𝗜𝗦 𝗜𝗧 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗛 𝗜𝗧? ✰ w. bjerken

•7•

I salute, and turn to face the runway. I force the visualization of Perrey's accident out of my brain and take off running.

I hit the spring board with my feet squarely, and fly up to hit the vault table with my hands. Twisting off of it, I soar through the air in a double layout to land squarely on the mat. My arms go up to salute.

A clean first vault, luckily. My second one goes similarly, and I get a decent score.

Then it's time for awards.

I win beam, and get second in floor and bars. Delaney got second in vault and third in bars. Perrey, who left earlier, got first in floor and bars, and second on beam. She also won all around, and I got second place. Obviously, she didn't place in vault, because of her accident, although her first score was pretty good. Too bad she's not here to get the awards...

"Whitney?" I sling my gym bag around my shoulders and stand up.

A younger gymnast stands in front of me.

"May I get my-I mean -y-your autograph?" She offers shyly, holding out her third place metal from the HOPEs competition.

I smile. "Sure!" Taking the metal gently, I pull a sharpie out of my pocket and sign it for her. "Congrats on third place," I say as I hand it back to her.

"Thanks." Then she scurries away.

Delaney comes up behind me and taps my arm.

"Ready to go?"

"Yup."

PERREY'S POV

It's a large ugly cast, stretching from my mid-thigh to my foot. The pain medications are starting to wear off, and the sharp bone pain is starting to come back.

"Mom?" Mom turns around and pats my leg. "I-I-do you think it had anything to do with the leg pain I had earlier?"

"I don't know, Per. I wish I knew. The doctor's going to come in and talk to us."

Looking up from his phone, dad smiles at me. "Guess what."

"What?"

"You won all around, bars, floor, and second in beam."

My eyes widen and I grin. "Really? Wow, I can't believe it! That's great. Maybe it'll be enough qualification to get to Worlds!"

"I don't know about that, Perrey," Dad says, bursting my bubble. "You're gonna be out for a while with this leg. We'll see."

Resigned, I sit back in my seat sadly. "Oh."

There's a knock on the door and the doctor comes in.

"Hi, Eliotts, how are you all doing?"

"We're good, how are you?" Dad responds politely.

The doctor nods and flips through his clipboard. "I'm fine. How are you doing, Perrey?"

Biting my lip, I force a small smile. "Okay." The burning question I have needs to come out, so I blurt out, "When will I be able to do gymnastics again?"

The doctor looks grave, and it's scaring me.

"Well..."

I hold my breath.

"While we were looking at your x-rays, we found something more serious than just a fracture," he explains slowly.

"What?"

"Have you had bone pain prior to this?"

My eyebrows furrow, and my heartbeat increases. "Uhh, yeah. Like at night. Not really when I'm doing gymnastics."

"Hmm." The doctor jots something down on the clipboard and proceeds to ask me some more questions.

Finally, he finishes his interrogation. "So you say you had pain right before you did your vault?"

"Yeah," I say, getting more nervous.

"Perrey, the results of our tests and scans are showing very serious signs of Fibrous Displaysia."

I blink my eyes at him. "Um, what does that mean?"

Looking at my parents, they look extremely concerned. That scares me.

"Fibrous Displaysia is a rare bone disease that affects not too many people. Basically, the disease causes tissue to grow in the certain places of your bone, rather than bone itself, which causes pain, and leads to fracturing, like in your case."

My heart drops to the floor. Slowly, I attempt, "S-oo, how long does it take to heal?"

He hesitates. "There's no known cure for it."

A/N: literally there are no reads on this thing so that's why I don't update much lol. If you like this story, please comment so I'll update more often :)