The Other Side of Perfect

Prologue

"When can I dance?"

My voice came out quiet in the small, sterile recovery room.

The doctor kept messing with his charts, so I didn't know if he heard me.

I was about to ask again, but I got distracted by the steel rods rooted into my bones and extending out, attached to a frame outside my leg.

Ever since I woke up from surgery, I couldn't stop staring at it.

After ten years at the Kira Dobrow Ballet School, I'd seen my share of bodily horrors: weeping toe blisters, a ruptured Achilles' tendon, but nothing like this.

It was called an external fixator, and it wasn't messing around.

Colleen was staring at it, too—her fingers tapping out the melody of the Kitri variation from Don Quixote on the metal post of my hospital bed.

I caught her eye, and we had one of our silent conversations.

It's not that bad right?
Totally not that bad.

I let out a breath and glanced behind Colleen to my parents. Dad's eyes were steadily on the floor so he wouldn't accidentally look at the external fixator and need to sit with his head between his legs again.

Mom gave me a smile I knew she meant to be reassuring but was 100 percent not.

"When can I dance?" I repeated loudly. The doctor startled, put down the charts and sat on the stool next to my bed.

"Let's take it one step at a time," he said, looking at my leg and chuckling.

"Pun not intended."

When no one reacted, he cleared his throat.

"You'll be bed to chair for a couple of weeks until we get you out of that external fixator and into a cast. A few months after that, you can start learning to walk again."

If he wasn't going to answer my question, I'd figure it out myself.

I did some mental calculations. The American Ballet Theatre summer intensive in New York was in July.

Four months from now. If I was walking in a couple of months, I could dance in four.

"That means I can still do the ballet intensive in July," I said.

"I can still go."

My parents shifted and the doctor sighed.

"Alina," he said carefully. "If it was a clean break, your bones could have healed naturally. You might have been able to dance on pin in four months. But it wasn't a clean break."

He stoped talking, like that explained everything. When I kept staring at him, he sighed again.

"We needed to but in sixteen screws and two plates to keep your bones together. That hardware is meant to stay in the forever. It means your leg won't be as strong or flexible as—"

"So when? If I let it heal and do physical therapy and everything I'm supposed to do, when will it be back to normal?"

"Never," the doctor said simply.

"When something breaks like that, you can't put it back together so easily. And when you do, it won't be the same."

That was the epitome of bullshit, but there was no point in saying it.

"I'll be able to dance in four months," I said coolly.

"I'm going to New York."

I looked at my parents so they'd know the plan hadn't changed.

Dad look quest and uncertain. Mom looked like she was holding back tears. Only Colleen was unfazed.

"Definitely," my best friend said, turning to the doctor.

"I read this article that said orthopedists can fix anything now, except maybe knees, but she didn't do anything to her knee."

"Yea," I said, latching on to Colleen's words.

"I didn't break my knee, just my tibia and fibula."

"Honey..." Mom put a firm hand on my shoulder.

"Let's not thing about what may or may or happen in the future. All you can do right now is focus on healing. That's the number one thing."

Dad looked at the external fixator again, cursed, and took a seat in the chair at the other end of the room, elbows on his knees.

Mom squeezed my shoulder again, like I was supposed to say something back, but I had nothing.

Not thinking about the future didn't make any sense to me.

The future was everything, and it had only ever looked like ballet.

A wave a drowsiness hit me, the anesthesia making everything hazy. At some point, I registered that my parents were whispering, and it was dark outside the window, and Colleen was gone.

I closed my eyes again and felt my body dancing, revolving through the air in the tip of my pointe shoe.

Springing across the floor in quick brisés.

As I slipped in and out of sleep, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't, what was happening right now and what was a memory.

But one thing was clear. In four months, I'd be on pointe again. In four months, I'd be in New York, dancing.