The Edge of Brilliance by Susan Traugh

Author:Susan Traugh [Traugh, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Finch Books
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * * *

“I can’t dance!” she yelled at Ms. Prudy the second the door closed for an emergency session.

“Slow down.” Ms. Prudy gestured toward the chair and touched Amy’s shoulder to help her settle in. “Now take a breath. No, really. Take a breath. Better. Blow it out… Slowly… Good. Now tell me.”

When Amy had finished relating her stumbling attempts in the gym, Ms. Prudy sat in silence for a second. Her downcast eyes made Amy want to jump out of the chair and shake her.

“Well?” Amy asked, leaning deeply forward.

“It’s not surprising, Amy,” she began quietly. “That loss of coordination is one of the side effects of both Ecstasy and inhalant use. And let’s face it, you used a lot. Those chemicals poison certain circuitry in the brain and keep the synapses from firing properly.”

“What!” Amy couldn’t help it, she jumped out of the chair. “I fried my brain and can’t dance anymore?”

“Amy…”

“No! No! Why don’t you just shoot me?” Forget the G-A Way. Great sobs shot out of Amy’s chest before she could even finish her sentence. Not dance? Not dance? How could that—

“Amy, Amy,” Ms. Prudy’s voice was calm and soothing. “This is not set in stone. The brain is a very elastic and malleable organ. You can retrain it to respond nearly as well as it did before.”

“Nearly? Nearly? What are you saying? The damage is permanent? Don’t talk to me that way! You hear me? Don’t say that to me!” Amy had grabbed onto Ms. Prudy’s bookcase and was swaying back and forth as the words exploded out of her. With her back to Prudy, she hoped that her rage and pain were not too visible to her therapist. Amy had never wanted to show Ms. Prudy the raw side of her…but this was dance and…and…and… Oh God, this was dance.

For the next thirty minutes, Ms. Prudy talked about cross-crawl exercises, dedicated practice and brain retraining. She lectured on about returning soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injuries, relearning basic skills and other parts of the brain picking up the tasks of the damaged sections. Her words swept over Amy like soft waves of water over a dying fish, gently rocking, holding afloat, but inevitably doing nothing to change the outcome of events.

That night, Amy buried her head into her pillow and softly sobbed herself to sleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.