The morning air is thick with fog, and the track ahead splits almost immediately into two black lines. One veers left, the other plunges straight down, steep enough to make seasoned racers flinch. Dane and I built both. We never believed in blue runs.
Easy was boring.
Rolling the bike to the start of the trail, I realize it feels heavier than I remember, or maybe I’m just weaker. Probably both.
I try to swing my right leg over the saddle, but I don’t manage to get it high enough.
I back up, try again, but my hip locks like the joint is frozen in place. The third time I try, something spasms and pain arcs down my thigh.
“Fuck!” I hiss through clenched teeth, head dropping forward.
I don’t want to cry.I don’t cry.
But my eyes sting anyway.
This shouldn’t be this hard.
I squeeze my eyes shut, suck in a breath, and then bite down, grit through, and shove my leg up and over.The scream stays silent in my throat, but I’m on the bike now, perched at the top of a trail only lunatics would ride before breakfast, and I’m shaking because I’m back on a bike, back on what almost killed me.
My breath comes in sharp bursts as my vision sways.
My lungs aretrying to expand,but there’s no air, none, just pain, and the weight of a broken body folding in on itself. I’m suffocating on my own blood while the medics scream, and I can’t scream because I?—
I blink hard. This is not real.I’m fine.
But the tremor in my arms is real, and the bile in my throat is too. I try to breathe the panic down while my gaze is zeroed in on the screws on the stem of the bike, and anxious thoughts fill my mind.
Who was the last one to touch this bike?
Me?
Dane?
A mechanic?
When was the last time it got checked?
Since when has it even been standing in the garage?
The panic flares again, and I fumble for balance, try to swing off the saddle, but my leg won’t move high enough. I twist, panic climbing up my throat once more, and my foot catches on the pedal. I go down, the bike tangled between my legs, my side slamming into the ground.
Ouch.
Clawing out from under it, I feel gravel biting into my palms as pain stabs through me, and I want to throw up.
I hate this. I hate this so much.
I hate my hip, my lungs, my fucking ribs. I hate that I can’t lift my leg like a normal person, hate that my body betrayed me, hate my mind for freezing, for panicking.
But mostly, I hate that I thought I could do this, and that I ever believed I could be something again.
And I hate this fucking bike.
I stand, unsteady, but grab the frame with both hands, and push it over the edge and down the trail with a scream.
It only skids a few feet down the track, and I scream again because I can’t even get that right.I scream until my throat rips raw and my lungs give out, and all that’s left is the heaving in my chest and the dull throb of everything—hip, ribs,heart.
“Al.”A warm hand lands on my shoulder, startling me.
