31. Karina
31
KARINA
Dahlia
The Past
New York City
I often think that if given the chance to choose between dreams and practicality, Karina might’ve chosen a pair of dance slippers over a career in academia.
From the moment Karina and me were old enough to recite the alphabet, practicality had been hammered into us with a cruel and heavy hand. We weren’t allowed to have dreams; we had goals. And as the eldest and only daughters of our parents, we bore the weight and responsibility of all their hopes and sacrifices. Such a burden made unhappy, overachievers of us both.
Watching her dance is an act of mourning. She moves across the stage in a shimmering white outfit with all the grace and agility of the mystical swan she aims to portray and at her pointed feet lies a graveyard all she could’ve done and been. Karina could’ve gone as far as the New York City Ballet or the Paris Opera Ballet but she traded her costumes for textbooks a long time ago. Now she dances for the joy and pleasure of it as part of a local dance company in downtown—the Lafayette Ballet Company. An old and well-respected nonprofit known for catapulting the careers of many of the industry’s most talented professionals.
Karina’s been scouted numerous times over the years by choreographers and talent agents alike but she’s always turned them down. Whether it was out of insecurity, fear, or both, she’ll never say.
We’re at Da Gennaro on Mulberry Street where I check my phone religiously, hoping a message from Karina will come through. An hour has come and gone and no one knows where she is or why it’s taking her so long to get here. No one seems to mind her absence, assuming she went out with friends from her company, but Karina wouldn’t have left her family high and dry like this. Da Gennaro is her favorite restaurant. Coming here after a show is tradition and seeing as how Karina and Brent left more or less around the same time as the rest of us, it can’t have taken them this long to drive fifteen blocks and find parking. It’s cold, snowing, and eleven o’clock; no one is out right now.
When I reach for my phone again, Alejandro notices. “She’s still not here?”
I call but it goes straight to voicemail. “No.”
“Do you think they’re stuck in traffic?”
“The theater is on Lafayette. No way it’s taking this long.” I let out a huff of frustration. “They should be here already.”
“Do you think Brent’s still upset about what happened?”
“ I’m still upset about what happened.” My eyes narrow. “What exactly were they arguing about?”
Alejandro looks over and I follow his line of sight. Diego is sitting at the end of our table with my aunt who’s holding one of her baby nieces. I can tell Diego isn’t in high spirits but he does well to hide his discontentment and instead, helps the baby sneak bits of pasta off my aunt’s plate. Lettie, the old soul she is, has been cooped up in a corner with my grandparents for most of the evening where they eat, drink, and judge people together in peace.
“He wouldn’t say,” Alejandro replies. “Though something tells me it has to do with Karina.”
It all happened so quickly. One minute, hundreds of people were vacating the theater and the next, Diego was pushing Brent so hard he knocked over a table of playbills. Alejandro swooped in and ended the conflict before it could go any further. Brent stormed off, taking a frustrated Karina with him and we haven’t heard from them since.
“Maybe it’s best we leave,” he tells me. “We shouldn’t have come to begin with.”
“Don’t say that. Karina and I both invited you guys. I’m family which means you are too.”
The corner of his mouth rises in a barely there smile. He lifts his hand and gently caresses my cheek. “I know. But Brent is Karina’s husband and if he doesn’t want my brother here for whatever reason, we have to respect his wishes.” He leans over and kisses my temple. “Text her and tell her we’re leaving. Maybe then she’ll come. If you’d like, I can pick you up?—”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m going with you guys. Karina won’t mind, and I’m tired anyway.”
He nods and doesn’t say anything else. I’m about to text Karina when a call from Lyss comes through.
I lift my phone to my ear. “Hey, can I call?—”
“Dee, I’m at the hospital and Karina’s here.”
I sit upright so quickly I knock over the wine glass in front of me. “Wh?—”
“Look, don’t panic, she’s okay. I’ll explain later. We’re at Mount Sinai, how quickly can you get here?”
Still beside me, Alejandro sits up in my seat and touches my arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re outside. Diego and Lettie can either stay or meet us later but tell them we’re leaving now . Give me the keys, I’m going to start the car.”
He hands over the keys to our rental without protest. I grab my coat and purse and run out of the restaurant.
“What the hell is she doing at Mount Sinai?”
“Brent brought her to the emergency room, apparently she fell and got hurt. My aunt’s on duty tonight and I stopped by to bring her dinner when I saw them. She got taken in for some more x-rays a few minutes ago. Brent’s a wreck.”
“Did he tell you anything?”
“Just that she hurt her foot. I don’t know what else.”
I stop dead in my tracks.
“Her…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Her what ?”
“My aunt just got back. Call me as soon as you get here!”
I storm through the emergency room like a hell-born blaze, ready to obliterate anything and everything in sight. The first person I lay eyes on is a bleary-eyed, red-faced Brent, pacing the length of the linoleum floors with slumped over shoulders and a wave of hair hanging limply over his brow. I beeline straight for him and he flinches at the sound of my approach but doesn’t meet my gaze.
“What. Happened?” I demand.
He swallows hard and slows his pacing. “She…she was getting out of the car…”
My patience thins with every second that passes and I don’t have an answer.
“It happened so fast…the door…”
I grab him by the lapels and give him a shake. “Fucking spit it out, Brent!”
He can’t look at me. Then again, he isn’t looking at anything, only staring at some far-off point in the distance I can’t make out.
I give him a hard push and he lands on the plastic chair behind him. “Fucking useless…” I yank off my gloves and am about to reach for my phone in my pocket when Lyss materializes from down the hall. “Over here!”
Her gaze darts across the emergency room and finds mine. When she does, she comes over to meet us and waves quickly at Diego and Lettie who’ve tagged along before approaching Alejandro, Brent, and me.
