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Teddy
SOMETIMES, I FEEL LIKE the whole world is going on around me, moving at breakneck speed, but I’m stationary. I’m stuck in one place, and I can’t move. There’s no one else with me, because everyone else knows how to run fast, to keep up. They don’t get left behind. But I do.
Minutes blur into hours and hours blur into days, yet it also feels like nothing is happening. Doctors talk to me. Sometimes at the hospital and sometimes on the phone. They say words like implantable cardioverter defibrillator and pacemaker. Then the air is cold, and trees are whispering. The engine of Dad’s car is rattling. We’ve gone out for a drive. My neck is still sore from the procedure. He stops at a petrol station, buys himself a coffee and donut. A water and a donut for me. I don’t touch either. Then it’s cold at home, despite the heating turned up high. I cannot get warm.
Dad makes me soup. “You have to rest a lot,” he says, and he keeps saying it and bringing more and more soup.
Heinz cream of tomato and cream of chicken and minestrone. God, doesn’t he know that cardiac patients aren’t supposed to have a lot of soup? So much cream and saturated fats and fluid content and salt. I mean, did he not even read any of the booklets from the hospital? Because, sure, I’ll go along with his pretense that I’ve got HCM if it means I can eat more healthy foods with less arguments from Dad.
But Dad just doesn’t understand. “Soup’s good for ill people,” he says, and nothing will change his mind on it.
One time, the soup has cheese on toast with it, but I just stare at the little puddle of grease sitting in a dip on the cheese and all the white bread, and after that, Dad eats it and cooks no more cheese on toast for me, but still the soup comes.
I weigh up my options and eat the tomato soup most of the time when it’s served because Dad doesn’t seem to know what a salad is. The alternatives of cheese on toast or the hot dogs and burgers he makes himself (minus any salad) seem worse to me. So unhealthy. I tell him I don’t like chicken soup and I don’t, not because of calorie intake or anything but because that one just seems way too unhealthy. And I need to eat healthily.
I eat the minestrone, carefully picking out the shells of pasta and stacking them on the wide rim of the bowl. I build forts with the pasta, a huge fort all around me that protects me from everything bad.
Xavier texts me. I try to reply, but then I let slip to him that Victoria thinks I’m the best of the male graduates this year. He doesn’t reply after that, and I can guess why. Xavier never likes losing.
Victoria’s texted a lot, too, demanding to know whether I’m even serious about the plan if I can’t show up for sessions. How can I reply to her though, when she’s not lost what I have?
The moment I learnt what the catheterization procedure confirmed, that was when the falling began. Me falling into myself, into this place where everything moved around me, where pasta became a fort shielding me. Where I’d lost everything.
Gemma texts me a lot. I can’t reply to her messages. I can’t do anything, can’t talk to her. It’s too painful because I know what she gave up, being a jockey, even if she is still around horses. And I don’t want to give up any part of who I am.
I can’t.
I’d rather die than never dance again.
I’d rather die.
Dance and die or not be me...
I stare at the tartan rug on the living room floor, turning this over and over in my mind.
There’s a photo of Mum on the table, even though she and Dad weren’t together for years before she died. But after her death, on I think the third time when I was here, the photo appeared in an ornate silver frame.
Mum was a principal dancer at the Royal Southern Ballet. She had two loves. Ballet and rock climbing.
She died doing what she loved.
I need to get back to Roseheart.
###
I KNOW THERE’S NO WAY Dad will let me go back, not after Thursday’s confirmation of the diagnosis and the procedure that says you must rest after it. So, I wait until he’s gone to bed on Monday evening, and then I walk out of the house. I’m still in pain, and each step hurts, but it’s not far to the train station. I know the route off the back of my hand.
Halfway there, I see a group of teenagers. Probably about my age or a bit younger. They’re dressed in baggy clothes and the air smells like weed around them. They’re shouting, and my shoulders tighten, and my whole body feels heavier as I pass them. I wish I could walk faster, more normally. My heart pounds and doesn’t stop pounding until I’m away from them, at the train station.
It makes me wonder if I can even run in a life-threatening situation now. If they’d pulled a knife on me, I’d have been outnumbered, and I’d have had to run. Yet would I then drop down dead from that?
I buy a ticket on the Trainline app on my phone because the ticket booth is closed, and I scan the e-ticket at the gate barrier. Once on the train, I feel calmer. Even though my phone rings. It’s Dad. Didn’t take him long to realize I’ve gone then. I ignore the call. I’ll message him once I’m there. Once I’m there and safely in my room where he can’t stop me. And he can’t drag me back. Not when he thinks I’m doing a choreography course and I’ve told him the staff will adapt it to suit my medical needs.
But I’m doing the right thing, I think, as I stare at the window. Half of my reflection is visible. Staring back at me. The other half of me is the night sky, and, as the train rumbles on, I swallow more and more darkness.
###
IT’S EASIER TO GET back into Roseheart than I’d thought it would be at night. But I just walk in, use my keycard. No alarms go off or anything. I make my way to my room. I sit on my bed, holding my canvas flats. Just an old pair. Probably from a few years ago. But I never liked throwing the old ones out, even though I was forever buying replacements.
I stare at the box of them at the foot of my bed, then at the pair in my lap. They tell a story. My story. They’re my journey through this. My steps. And my journey isn’t going to stop, just because some doctors think they can dictate what I do. My journey only stops when I stop.