Chapter 15 #4
By the time they reached the infirmary, her heart was beating so hard that she could hear it in her ears. The boys sat her down carefully on the couch and left the room, and then there was only the nurse, the smell of antiseptic and alcohol, the cold light under the ceiling and endless questions.
“Does it hurt here?”
“And here?”
“And if I press like this?”
Alisa answered automatically, barely hearing herself, because her own voice sounded strange and distant, as if it were echoing somewhere very far away.
“Here… yes… stronger here… no, not there…”
Time dragged on endlessly.
Then at some point the nurse left too, and Alisa remained alone in the examination room, lying on the narrow couch with her knee wrapped tightly in elastic bandages, while both skates lay abandoned on the floor in the corner, the laces untied hastily, as if she had simply torn them off.
The room smelled of pain ointment now too.
Then there was a knock.
The door opened, and Arkadiy came in. He was holding a tube of anti-inflammatory cream in one hand, and his face was so serious that Alisa’s stomach dropped somewhere down into her skates. For a second she thought, that’s it, that’s it, it’s fucking over.
But then suddenly he smiled.
“You’re going to Beijing,” he said.
Alisa stared at him. She couldn’t believe her ears!
To Beijing?
Her?
For one terrifying second she honestly thought maybe she had a fever and had simply imagined it.
“Really?..” she asked at last, almost in a whisper, with her mouth still slightly open in disbelief.
“Really,” Arkadiy repeated, coming closer and putting the ointment down beside her. “And now the work begins for real, Alisa, because you have very little time left and the preparation will be even worse.”
She blinked several times.
“But my knee?..”
“Tired muscles. Some inflammation. Nothing terrible,” he said, already kneeling in front of her and carefully spreading the ointment over both knees, because both of them hurt now, only one much more than the other.
“Bandages, ointment six times a day, rest when you can. You’ve skated through worse. ”
“Well…” Alisa tried to smile, although her lips trembled helplessly. “That’s just part of our lives.”
Arkadiy looked up at her.
“There shouldn’t be.”
Alisa lowered her eyes.
“There’s no pain on the ice,” she whispered after a moment, so quietly that she almost did not hear herself.
For a second Arkadiy said nothing at all, and then he only put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“Are you ready to go out?” he asked softly. “The others want to congratulate you.”
Alisa nodded.
Getting up was unpleasant, her knee immediately ached again, but not as badly as before, maybe because the ointment had finally started working.
Beijing. I’m going to Beijing!!!
The corridor outside was full of skaters. Almost all the boys from Arkadiy’s group were there, all the girls from Alyona’s group too, everyone talking loudly at once.
Everyone except Cherry. She wasn’t there. And the moment Alisa realized that, it felt as if somebody had suddenly driven a knife straight into her chest.
Because why her?
Why Alisa?
Had Cherry really skated worse?
Had Alisa really taken her or Anastasia’s place?
“Congratulations, baby!”
“You’re insane!”
“You’re a rocket!”
“We’re so proud of you!”
“You wanted this so much!”
“You trained harder than anyone!”
Voices crashed into her from every side, skaters hugged her shoulders, touched her hands, smiled at her, and Alisa smiled back automatically, nodded, whispered thank you, thank you, thank you, but somewhere deep inside there was still that horrible, painful feeling of guilt.
And then someone shouted.
“Two hundred seventy-two point four one! Alisa, that’s crazy! Is that your new personal best?”
Alisa froze.
“…What?”
“Two hundred seventy-two point four one!”
For a second she just stared.
They had really scored her that high?
After the fall?
After the mistake?
After everything?
“I… I think so,” she whispered, almost laughing in disbelief now, because tears were suddenly burning in her eyes all over again. “I think it’s a personal best… even with the bad jump… even with almost ruining everything…”
“Oh, stop it,” Anastasia said immediately, stepping toward her with a wide smile and wrapping her arms around her shoulders.
“We all watched you. It was magical, Alisa, really, I had goosebumps through the whole program, every spin, every movement, and the jumps…” she shook her head as if she still could not believe it.
“The jumps were something else entirely.”
“It’s true!” the blonde chimed in, hugging Alisa too. “We’re proud that you train with us, seriously, you’re incredible!”
Then the other girls came too, one after another, hugging her, smiling, talking over each other, and Alisa stood there in the middle of them with aching knees and red eyes and the taste of tears still somewhere in her throat, feeling two completely opposite things at once.
The terrible guilt that maybe she had broken somebody else’s dream.
And also joy… Huge, blinding, impossible joy.
Because for the first time in a very long time, she had done it and people fucking saw it.