Chapter 46 #2
Sasha already knows he shouldn’t be watching this in front of his teammates, but the video’s started and he can’t look away. Because there’s Danny, a close-up of his face in high definition, and the achingly familiar sight of him keeps Sasha rooted in place, staring.
“Now on floor, Danny Hartman,” a commentator says as Danny salutes the judges. “And he’s got a tough road ahead of him, doesn’t he, Ted.”
“Absolutely, Bob. Danny came in as the favorite to win, and now he’s in tenth, after a disaster on night one,” Ted replies.
“He fell on pommel horse, and he had two falls on high bar—made a lot of very uncharacteristic mistakes that you don’t normally see from him.
I talked to him afterwards and he told me he was having trouble focusing. ”
Sasha’s stomach knots up as Danny steps into the corner, getting ready for his first tumbling pass. The camera does another close-up as he takes a deep breath, and Sasha wishes he could pause the video right there, stop whatever’s going to happen next.
“But he also said he’ll be ready to go for night two,” Ted continues as Danny starts running, “and let me tell you, Bob, if there’s anyone here you don’t want to count out, it’s Danny Hartman. He’s the best male gymnast in the United States—”
Ted abruptly stops talking, or maybe Sasha just stops listening as Danny goes flying out of his round-off like a ragdoll, his twisting all wrong, his arms reaching for his right leg instead of pulling in tight to his chest. He hits the ground with an audible thud, somersaulting backwards out of sheer momentum—and then, for a heart-stopping second, he gets stuck upside down, neck bent and legs askew over his head, before he crumples sideways and stops moving.
“Oh boy,” the commentator says as the medics rush in, blocking Danny from view. “I really hope I’m wrong—we’ll see if we can get a replay—but that… I think that might have been his Achilles.”
Sasha doesn’t want a fucking replay. He jabs at the screen, fast-forwarding until he sees the top of Danny’s head, the only part of him visible through the swarm of medics.
Sasha holds his breath as he watches them work, praying for Danny to nod or twitch or something to reassure the crowd that he’s awake, that he hasn’t lost consciousness.
An Achilles tear is bad enough, but if his head and neck took the brunt of his fall…
“Well, we’re hoping he’s okay, but unfortunately, it’s looking like Danny won’t be able to defend his national title,” says Ted, the absolute dipshit, as if a national title fucking matters when Danny still isn’t moving. “And that means the door’s open for Noah Park, who’s up now on pommel horse—”
The clip ends a few seconds later, and Sasha stares at his reflection in the dark screen, realizing this happened yesterday and he had no idea. Danny could be in the hospital—his entire career might be over—and then Sasha would never see him again, not even at Worlds—
He’s about to pull up Danny’s Instagram when he remembers that this isn’t his phone.
That he’s standing in the middle of a locker room, surrounded by teammates who are definitely watching him, and he has no idea what his face is doing, no idea what the others might have seen while he was panicking over Danny.
It takes every ounce of bravery he has to glance back up, to make what he desperately hopes is a normal amount of eye contact as he returns the phone to Oleg.
“Wow. That… sucks,” he manages, trying to assess the damage without being obvious about it.
Is anyone staring at him? Or pointedly looking away?
Ilya, at least, just seems surprised. “You didn’t know?”
“Obviously he didn’t.”
Sasha can’t get a clear read on Oleg’s expression, but that’s probably a good thing—Oleg’s made plenty of comments about gay people over the years, and Sasha doubts he’d mince words, or punches, if he knew the truth.
“I haven’t talked to him in a while,” Sasha says, barely keeping his voice steady. Thank God Kirill isn’t here. “I’ll text him later.”
Luckily, Ilya and Oleg seem to buy it, though Sasha still has to listen to them rewatching the video before he can escape from the locker room.
Outside the arena, he slips past other gymnasts and their coaches, taking a path along the Iset River and walking until he doesn’t see anyone in white, blue, and red.
As soon as he’s found a quiet enough spot, he sits down on a low stone wall and pulls up Danny’s Instagram.
Nothing. Not even a story.
Sasha checks the USA Gymnastics account, but there’s no update there either—just a post announcing Noah Park as the winner of the competition.
Google and Twitter are equally useless, and by the time he’s combing the dregs of the gymnastics blogs, he’s desperate.
Why isn’t anyone saying anything? Why isn’t Danny saying anything?
Thinking of all the reasons why Danny might not be posting—why Danny might not be able to post—Sasha feels his breathing getting shallower by the second, his stomach churning like rancid butter as he refreshes every page again.
