Practice Makes Perfect (Completed)

Chapter 3

Anastasia's cousin was a dentist, and an arrogant one at that. Every time she had visited, he had taken her whole family on a tour of his offices. Starting on about the third time, Anastasia had started stealing injections of Lidacaine, the powerful numbing agent they used when they did oral surgery. She had only actually used the injection twice: once as a dare from her friends, and once now. Since the doctor had told her her ankle was broken, she had emptied six syringes into her heel, and the pain had basically disappeared.

"Are you sure you're good to go onstage?" her coach asked, wrapping an extra bandage tightly around her ankle.

"Just put the brace over the bandages. I'll be a little stiff, but still alright."

"Are you sure you want to go out there? You could ruin your ankle."

"Coach, you know as well as I do that I need this win. If I get the points here tonight, I'll automatically qualify for the state meet, and I'll have six months to recover."

"That's only if you win. What happens of you lose?"

Anastasia tied the ribbon on her ballet shoes and looked her coua ch in the eyes.

"I won't lose."

She she stood, she didn't even favor her good foot. Instead, she walked on stage with confidence, and took her position on stage, posed and ready to begin. She watched the curtain begin to part.

Some of the audience had seen her first dance, and the applause was a bit louder than usual. People were always ready to applause someone for getting back up after a fall. Of course they didn't know how bad of a fall it had been.

As the song started, Anastasia moved into her first form, certain to make everything flow well. Her injured door was numb enough that moving it felt like moving a ghost limb, and she had to be careful to move exactly how she remembered. The occasional tendrils of pain that arose when she put too much pressure on the injury also helped her orient herself.

The hardest part of the routine was near the end, and it involved several piroets on her bad ankle. She had considered changing the move to her other foot, but it simply didn't flow as well that way, and she was still pretty sure she could pull it off.

The brace made it difficult to hold proper form, but she forced her ankle straight, and balanced on her bad foot. Her coaches words echoed in her head. You could ruin your ankle. Anastasia shook her head. That was a risk she had to be willing to take.

The music swelled, and Anastasia shut her eyes. She couldn't feel her ankle, but she could feel her body spinning faster and faster, every ounce of her weight resting upon a broken ankle. One tiny shift in balance would send both her body and her score tumbling downwards.

For the last two turns, she held her breath, and the leap towards the end nearly caught her by surprise. Amazingly, when she landed, her ankle neither gave out on her, nor slipped away. For the first time in years, she was dizzy, and something about the crowd's cheers was making her a bit lightheaded, but she had actually done it. Dancing on a broken ankle, she had finished her routine, and she had done it without a single fall. Knowing what she did about her own talent and the talent of her competitors, she had a great chance of winning.

The curtains closed, and Anastasia relaxed. Luckily, her final position placed her close to the ground, and when her body gave out, the fall to the floor was a short one.

"Are you okay? How's the ankle? How did it go?" her coach asked, handing her an ice pack.

Anastasia tried to breath deeply, but her heart was fluttering. Adrenaline, perhaps, or maybe the pain was starting to get to her. She couldn't really feel her ankle anymore, but that didn't mean she couldn't go into shock.

"I'm okay." she assured her coach, and she hobbled offstage on her own power to prove it.

The medic was waiting just backstage, and ad already cleared the table. "Let's see that ankle."

He started to unfasten the brace, but Anastasia interrupted. "I thought you were done helping me."

"I'm a doctor. That's not how it works."

There was relative quiet for a few minutes as he unwrapped every bandage Anastasia and her coach had forced around the appendage. It was a strange sensation not to feel his hands as they prodded at her ankle, feeling for the edges of the bone. She still felt a bit lightheaded, and when it was combined with the numbness, it made her feel a little disconnected from reality.

Anastasia watched as the doctor pushed up on her foot. She felt something that almost felt like pain, but dull and far away.

The doctor shook his head. "That should have been agony. Are you on something?"

"I took some Advil earlier." Strictly speaking, it wasn't a lie.

He still looked suspicious. "Is that all."

"I took a couple too many." Again, not really a lie. She must have swallowed six or eight of the painkillers before she went onstage. The bottle limited her to two. She didn't say that she hadn't also dosed herself with six times the recommended dose of lidocaine.

Eyes still narrow, the doctor continued. "Well, regardless, we need to get you into the hospital for an x-ray. It can't e safe for you to walk on that foot."

Anastasia hated hospitals, and if she hadn't been so drowsy, she might have argued. As it was, her eyes were drooping, and muscles beginning to relax.

"You this girl's coach? Give her a hand to the ambulance, could you?"

"You have an ambulance?" the coach's voice sounded distant. "Already?"

"I had it waiting when she--"

Anastasia would have heard the rest of the sentence, but as the medic was speaking, she drifted into sleep.