84 Ribbons (21 page)

A doctor stepped into her white-curtained cubicle. “I’m Dr. Wycoff, the orthopedist. Let’s take x-rays and see what damage has been done.”

Half an hour later the doctor returned and hung the x-ray film on a backlit screen.

“Your ankle is broken,” he said. “Left hand is sprained. You have a nasty head wound and multiple deep bruises, but your cuts do not require stitches. I’m admitting you. We’ll clean you up tonight, then cast your ankle once the swelling decreases.”

Marta’s eyes filled with tears that Lynne wiped away.

Once Marta settled in her hospital room, the nurse placed a metal frame under the covers to lighten the weight of the blankets on her injured leg. She applied ice packs to Marta’s ankle and gave her sips of water.

When Marta lifted her left hand, the bandage squeezed like an undersized glove. She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m sorry I wanted that dumb chicken,” Lynne said from a seat in the corner of the room. “I feel guilty about this. It’s my fault.”

Marta turned away from Lynne and focused on the blue neon emergency sign outside her window. It wavered like a ghostly image. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Mrs. B. is calling your mom. Should I call Steve?”

Marta turned to face Lynne. “No. He’ll not be home until after the trip to the cabin. He’s helping a friend move to Bozeman then heading straight to the cabin. He’ll think we went to Spokane to see the Ballet Russe.” She fingered the necklace he’d given her last week. If only he knew where she’d gone and could come see her, she’d feel better.

The door opened. Mrs. B. bustled in. Her tight mouth and her furrowed brow matched her worried voice. “How are you, Marta?”

“Not great. Did you reach my mom?”

“She’s on her way.” Mrs. B. squeezed Marta’s right hand, sharing her warmth.

Marta held her breath to keep from crying.

New Year’s Eve day became an endless loop of empty, painful minutes. Her cuts burned, many of her bruises were the size of dinner plates, her leg throbbed, and she ached from lying in bed. The biology lab smell of the hospital and the squeaky footsteps of the nurses played like a bad dream. If only she could escape and go to sleep in her own bed. 

Evening light filtered through the wide Venetian blind slats. As Marta adjusted her covers, a familiar staccato of steps approached her partially open door. Her mom.

She rushed to the bed and swooped down, gathering Marta in a gentle hug. “Marta, honey, how are you?”

A stream of tears slid down Marta’s face. Her mom brushed them aside. “That answers my question. What did the doctor say?”

“He said I broke the scaphoid. That’s a small bone on top of my foot. How did you get here?”

“I drove.”

“Oh, M-mom.” She started to cry again.

On New Year’s Day the boarders stopped in to visit. They brought a basket of fruit, a vase of yellow roses, and a bottle of 7-Up to celebrate the new year. After they toasted using Mrs. B.’s best wine glasses, they stayed while Marta’s mom recited funny stories of Marta’s growing up years. The embarrassment of those events distracted her from her pain. But she worried about Steve and his friends finding the broken railing and the wood scattered near the cabin. Would he think someone had tried to break in? Would he be disappointed thinking she’d not come? What a mess.

As visiting hours ended, Marta readied herself for another restless night with the blue emergency light reflecting off the window blind. Perhaps 1958 would be a better year.

The white-uniformed nurses woke her through the night to check her blood pressure and adjust the tent over her leg. Her mom dozed in the narrow chair by the window. Marta gave up trying to sleep and counted hushed footsteps in the hall until dawn.

Lack of sleep left Marta feeling fuzzy. While she had a sponge bath, her mom disappeared and returned with a shopping bag. Marta opened the bag cautiously, then smiled as she lifted out a large blue leatherette scrapbook.

The pages revealed dance photos and recital programs across several years. “Oh, Mom! My butterfly costume and my first solo costume.”

“I started this years ago. I brought it along thinking we could work on it together; take your mind off your injuries.”

Doctor Wycoff entered. “Morning, Miss …” the doctor flipped open her chart. “Miss Selbiff.  Are you experiencing any pain?”

“Off and on.”

The doctor checked her eyes. “Possible concussion. Let’s check that foot.” He slid the bedcover aside and began fingering Marta’s foot and ankle.

She winced when he added pressure.

“The swelling’s diminished. We’ll cast it tomorrow.”

“When can I put weight on it?”

“Seven weeks to add weight. Total recovery will take fifteen to twenty weeks.”

