“Go call an ambulance,” I say.
“What?” Beverly says.
During the next scene, I do a complete song and dance number on what I would later discover to be a broken fifth metatarsal. The pain is twisting up my leg as I try not to puke. Finally, I get to the part where Charity leaves the stage for a minute. I run off and promptly faint.
In the dressing room, the EMTs want to get me out of mycostume so Dylis Croman, my swing, can use it. I tell them that they can take off my wig and my shoes but not my dress, as I’d be naked, and then they blue-light me away.
April 6, 2005
How does one explain it when it feels like in a moment you lose everything? But I kept going. I can’t stop now, I thought. I can’t give up. Sitting in that hospital with my red dress still on, I had a moment of falling apart. A moment of, “Why the fuck did this happen to me?” Then a mode switched in. A mode that I CAN’T GIVE UP. I can do this.
Goddamn it, don’t replace me.
That night, Dylis Croman did an incredible job stepping in for me. The producers wanted me off the show after that. I was devastated but not surprised—the standard healing time for a break like this is twelve weeks.
I wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“I’m going to do it in six,” I said.
I had to stay out of the previews for those six weeks—my understudy, the brilliant Charlotte d’Amboise, initially covered for me while we finished our out-of-town run. I did everything I could to get better faster. I would swim with my bad foot up above the water—next time you get in a pool, try to swim breaststroke with one leg held out of the water. I needed to keep my lungs going, my body fit, because it’s such a challenging role. I was determined to do whatever it took, even if I had to learn to swim with one leg sticking up out of the pool.
While the previews were in Boston, I was heading to Harvard every day to use their special machines, probes, and tech. I’d meditate constantly, too, setting my intention that this bone would heal in six weeks, not twelve. Agape’s Dr. Michael Beckwith, who has now been in my life for thirty-something years, said, “I need you to visualize a doctor saying, ‘I’ve never seen a bone heal this fast before.’ ”
I pictured it, over and over again.
The whole time, I could feel the producers trying to push me out. They took my face off the Playbill—shit, they wouldn’t even let me come to an opening night party.
The accident happened in March. Pretty soon it was Good Friday. My doctor called me.
“I’ve never seen a bone heal this fast before,” he said.
The next call I got was about ticket sales in New York plummeting because people had heard that I might not be in the show. I was toldSweet Charitywas shutting down.
I had just healed a bone faster than a human person should be able to heal a bone, but all the investors saw was their lost investment.
“Give me two hours,” I said.
I started calling everyone, from the director ofJawson down.
“I need a break,” I remember telling Steven Spielberg. “In the form of half a million dollars.”
Unsurprisingly, I got nowhere with anyone. Then my choreographer, Wayne Cilento—a gentle, beautiful human being—called me. “They already put the sign up backstage, Christina, telling the cast that the show’s over on Sunday.”
“Don’t let them get other jobs,” I said. “Don’t.”
And then I put up the $500,000 myself.
My agent said to me, “Either you’re the stupidest person I’ve evermet or you’re a fucking genius.” Turns out it was a bit of both. Stupid: It was half a million bucks. Genius: The other investors realized I was serious, and by Sunday—the deeply appropriate day of the resurrection of the Lord—I got a call that confirmed we had the money we needed to continue.
That same night, the cast threw a closing party. Denis O’Hare, who played Oscar, secretly filmed me sitting there with everyone as they cried, all thinking it was over.
“Don’t get another job, please,” I said to everyone. I knew we were going to be safe, but I couldn’t tell them yet.
“Christina,” someone said, “it’sover.”
The next day—Easter Monday—we announced that the show was back up. My foot was at 45 percent.
Now the question was, could I even do this? I was still crying in the morning because I woke up in so much pain. The investors told me they’d have Charlotte d’Amboise do the show if I couldn’t prove to them that I could pull it off.
