Chapter Text
– Evgenia –
September 2016
Have you ever centered your entire life around something, and still lose? You try your very hardest for years and years, and it all turns out to be for nothing?
Have you ever lost it to the love of your life?
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My whole body aches.
It’s prime skating season, and I’ve got everything to lose. The rink is still dim when I arrive, the fluorescent lights only turn on in half of the rink. Everything smells cold, icy and comforting. By six-thirty, the first off-ice session had already started. My jumps are sharper in the mornings, non-tired legs produce better elements.
I pull my blue and red jacket a little tighter around my body. Evgenia Medvedeva is sewn into the fabric, reminding me of everything I still have to work for.
Sometimes I stare at my own name too long. It’s honestly a bit stressful, seeing my name on headlines, on scoreboards, coming out of reporters mouths. This jacket is my golden ticket, it’s my way onto somewhere better, like the Olympics. I’m going to be big someday, I just have to keep going.
Stepping towards the ice, I slide my guards off and suck in a long, hard deep breath. The sound of blades scraping across fresh ice echoes through the rink, sharp and familiar. Across the rink, I see one of the younger novice girls, Daria, trip up on a double. She lands hard, and her bottom lip wobbles, but she doesn’t cry.
She just pushes herself back up and tries again immediately, cheeks pink from embarrassment.
I admire her. She’s stronger than me.
My emotions are a troublesome topic nowadays. Everything frustrates me. I’m always angry. Nothing is like it used to be, and I think I know why. A year or two ago, I’d never lose. I had no real competition. Even in the junior circuit, I had nothing to worry about.
Back then, skating felt easy. Simple. Not physically, it’s never physically easy, but mentally. I knew what would happen when I stepped onto the ice. I knew I’d win. I knew judges loved me. I knew my programs would leave people speechless.
I knew exactly who I was.
Until she came along.
Alina Zagitova.
She’s like an ice princess. She’s beautiful, graceful, younger, “like a breath of fresh air” as some of my coaches say, and it infuriates me. I think this might be the source of my constant anger. I’m snappy and difficult to work with. I start my day off fine, and then she walks in and ruins it. She lands every jump, she centers every spin, she’s everything I am and more.
I’m so, so fucking jealous of her.
Taking a deep breath to clear my mind of Alina, I tie my skates a bit tighter and step onto the ice, immediately pushing into a few slow laps to warm up. Cold air burns my lungs in the best way possible. My blades cut clean half-circles into the ice beneath me, familiar and automatic.
My legs still ache from yesterday’s training.
Actually, everything hurts lately.
My left hip. My back. My ankles, especially during certain jumps, but it’s not like that’s new. Pain is normal at my level. If you want to succeed, it’s just a given.
No one talks about that part when you’re young. Nobody tells you what you’re in for. They talk about medals and dresses and artistry. They don’t talk about waking up barely able to walk down stairs after practice.
Sometimes I can’t remember what my body felt like before skating hurt. I think I started to be in constant pain a year or two ago. I do all my warm up stretches. Once at home in the morning before I leave, and once in the off-ice room before I even step onto the ice, so why does everything hurt all the time?
I wonder if Alina is in constant pain.
I don’t think I hurt too bad when I was fourteen.
Maybe that’s why it feels like she’s so much more consistent than me.
After a couple warm up jumps, I skate to the boards for water, and I see her. Hair in a perfect, slicked back ballerina bun, with the same red and blue Sambo-70 jacket I wear, draped around her shoulders. She’s younger than me by just under two years, still small with long legs and not much else, like she hadn’t grown into her body all the way yet.
She’s laughing quietly at something one of the other younger skaters says, her pink lips curved into a soft smile. It’s infuriating, how much talent she has in that little body. And it’s even more infuriating how envious I am of her. I need to stop with this jealousy crap.
“Morning,” she said as she passed me by.
I nod in acknowledgement, and she smiles. It’s a sweet, kind smile. It shouldn’t upset me, but it does. It’s not like she’s rude, she’s actually pretty quiet, doesn’t talk back to coaches or really at all, but her presence on the ice emits confidence. She takes up space naturally, despite her young age.
Everyone notices her.
And somehow, I notice her the most.