“Twenty weeks?”

“It’s a sensitive fracture. If we rush it, you might never walk correctly or dance again. The time will go quickly.” He lowered her foot, straightened the covers, and hung her chart on the end of the bed as he left the room.

Marta lay back, inhaling ragged breaths. Twenty weeks! Five months!
By then the ballet company would have danced
Giselle
and
Serenade
. Only the tribute to American composers would be left.

“Marta? Honey?” Her mom touched her shoulder.

Marta heard her and felt her touch but couldn’t reply. Maybe Dr. Wycoff was wrong. What if he was right? What if she could never dance again? Should she go home and see a specialist in Seattle? Dancing was the only thing she knew how to do. She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shaking apart.

“Mom, why don’t you take a break. Go get coffee or a snack. I need to sleep.”

Her mom re-straightened the bed covers, brushed back Marta’s hair, then left.

As soon as the door closed and she heard her mom’s footsteps fade, Marta covered her face with a pillow and cried.

The rest of the morning Marta replayed Dr. Wycoff’s timeline through her mind as a continuous nightmare. Twenty weeks without dancing would take forever. Should go home or stay? Did it matter? Maybe.

Her mom sat in a corner reading a magazine when Marta’s door opened slowly. Lynne entered carrying a bouquet. “Hi, Mrs. Selbryth. Hi, Marta. How do you feel today?”

“Better.”

“Good.” Lynne handed a bouquet of carnations to Marta. “I hope you like red. Take a whiff. They smell good.”

“I love red carnations. Thanks.” Marta sniffed them. “Um-m. Put them in with the flowers from the boarders.”

Lynne added them to the existing bouquet, then picked up the scrapbook. “What’s this?”

“Mom brought my dance photo album for us to work on.”

Lynne sat on the edge of the bed, turning pages. She laughed. “You were cute as a cat.”

“That’s a lion for
Carnival of the Animals
. I had a ten second solo.”

Lynne flipped through the photos and stopped at a hand-written paper.

“What’s this? You used to write with curly cues. So girly.”

Marta fingered the notebook paper. “It’s the first page of my sixth grade report on ballet history. She silently read what she had written.

Ballet started in Italy, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At first men were the only ones allowed to dance. They put on wigs and pretended to be women.

King Louis XIV liked to dance. When he got too fat to dance, he started a dance school. Soon women began dancing.

“I felt so proud of myself. I brought in my new pointe shoes and a costume.”

Lynne snorted a laugh. “Guess we can thank old Louis XIV for our careers.”

Marta stared off in space. “I’ll get fat like King Louis if I don’t dance.”

“Marta, stop worrying about your weight. You’re thin as a rail.”

Her mom looked up over the magazine she was reading. “That’s right, honey,” her mom said. “Why should anything change over a few months? You’ve never gained weight in the past when you were sick.”

Marta closed the scrapbook and crossed her arms over it. “That’s because I watch what I eat. I’ve not eaten all I wanted for years.”

Lynne backed away.

“We exercise and attend classes three to four hours every morning and afternoon. You know I’d get sick if I ate a normal meal.”

“Yes, but Marta, honey. When you weren’t dancing you ate, didn’t you?”

“Hardly. I spit food in my napkin, then threw it in the garbage when you left the room. Would you have let me eat baby-size portions?”

“Of course not!”

“Exactly.”

Her mom stood and moved to look out the window.

“I had to do it for dancing, Mom. Besides, the long hours were exhausting. I’d lose my appetite anyway. We talked about that at Christmas.”

Her mom remained silent with her back toward Marta. When she turned around, her face looked ashen. “When did my sweet daughter stop taking care of herself?”

“I take care of myself, but I’ve gotten my dream answered. I won’t do anything to ruin my career as a dancer, and gaining weight might end my chances to dance. Who wants to watch a fat dancer?”

A nurse entered with a tray of food and swung the hospital table over Marta’s lap. “Time for lunch.”

Marta saw her mom close her eyes and shake her head. “It’s up to you. To mend you need to eat. I’m going to leave you two alone. I’ll be in the cafeteria.”

Two? Lynne stood pressed against the wall, her eyes focused on the floor. “Oh my God, Lynne. I forgot you were here.”

“That’s what I figured. Sounds like you and your mom need a private discussion.”

