5 (jaylor) forever fearless nights and a mirrorball spotlight

chapter nineteen.

The waiting room can be the loneliest place in the entire world.
Taylor had spent a lot of her time in waiting rooms while she was with Adam - when he'd hurt her too deep to fix with a Band-Aid at the bottom of a draw.
When she'd come in swearing she'd just tripped or slipped. It scared her that one of her biggest excuses... was that she'd slipped while figure skating. And where was she now?
Sitting on a plastic blue chair as she tried to remember to breathe. Blake was watching the kids - she'd come to pick them up from figure skating so that Taylor could go in the ambulance.

She'd felt life slip right through her fingers at that moment and she never, ever wanted to feel like that ever again.
There was still blood on her coat, on her jeans. On her hands. It was everywhere. Joe hadn't even got here yet. She was here and she was all alone. She hadn't gotten changed yet. She couldn't bear to.
She was there trying to remember how to breathe, trying to get her body to feel like it was alive.
She felt empty. Shattered on the floor. She remembered how scared she'd been for this to happen. How it had been a ticking time bomb. She'd been waiting for this moment. And it had come.

She'd been sitting on that fucking blue plastic chair for twenty-five minutes already - and it felt like time had never gone slower. While it had slipped through her fingers when she'd seen Thea fall... now... it was cement... and she was frozen in time.
She was sure that everyone else around her was moving on - and she had to remind herself that the world hadn't stopped spinning. Even though her world was covered in ice, frozen right to its core. To everyone else... the world was spinning and the clock was still ticking. But for Taylor... she was sure that the clock had been stuck on the time 10:03 for hours.
She was anxiously biting down on her cheek but wasn't in the headspace to remind herself not to. She needed that relief. Needed something.

And it was the first time in many, many years that she'd felt like she needed it. The dreaded sharp edge that she'd avoided for so long. She wouldn't, of course. But the fact that the thought was in her head in the first place... it scared her. Sometimes you can't change. No matter how much you wish you could wipe it from your slate... sometimes these things are with you for life. Some things cause permanent damage that can't be undone.
"Taylor - oh my god. Taylor." It was Joe. Joe was here. Her body lunged forward to him - her arms wrapping around his neck. Oh, how relieved she was that this had happened while he was here. That he wasn't all the way in Australia. 

"Is she okay?" Joe asked, cupping her cheeks.
Taylor wasn't sure if she could find the words.
"All I know is that she fell on her arm - I'm pretty sure it's broken but I don't know how bad... and I - I think she has a concussion? I don't even know, Joe. She... she fell." Taylor pulled away, her panic and worry covering her face. Joe took her hand and pulled her towards an empty hallway.
"She fell and I couldn't get to her straight away and she was unconscious by the time I could get to her and I couldn't see anything but her... she... she was bleeding so bad, Joe. I don't know where she was bleeding from but I... I-" It was very rare for words to leave her completely. It was very rare for her to feel like she was speechless. But this was one of those moments. She could still see it playing out in her memory over and over and over again. On repeat. It hurt to see it - it hurt to watch her daughter fall. To watch her body lying in a ball on the ground. Thea had fallen before, but never like this.

And this was one of the reasons why Taylor hadn't wanted her to get into figure skating. Because it was so dangerous. Taylor had always watched figure skating in the Winter Olympics and she had always known that the older you get... the more difficult the jumps got. And Taylor had held it off for as long as possible.

Because Thea had always gone on to her about the fact that Lizzie was able to jump already, that Lizzie had done all of these great jumps and spins several months before Thea even started to learn it. Thea had always complained about that. About the fact that Lizzie did all of these things first, about the fact that Lizzie had a trainer - and her mother - to push her to her limits. Taylor hadn't realised how bad her mother had treated her, of course. But Thea thought that it was that aspect to it - the constant training, the pressure. But Taylor knew that it wasn't pressure that made a star, it was love. It was passion and energy. Being good at something wasn't enough. Not without passion and love for it.