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Practice is always stressful, but I don’t mind it. Feeling the cold rink air soothes me more than anything else. If anything, stress keeps me on my toes. When I was skating alone, without a coach to direct me, I got in my head. Not in a bad way, exactly, but I could think in peace. My life is very fast. I skate everyday, I don’t take breaks, I’m always on the go. I don’t have much time to myself. I like my silent skating time, where I can tune everything out and just train.
The rink is one of the only places where just thinking doesn’t feel like time wasted, like I could be training or stretching instead. I’ve always felt safe on the ice, it’s like a second home.
Usually, I’m on top of my game. I take so much in my skating, but recently, somethings been distracting me.
Someone’s been distracting me.
Alina. She’s like a fly. A fly on the wall. You don’t notice it all day, then right when you’re in the middle of something—BUZZ!—right in your ear. I can’t avoid her. She’s everywhere, with that stupid, stupid smile.
One second she’s practicing spins in the corner of my vision, the next she’s flying across the rink into a perfect jump combination while every coach watches.
I hear her name constantly.
“Alina, again.”
“Good, Alina, that was good.”
“Excellent, Alina.”
“You need to go faster, Alina.”
And every compliment directed at her feels like a tiny knife sliding under my ribs.
I’m not a mean person, I promise. I don’t really know what’s wrong with me, okay? I’ve never felt like this about someone before. She frustrates me, yet she fascinates me. Her skating catches my eye, and her face…
God, her face.
There’s something unfair about how soft she looks compared to how fiercely she skates.
Before she can even catch me staring, I go down.
It happens before I can even think — I’ve done this jump a million times, my body knows the rotation better than I know the back of my own hand, and yet something goes wrong. Horribly wrong.
My takeoff is crooked.
Just slightly, hardly enough to even notice. But it was enough.
The second my blade leaves the ice, I know.
Panic slams through my chest midair. My axis tilts, my body no longer aligned the way it’s supposed to be. Instinct takes over immediately, arms jerking in a desperate attempt to save it, but it’s too late. I come down wrong.
The impact is violent.
My hip smashes into the ice first, then my back, and a sickening crack rips through my body so loudly I swear I can hear it over the loud rink music. Pain explodes through me instantly, sharp and unbearable, like someone drove a knife straight into my spine.
For a second, I genuinely think I’m dying. I can’t breathe. I open my mouth, but nothing comes in or out, except for this horrible choking sound. My entire body locks up against the ice, every muscle tensing so hard it hurts even worse.
The rink goes dead silent. That, or I just can’t hear anymore. Everything blurs together into bright lights and muffled shouting. My vision swims so badly I feel sick. I think I might actually vomit. I try to move my leg and pain tears through me so violently that a cry finally rips out of my throat before I can stop it.
Oh my god.
Oh my god, something is seriously wrong.
Tears start streaming down my face instantly, hot and humiliating and completely uncontrollable. I curl in on myself automatically, clutching at my side, but even that movement sends another wave of pain crashing through me hard enough to make me dizzy.
Everyone is yelling. Screaming, even. I hear blades scarping against the ice and try my best to focus on that sound, but concentrating is impossible when I’m in this much pain.
“Don’t move her—”
“Someone get a coach—”
“Oh my God, is that blood?!”
My chest heaves uselessly. I still can’t breathe right. Every inhale catches painfully in my ribs, shallow and broken. Terror floods me so fast it makes me shake.
This isn’t normal.
I know pain. I know injuries. Figure skaters are in pain constantly — bruises, sprains, overworked muscles, stress fractures. I’ve had them all.
But this?
This is different.
This feels catastrophic. Career-ending, even.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to panic, but said panic is already swallowing me whole. My back burns so badly it feels unstable, fragile, wrong. Everything is wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
The Olympics.
The thought hits me so hard I almost throw up.
The Olympics are in two years. Two.
No no no no—
Hands touch my shoulders carefully, trying to help me sit up, and the movement sends blinding pain shooting up my spine. I gasp so sharply it turns into a sob. Black spots swarm across my vision for a second.
I think I black out for a moment after that.
When I come back, chest heaving and hands shaking, someone is kneeling in front of me.
Dark brunette hair pulled into a perfect bun.
Wide, terrified eyes.
Alina.
“You’re okay, don’t cry.”
