Shiny Broken Pieces (22 page)

“
I THOUGHT YOUR MOM WOULD
have told you.” It's after lunch, and I'm dressed in my black, long-sleeved Tuesday leotard with pink tights, ready for class. But Nurse Connie's waiting for me in the hall, her face grim, with a medical pass for Morkie—one I didn't know I needed—excusing me from afternoon ballet. For a minute, I'm scared that someone told them about all my missed appointments with my therapist, Taylor, and the fact that I'm still hovering around 102 pounds. “Did you eat?”

I kind of want to say yes. I wonder if that would get me out of whatever this is. But I shake my head. “What's this for?” I peer at the paper, but it doesn't reveal much.

“You have a doctor's appointment. A bone scan.”

A bone scan? I don't know quite what that means, but I know it's scary. I snatch the pass from Nurse Connie's hands, and head down to the front office.

My mom is seated on the leather bench in the administration office. I'm about to ask her if I can go change when she stands. “Good, you are on time. I don't want to be late.” She pauses, awkward. “It takes weeks to get these appointments. I had to call in a favor.”

I know what she's not saying. My father's the one who called in a favor. So he knows about all of it—the auditions, the eating, the not eating. The bile rises in my throat, knowing that he's in on something so close, so personal, when he hardly knows me at all.

I go change, and we're in a cab headed east five minutes later. The driver goes through the park, which is a major mistake, because traffic is at a standstill. I turn to face my mother, tapping away on her phone. Usually, I would be, too. But the idea of this is freaking me out too much to focus on anything else.

“Why didn't you tell me?” My voice seems to startle her, like she forgot I was sitting next to her.

“It was last-minute.” She looks up and around, frown lines forming fast and furious as she realizes we're blocked in. “You should have gone down to Central Park South,” she tells the cabdriver, as if it will do any good now. “We're already behind.”

“I know you think I need this stuff.” I catch her off guard again, the way she looks at me, surprised. “But I'm almost eighteen. I'd like to be in on the decision-making.”

“When you show me you are well enough to handle yourself, we can talk about that,” she says, touching my leg. “For now, though, you will do as I say.”

She taps away on her phone again for the next twenty minutes.

We're half an hour late. The doctor's office feels cold and metallic, with the AC going, even though it's barely March.

“Just another minute,” the tall, scrub-suited woman at the front desk says before she turns back to the computer. She's brown, with dark hair and dark eyes. “We're short staffed, and you were supposed to go in fifteen minutes ago. I need to get another nurse.”

My mom nods, and I focus on the small flat screen in front of me that's tuned into the cooking channel. It's a chubby, redheaded chick who talks about life on the ranch and cooking for cowboys. She's making fried chicken, potato salad with globs of mayo, and cupcakes for dessert. “Things that will stick to your ribs,” she hollers through the screen.

Do real people eat this stuff?

“Can I go to the bathroom?” I ask no one in particular, and when my mom nods, still on her phone, I take off. I walk through a long corridor, with patient rooms off either side. The bathroom is to the right. I head straight for it.

The tall, scrub-suited lady spies me just as I reach the door. “Oh, did they call you already, E-Jun?” She extends both the
e
and the
uhn
, so my name sounds stretchy and loose.

I'm so panicked, I want to cry. I want to curl up on the floor and go to sleep.

“Bathroom.” I point.

“Oh, then take this.” She hands me a cup. “We need a sample before we start.”

When I get into the bathroom, I pee first, filling the cup
halfway, the acrid scent of urine overwhelming the small room. I flush, and carefully wipe down both the bowl and the floor. Getting down on my knees, I listen to the swirl of the water, and seconds later, the bile comes up naturally, friendly and familiar. There's not much to it—mostly water, since I've yet to eat today.

But just the act is comforting. I heave again, trying to be as quiet as I can, but someone's knocking, then pounding. My vision is teary, so I flush and stand, washing my hands as fast as I can. My throat still throbs. I have to swallow and breathe to press down the rest of the liquid in my stomach. “Just a second.”

I splash my face and look away from the toilet. I nearly knock over the pee cup as I pull open the door.

It's the scrub-suited lady. Dr. Neha Arora, her name tag reads. All this time, I assumed she was a nurse.

