One of the EMTs riffles through my bags—and he comes across my locket. “Pills.” He flashes the contents at Connie and Mr. K. The other Russian teachers try to clear out the room, but I can still see faces behind the glass walls, staring in at me.
“What are these, Bette? Diet pills? Help us out.” Nurse Connie’s looking at them now, frowning. Mr. K is pacing. I can hardly keep my eyes open. They droop and flutter.
I pull off the mask. “They’re my prescription. It’s in my chart. Nothing I haven’t been taking forever.”
“Okay,” the EMT says. “Ideally, we should take her in. It’s protocol. But there’s a note in this chart documenting all her meds.”
Another one checks my pulse and flashes a light in my eyes. I can barely stay awake. I feel pulled under again. I just want to curl up right here and sleep.
“Her pupils are dilated, and she’s barely awake.”
They collect all the pills from my bag. I try to watch everything, but I dip in and out of the room. The lights, the voices, the sounds go on and off.
“Bette.” Nurse Connie shakes my shoulder. “Are you sure these were just Adderall?”
My mouth goes dry and my brain tries to put this all together. I look up and see Cassie standing directly in front of the glass studio wall. She blows me a kiss and smiles. I try to stand. My legs are too weak to hold my weight. I want to confront her in front of everyone. I want her to get caught for this. I want it all to be over. We’re even now.
“She should go to the hospital,” one of the EMTs says, holding an ice pack to my forehead. “She needs blood work.”
“Her mom is on the way, and doesn’t want her moved until she arrives,” Nurse Connie says. “She’s got a knot on her head that will need examining. Also, we should give her a CAT scan.”
“Cassie did . . .” I slur out.
Nurse Connie frowns. “Did what?”
The words sound ridiculous out loud. I look back up. Cassie’s not there anymore. The crowd thins out. No one cares about what’s happened to me. Ballet class has resumed in a different studio.
“Cassie helped me is what I meant.”
“Morkie said she caught you before you hit your head even harder,” Nurse Connie says. “What a nice girl.”
I clench my teeth.
The EMTs hover, the gurney ready to go, still insistent on taking me to the hospital. When my mother arrives, raging, they start packing things up, and taking out refusal-of-medical-treatment paperwork.
She storms up to Mr. K. “Just what has happened here?”
Mr. K looks stricken. He can’t afford to mess with my mother. Not now.
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Abney,” he says, resting a hand on her arm. “We’ll have this all taken care of in just minutes.”
She touches my cheek, and her eyes get a little watery. A tiny swell blooms inside me and I try to keep from crying. I don’t remember the last time she’s looked at me like this.
“I think I took the wrong prescription. One of my sleep aids,” I say. “It was an accident.”
“Still, you need to go to the emergency room, just to be sure.”
“I will take her,” my mother says.
“I will go with you. I want to ask the doctor about clearing her to dance,” Nurse Connie says.
“Oh, you’ve done enough,” my mother says, helping me to my feet. “And not to worry, she will be fine to dance.”
“But—”
“She’s an Abney, she’ll always be fine.”
In that moment, I actually love the woman.
33.
June
“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.