| |
Teddy
I AM FLOATING. FLOATING through water. I am weightless, like how I’ve always wanted to be when I’m dancing. Because I have no body now, and it’s a relief. It’s just me. Just me...
Theodore!
The water’s warm, and there’s a part of my brain trying to tell me I’m swimming, even though I’m not. I’m dancing. Pirouetting now, in blue lights and memories and twisting time.
Theodore!
There it is again. I frown. That word.
No, not a word, a name.
My name.
And suddenly the name has a shape. It is a paper airplane coming toward me, cutting the water cleanly into two sections until I’m in the gap between two giant walls of water.
“The anesthetic is still wearing off,” a voice says. “It’ll be a while until Theodore can communicate with you as normal. He may be able to hear you though.”
“But he will be able to?”
“Yes, hearing is one of the first things to return.”
“No. I mean communicate as normal. Once he's fully awake.”
There’s a pause, and I realize they’re talking about me. Even if I’m not sure who they are. Or if they’re actually here. Or where I am, because it’s like everything’s floating and moving.
“Sorry, that was poor use of...” The voice trials away, and I’m unsure if the man’s stopped speaking or if the words are just floating in a different direction. But then he’s back, speaking stronger. His voice has an almost strident tone to it that grates against my ear canals. “As my colleague said earlier, the CT scan showed no serious brain injury, but we won’t know the extent of Teddy’s concussion, until he is awake. Then he’ll be able to give us more of an idea and we can do further assessments. The swelling from the nasal manipulation should also reduce soon—we were lucky that we were able to do that before the usual swelling from that injury occurred. Normally we have to wait several days... And his cardiologist will be in touch soon too with the...”
The words drift off again, but I’ve heard enough. Just those two dreaded words: brain injury.
Sudden awareness pours over me. It’s cold. Cold wherever I am because my skin is goosepimpling and I am cold. But I can feel. I have a body. A body that isn’t wet, that hasn’t just been floating and dancing through a beautiful ocean.
A body that’s lying down. Something firm beneath my spine.
A hospital—suddenly, I can smell it. Too clean and artificial. Antiseptic.
“But...but he’s my boy,” the other voice says.
Dad.
It’s Dad. My heart speeds up—and it’s a weird sensation suddenly knowing both that you have a heart and that it’s speeding up. But my dad is here. The man I haven’t seen in...in ages. I don’t know how long. Can’t think. But where’s Mum?
Dead.
The word bites me.
My eyes open, and it’s strange because it’s like it just happens. Like I’m not in control of it. Of anything. I can’t be. Not in a world where my mum’s not here and—
Bright lights. Wires. Machines. Screens. Faces.
I’m processing everything, but slowly. There’s a lag. I’m aware there’s a lag. And my heart...my chest feels heavy. And my face...my nose. Something’s not right with my nose.
“Theodore? Oh, Theodore, boy! It’s okay.”
The man to my right looks both like my dad and not. His face is too lined and his hair too gray. He presses cool fingers to my forehead, and then the other man—one with a pale face and a navy-blue uniform—is speaking to me in slow and careful words, telling me that I’m in hospital, that there was an accident.
But I don’t want to listen.
I don’t want to hear. I don't want those words to be funneled into my ears because they can’t reach my brain. Because if they do, they’ll burrow in too deeply into the pink fleshy textures and grow roots. They’ll become permanent, and it’ll cement what I can feel.
That whatever has happened is bad.
That I won’t dance again.
That I’ll never dance with Taryn again.
Taryn. My heart squeezes. Taryn with her cautious personality in everyday life, but who transforms into an ethereal being when she dances. Whose soul wraps around mine because we recognize each other and we’re the same. The best of friends. Partners.
The doctor clears his throat. “You’ve suffered extensive—”
“No,” I shout, and my volume surprises me. Is that because something is wrong with my head?
I think my voice surprises everyone though, because my dad and the doctor step back. Through the window at the end of the room I see staff looking. All at me.
I think I liked it better when I didn’t have a body.
“I don’t want to know about a head injury. Head injuries mean I can’t dance.” My words taste strange.
“Theodore, we will of course be doing more tests. It was quite a bang on the head that you took, and we have also managed to fix up your nose, but those are not the main concerns,” the doctor says.
Not the main concerns?
“Ah, there she is.” The doctor points to my right.
A Black woman has entered the ward, and she marches straight over.
“Theodore Walker?” she asks, her voice chipper.
“It’s Teddy.” I try to sit up a bit, but there are wires all over me and sticky things on my chest. Dad tries to stop me, a hand on my shoulder, but I push him away.
