Fever

by Tonya Plank

  “I think that was him. It looked like him.”

  “He was in the ballroom?” It made absolutely no sense that James was at the competition. There must have been a mistake. But just then I remembered hearing someone say he was a lawyer. That was crazy. How would he even have known I was there?

  “I meant to talk to him when I saw him at the hospital but he was busy talking to the medical people. Before I knew it he left.”

  “That’s just incredibly weird,” I said, realizing that’s exactly what I felt and nothing more. That it was odd and confusing but not the least bit exciting or heartwarming that my ex had shown up at my first competition. It was touching that he cared about me after I was hurt, but I couldn’t help be annoyed that he basically prevented Sasha from staying with me on the way to the ER.

  “I hope nothing’s wrong with my sister…although I hope I’d find out from her or my mom if something was…” I mumbled, thinking out loud.

  “Your sister?” Sasha looked at me with concern.

  “Yeah, they’re close friends. I met James through her. That’s the only reason I can think of that he’d try so hard to find me.”

  “I can try to find out?”

  I realized then I hadn’t looked at my cell phone since being brought to the hospital. “My things. I don’t know where—”

  “Oh they’re in the lobby with Pepe. I meant to bring them. I be right back,” he said, his grammar waning for the first time in…I couldn’t remember how long. He returned in seconds holding my phone out to me. “Yes, there are messages,” he said.

  Two. Both from my sister.

  “Rory, James went to see you perform in some dance competition. He said you collapsed on the stage and they took you to the hospital. It just so happens I’m in Santa Barbara this weekend. I just wanted you to know that I’ll be on my way down soon. I, I didn’t know you were dancing so seriously again.” On that she hung up.

  She sounded flustered and annoyed more than worried, although that easily could have been the way I was hearing it, given our history. I didn’t like the way she said “dance” and “dancing” at all. But again, she, like Mom, had never very much approved of my childhood passion.

  “Hi again, Rore,” began her second message. “So, I’m in the O.C. and having coffee with James. We’re catching up. It’s nice to see him. Will be nice to see you. I haven’t seen you in so long. Anyway, we’re off to the hospital. So see you soon. Bye.”

  I looked at the time. That one was left half an hour ago. I hadn’t actually seen her since last summer. Since I’d moved to L.A. And our last phone conversation didn’t go so well. I felt a pit in my stomach growing larger.

  “What is it? Rory, are you okay?” Sasha said, brushing his long fingers up and down my arm.

  “Yeah,” I lied. “She’s okay. She said she’s coming to see me. I still don’t really know what James was doing—”

  The door opened and the young doctor from earlier stepped in. She was reading my chart as she walked in.

  “Hello, Ms. Laudner,” she said, finally looking up at me. She had a soft, round face but a severe look in her eyes, similar to the one Rajiv had earlier.

  I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach. What was wrong with me? She looked back and forth between me and Sasha.

  “We need to talk,” she said fixing on me. She looked again at Sasha. “Would you please excuse us, sir?”

  “Oh, he can stay,” I said. “He’s my partner.”

  She looked at him again. “Okay.” She sounded dubious.

  Did we look too different to be partners? Did he look too exotic and I too plain? I tried to shake it off. I was probably just being hypersensitive since I knew my sister was in the vicinity. She tended to have that effect on me.

  The doctor pulled up a chair. “The good news is that there’s nothing wrong with your heart…yet.”

  “Yet?” Sasha and I said in unison.

  “Your blood work shows that you have mild hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar. You’ve got to eat more often than you do to keep your blood sugar up. You’ve got to eat more than do you in general, Ms. Laudner. Your body mass index is well below what it should be for your age. Well below.” She looked at me straight on. “Ms. Laudner, the paramedics detected an irregular heartbeat. But from your EKG it seems it is probably a murmur at this point. But I must tell you, Ms. Laudner, starving yourself of important nutrients can have a long-term effect on your heart.”

  “Starving myself?” I said.