“E-Jun.” She pronounces my name more normally this time. My mom walks into the corridor, too. She's wringing her hands, which means they're onto me, although no one's saying anything yet. “The nurse is ready for you now.”

The nurse stands behind her. She's a youngish black lady, also in scrubs, with hot-pink spiky hair. “I'm Ericka. I'll be administering the radiotracer for the bone scan.” She doesn't look like she's graduated college yet, let alone whatever else she needs to legally pierce my arm. She settles me into a lumbering metal chair, my feet flat on the floor for now, checking my heartbeat and temperature. My mom stands around, observing. I wish she would leave—that is, until the nurse brings in a few tubes and a long, skinny needle.

“It'll only pinch for a second,” the nurse says, and I grimace.

“Want me to hold your hand?” my mom asks, then takes it without waiting for an answer.

The nurse ties what looks like a supersize, superflimsy rubber band around my bicep. I try not to watch what she's doing—tempted to close my eyes like I used to when I was a kid—but I can't take my eyes off her.

“Try to relax.” She taps my arm, looking for a vein. When she finds one, she sticks the needle in. It burns and pinches, like the time I got bitten by red ants at the beach in Coney Island. Ericka hums to herself as she attaches a tube to it. She draws a small vial of blood—dark and thick—and then attaches another needle hooked to a metal tube. As soon as she's done, I feel something cool and creepy climbing through my veins—like someone is freezing me, part by part. I want to pass out then so I don't have to be in the room anymore. The nurse must sense it, because she tapes the tube in place, then pushes a button and the back of the chair slides down, so it's almost like a bed. “Just breathe and relax. You can close your eyes if you'd like.”

I do for a few minutes. I can hear the nurse coming in and out of the room, and sense my mom still sitting in the other chair. I bet she's on her phone, which annoys me to no end, so I lift up my head to look. But she's just sitting there, staring at me. She immediately comes over, puts her hand on my forehead. “You okay,
boba
?”

I nod but don't speak. She hovers. She wants to say something, I can feel it, but it's all bottled up, like a shaken can of soda, ready to burst.

“What?” I finally say.

“I had a bone scan. Back when I danced.” It's the first time she's ever brought up her dancing history herself, so my ears perk up. I've tried to ask her about it a dozen times, but she usually won't talk about it. “Back then, it was so different. That massive machine felt like death, like a coffin.”

That's what I have to look forward to? I must seem stressed out, because she rubs my face, her fingers gliding over my eyebrows as she smiles. “You'll be okay. They have open-air machines now, like a tanning bed.” Not that either of us have ever been in a tanning bed. The thought of my mom lying in one, in her skirted one-piece and compression socks, makes me giggle.

She smiles, then frowns. “I had shin fractures—tiny little ones that would've gotten worse. Then I got pregnant, and had you.” She smiles, a bit happy, a bit sad. “I knew by then dance was not happening anymore.”

The defeat in her voice makes me want to cry. For the two of us, our tiny little fractured family. But she's rubbing my cheeks again, and though her eyes are wet, she's still smiling. “I'm not disappointed, E-Jun. I never had the same love for dance. For me, ballet was an escape—from Korea. And, back then, I was so, so happy, so in love. With a baby, I thought it meant—”

She goes silent there, but I know what she's thinking.

“I know you struggle, that this is hard. But, believe me, having you, I was happy.” Her papery fingers are on my arm now, not far from where the needle has pierced me, where the coldness begins. “But you like this—here, the needles, so skinny, I can't take it. It's killing you, this dream. And it's killing me.”

She's holding my hands so tightly, I know what she says is
true. If I don't fix this now, I could lose everything. Dancing, I realize, slowly but surely, is not worth giving up my life for. I nod, and I hope she can see the clarity in my eyes, the determination. I may never be cured, like Nurse Connie said, but I can take control. I can stay the path, and do what I need to do—for myself, for my mother, and for the others who choose to love me.

Two hours later, the bone scan begins. They lay me down on a flat bed, one that I know will go into the huge machine that's been whirring and spitting in this room for the past half hour, as they prepped me. With its screens and the tunnel-like cavity, it looks like a face with a large gaping mouth, one ready to swallow me whole. Dr. Neha is by my side now, and Ericka is on the other side.