“I get so frustrated when she brings up eating.”

“You don’t eat much, Marta.“

“Not you too?”

Lynne raised her palms toward Marta. “I won’t say anything more. I’m out of here. See you tomorrow if my not-so-trusty car doesn’t conk out.” The door swung open and drifted closed. Marta sat alone.

The food on the tray looked hideous: orange Jell-o, bits of chicken  surrounded by white flour gravy, six pale green beans, a dinner roll, and a cup of watery tea. Marta picked up her fork in her right hand. It felt so awkward, considering she never ate using that hand. She rescued the chicken from the gravy and took one bite. She shuddered as she stabbed a green bean and began chewing, lonely for her mom’s company and praying she hadn’t damaged her friendship with Lynne.

18

A
s the nurse removed the tray, Marta’s mom re-entered the room, eyeing the leftovers. She moved to the window and peeked through the blinds. “Where’s Lynne?”

“She left after you did.”

Her mom sat down on the chair in the corner and opened her
Life
magazine. The silence in the room hung heavy as a velvet curtain.

Marta’s thoughts shifted to her dad’s fall. It haunted her whenever she closed her eyes and relived her terror. She’d never asked about it, but now she needed answers.

“Mom? What do you know about how dad died?”

Her mom’s head jerked up from the magazine. “Nothing more than I’ve told you in the past. Why?”

“I wondered if you’d kept anything from me because I was so young.”

Her mom stepped to the window and used her fingers to spread the slats of the blinds apart. “I told you what I knew. He fell into the empty dry dock when a railing collapsed.”

Marta shuddered, remembering the somber strangers sitting in her home as she walked in from school. “Did he suffer?”

Her mom turned to face her. “They said it happened in a flash. They’d just drained the dry dock, getting ready to repair the hull of the battleship. He landed on the metal floor.”

“When I fell, I thought about him. I wondered if he felt any fear, if he knew he was about to die.”

Her mom moved to the bed and held Marta’s right hand. Her lips tightened; she blinked slowly. “I don’t know. I try not to think about it.”

“As I fell off the porch, I wondered if I might die.”

“Oh, Marta.” Her mom started crying. “I can’t imagine how lonely you felt.”

“I thought of you, and I knew I had to be brave.”

“Come home with me, honey. Let me take care of you.”

“I can’t. I’ve thought a lot about it. If I leave, Madame Cosper may give away my position. By staying, I’ll convince her I’m serious and that I plan to rejoin the company. Can you see why I can’t risk leaving?”

“Yes. I know you’ve made a life here and--“

“That’s not all true. Sure Lynne, Bartley, and Steve are important to me, but the big reason is Madame. She doubts their selecting me for the company.”

“She hired you. Why do you say such a thing?”

Marta squirmed under her mom’s gaze. “When I first arrived, I made a terrible mistake. I mimicked Madame, and she saw me. When I went to apologize, she told me I wasn’t her first choice. Since then she’s given me the roles no one wants. I’ve done whatever she’s asked without complaint. If I leave, she’ll think I’ve given up.”

The next morning Marta’s cast extended from her foot to below her knee. The nurse spent half an hour smoothing on layer upon layer of plaster, creating a white log heavier than her entire body. Great. Now she looked broken and helpless.

In the early afternoon, Doctor Wycoff returned. “I’m releasing you today. Keep your foot elevated, even in the wheelchair for the next week. Use a bedpan if the bathroom is narrow. Be patient. It’s a delicate bone. We can’t rush the healing. We’ll move you to crutches as soon as possible.” He scribbled notes on her chart and left.

Seven weeks. Forty-nine days. Hundreds and hundreds of hours without walking or dancing. Then over a dozen additional weeks before she’d be cleared to return to the company. What would she do with herself?

Her mom collected her belongings, promising to return as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, Marta fidgeted, waiting for her mom to return. Outside, the snow clouds hung like gray blankets over the sky. That meant that Steve and his friends might get snowed in and stay longer. She should have thought to have Lynne call his home. It could be days before he knew what had happened.

Doctor Wycoff returned, closed the door, and crossed his arms over his chest. He was as tall and thin as her image of Ichabod Crane. The overhead light reflected off his shiny head. “I’m concerned about your general health. Your blood pressure is low, and you’re anemic. That’s unusual for a person your age. Do you eat meat and calcium-rich foods?”