  “Have you lost a lot of weight recently?”

  “I don’t feel like it but it’s funny because people are telling me I have, and my dance costume is fitting a little loosely.”

  “There’s nothing funny about anorexia,” she quipped.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean ha-ha funny,” I said. I wasn’t liking this woman. With her long eyelashes and large doll eyes and heart-shaped face, she looked somewhat cherubic. Maybe she was trying to overcompensate by being serious to the point of being rude.

  “She has, doctor. But just in the last two or three months,” Sasha said, putting his arm around me and caressing my shoulder with his thumb.

  “When was the last time you ate? And what did you eat?” she asked, now looking back and forth between the two of us.

  “I had a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice just this morning,” I said, lifting my chin. I ate. That’s nutrition.

  “How big?” she said.

  I showed her the height of the glass.

  “Is that how much liquid was in it?”

  I showed her the amount of liquid with my fingers.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “A piece of cake that my teammate made,” I semi-lied.

  “Really?” she asked, dubious again.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Anything else?”

  “Some blueberries in the morning and ten walnuts on the bus,” I said.

  “Okay and yesterday?”

  I had to think back. “Last night I had a glass of this kale celery apple juice Sasha makes and insists I drink,” I said, motioning to him with a nervous laugh.

  He smiled weakly.

  Her harsh expression remained solid. “What else?”

  “Um, I had a pretty bad day at work and actually, I think besides that, I had only half a banana in the morning, and a bottle of mineral water.”

  “Okay. And how large was the glass of juice?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I mean, regular size.”

  “She did drink the whole thing,” Sasha added, nodding, as if defending me.

  After I continued listing the contents of my meals for the last week, the doctor told me she was going to release me on the condition that when I got back to L.A. I saw a psychologist as well as a nutritionist. She gave me a list of referrals and said she was putting in a call to my current primary care doctor to make sure I followed her advice. She thought I had anorexia spectrum disorder, and while I wasn’t full-blown anorexic since I was eating, she was concerned that I could become so and it could further weaken my heart. Especially with me being so physical.

  “You’re a dancer, right?” she asked.

  “Yes, she is,” Sasha said. “She’s an excellent dancer.” I looked up at him, and saw his eyes were slightly wet around the edges.

  She looked back and forth between Sasha and me. “I was told you came from a dance competition. Not ballet, though?”

  “No, ballroom. But it’s interesting you ask because I danced ballet earlier, as a child and teen.”

  She nodded. “Have you ever had problems with anorexia before, Ms. Laudner?”

  Embarrassed as I was about that part of my past, I needed to come clean. She was a doctor, after all. And I’d told my primary care physician, so it was part of my record.

  “When you danced ballet?” she added, sensing my hesitation.

  I nodded, without looking up at either her or Sasha. “I overcame it, though.”

  “Th
at’s not unusual, unfortunately,” she said. “It’s good you overcame it. It means you can do it again. I definitely want you to go to the therapist, Ms. Laudner, in L.A. This could become very serious. Your heart is the last thing you want to damage.” She looked at Sasha and he nodded.

  “Thank you, doctor,” he said.

  After she left, Sasha leaned over and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m so sorry. I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know it was so bad. I will do everything I can to help, my princess.” There was a slight crack in his voice. “Everything,” he repeated, then kissed my forehead and my cheek. He began trailing kisses down my neck, when the door opened again.

  We both looked up. It was the nurse.

  “There are two people here requesting to see you, miss,” he said.

  “Okay, you can send them in,” I said, assuming he was talking about Rajiv and Kendra or Pepe.

  “We can’t have more than two visitors at a time. And they wish to see you together. So if you want them to come in, I have to ask your friend to step out for a moment.” He gestured to Sasha.

  “Oh, well then they can see me one at a time—”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” Sasha said, giving my forehead another peck before releasing me. “I want to go down to cafeteria and get juice anyway. I can let them have you. But only for a few seconds, of course.”

