My leg is broken!

Kirby knew it the moment consciousness came back to her. Even before she opened her eyes, she had to realize that the terrible pain shooting through her lower left leg could be caused by nothing less than a broken bone.

Then she did open her eyes, and she wished that she hadn’t.

“Kirby! Oh, Kirby!” Nancy was bent over her, her face white with terror. “Kirby, are you all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right,” Kirby managed to gasp.

“Oh, no, Kirby!” Nancy couldn’t seem to say anything but her sister’s name. Her eyes were wide and horrified, and her face was so huge and close that Kirby longed to reach up and shove her away.

“Get back now! Give her air!” another voice said sharply. Nancy’s face disappeared and was replaced by one of the teachers’.

“Hang on now, dear,” she said to Kirby. “Somebody’s getting the nurse. You’ll be all right.”

“I won’t be all right!” Kirby cried. “It’s my leg! My leg!”

She knew she was screaming the words. They were one great shriek inside her. For some reason, though, she couldn’t get the sound of them out past her lips. She was aware suddenly that a whole crowd had gathered around her. From her position on the floor, a million knees and ankles seemed to surround her.

The teacher was ordering people back.

“Give her air!” she was saying. “We don’t want her to faint again.”

Then a man’s voice said, “Clear the way and let me through here.”

The people who had not moved at the teacher’s request now began to do so. A moment later, Kirby found Tom Duncan on his knees beside her.

“Don’t you know better,” he asked, “than to try to dance on a narrow landing? And then to try to fly! Did you think you were the Sugar Plum Fairy?”

“The Cecchetti exams—” Kirby whispered, “Ballet South—the scholarship—”

“Easy does it, Kirby.” Mr. Duncan’s voice was gentle. “We’ll worry about those things later.”

His hand closed over hers, and Kirby grasped it tightly. It was a strong hand, and when she gripped it hard the pain that surged through her seemed to lessen. She closed her eyes and clung to the hand as she was lifted onto a stretcher and into an ambulance and all the way to the hospital.

Her mother was there when they brought her back from having her leg set. The anesthetic they had given her had not yet worn off completely.

“My leg—” Kirby murmured, and Elizabeth said, “It’s broken. They’ve set it now, sweetheart, and it’s going to mend just fine.”

Her face kept rippling back and forth like a flag in a windstorm. Her voice seemed to come from a long distance away.

“But what if it doesn’t?” asked Kirby. Her own voice was a whisper, and her eyes were closed before she could hear her mother’s answer.

She asked the question again in the morning when Dr. Collins, the orthopedic surgeon who had set her leg, came in on his rounds.

“What if my leg doesn’t mend?” she said.

“What a silly question,” the doctor said lightly. “This is a simple break. I set fifty like it each year. People your age mend easily. You should be hopping around as good as new in a few months.” He leaned over the bed to examine Kirby’s foot, which was sticking out of the open end of the cast. “Wiggle your toes, please.”

“But will I be able to dance?” Kirby persisted.

“I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.” The doctor leaned closer. “Now, stop asking questions for a minute. I want you to wiggle your toes.”

“I am,” Kirby said.

“Listen to me, Kirby.” The doctor was beginning to get impatient. “I want to see your toes moving.”

“Then look at them!” Kirby was impatient, too. She fought against the pain and tightened the muscles of her foot. “There, see? I am—I am wiggling them.” She paused, disconcerted by the look on the doctor’s face. “I am—aren’t I?”

“Press your toes down,” Dr. Collins told her. “I know it’s painful, but you really need to show me that you can do it.”

“I am pressing them,” Kirby said. “You mean, they’re not moving?” A cold shaft of fear shot through her. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Other people with broken legs can move their toes.”

“Well, yes. Most of them can.” The doctor’s round face was creased with a frown. “This is a bit unusual, but it may mean nothing. The nerves in your leg may just be numbed by the shock of the break.” He patted her good leg reassuringly. “Let’s not start worrying. Your toes will probably be wriggling all over the place by the time you’re ready to leave us.”

But they were not.

Kirby remained in the hospital for four days. At the end of that time her toes were still completely motionless. They were beginning to look different, too. They had drawn up slightly, so that each one had a little curl to it.

The day she went home from the hospital was crisp and bright and sunny. Mr. Duncan came with Elizabeth to pick her up, as it was a two-person job getting her and the heavy cast in and out of the car. As they drove home along the beach road, the salt wind blew across the sea grass so that it bent and swayed like a field of slender dancers.

“Won’t it be good to be home again?” her mother asked her, and Kirby turned her head aside and did not answer.

Nancy and Brendon were waiting in the front yard. They rushed up to the car as though Kirby had been gone for years.

“What a cool cast!” Brendon exclaimed enthusiastically. “Can I be the first to write my name on it?”

“You may not,” Kirby said. She braced herself against the pain as Mr. Duncan lifted her gently out of the car.

Nancy said, “Oh, Kirby, I didn’t mean for this to happen!” Her eyes were red, as though she had been crying, and her face was strange and pinched-looking.

“Nobody said you did,” Kirby told her crisply. She did not want her sister weeping over her, or her mother’s forced cheerfulness, or any kind of emotion from anybody. She held tightly to Mr. Duncan’s shoulder and was grateful that he did not talk to her as he carried her up the steps and into the house.

