"Don't talk. Breathe. In for four. With me. Ready? One. Two. Three. Four." Alana's voice was very calm. It was her father's voice. She had not known she had it until that moment. "Good. Hold it. One. Two. Three. Four. Now out. Slow. Good. You're okay. You're going to be okay. Don't move your arm. Don't try to move it. Let me look."
Above her, she was aware of Madison, standing very still now, staring down at her.
"What are you doing?" said Madison Cross. Her voice had gone high and strange. "Get away from her. What do you think you're doing? You're not on the squad. You're not even supposed to be down here. Get away from my—"
Alana did not look up.
"Somebody get me a towel," she said, to the frozen girls on the mat around her, in the same calm, flat, steady voice. "And a program. One of those printed programs. And some tape. Athletic tape. There's a roll in the first aid kit. The coach is bringing it. Go meet her. Go." She looked up, for the first time, straight at Tessa, the tall terrified junior with the dark ponytail, who was still standing with her hands over her mouth. "You. Tessa. Go."
Tessa went.
* * *
Afterward, a great many people would describe what happened next on the mats in front of the home bleachers at Cross Field, and most of them would get it slightly wrong. They would say that the new girl had taken charge. That was not quite right. Alana did not feel as though she was taking charge of anything. She felt as though she were doing a thing she had been taught to do, step by step, in order, the way you follow a recipe, and that the rest of the world had gone very far away and very quiet while she did it.
She did not touch the arm at first. That was the first thing her father had taught her, years ago, sitting cross-legged on the floor of a living room in Coronado with a roll of gauze and a magazine and his own big forearm laid out between them as a patient. Look before you touch. See what you're dealing with. Don't make it worse.
She looked.
Britney was holding her right arm against her stomach with her left hand. The forearm, just above the wrist, had a shape to it that forearms should not have, a slight bend, a lump under the skin on the back. Not through the skin. Alana let out a breath she had not known she was holding. No blood. The hand below it was pale but not white. The fingers were curled.
"Britney," she said. "Can you wiggle your fingers for me? Just a little. Don't move the wrist. Just the fingers."
Britney, gasping, wiggled them. All five.
"Good. That's really good. Can you feel me touching them?" Alana touched the tip of each finger, very lightly, one at a time. Britney nodded, her teeth clenched. "Good. Is it tingling? Numb? Anything feel like pins and needles?"
"No. It just—it hurts, it hurts so bad, oh my God—"
"I know. I know it does. I'm sorry. It's probably broken. You're going to need an X-ray. But your fingers are working and your hand is getting blood, and that's what matters right now. Okay? We're just going to keep it still till the paramedics get here. That's all. We're not going to straighten it. We're not going to pull on it. We're just going to keep it exactly how it is so it doesn't move." She looked up. "Towel?"
One of the varsity girls, a short girl with a pixie cut, thrust a white towel at her. Alana took it and folded it lengthwise, twice, into a long thick pad.
"Program?"
Another girl had run to the front row of the bleachers and come back with a printed program, folded in thirds, in navy and gold. Alana took it and opened it out flat and then rolled it lengthwise, tightly, and then flattened the roll, so that it made a stiff, narrow board about a foot long. She laid the folded towel along the top of it.
Tessa came running back across the track with a roll of white athletic tape in her hand and the assistant coach behind her with the big red first aid kit. Coach Williams arrived a second later, out of breath, her face gray, and dropped to her knees on the mat on the other side of Britney.
"What do we have?" said the coach.
"Closed fracture, I think," said Alana, without looking up. "Distal forearm. Just above the wrist. Deformity, no bleeding, no bone through the skin. Fingers move, sensation's good, color's okay. I'm going to splint it in the position we found it and support it till the EMTs get here. Is that okay?"
Coach Williams stared at her for a second.
"Yes," she said. "Yes. Go ahead. Do it." She turned her head and shouted over her shoulder, very loudly, to somebody up in the stands: "Call it in! Ambulance! Now!" And then, to the assistant: "Ice pack. Cold pack. Get one cracked."