  “Thank you. I’ll miss you,” I said, reaching out to him as he walked to the door. He turned and blew me a kiss.

  The nurse shot us a bemused look. I guess we were being a bit overly dramatic. But I was just so thankful not to have a heart problem. I could nip this in the bud. I’d done it before and was sure I could do it again. Dieting and staying dancer-thin and fit, and yet getting enough nutrition to be strong, were not mutually exclusive. I knew that in my brain. I just had to keep reminding myself of that, and of how absolutely horrible it would be if I fainted at Blackpool and ruined Sasha’s dreams. And now my own.

  I hadn’t even thought of how much I’d disappointed my teammates. I guess I’d find out what damage I’d done in the next few minutes.

  But it wasn’t Pepe’s face that replaced Sasha’s disappearing black curls in the doorway. Instead I saw long, silky jet black hair, green cat eyes, a ski-jump nose, fair, creamy, flawless skin, perfectly red-lined full lips. My sister.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said quietly, cautiously, with a weak smile. Even though it was the weekend, she wore a professional Diane von Furstenberg-looking navy blue wrap dress with high patent leather black pumps, and a matching necklace and earring set made of beautiful purplish Tahitian pearls. She carried a large Gucci bag on her shoulder. She looked immaculate and financially successful, as always.

  James followed her in. He wore the same weak smile. They looked at me like I’d just been given a cancer diagnosis and they were trying their hardest to be pleasant and positive in the face of tragedy.

  “So, how are we feeling?” Jacqueline said, raising her hands as if she didn’t know what else to say. James looked me up and down and raised his eyebrows.

  I hated how she often referred to me in the first person plural when asking me a question. It was usually a question designed to put me on the defensive. “Better,” I said, trying to sound optimistic. “Now that I have fluids in me, and after talking to the doctor. I know what I need to do and I already have a plan to set things in motion for when I get back to L.A.” My words were assertive but they somehow came off sounding defensive.

  Like clockwork, every time I was in my sister’s presence, my old insecurities returned. She was brilliant and beautiful, had a stellar education with a federal clerkship to top it off and a high-paying job at a prestigious firm. At thirty, she owned a condo in a posh San Francisco neighborhood as well as a gorgeous Victorian house in Sausalito. Here I was, about to lose my low-paying job at a miniscule firm in L.A. and I rented a small one-bedroom in Hollywood. A nice part of Hollywood to be sure, but Hollywood in general wasn’t exactly L.A.’s poshest residential district.

  But wait, I thought. Why was I focusing on all this? I was a dancer now, training with the greatest male Latin ballroom dancer in the world for the world’s most prestigious championship. There was no competition between us now. We were totally different people. So why did I still feel two feet tall in her presence?

  She raised her hands again and approached my bed. I noticed she had a perfect French manicure that looked like it had just been done. “Oh honey, you do look incredibly thin.” She looked back at James, who nodded at her. “I, I feel so badly I haven’t been around much for you,” she said, returning her gaze to me, “and, I know you guys had that fight, but I just, I thought James was taking care…” She looked back at James again.

  I couldn’t see her face but he looked down, avoiding both of our gazes. She must have glared at him. Maybe he’d lied and told her we’d gotten back together? Or maybe she’d just forgotten.

  “Anyway.” She came up to my bed and grabbed my hand. Her hands were cold and shaking. She was nervous, which was odd for my always-put-together sister. “So, what is this about all this dancing you’ve been doing? It seems to have gotten very serious.”

  Her smile was soft but she had a rather hysterical look in her eyes. The contrast would have been laughable, had I not always felt my exterior was made of eggshells on the verge of cracking in her presence.

  “Yeah, I’m training with this Russian ballroom dancer, Sasha, for the largest competition in the world. He’s currently ranked number two in the world in Latin dance, and we’re trying hard to shoot for number one, so…I have my work cut out for me!”

  She looked back at James and they both regarded me as if I’d just spoken in another language.