Finally, he’s exhausted his social media options and he still doesn’t know if Danny’s okay and—
He calls Danny.
The phone rings, and Sasha doesn’t think about what he’s doing, or the fact that they haven’t talked in four weeks.
He just needs to know that Danny isn’t concussed, or something worse; and the longer he sits there listening to his phone, the more panicked he feels, because Danny almost always picks up after the first ring, like he was just waiting for Sasha to call.
But maybe Danny wouldn’t answer even if he was okay. Maybe—
“Sasha?”
Hearing Danny’s voice again is like slamming down onto the parallel bars, a blow to his ribs that scrapes him open raw, and for a moment Sasha’s too stunned to answer. Because it’s Danny, and it’s been so long, and Sasha’s missed everything about him but especially this—
“Sasha? Are you—is this a butt dial?”
For a horrifying second, Sasha thinks he’s going to burst into tears. He swallows hard, his throat so tight it’s painful, and manages to choke out: “Danny.”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Danny sounds confused, wary. “What’s up?”
There are so many things Sasha wants to say, and he can’t find the words for any of them. “You’re okay,” he starts, immediately realizing his mistake—just because Danny can pick up a phone, doesn’t mean he’s actually okay. “Are you?”
Danny sighs, the sound crinkling like static in Sasha’s ear. “I have surgery tomorrow. My Achilles is fucked.”
Sasha bites his lip, shuffling through memories of other teammates who’ve torn their Achilles.
It doesn’t have to be a career-ending injury, he reassures himself; Danny can rebuild with physical therapy and conditioning, light training on soft landings.
If he’s lucky and there aren’t any complications, he’ll be back in the game in six months, maybe eight, and fully recovered in a year.
“I am sorry. But are you…” Sasha hasn’t spoken English since California, and it feels awkward on his tongue, the sentences not forming like they used to. “Your head,” he finally says. “I thought—when you fell—and your… your neck?”
“Oh. Yeah, no, I guess it looked bad on TV, but I actually just landed on my back,” Danny explains. “My head got, like, some of it, but they checked and I don’t have a concussion or anything, so. My neck’s kind of sore from, like, rolling over weird, but it’s fine.”
Sasha should be relieved, hearing that Danny doesn’t have a head injury on top of his Achilles; he doesn’t know why his eyes are welling up instead.
“I thought you were hurt. I was with my team, and Oleg showed me, and everyone was watching, and I—I thought—I was afraid—” His voice breaks, and he cuts himself off, hoping Danny didn’t notice.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Sasha, that’s… yeah, I’d be freaking out, too.”
“But you’re okay,” Sasha whispers, which is stupid, because Danny’s already told him that.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Danny says it kindly, like he knows Sasha’s being an idiot but isn’t going to call him out. “Well, except for my Achilles. But yeah.”
Sasha clears his throat. Swallows. Breathes. “Does it hurt?”
“No, not really. I mean, when I was coming out of the round-off, I felt this, like, pop, and I just, like… knew it was bad. And then I was like, there’s no way I’m gonna land on this, so I bailed, and…
I don’t know. It didn’t hurt after that, but I tried walking and my dad flipped his shit, so I’m not supposed to put any weight on it until tomorrow. ”
“Is your dad… is he doing your surgery?” Sasha asks, recalling that Andy’s a sports medicine doctor, or something along those lines.
“No, it’s his friend Bill, who’s, like, the best Achilles surgeon in the US. You actually met him, he was at the country club when we were having dinner.”
Sasha doesn’t remember Bill at all, but he remembers that night, Danny eagerly pulling out his phone to show Andy’s friends a video of Sasha vaulting. He can’t believe that was just over a month ago; it already feels like another lifetime.
“Well…” Danny clears his throat. “I should probably, uh…”
Realizing Danny’s about to hang up, Sasha panics—he isn’t ready for them to stop talking to each other again.
He wants Danny back in his life, he can’t believe he was ever stupid enough to let him go, but he doesn’t know how to say any of this; he just knows he has to keep Danny on the call.
So instead he says everything that he should have said weeks ago, the words pouring out of him like a wound that won’t stop bleeding.
“I am sorry. For—for what I said. About gymnastics, about Rio. I was angry, but I should not—I don’t know how to say. I was… I was… rude. Very rude. And it was not your fault, it was mine. I miss you—I miss you so much. I am very sorry.”
There’s a long silence; Sasha tells himself that Danny just needs time to figure out what the fuck he just said.