“Shhhh,” Dr. Neha says again. “Relax.”

I am relaxed, because they've clearly slipped me some kind of sedative. Everything feels so slow, so soft, the sharpness gone from it all. As the flat bed moves forward, I know I should be panicking. But I just feel tired. I close my eyes and let the machine do its thing, knowing what it will reveal—the things that the physical therapists have been warning me about for months. The miniscule stress fractures in my shins and feet, the ones that cause me those tiny agonies on a weekly basis. The ones that have been getting progressively worse since freshman year. The ones that might eventually end my dancing career. The lack of strength in my bones from poor nutrition.

I know from all the pamphlets Taylor gave me at our first meeting that my eating problems are to blame—the throwing up, the lack of bone-building nutrients, the fact that my period came
and went and never came back. I picture the box full of dead toe shoes I've compiled over my time at the conservatory, each pair taking its toll. The thought of them makes me shiver, like the butterflies that stared out at me that night, cold, menacing.

When it's finally over, Dr. Neha talks briefly to my mother in her office, as I sit quietly and wait for her to tell us what she knows. What I already know.

“It's bad,” she says, and my mom flinches. “But it could be worse. We won't have the full analysis for a few weeks, but I think we know what we're looking at here. That gives us someplace to start.”

My mom breathes then finally, and I watch her hands tremble as she places them on Dr. Neha's desk. “So what's next?”

“Well”—Dr. Neha turns to look at me sternly—“the eating issues are the biggest culprit here—and I know you're working on that, but that is the key. We need to get you healthy, June. You're seventeen, in the prime of your life, and you're falling apart. There's no reason for that—even if you continue to dance. I've worked with dozens of dancers, and strong bones and musculature are so, so critical. You're doing yourself a disservice here—as a dancer and a human.”

I nod.

But she's not satisfied. “No, speak. I want to hear you say it.”

So for the first time, I say it.

“I'll do what I have to do,” I say. “I'll stop.” I don't say throwing up, but I know they know what I mean. This time, I know it's true. “I want to dance,” I tell them—and myself. “I want to be healthy.”

The next week, things shift, slowly at first, but then all at once. I visited my therapist, Taylor, for the first few days, but my mom decided instead of me going to her—and possibly skipping appointments—that as of today, Taylor would come to me.

When I get to the café, she's already there at the entrance, waiting with her ever-present clipboard and that menacing red pen, already making notes of my crimes to report back to my mother.

“Right on time.” She smiles and gives me a quick once-over, looking for signs that I'm up to no good, I guess. She heads toward an empty table, and we sit. “Tell me what you had today.”

“I managed to down a full bowl of congee at breakfast,” I say. I can still feel the rice porridge sitting heavy in my stomach, leaving no room for everything she'll make me eat now.

“Junebug, that's a strong start.” I cringe as she scribbles some more notes. Junebug? Gross. No one's ever called me that. “I think lunchtime should be protein focused, since you'll be dancing again in the afternoon. And maybe some carbs.”

Her voice rings out even over the din of the café, which means everyone can hear her. It's so loud, so obvious, I wonder if I should start planning meals for odd hours, so no one else is here. I don't want them to see how strict Taylor is with me, how she monitors everything I put on my tray, every bite I put in my mouth. I feel like a petulant four-year-old who doesn't want to eat her peas.

“Did you have your snacks today, Junebug?” Ugh, there it goes again. It kind of makes me want to vomit. Which isn't good if that's what she's supposed to be trying to help me not do. “Do you need more?”

I shake my head. She's taken to portioning out little baggies of nuts or trail mix—I'm supposed to eat two packets a day. Taylor says it's perfect postclass food: full of vitamins, minerals, and the good kind of fat, the kind your brain and your muscles need after a harsh workout. I want to get better, I do. But it's just too much for me. So I've been eating one bag, and leaving the other in the rec room, where I've seen the boys downing it during movie night. But that's not what I tell Taylor. “Yes, one bag of trail mix after academic classes,” I say, pulling out an empty packet from my backpack. “Saving the other one for afternoon ballet class. I'm always starving then,” I lie.