On top of the world

Hurt

It all happened so suddenly.

One minute, Katya was training as usual, looking graceful and free as a bird. Just moments later, she was down on the ground, clutching her arm and sobbing loudly.

The accident happened in the early morning, so the only other skaters there were Yuzuru and me. The front desk lady also saw what happened through the camera footage and quickly dialed 911. Yuzuru and I carried Katya out to the lobby together. I was crying too, but I tried to keep it quiet. Once Katya was lifted up into the stretcher by the EMTs, I called Katya's mom to tell her what happened. She sounded very distressed at the news.

"I must call her father," she said.

"But isn't he teaching class at the university right now?" I asked her, sniffling. Yuzuru handed me a tissue and I accepted it gratefully.

"He cannot ignore this! Our daughter is hurt!" Katya's mom's voice rose with each word. "Thank you for telling me Lyubov," she said, her voice back at a normal volume. "Don't worry too much about Katya; that is our job. I will call Katya's father so you don't need to. You go back to training."

"I--" She hung up.

"I can't go back to training! I'm scared!" I confessed to Yuzuru.

"It's okay. You stay here; wait for Brian. I train."

I sat at a bench and started to work on some algebra problems from my math class. They were pretty easy and repetitive, so I was just going through the motions. I continued to go through the exercises while watching Yuzuru out of the corner of my eye. He was inspecting the place where Katya fell and hit her arm. There was no blood, but there was a big chunk of ice that left a hole by the place she had landed. Yuzuru went out to where the Zamboni was parked and grabbed some snow from there to patch the place up. He put a cone there too; luckily, the spot was near the wall, so it wouldn't get in anyone's way.

I was paying much more attention to what Yuzuru was doing than to my math homework, and I soon realized this when I looked down at my paper and noticed that I was mindlessly scribbling  all over the page. I quickly erased all the stray marks, and my head jolted up when I heard Brian's voice as he came into the facility with Javi and Nam. 

"Lyuba? What are you doing out here; why aren't you training?" Brian asked me. He looked past me and saw only Yuzuru out on the ice. "Why is only Yuzuru out there? Where's Katya?"

"She--" I took a deep breath to keep myself together in front of him. "She...h-had an a-accid-dent. H-her a-arm--"

"Oh God." Brian put a hand to his head. Javi's eyebrows creased together and Nam bit his lip. 

"Why didn't you call me sooner?" Brian asked.

He's right. I should have called him after I phoned Katya's mom. "I-I didn't w-want to dist-turb you while y-you were d-driving," I told him.

"Now I'm going to have to make some changes to my schedule, and I'll have to pay her a visit at the hospital later today, I suppose. I can bring you if you want to see her."

"Yes please," I replied, accepting the offer. 

"Oh, and if you aren't ready to skate right now I can give you your lesson later this morning."

"No," I said firmly. "Give me 10 minutes to warm myself back up and I'lll be ready for you." I didn't want to be treated like some dainty daisy. I'm a diamond, strong and beautiful. I needed to prove to everyone that I'm worthy of Pyeongchang, the 2018 Olympic Games.

Brian looked a little doubtful, but I picked up my laptop and schoolwork and sprinted to the locker room to lace on my skates. Once I stepped out onto the ice, I could still feel tension in my shoulders, but I tried my best to relax myself with deep breathing. I raced around the rink doing power mohawks and power-pulls. I decided out of the blue to do an Ina Bauer down the center of the ice. When I leaned back, I saw Yuzuru staring at me.