I said goodbye to Matías and Rodrigo and left.
My stomach was growling, and I forced myself to eat my apple as I took the three flights of stairs to the street. Outside, the sun was shining bright. It was nine in the morning, but it was already warm out. Summer was hitting Madrid with full force, and this June was hotter than usual.
I put on my headphones and chose a random playlist on my phone as I walked to Lavapiés and raced downstairs to catch the train to the hospital. Thirty minutes later, I was walking through the door of the outpatient clinic and toward the D wing with a knot in my stomach.
I signed in and sat in the waiting room.
I stopped cold when I saw her there with her back to me. So straight. So haughty. Her blond hair was pulled back perfectly, neither too tight nor too loose, and not a single hair had fallen out of place. She had on big sunglasses that covered much of her face, and I knew behind those dark lenses were those cold green eyes surrounded in eyeliner as meticulously applied as her red lipstick.
Olga Yarovenka, my grandmother. The woman who had raised me after my mother abandoned me at four years old, because taking care of her own daughter was just too much for her.
She stood when she saw me.
“You should have been here already,” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t come home last night.”
“I went out with Antoine. It got late, so I stayed at his place.”
“I see you’re not too worried about this appointment. Your life’s hanging by a thread and you’re busy going out with this would-be player who thinks he’s the next Sergei Polunin.”
The contempt in her tone struck me like a whip.
“How can you say I’m not worried? There’s nothing I want more than to keep dancing,” I said.
“If you’d listened to me, you’d never have had to stop. But you think you know everything, and look where that’s gotten you.”
“It was an accident. I had nothing to do with it.”
She was about to reply, but a nurse’s voice interrupted her.
“Maya Rivet Yarovenka?”
“That’s us,” my grandmother responded.
“Your number’s been up on the screen for some time.”
“Sorry,” I told her. “We got distracted.”
The nurse showed us which office to go to, and my grandmother entered first.
I almost told her to go outside and wait. I was an adult, after all; I could ask for privacy if I wanted it. But I got scared, and the words died on my lips. My grandmother wasn’t a woman to be contradicted, and if you tried to confront her, she could make you shudder with one cruel look. I knew from experience. I had lived my entire life under her iron fist.
“Doctor Sanz, nice to see you again,” my grandmother said.
“The same, Mrs. Yarovenka,” my doctor replied, sitting at his desk.
“Call me Olga, please. I’m not that old.”
The doctor nodded and grinned, then told us to sit before typingsomething into his computer with a concentrated expression. His eyes scanned the screen and his forehead furrowed. Then he looked over at me kindly.
“Well, Maya. How are you?”
“Good?”
“Still doing your physical therapy?”
