The Last Dance

• Maddison Reed, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2020

The bright lights hit my face, the concert was about to begin. I could see hundreds of faces staring at only me, as well as my mum and dad waving their hands high above their heads. I tried to imagine everyone in their underwear, but it didn't seem to help my nerves. As the rest of my dance troupe accompanied me onto the stage, I could feel my lunch coming back up, but I knew I needed to try and put my nerves aside and just do the flip. The music began and I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing but I couldn’t stop thinking about the flip. When it came to the moment, I was more nervous than I'd never been before in my life.

I ran across the stage and dived into my round off back handspring. When I landed, there was a crack. I fell to the ground, smashing my head on the sturdy stage floor, everything became a blur including my dance mates, My back was in agony. I could feel the body heat from my fellow dance mates as they surrounded me. I was bawling my eyes out and screaming in pain. I could see my best friend Abby’s long shinny blonde hair covering her tears of sorrow coming out of her beautiful green eyes. My parents charged through the audience to get to me. Not only did I wreck it for my dance mates, but I didn’t know what this meant for my dance career. When the paramedics arrived they knew by how much pain I was in, that I had done some serious damage. After catching a glimpse of the paramedics I completely cut myself off by grasping. tightly to the green whistle. I took a few breaths and I completely blacked out.

Sometime later I could faintly hear the sirens from the ambulance. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t open my eyes fully or focus on what was going on around me. I was pulled out of the ambulance and taken into emergency people surrounded me.
The bed stopped moving and there were doctors and paramedics everywhere. Some were wiping makeup off my freckly face, others were cutting my costume and taking my stockings off my long legs that extended into the distance. I became really sleepy again and drifted off into a deep sleep hoping the pain would go away.

When I woke up I was waiting for the doctor to receive the results that could change my life, I hugged the hospital blanket and it hugged me. A rush of pain travelled down my spin. After being in a lot of pain and struggling to breathe properly the doctors finally came in. I was so nervous while the doctor was explaining the issue. It took me a while to process it, but I had a spinal injury and it was going to take months to recover before feeling somewhat normal again.