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Teddy
“YOU’VE TOLD THE ACADEMY I’m not going back?” I stare at my dad, my phone in my hand. The email I just got from Roseheart’s administration team is still on my screen. They only just sent it—bang on 9 a.m. I wonder if they typed it up yesterday and scheduled it to send first thing today.
We’re so sorry to hear of your diagnosis. Given you were so close to completion of the BTEC Ballet Extended Diploma we will be issuing you with an honorable graduation. It is regrettable that you are not able to attend Roseheart Academy to receive your certificate, but we understand your decision not to return here. We wish you the very best of luck with your future.
“Well, yeah.” Dad frowns and looks up from his book—the latest Richard Osman detective novel. He’s been dropping toast crumbs on it as he reads. “You only had a month left anyway, and you can’t dance. The doctors said that.”
I want to scream. Sure, the doctors said that, but they’re wrong. They don’t know me. I have to dance. “You had no right to do that. I was going back next week.”
“Next week?” He snorts. “Theodore, you’ve got all these tests coming up. And that catheterization will be soon, too. It sounds like a big deal. They said you’d need to rest after it.”
I roll my eyes. The doctor did say that when they discharged me—because catheterization is an invasive procedure to look at my heart—but none of these medical staff know me. I’m strong and I’m healthy. I fuel my body with the right things. I won’t need to rest. I’ll bounce back quickly. “I need to get back to Roseheart.”
Dad puts his bookmark in the book and sets it to the side. “What for?” He swivels his whole body to face me. “You can’t dance anymore.”
“I... I need to speak to the admissions team.” My mind races. Dad’s not going to let me go back if he thinks I’m going to dance—and I have to. Before, I was thinking I needed someone’s permission to dance, but I don’t. I just need mine. I know what’s best for me. “Roseheart’s academy trains choreographers and dance teachers, too. I can do either of those.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Spending more of my money?”
I glare at him. He can afford it. He’s a lawyer. A good one. And he owes me—all those years when we had no contact. When he left my mum, he pretty much pretended I didn’t exist until she died. Then he saw her death as a second chance to be a father to me. Mum had already set aside a fund to pay for my ballet education, but when Dad took over the parental duties—albeit late and only because of the circumstances—he said he’d pay instead. That the money my mum had left me should be for something else, though he never specified what.
“I can pay it,” I say.
“Don’t waste your mum’s money on this.”
“Waste it?”
“Yes, all this dancing. It was different with your mother. She was a ballerina.”
“Oh, so it’s a gender thing. If I’d been a girl, you’d support it. So, we’re back to this old argument.”
He clears his throat. “You’re not going back. And you’re not wasting my money or your mum’s on some new course. Got it?”
My shoulders tighten. “It’s my life! And it wasn’t my decision to have all this taken away from me! You know how good I am at it, or maybe you would’ve if you’d actually come to any of the shows and got over your sexism.” I take a deep breath, try to steady myself. “Ballet is my life. If I can’t be there as a dancer then I still have to be there. And I will be. You can’t stop me.”
He makes a grumbling sound. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” I want to laugh.
“Yes! And you’ve never shown any interest in teaching or what was it? Choreography? Never mentioned those before.”
“I didn’t know I apparently had this stupid heart condition before.” I let out an exasperated sigh. But this catheterization procedure will prove I don’t have it. My shortness of breath and collapsing is caused by my eating—I wasn’t being as healthy as I thought I was. It has to be that.
I will be more careful of food, making sure everything is organic and that I’m getting the right vitamins and minerals, and I will dance again. I mean, I can’t not do ballet. Everyone knows you’ve got to exercise to stay healthy—so it’s fine for me to dance. I need dance to keep fit.
Dad opens his book again, then brushes crumbs from its pages. “We’ll think about it.”
“Like I need your approval.”
“I said I’d think about it, Theodore. We’re not rushing into anything. Now, you better get some breakfast before we leave.”
“Leave?” My heart lifts. To go back to Roseheart? He’s surrendered so easily?
“To go to the support group.” His voice has an edge in it. “You’re lucky the monthly meeting is today for this area. You could’ve had to wait a lot longer.”
The support group. I only vaguely remember the doctors telling me about this, right before I was discharged. I’d just nodded, thinking I’d never go. Dad, on the other hand, clearly has different ideas. God, he’s so annoying. Thinking he can stop me dancing and now decide what I do with my day.
“You’re going,” he says before I can say anything. “It’ll be good to meet others with this. Have more of a support network. And you’re going to meet new people.”
“I can go next month.”
“You’re going today.”
“You can’t make me. I’m eighteen.’
“Then you should see that this is important.” He levels a look at me. “Go to this, and I’ll think about paying tuition for a new non-dancing course at Roseheart.”
###
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I expected a support group for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to look like, but it wasn’t this: we’re in a café, and everyone is laughing and smiling. I don’t know why I’d assumed everyone would look decrepit and overweight and obviously unhealthy, but several have similar builds to me. Immediately, I feel shame. In the booklet that the doctors gave me about HCM, I read about the misconceptions of the condition. How people think it’s caused by unhealthy lifestyles, when in fact it’s genetic. And I know I’ve been doing the same thing. Making assumptions. Judging. Shame fills me.
“Hello, you must be Theodore?” a middle-aged woman with bright purple hair says. She pulls out a seat next to her table.