  “I mean, not today. Today was just for fun. I joined a mambo team at the studio Sasha teaches at just for fun. I thought being on a team would be fun, and competing before the big competition would be a good experience and a lot of fun.” I was blabbering badly. And could I say the word ‘fun’ more? I always talked too much when I was nervous.

  “Was passing out from anorexia fun?” she asked, the same phony smile plastered on her face.

  I opened my mouth but I had nothing to say to that.

  “Jacqueline, be careful,” James said.

  “I’m sorry, that was a little too harsh, too soon.”

  Jacqueline was the perfect litigator, the way she could crush her opponent with such few words delivered somehow bluntly yet elegantly.

  “You don’t need to worry about me. I don’t even have anorexia,” I said. How did I always let her put me on the defensive? “The doctor said it was only spectrum and she gave me a plan to follow. I’ll be fine.”

  “Like last time?” she said with a snicker.

  “Yes, like last time. The doctor even said if I conquered it once I can overcome it again.” My voice could not have been squeakier.

  “Rory! You only overcame it after you left that stupid dance school and went to college!” This time she yelled, throwing her hands up in frustration.

  The door opened a smidgeon. Sasha’s beautiful face appeared. “Are you okay?” he asked me, his dark blue eyes wide and full of concern.

  “Sir, sir, please,” came a voice behind him. “Only two visitors at a time.”

  Sasha didn’t budge.

  “Please, I need to help my sister,” Jacqueline said in his direction, not even fully turning to face him. Disgust tinged her voice.

  “Don’t you dare talk to him like that,” I found myself saying.

  “Rory, Rory, please, just talk to us a little while longer. Just hear us out.” This was from James.

  “I’m going to have to ask one of you to leave,” said the nurse, opening the door wider.

  Sasha eyed James, giving him the nastiest don’t-you-dare-go-near-her glare I’d ever seen him make. James turned to him, caught his scowl and actually physically backed away from him. It was funny seeing them face off. James was a lawyer and Sasha an artist, but Sasha was w
ay more alpha and intimidating, and he had far more distinction and virile, masculine presence. He’d transformed James into a scrawny little fly in need of being squashed.

  “It’s okay, honey, I can handle them,” I said to Sasha with a smile that suddenly felt real. “But thank you!”

  “I am right out here if you need me,” he said, shooting James one last glower.

  I smiled, feeling empowered by his protectiveness.

  “Thank you,” said the nurse, closing the door.

  “You called him ‘honey.’ Rory, is that your boyfriend?” Jacqueline practically screeched.

  “Obviously. And he’s a him, not a that,” I said, surprised by the forcefulness of my words and lack of whine now in my voice.

  “Psssht,” she said with a laugh, throwing her arms up again. “Okay, so now I see it. You’ve become obsessed with this Russian guy and now you’re giving up your whole life for him and some pipe dream.”

  Pipe dream? What gave her the right to judge me? I was fuming so badly I couldn’t even speak. I opened my mouth but only hot air came out.

  “I mean, if you’re doing all this training and competing, you’re obviously not working that hard at your job,” she continued. “When I was a first year associate I was at the office eighty hours a week, at least, to prove myself. Rory, your bosses have to realize your lack of passion.” She shook her head, looking at me, mouth open in disbelief. “Rory, stop glaring at me. I’m trying to help you. You’re my sister and you’re spiraling out of control so early in your career.”

  “I’m actually taking some time off from my job. I’m focusing on dance right now,” I heard myself say, vocalizing my plan. It didn’t sound so bad now that I’d said it.

  “Oh my God, are you serious? After all that work you put into your career. The LSAT, law school for three years, taking the bar exam. All that money? You’re going to let it go just like that?”

  “Stop being so melodramatic,” I said. “I’m only taking a few months off. Maybe a year.”

  “She doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” James piped in. “The market is so tight these days, the field is saturated with too many attorneys. Starting attorneys are taking temporary document review positions forever. It’s crazy competitive.”