. When we reached the bottom, Jackson was clutching his wrist. And you know what happened from there." I said, gesturing to the x-ray room, where it appeared Jackson was getting ready to leave.
"If you guys could just wait here for a moment, we'll try to get a doctor to see you shortly." Renee says, bringing another patient into the x-ray room.
"Jackson Fuller, Dr. Vasquez is ready to see you." we hear about 5 minutes later, prompting both my biological and non-biological family to get up and follow the woman down the hall.
Walking over to the room where we are all supposed to be seated, there are 2 chairs and the big area where the patient is supposed to sit. Right off the bat, DJ claims a chair, and Max sits on top of her. He barely even noticed that we were moving, he was so enthralled in that book. Kimmy races to sit in the other chair, Tommy sitting on top of her. Fernando, Steph, and Steve choose to stand between Kimmy and DJ. "Where am I supposed to sit?" I ask concerned.
"Just get up there with Jackson; there should be enough room." DJ says, pointing up to the patient area. "Okay."I say, hopping up and helping Jackson up. Surprisingly, we all fit into the room without it feeling too claustrophobic.
The door opens, and a man comes in, saying, "Good morning. My name is Dr. Michael Vasquez, and I will be taking care of Jackson for the next few months, as it appears from his x-rays that he has sprained his wrist. There will be no surgery required, but he will need a brace for the next 6 weeks. Sadly, he also cannot participate in gym class or play sports for the next couple of months. " The next 6 weeks? Football season starts in 2 weeks and I don't think you can play football in a cast. Looking at Jackson, I see that he has the horror-stricken expression on his face. Football is his thing, he's not called Golden-Toe Fuller for no reason.
Dr. Vasquez leaves, getting the possible colors for Jackson's brace. Seeing the tears already building up and knowing that he probably doesn't want anyone to see him like that, but can't be left alone, I ask the others, "Can you guys please leave us alone for a minute?"
"Ok, honey." DJ agrees, dragging everyone else out to the waiting area, much to their dismay, as it looks pretty cramped in there again.
As soon as they leave the room, Jackson's tears start falling, so I wipe them away and he says, "Ramona, how am I supposed to be Golden-Toe Fuller if I can't even play football? A couple of months from now, the season will have already started, and I'll be stuck on the sidelines- or worse, on the bleachers." He keeps talking, but his sobs are too loud to decipher what he says.
Grabbing my phone, I say, "Hey, Jackson, you have to stop beating yourself up over this. It's just as much my fault as it is yours that this happened, and for that I am sorry, but you're still an awesome friend and brother, regardless of whether or not you play football. You do know that, right?" His tears slow down a bit, and I instinctively give him a hug.
"Thanks, Ramona. I don't know what I would do without you." he says, trying to collect himself before the others come back in.
"Anytime, Jax. Now, I think Dr. Vasquez is going to come in here soon for your brace, so you should probably decide on the color of it. I personally recommend the color pink." I say, teasing him.
"Maybe next time... What about neon blue? Or black?" Jackson says, joking along with me. DJ would not approve of a black colored cast, but he could get a neon pink one.
Noticing that the poster behind me has the possible colors of a cast/brace, I point to it and say, "I personally think the neon green would be a better color than the previously suggested pink for you to have. After all, it goes really well with the school colors and you could be seen from space. The aliens could think you are one of them."
Jackson nods, agreeing with me. "Yeah, let's do that one. I think the others can come back in now." he says, prompting me to text Mom that they can all reenter and that his brace will be neon green.
After everyone gets resettled, Dr. Vasquez comes in with Renee, and the two of them get Jackson's brace on, not even batting an eyelash when he told them that he wanted neon green. The brace took around 30 minutes to put on and when he was done, DJ was given a pamphlet with the things Jackson can and cannot do, along with certain guidelines and predicted timelines that Dr. Vasquez reviewed with her.
When the brace is on and pamphlet overview completed, we decide to take the elevator down to the parking garage. Go figure, they could fit in everybody but Jackson and I in that elevator, so I was, yet again, alone with him. "I think you need to be thanked in advance, because these next couple of months, I'm probably going to need you a lot more than normal. Plus, I think my mom is calling the school to tell them what happened and request that we get put in the same classes." he says, seeming embarrassed that he's going to be needing help.
"Hey, I'm happy to help you out. After all, you're my best friend, Jax. Now, can you press the button for the elevator or are we going to stand here forever, leaving our parents to think we were abducted by aliens." I say truthfully and teasingly.
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I'm going to stop typing now because my arms hurt. I had to retype 1915 words.
~Ry