“Karina’s in good hands, my aunt’s the one attending to her,” she placates. “Please don’t panic. I called you instead of her parents because I thought you’d be less likely to make a scene and upset her.”
“Is she all right?” Alejandro asks. “Can Dahlia see her?”
She nods. “Come, I’ll take you there now.”
I unbutton my coat and Alejandro helps me out of it. I hand him my purse but keep my phone. “Watch them, please. All of them.”
Alejandro glances at his brother and Brent before nodding. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
Lyss leads me down the hall and at every turn I have to avoid someone stepping on the train of my skirt. I must look ridiculous in a black evening dress and pearls in my hair but this is a hospital; I’m certain everyone’s seen far worse and far stranger.
We reach a white door at the end of the sterile hall and Lyss knocks once. “Clodagh? It’s us.”
“Come in.”
Lyss pushes the door open and Karina is sitting upright on a white hospital bed. Tears have clawed their way down her round cheeks, ruining her makeup with ugly, black lines and messy glitter. Otherwise, her hair and costume are intact and her winter coat is strewn across one of the side chairs and she wears a simple gray sweater for warmth. More than the ruined eyeliner and blank expression on her face, my attention is drawn to the monstrosity on her foot.
Karina’s half a foot shorter than I am and the boot on her right foot is massive, heavy, and goes all the way up to below the knee. How is she supposed to move around in that thing when it probably weighs more than her?
“Kay?” I approach the side of the bed and sit next to her. “Are you okay?”
“She’s in shock,” Clodagh, Lyss’s aunt, tells me. “But she’s all right.”
“What happened?”
“Karina, I need your consent first.”
My cousin inhales shakily before giving a curt nod. “You can tell her everything.”
Clodagh sets down her clipboard and Lyss steps out into the hallway to give us some privacy. “She crushed her foot.”
“What do you mean she crushed her foot? She was fine an hour ago!”
Karina’s monotone voice sends a shiver down my spine. “I…opened the door. To get out and…and a motorcycle.”
Both Clodagh and I watch her with suspicion.
“He was driving against traffic…flew past the passenger side door…my foot. It got caught.”
“Did it happen on your way to the restaurant?” I look around the room and find a box of tissues and an unopened water bottle on the nightstand. I grab a wad of tissues and wet them before cleaning up the running makeup as best as I can. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? And where’s your phone?”
“I lost?—”
“Brent has it,” Clodagh interrupts. “And her purse as well.”
Karina doesn’t react at first. After a moment, she looks at me and says, “Please don’t tell my parents.”
“Kay, I’m not going to tell them right now because they’re only going to make a scene in the emergency room. But everyone is still at the restaurant waiting for you; we have to tell them something.”
“ No .” Her voice is firm if not slightly erratic. “I said no. Don’t .”
Clodagh and I exchange looks in silence. She tilts her head and I follow her out into the hall. Lyss isn’t here, which means she must be in the waiting room with everyone else.
“I’ve made a call up to psych and one of my colleagues is on his way down. I’m hoping she’ll consent to an evaluation.”
“An evaluation? For what? She broke her foot.”
“And she’s practically comatose. Look at her,” Clodagh says. “You’re the first person she’s spoken more than a few words to since she got here. I’m concerned.”
“She’s in shock, Clo. An hour ago she was riding the high of an amazing performance and now she’s broken her foot…” The moment I say the words aloud, something dawns on me. “Oh my God…her foot.”
She understands my concern immediately. “Broken in several notoriously difficult places for healing. Thankfully, she avoided the need for surgery.”
“Recovery?”
She hesitates a beat before continuing. “I’m not so concerned about the phalanges—her toe bones. Those fractures are smaller and less severe. They should heal without issue. However, her metatarsals are different.” She holds up her hand to demonstrate. “They’re the long bones in the middle of the foot and crucial for weight-bearing and balance. Almost every single one of them is fractured. It’s a miracle her sesamoid bones weren’t crushed either.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means movements crucial to ballet, like rising to the tips of your toes, would become nearly impossible. At this point in time, I do not feel confident in her ability to dance again after this.”
My heart drops. Instinctively, I look over my shoulder and find Karina exactly where we left her a few minutes ago. Stone faced and silent.
“Does she know?”
“I think she does. After we removed the shoe and she saw the damage, she’s been quiet ever since.”
My poor Kay…
“There’s something else you should know.” Clodagh reaches forward and pulls the door halfway closed. She lowers her voice. “She lied about the motorcycle.”
“What?”
“When they first got here, Brent said it was a cyclist.”
“She could’ve gotten them mixed up, Clodagh, look at her—she’s traumatized. I doubt she was paying attention.”
The doctor in front of me gives a firm shake of the head. “No, Dahlia. I was there, in the emergency room with Alyssa when they came in. I heard everything. They both said it was a cyclist. And another thing,” she says. “Karina tried to lie about where her phone is. Brent has it and she knows he has it.”
“What reason could she possibly have to lie about those things?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?”
Her implication makes my blood run cold.
“I’ve worked in a hospital for almost as long as you’ve been alive. I’ve seen everything. And I know when a woman is keeping a secret for her husband.”
“That’s not?—”
Even as the words take form on my lips, they stop short. Brent is many, many things but it would be wrong of me to think the worst of him in this moment. Right now, he’s sitting in the emergency room, distraught and essentially useless. We have our issues but one thing I can never say I’ve witnessed is him mistreating my cousin. On the contrary, he’s annoyingly obsessed and doting, to the point of being overbearing. He’s never even raised his voice at her. He wouldn’t raise a hand to her…
Would he?
And if he did, would Karina tolerate it?