Her voice sounds soft, but underneath it I hear panic. Real panic. Her hand cups the side of my face carefully, like I’m something fragile that might break apart completely if she touches me too hard.
Cry.
I didn’t even realize I was crying again until she said it. Tears are pouring down my face uncontrollably now, dripping onto the ice beneath me.
My entire body trembles.
“It hurts,” I whisper, and my voice barely sounds like mine.
Her expression crumples for half a second, but she puts on a brave face, squeezing my hand. “I know,” she says quietly.
Another wave of pain crashes through me so suddenly I nearly scream. My fingers claw helplessly against the ice. I can’t stop shaking. Coaches are surrounding us now, talking too quickly in urgent voices, but all I can focus on is the horrible pressure in my back and the terrifying thought repeating over and over in my head.
Please let me skate again.
Please.
Skating is all I have.
And lying there on the ice, unable to stand, with tears freezing against my skin and the entire rink staring at me, I realize for the first time in my life that I could lose everything in a single second.
I need something to focus on. I need to calm down. I hear one of my coaches, Eteri, shout at Alina. Something along the lines of, “You need to back up!” but I don’t feel her hand move from mine.
I hate how comforting it is.
I hate even more how badly I want her to keep touching me.
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The hospital room smells funny. I don’t like it. It makes me nauseous. My head is spinning and my stomach is queasy. The lights overhead are painfully white, making everything look blurry and obnoxiously loud.
Machines beep somewhere near me.
My mother is sitting at my side, explaining to me that I’m on a lot of drugs and she doesn’t expect me to feel normal right now, but I feel like shit nonetheless.
The pain is mostly gone, now just a dull ache in my back, one I feel most days after training. My limbs feel heavy and disconnected from the rest of me.
I think of Alina, and her stupidly sweet voice.
She was so kind today, maybe I’ve been cold. Maybe I should tone down the jealousy. She’s only fourteen, and she’s only been training with us for about a year. I think I’ve been a little weird around her, ignoring the little words she’d say to me and trying my best to keep my eyes off of her during practice.
I feel things when I look at her.
Something more than anger, but that doesn’t matter. I need to not feel those things and focus on the sport.
If I can even still skate.
The thought alone makes my chest tighten.
I spent my whole childhood sacrificing everything for this. Birthdays. Friends. School dances. Sleepovers. Literally everything.
Every single piece of my life was traded for skating.
So what happens when I can’t skate? What do I do with my life?
The door in the corner opens and a kind-looking woman in scrubs walks in. She’s speaking, but I’m not listening. My head is moving a million miles a minute.
“Evgenia?”
The nurse’s voice catches my attention, and I glance up.
God, just moving my head hurts.
“Alright, we’ve determined that you have three fractures in your lower back.” She continues, mostly talking to my mom, but I’m back to not listening. I clutch at the hospital drapes swallowing my whole body, because if I don’t, I think I’ll hit something. Three fractures. Three.
The room suddenly feels smaller, like the walls are closing in around me.
I’m terrified for myself and my future. All I’ve ever done is skate. I never played other sports, I left in-person school young to focus on my training, this is my entire life.
“Can I still skate?” It’s like the words were exploding out of me, yet were so hard to get out. I think I’m crying again, my cheeks are wet, and not sure if it’s from the pain or fear.
The nurse, whose name tag says Natasha, says, “Most likely, yes. Depending on the severity of the injury. Not right away, of course, but after six to twelve weeks patients can typically return to sports.”
Six to twelve weeks?
I do the math in my head. That’s February at the latest. That puts me at exactly a year before the Olympics, and even less time until Olympic selections. Any other time I’ve been injured, I’ve taken a slight hit and been a bit off my game. This is the worst time to have a severe injury.
The realization dawns on me quickly.
I might not compete at the Olympics.
The words settle over me like a death sentence.
If I don’t compete now, I don’t know if I ever will. The novice girls in Russia are incredible, who knows what they’ll do a few years from now in the senior division. The competition will be larger, and more difficult the older I get.
There’s always another girl coming.
Another prodigy.
Another “breath of fresh air.”
Jealousy fills my veins. Someone else will make it to the Olympics, someone else will win, and one day, this will all be for nothing.
And the worst part?
Deep down, I already know exactly who that someone else might be.