Lights in her Eyes
The ice is cold and hard on her back as she blinks up at the fluorescent lights hanging from the rink’s high ceiling. They hang in circular fixtures, interspaced between the crisscrossing rafters like the sequins on her dress. Had they always been so high up? They bring a heavy beat of pain behind her eyes, but she doesn’t look away. They are too pretty.
People are crowded around the girl; coaches and skaters crane their necks to see past one another, maintaining a bubble of space around her that is broken only by the coach who kneels at her side, repeating her name in a soft voice.
The girl replies, and what she says makes the coach’s face fall.
The other skaters are sent off the ice as calls are made. Soon, paramedics are being escorted inside and a brace is wrapped around her neck.
The girl smiles at the paramedics as they carry her out on a stretcher, mumbling about how she’s never been in an ambulance before. The drive is not long, and the ambulance is full of dim light, clear tubing, and colourful buttons. She vomits for the first time, right onto the paramedic asking her questions. Immediately, she breaks down in tears, apologizing, even as she gags and vomits again. Her ears ache, the pulse of blood in her brain jostling against her eardrums in a one-two rhythm. The paramedic assures the girl that vomit is not the worst thing she has been covered with that day. The girl continues apologizing anyway, repeating ‘sorry’ until the word loses all meaning.
The lights in the hospital are different. They’re still fluorescents, but these are much closer and brighter. They’re also long and rectangular, rather than circular, and they flash past her like the windows of a subway car blowing through the station. She follows them with her eyes, skipping from one to the next until it makes her so dizzy that she vomits again.
A woman is crying, calling her ‘baby’ and stroking her hair. The girl has changed her mantra from apologies to saying that she is fine, repeating it until it becomes nothing more than a tickle against her lip and a vibration in her throat. She’s smiling at the woman as they wheel her into another room, and the woman manages a watery smile in return.
It is dark for the few seconds it takes the nurse to flip the light switch, and then the room is flooded with overly-bright light. There is a big white machine in the centre with a long neck that rotates when the nurse touches it, making a quick clicking noise as it shifts up and over in a circular motion, reminiscent of a ballerina’s arm mid-plié. The girl starts to lift her arm in response, muscle memory from hours in the dance studio reacting without conscious thought, but the nurse pushes her arm back down.
The machine makes a buzzing sound as it rotates around the girl, pausing periodically to flash a bright light. She tries not to look at it, because looking at it makes her dizzy, and if she’s dizzy, then she might move, or worse— vomit. The nurse had been very clear that she is not to move because, otherwise, they will have to take the pictures again. It is too difficult to keep herself from looking, so she decides to close her eyes.
The nurse tells the girl to keep her eyes open. They become dry and achy in the brightness of the room and, although she fights hard, the urge to blink eventually overpowers her. When the girl is wheeled back out into the hallway, the woman from before asks why the girl is crying. She does not explain, instead murmuring apologies under her breath.
Her skates must have been taken off at some point because they are sitting in the woman’s lap. The girl reminds her to dry the blades so that they do not rust, but the woman does not move to wipe the steel clean. The girl frowns at the melted snow and condensation that sticks to the metal surface. She thinks about clean edges and smooth lines. She repeats that the woman should keep them dry. The woman does nothing except play with the too-long laces.
The girl looks up at the ceiling, where the lights are small and wide-spread and bright. They’re not fluorescent anymore. She isn’t sure what kind of lights they are, but she likes the way they wink at her softly. They are gentle, and they are pretty.
She does not look away.
.jpg){kind=link}