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Dancing Across the Country by akire [Reviews - 0] 
I don’t know how to break the bottle I’m living in… For the first six years of her life, Greta has ten memories of the hospital for every memory of her frilly pink bedroom. For the first six years of her life, home and hospital meant the same thing. Fifteen years later, home has four wheels and an engine, and Greta rests her head against the window and watches the scenery pass, grateful for any distraction from the constant ache in her belly. Medicine man now my feet are dragging “Touring is doing you no favours, Greta.” Dr Harper isn’t even looking at her. She stares at his back as he scrutinizes the thin, ghostly shadows on film. “How bad is the pain?” She looks down at her bare feet as he finally turns around. “I didn’t say anything about pain.” “You didn’t need to. The inflammation around your surgical scars tell me everything.” His voice is soft, gentle, and Greta feels like she’s six years old again, lying on the bed because she can’t sit up, answering questions and listening to the buzz of grown-up conversation as she waits for her end-of-appointment lollypop. “Greta?” She looks up, tilts her head sideways and smiles. “It aches, sometimes,” she admits. “Nothing two Tylenol don’t fix.” Dr Harper makes a mildly disapproving noise, and Greta drops the smile. “And I doing any more damage?” she asks sharply. “No,” he grudgingly admits, turning away to pull down the x-rays. Greta hops lightly from the examination table. “Then I’ll keep touring. Besides, we might be getting a proper bus, too.” She smiles widely. “With real bunks. Bunks, Dr Harper!” Dr Harper laughs and gestures to the door. “Go put on your pretty dress, Miss Greta,” he says in an easy mockery of the tone he used to use when she was small. “And we’ll talk about some exercises that may help manage the pain.” You were a child made of glass… She met Bob in the seventh grade. New school, new start, theoretically. Still no friends. But the music room had an upright piano and an open door. The piano was old, the action poor, but it was a soothing ritual borne out of countless hours of practice. She had a note for PE; this was her exercise. Sit up straight, breath pass the scars. Her dress brushed her legs as she worked the pedals. The keys worked the body, the music fed the mind. She ran up a scale, segued into arpeggios, notes falling into an easy progression, taking her away. A dropped clatter made her start, gasping as pain scythed through her midsection bringing her back to herself. “Sorry, sorry.” The boy was half-crouched over a dropped music stand. “I just wanted to return this, I didn’t want to disturb you, sorry, sor— hey, are you okay?” Greta braced herself against the frame of the piano and forced herself past that angle. The pressure eased, taking pain with it. “Yeah, sorry, I…sorry” The boy has taken two steps to stand beside her, his hand warm and heavy on her shoulder. “We’re both saying sorry here. I think we can take it as given.” He smiled down at her, open and friendly. “I’m Bob.” “Greta.” Bob nodded at the piano. “What else can you play?” And that was that. Do the hospital bed crawl, do the terminal yell, and the violently alone I feel… Bob is waiting in the carpark, leaning against the bonnet of his car. His dark sunglasses reflect her face back at her as she approaches. “Cool?” The warm breeze catches and plays with the folds of her skirt, and she can feel the smooth material tug and catch across the triangle of scars that run like an arrow down between the channel of her hips. “All good,” she says with a sunny smile. “Cool,” Bob repeats, sliding off the bonnet to open her door. He catches her elbow as she jerkily lowers herself into the bucket seat. “You need a bigger car,” she says, puffing a lock of hair out of her face. She feels like a rusty hinge after all that poking, able to move freely except for one particular point where everything catches and creaks. “Write a few more hits and I might be able to afford one.” He closes the door and walks around. Greta no longer feels envy as she watches him sling himself easily into the drivers seat. “Chris and Darren called,” he dips his head and looks at her over the top of his sunglasses. She smiles back. “Icecream run?” He nods seriously. “Icecream is very important.” Greta fishes a pair of sunglasses out of the detritus littering the dashboard. They’re too big, and slip down her nose. “Let’s roll.” |
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