“It’s Teddy,” I say, and I hear Dad grumble. He never liked my nickname, said it made me sound soft. Still, I guess ballet makes me seem soft, too.
Dad’s right behind me and tells me to sit down in the chair the woman’s offered. It’s embarrassing him being here, like I’m a little child. I scan the room. I think I’m the only adult accompanied by a parent. Oh God. Even some teenagers are here on their own.
“I’m Tracy,” the purple-haired woman says as I sit. “It’s so great to have a new face here. Well, new faces,” she adds looking at Dad, and her smile gets even wider.
Oh, hell no. I want to disappear.
“So, you’ve just got a diagnosis, you say?” Tracy asks, her gaze back on me.
“Yes,” Dad says before I can say anything. He’s already been talking about me. On the way here in the car, he said he’d phoned the group leader to let her know we were coming and to get directions, but he hadn’t mentioned he’d been talking about me.
I shoot him a look, but he doesn’t appear to notice.
Dad’s chatting away to Tracy, like they’re suddenly old friends. Old friends who talk about their children’s heart conditions—or suspected heart conditions. Tracy has a son in his early twenties who isn’t here, and I recoil in horror as I hear how he suddenly went into cardiac arrest when playing football when he was thirteen.
“What do you do?” A high-pitched voice makes me turn, and I find a girl peering at me intently. She’s got the palest skin I’ve ever seen and really fine blond hair that shows a surprisingly pink scalp through it.
“I... uh, I dance. Ballet. Professionally,” I add, clearing my throat.
I wait for the reactions of everyone here—because people always say something when they learn that I, a guy, am a ballet dancer. But this girl just nods, and no one else seems to be paying attention to me. Everyone is chattering away. Even Dad doesn’t appear to have heard because he’s not launching in with a you-used-to-be-a-dancer correction.
“Cool,” the girl says. She stretches her hands in front of her. “You going to keep doing it?”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Well, yeah. I want to. Can I?”
Can I? Why am I asking her permission? She doesn’t matter.
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “You’ll find a new way to do what you love. You’ve still got to live.” She lowers her voice. “I used to be a jockey. Had to stop that, but I still ride a bit. Just not intensely.”
“And that’s not a problem for you?” I ask, leaning forward.
She shrugs. “Everyone’s affected differently. Doctors don’t know why we all have different tolerances. They all advise no strenuous or intense exercise, that sort of thing.” She points at a balding guy who’s very tall, his height even apparent when sitting down. “He struggles with any uphill walking and has a pacemaker, but she—” She points at the oldest woman here. “She can still jog. It all just depends on the person and how badly affected you are. Your cardiologist will help you work it out, I guess.”
“I really hope I can dance,” I say. My voice sounds odd to my ears though. Of course I’m going to keep dancing. I mean, I’m a fraud sitting here.
“You will.” She smiles. It doesn’t exactly light up her face—that’s just an annoying cliché—but it makes her features almost seem to suit her more. Those thin lips and narrow nose. “Either way, you’ll find a way to stay connected to it. If you want to.”
I nod.
“I’m Gemma,” she says.
“Teddy.”
“I know.” She rolls her eyes. “Tracy gathered us all early to say you were coming and how we mustn’t all try and talk to you at once.” Her eye roll gets even deeper, and I don’t know whether to be alarmed or embarrassed by this news. It just makes me want to disappear through the floor even more. She laughs. “And Tracy is a fan. Well, she reckoned it was you.”
“What was me?”
Gemma laughs. “She recognized your name when your dad phoned up. She’s mad about ballet and said she saw some performance you were in last year. The Nutcracker? Up in London?”
I nod. Last Christmas. This is the first time though someone has indicated that I’m a celebrity. “This just gets more and more embarrassing.”
Gemma laughs. I’d thought she was fifteen or something, but the longer I look at her, the more I realize she’s probably older. Maybe even my age.
“Tracy told us not to mention the ballet as you won’t know what your future is yet.”
“But you still asked?” I raise my eyebrows.
“I asked what you did, kind of without thinking. You just looked so lonely sitting there.” She shrugs. “Done now, though, innit? But you’re cool. Cooler than a lot of others here. I mean, all some of them want to talk about is medical stuff. And I get it, we're all a very rare breed. Ha. But I want to talk about normal things, too, and I think you do, as well?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say.
“Good. I like people-watching.” She nods over at an elderly couple by a window on the far side of the room who don’t appear to be part of the HCM meeting. I have to twist a little to see them. “I think they’re drug dealers.”
I burst out laughing. “What?” That couple looks the least like drug dealers I can imagine.
“It’s always the unexpected ones,” she says with a knowing look. “Trust me, people surprise you all the time. They have these huge secrets you’d never expect. Secrets they’ll do anything to keep hidden away, festering, rotting until they turn their whole beings bad.”
Gemma is...intense. High energy. But fun, I guess. I can’t help but smile, and for the first time since getting this stupid probably diagnosis, I feel a little better. A little calmer and at home.
But still, I don’t feel a kinship with these people. They actually have this condition. I don’t, and the tests will prove it. After all, they can’t have diagnosed me that quickly. And the hospital was quick to say they suspected this but that the diagnosis needs confirming. If the scan they did really showed thickening of my heart, then there’s another explanation.
There has to be.
I will get better. It’s my food issues, how I’m still not being healthy enough, that’s causing this. Nothing more.