“You’re Dad, I assume?” The woman looks at him, and Dad nods. “Excellent.” She pulls the curtain around my bed, sectioning us, her, and the man in the navy-blue uniform off from the rest of the ward, from the rest of the world.
The man has a clipboard now, and I’m not sure where it came from.
“I am Dr Reimbert,” the woman says. “Consultant emergency cardiologist here.”
Cardiologist. That’s...that’s serious. My stomach does a loop-the-loop motion, and I stare down at the wires attached to my chest with sticky pads and tape. Suddenly, I’m aware of a monitor bleeping away. It’s right next to my bed.
“So, Teddy, we’ve got results back from the ECG and the heart echo we did. We did the echo when you were still very woozy from the concussion because the ECG showed abnormalities. You might not remember any of this as you were taken through for the general anesthetic after to have your nose sorted out.”
I don’t. There’s...nothing but water and oceans in my memory, and I know that can’t be real.
Dr Reimbert leans forward. “Tell me, do you have a history of shortness of breath, chest pain, or dizziness?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m a dancer.” The only times I get dizzy are when I’m pushing myself too hard, when I’ve been in the studio for hours before breakfast. Then, I get dizzy. But that’s just normal.
Dr. Reimbert nods and then leans even closer, so I can see clumps of mascara on her eyelashes. “Any arrhythmias you’re aware of in daily life? That’s abnormal heart rhythms. Faster or slower? Jumpy?”
I stare at her. “No... I mean, my heart speeds up when I dance, but that’s normal. Right?”
“Teddy, I have concerns. I want to book further scans for you, and I want you to see a specialist consultant. I’ve also requested an MRI at this point, so we should get a time through soon for you. But the results we’ve had so far show a thickening of the heart. And I’ll tell you what I suspect: there is a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. It can cause symptoms, but equally it can go undetected—until there’s a serious problem. It’s rare, but many of the people who end up diagnosed with it in adulthood have no symptoms until a major event. HCM causes problems with the electrical system of the heart. We believe it could be the cause of your earlier blackout today.”
“Blackout?”
“Well, some of your teachers reckon you tripped and that’s why you hit your head, but it’s possible that it was a blackout. That you were unconscious before you hit your head, and the blackout was what made you actually fall.”
I frown. I can’t remember... I was waiting backstage... The final show. And then there’s nothing but water. Oh, lord. What happened? Did I mess it up for everyone? Or maybe we finished the show and...
“What?” Dad splutters. “A heart condition? He can’t have a heart condition. He’s a professional dancer.”
The words, from Dad’s mouth, any other time would’ve been a blessing. Dad’s never seen my dance as anything professional. Just girly. Hearing his words now is strange because there’s pride in his voice. Pride and fear.
I know what’s coming. Even before Dr Reimbert opens her mouth again, I know.
“I’m afraid it’s very likely that Teddy’s dancing days are over.”
“But you’re not sure that it is this heart condition,” Dad says.
Dr. Reimbert tilts her head to one side. “We know there is an abnormal thickening of the heart, Mr. Walker. We also know Teddy may have had a blackout. A specialist cardiologist will know more, but I can tell you a lot of people with HCM don’t get diagnosed until they’re in their late teens or twenties, as they don’t get symptoms until there's an obstruction or cardiac event. And a lot of those who get diagnosed after a sudden collapse or cardiac event are young athletes because an exercise-heavy lifestyle puts too much strain on a HCM heart.”
“What, so everyone with this condition finds out like this?” Dad says. “This is absurd!”
“Not everyone,” she says. “It is genetic and when we diagnose an individual, we like to test family members too. That’s most often how young children are diagnosed with this condition. But we know there are people out there undiagnosed. And, Teddy, initial tests are indicating this as a diagnosis. We will know more after further tests. We will have the MRI, as I already said, and I’ll refer you for genetic testing too. We are especially concerned about your heart’s left ventricle chamber, and I’m going to speak to a senior cardiologist at a different hospital who specializes in HCM, but I’m going to suggest we go for diagnostic catheterization if that’s okay with you?”
I stare at her. Suddenly, everything is too loud in here. The buzz of machinery. Nurses’ voices beyond the blue curtain. Dad’s breathing.
“What’s diagnostic catheterization?” Dad asks.
“It’s a procedure we use to look at how well the heart is working,” Dr Reimbert says. “It isn’t required for a diagnosis of HCM, but we are concerned about the flow of blood through the left ventricle, so this will give us more information on how much obstruction there is, and we can also gather other data as well.”
Obstruction?
“I... No,” I whisper. “I can’t have this. I have to be a dancer.”
Taryn’s face fills my mind.
Dr. Reimbert shakes her head. “Teddy, I have strong suspicions that you do have HCM and dancing again, at such a high level as I’m assured you dance at, could very well kill you.”