Page 7 of It’s All in How You Fall
Maybe Dr. Kennedy knew without looking and was trying to spare me the news that my chronic pain was actually aspinalinjury. Somehow, just the switch of terminology is terrifying. Like the difference between a skirmish and a battle. I feel like I’ve just lost the war.
“Gymnastics is a sport with plenty of fifteen-year-old retirees.”
“Edgar, will you excuse us?” Dad asks.
“Yes, yes.” As he leaves, the doctor looks to me. Now he smiles, and it’s in a way that breaks off a piece of my heart. An apology, not mitigation, coming from my dad’s buddy with the Corn Nut addiction and three ex-wives, not some authority figure with a medical degree. “I’m sorry, Caroline. I wish I had better news.”
Edgar exits into the hum of the ER, and when the glass door is tightly shut again, Dad pulls his chair bedside. Olga paces along the other side of the bed, her flip-flops smacking decisively with each angry step. The smack-and-muffle is almost a thread of conversation itself, Olga’s inner thoughts as my longtime coach floating into the charged room. Dad, though, is the first one to speak.
“We can send it over to Dr. Kennedy for his opinion, but—”
“Dad, we know his stupid opinion already.” My voice shakes and my heart has morphed into a fireball in my throat. I feel like I’ve swallowed bees. “Like this information is going to change it. All it does is give my chronic back pain a fancier name. It’s the same—”
“This isnotthe same.” Olga stops pacing and whirls around on me. There’s not an inch of wiggle room for argument in her expression.
But I’m stubborn and so I try anyway. “It is. Get past the lumbar strain and it’s the same as it was this morning, just named. I’ll just keep going—”
“You cannot keep going.”
“Yes. I. Can.” My fingernails dig into the skin on either arm. I’m tense, rigid—poured in, hardened, never moving. Though I’m aware this is far less impressive when exhibited from a hospital bed.
“If you keep going, it may become worse and stay worse” is what Olga says.
“Or itwon’t.” My voice is high and my vision swings, and Dad and Olga blur on either side of the bed as something hot rises in my chest.
“But worse is the more likely scenario,” Dad interjects.
“Maybe,” I snap. “Everything about this situation is a maybe.”
“Spinal stenosis isnota maybe, Caroline.” Dad wrenches his chair around, lunges at the board, yanks the MRI scan off the clip, and tosses it into my lap, his voice rising to an honest-to-God yell. “It’s permanent. It’s caused by degeneration. Which you make worsedailyin the gym.”
My dad is not a loud man. This explosion sits among the three of us like the sudden eruption of Vesuvius. He’s breathing hard, cheeks pinking over graying stubble.
His eyes slide to Olga’s across the foot of my hospital bed. Something passes between them and…wait.
“Youwantme to quit.” My eyes swing between them. And everything I worried about before that final Arabian busts into the open, the truth, rather than just my anxiety. “Youbothwant me to quit.”
For a moment after the words are out of my mouth, it’s completely silent. Olga sits gently on the bed, obviously searching for a retort that isn’t a total lie. She won’t lie to me. She’s never lied to me.
Olga puts up a small hand, callouses from long-ago bar rips pink on her palm, still evident half a lifetime in the future. She places the hand on my ankle, warm over the thin hospital blanket. “Caroline, I don’t ever want to lose a gymnast. Especially not the best beam worker in the state of Kansas.” I’m so angry that I can’t even enjoy the fact that she’s right. Iamthe best, three years running. “But this is more than gymnastics. This is your future.”
“My future. My choice.”
At my words, they don’t react. No immediate nods. Compromises. Sparks of a plan to beat this.
Nothing.
I try to swallow the urge to fall apart but completely fail. I hug my arms across my chest. Trying to find stability. My center. Something. Anything.
I meet Olga’s eyes. My lips tremble. “Please…”
It’s all I have left to say.
“Please, what?” My coach’s quiet voice is sharp enough to draw blood. “Watch you lie to me about the pain? What good is in that? For you or for me?”
The tears finally start, pressure building since the doctor’s office, a blink from release. “Please don’t make me quit. I can’t. This is my life. It’s your gym but it’s my life.”
“I know.”
