By the tenth unanswered call, Sienna remembered her bestie’s dad was chief of surgery at UCLA.
“Emma?” Her voice was barely there. “Can you… can you call your dad? I think I’m bleeding out at Mitchell Medical and they won’t… they won’t see me…”
She blacked out mid–sentence.
When she came to, Dr. Chen was finishing up her chart. Emma was slumped in the plastic chair, looking like she’d been ugly–crying for hours.
“Babe, what the actual fuck?” Emma squeezed her hand. “You’re literally dying in Ryan’s family hospital and I had to get my dad to drive across town to save you? Where was your precious boyfriend?”
She was spiraling now. “This makes no sense! Remember when you had that panic attack sophomore year? Ryan made them call in like six different specialists just to make sure you were okay!”
Sienna remembered. He’d paced the waiting room for four hours over what turned out to be caffeine jitters from too much pre–calc cramming.
That Ryan was gone. Had been for months.
Emma’s Apple Watch started buzzing. “Fuck, I’m supposed to be at brunch with my mom in twenty. But I’m coming back tonight with In–N–Out and you’re gonna spill everything about what’s going on.”
After Emma bounced, Sienna could hear the nurse gossip echoing down the hallway.
“Oh my God, did you see Ryan Mitchell? Dude won’t leave that girl’s room.”
“Right? She’s got like a scraped elbow and he’s acting like she needs life support. Been camping out there all week.”
Meanwhile Sienna was peeling off her own surgical tape and forcing down mystery meat from the cafeteria.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
20:13 C
From Best Friends to Ratraual. FOL
Chapter 6
The day she got discharged happened to be her eighteenth birthday.
Her parents were stuck in Singapore on business, but they’d hired the most extra event planner in all of Los Angeles. The backyard looked like something out of Pinterest – fairy lights, a dessert wall, professional photographers, the whole nine yards.
Sienna was doing her hostess thing in a champagne–colored mini dress when she spotted Ryan and Nina coming through the side gate.
He said something to Nina and got her settled at one of the cocktail tables with some other girls, then headed straight for Sienna.
“Babe, you look amazing,” he said, going for his usual move where he’d pull her close by her waist.
She sidestepped him smoothly.
“Seriously? You’re still being weird?” That frustrated tone was creeping into his voice. “Look, I get that you’re pissed about the hospital thing, but you have to understand – Nina literally has nobody. Your parents fly you to Switzerland when you have a cold. She doesn’t have that safety net.”
“I’m not being weird.”
Relief washed over his face as he pulled out a small Cartier box. “Thank God. I was starting to think you hated me or something. Got you that bracelet you were stalking on Instagram…”
Sienna barely looked at it before setting it on the nearest table.
Ryan’s smile faltered. “Okay, what’s actually going on? You’ve been acting like I don’t exist for weeks and I’m losing my fucking mind trying to figure out what I did.”
She was about to end his suffering when chaos erupted from the main party area.
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
Screaming. The sound of very expensive things being destroyed.
Sienna rushed over to find her perfectly curated dessert wall collapsed in a heap of macarons and shattered glass. The balloon arch was deflated and twisted. Her custom three–tier cake – designed to look like the London skyline since she was leaving for study abroad – was completely demolished.
Nina stood in the middle of the wreckage, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m so sorry!” she sobbed. “I was just trying to get a better angle for a selfie with the dessert wall and I backed up too far and knocked into something and it all just started falling!”
20:13 O
From Rost Triandan
Chapter 6
Sienna stared at the ruins. Months of her parents planning, thousands of dollars, completely fucked.
“Nina, are you kidding me right n-”
“Whoa, hey.” Ryan immediately stepped between them, hands up like he was defusing a bomb. “It was clearly an accident. That’s the first time she come to this kind of party – she doesn’t know how
these events work. She’s already upset enough – don’t pile on.”
20:13 C