It was three weeks before they could go back to the doctor to have the cast opened, and the break was so delicate that she had to try to stay immobile, which meant no school. They were the longest, most miserable weeks that Kirby had spent in her life. With Nancy in school all day and their mother working, there was no one to talk to, and even if there had been, there was nothing she wanted to say.

Madame Vilar called several times, and Kirby would not speak to her.

“Tell her I’m asleep or something, won’t you, Mom?” she said when Elizabeth came to tell her that Madame was on the phone.

“But she’s really concerned about you, dear,” Elizabeth said. “And you’ve been so devoted to her. Wouldn’t it make you feel better to talk to her for just a moment?”

“No,” Kirby said, so her mother went back to the phone and said that Kirby was sleeping.

Then many of her classmates and almost all the students at the dance studio sent notes and get-well cards. In a way, that was even worse than phone calls.

“Here’s one from Arlene Wright,” Nancy said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Unbelievable! She sent a card with a picture of a ballerina on it!”

“Chuck it,” Kirby told her bitterly. “I don’t even want to see it.” For the first time since she had seen her dance the Sugar Plum Fairy, she felt envy instead of pity for Arlene.

The day that Kirby was to return to the doctor, Elizabeth took the morning off from work to drive her. When Dr. Collins came into the examination room, he had another man with him.

“This is Dr. Sadock,” he said, “a neurologist. He’s going to run some tests on that leg of yours.”

Kirby, who was stretched out flat on the examination table, nodded without speaking. She lay quiet while the cast was cut open by a small electric saw. When her leg was exposed, she raised herself on her elbows to look down at it and then sank back, wishing that she had not done so. The leg was thin and white and covered with a growth of coarse, black hair.

“Don’t worry about that,” Dr. Collins told her, noting her expression. “Body hair always grows heavily inside a cast. After you shave it off, it won’t grow back that way.”

Dr. Sadock was busy attaching sensors to Kirby’s ankle. A cord ran from those to a machine that looked like a TV. Across the center of the screen there ran a line of light.

“Now,” he said, “I’m going to prick your leg in various places with an electric needle. It will be a prick, that’s all. It won’t be particularly painful.”

Kirby nodded. Her eyes were glued to the screen. She gave a start when the needle touched her for the first time. The light on the screen jumped and crackled like a bolt of lightning.

“Good,” Dr. Sadock said. “Fine. A good response. That’s exactly what we were hoping for.”

He moved the sensors to new positions and touched the leg again.

Kirby watched the screen as the needle stabbed her leg in first one spot, and then another. But with the next prick, the light on the screen remained motionless.

“That’s it,” she said. “Isn’t it? There’s something wrong there!”

Neither doctor responded. Dr. Sadock adjusted the sensors and pricked her again.

Still the light on the screen did not move.

“Here’s our trouble,” Dr. Sadock said in a low voice. He turned to the nurse who had been hovering in the back of the room. “Will you put a new cast on Kirby, please, Nurse Martin? Then, Kirby, you can come out and join us. Dr. Collins and I will be talking with your mother in my office.”

Kirby was hardly aware of the nurse putting on a new cast. Later she would not remember being helped down from the table and handed crutches. What would stay in her mind forever was the moment she entered the doctor’s office and saw her mother turn toward her with tears shining in her eyes.

“What is it?” She did not ask her mother, but Dr. Collins. She did not want to make her mother be the one to say the words.

“Well, there is evidently some nerve damage, Kirby,” the doctor told her carefully. “It’s hard to tell exactly how much at this time.”

“But the light did jump some!” Kirby said. She turned to Dr. Sadock. “It jumped in the beginning! I know! I saw it!”

“There are many different nerves in your leg, Kirby,” the neurologist told her. “From the tests we made, it appears that only one of them is damaged. It’s the big nerve that runs down the back of the leg, the one that feeds the toes. We don’t know exactly had badly damaged that nerve is. There is a possibility that it may rejuvenate—that is, restore itself. That does sometimes happen. It’s also possible—” He hesitated.

“What?”

“Well,” the doctor said matter-of-factly, “if the nerve is completely severed, then there’s no hope for it. We will simply have to face the fact that it’s gone.”

“And if it is—” Kirby could hardly bring out the words. “Does that mean I’ll always be on crutches?”

“Of course not,” said Dr. Sadock. “It’s only your toes that are affected. You don’t walk on your toes.”

“Will I be able to dance?”

“I don’t see why not,” the doctor told her. “You won’t be able to wear heels, of course—that would put too much pressure on your toes—but you’re already a tall girl, anyway. You’ll be dancing at your prom. You can promise your boyfriend that.”

“That’s not the kind of dancing I’m talking about,” Kirby cried in desperation. “I mean real dancing! Ballet!”

“Sweetheart,” her mother broke in, “we’ll just think positively. The nerve may grow back. The doctors say it’s possible. We’ll come back in six weeks for more tests to see if things are improving. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep hoping. It’s all we can do.”

Kirby leaned on her crutches and looked down. Her skirt hung loose. Her arms stuck out, long and skinny, from the sleeves of her blouse, and the good leg, lined up beside the cast, looked like a pipe stem.

“For the first time,” Kirby said softly, “I look like a dancer. And now it doesn’t make any difference.”