Letters from Yelena (25 page)

I remember the rising, ugly pain at the back of my head as I lay on the tarmac. I remember the scent of burning in the air as I looked up and watched the driver writhe in his chair, desperate to
escape his vehicle, which had smashed into the wall in front of me on the left. That sense of enclosed madness, unacknowledged by the world, that existed until strangers finally swarmed around us.
Then the panicked interventions of people desperate to appear composed for me, though they must have had no idea what they were supposed to do.

Someone asked me where it hurt and I told them that I couldn’t move my foot. The end of my leg felt watery and disconnected. I wanted to snap out of it, but the pain was so enormous that I
couldn’t compose myself. I remember the scent of wax from the coat of the man who held me up, asking me exactly how I wanted to lie, and the heady perfume of the woman who held me against
her, telling me jokes until the ambulance arrived. I clung onto her tightly, trying to laugh out of politeness, and I occasionally sensed her mouthing instructions to other people standing over me.
I remember the relief of seeing flashing lights, as the strangers parted from around me.

‘My name’s Carole,’ the paramedic said. ‘What’s your name?’ I remember for the first time wanting to cry as I heard my trousers being cut off, and how exposed
and weak I felt in front of all these people. The endless wait for the paramedic to inject me with something that might dull that jagged, dizzying pain. Being strapped onto a stretcher as my neck
was put in a brace. Being lifted into the ambulance, the paramedic telling the driver to go smoothly over the bumps as she carefully placed an oxygen mask over my face. Telling the paramedic to
call you on my mobile, still somehow wedged in the pocket of my now shredded trousers. Then in A&E, the nurse who held my hand while the medics crowded around me. The moment I saw a flash of
red at the end of my leg for the first time, and the way it made me convulse. The excruciating pain I felt as they pulled my foot back into position, but the way the nurse made it easier by holding
my hand and trying to make me laugh.

It was then that you rushed into the room. Someone must have called you, and I remember the sudden exclamation that arose from the staff as they rushed to prevent you from overwhelming me.
‘I’m her boyfriend,’ you said. ‘I need to see her.’

Amongst the chaos the expressions we gave one another were so complex, Noah, so conflicted. You stroked my cheeks and I laughed with the relief of now having you beside me. ‘It’s
okay. You’re going to be alright. Everything’s going to be alright,’ you said.

But you were quickly forced to leave, as they put me on a drip and took me away to the X-ray theatre. I remember seeing a doctor draw you into the corner of the room and question you about the
events leading up to the crash. I overheard the word ‘psychiatrist’ being used, but at the time I didn’t worry about it. As I was wheeled past you I simply assumed that we would
be reunited in a few minutes.

In the X-ray theatre, the murmurings around me suggested I had got off relatively lightly. Although the focus of concern was my leg and foot, the rest of me was also scanned, and most of my body
seemed to have escaped injury. I was taken up to the High Dependency Unit.

Although two days passed without me hearing from you, I didn’t dwell too much on it. I assumed they were merely being careful, and through those static, restricted days I simply
concentrated on sleeping and trying to get comfortable. That wasn’t easy though, because during the night, every four hours I was awoken by the voice of a stranger. They pressed pads on my
chest, strapped belts to my arm and pushed thermometers into my ear. After a couple of days of this I was moved into the general ward, and given the room to move a little more. The nurse who
wheeled me downstairs told me that the insurance from the ballet company entitled me to private healthcare, and that I would soon be transferred to another hospital. I just closed my eyes and tried
to push out the pain.

At the new hospital, I was given my own room. A small, pale cube on the top floor of a building, housed somewhere on the outskirts of the city. For the first time since the chaos of the crash
there was room for solace and reflection, though my life was inevitably punctuated by the regular, urgent interventions of the nurses.

At the back of my mind, I had known that the activity of the last few days was all leading up to something; that it would probably end with something explosive. The pressure I had placed upon
myself throughout
Giselle
, and then in my self-appointed role as your custodian, had been unsustainable. With you then having suddenly left me alone for a few days, I had had nothing to do
with all of that frantic activity in my brain, and I knew it had manifested itself in the hysterical, skewed logic that had led me to contact Cecilia. During that time, I had been impermeable to
reason, but being incapacitated now forced me to retread the path that had led me here.

Thinking about it, I realised that I had by now grown accustomed to living in goldfish bowls. Firstly in Donetsk, then at the Vaganova, the Mariinsky and finally during
Giselle
. Ever
since my childhood I had always been focused on a single goal, thinking in a constricted way, and driving myself through some tunnel towards what I eventually hoped would be daylight. This had
benefited me as a dancer, but it had also meant that my brain was so used to pressure that when it had no task to address, it had to find it elsewhere. I knew that there had never been any reason
to suspect your integrity. I should have seen it all along, but somewhere along the way I had become lost.

The diagnosis from the doctors was that I had broken my foot as well as the largest bone in my calf. The calf would require a metal rod, and the foot would require screws and wiring to fix
everything back into place. As I lay in bed after the operations I remember I felt simply glad to be alive. I felt grateful that my mind had suddenly been cleansed of that swarming red mist, which
had led me to such dark places. The doctors had evidently been told I was a professional ballerina, and during the early days they skirted around the issue of whether I would be able to dance
again. It was already clear to me that I would struggle to dance in a professional capacity. Perhaps it was the morphine, but I felt strangely relaxed about this, despite the great sacrifices I had
made over many years.

Dancing had been a way of escaping my childhood, of making me feel worthy, and as such it had been a successful strategy. I had danced the role I had always dreamt of performing and in so doing
I had explored, and to some degree broken out of the blueprint that I had believed that role offered for my life. But dancing had also come with great costs. Great physical pain, and great mental
endurance. I could not help but feel that there must be easier ways to live.

I knew that I needed to address this tendency for faulty reasoning, in order to prevent it from ever harming me again. But I would have been surprised to learn that my appointed psychiatrist, a
man with wisps of white hair burgeoning from the side of his head, could assist me with that.

I first encountered Dr Ibarra through his laugh, which echoed down from the nurses’ station during the early morning medicine distributions. It was a distinctive sound, a kind of earthy
hee-haw, which replaced the sterile hospital air with a sense of reassuring liveliness. But once he’d poked his head around my door it was immediately apparent that he was no clown. In fact
he looked like the kind of mature man you would see sat amongst the courtyards of Florence or Milan, playing cards with his friends as the sun came down. He smiled at me, with his head bowed and
his fingers clasped together in an intricate arrangement. I felt an immediate urge to make him like me.

During our first meeting he sat by my bed and said very little, merely leafed through my medical notes with a kind of academic restlessness. From his notes I caught fragments of sentences.
‘A history of anxiety attacks and dizzy spells’ …

‘Possible paranoid episodes’ … ‘The encounter ended with her meeting said woman and pursuing a sexual liaison.’ It seemed pretty apparent that your conversation
with the doctor, Noah, had led to my psychological profile being sketched out for the first time. While the doctors and nurses would be concentrating on helping me to walk again, Dr Ibarra would
clearly be focused on the mental processes that had led to the accident in the first place.

‘You’re a ballerina,’ he began. ‘Of some repute. Is that right?’

The voice was gruffer than I had expected, but it had a warm edge to it. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a chess strategy marked in pencil on the back of one of the pages.

‘Do you play chess?’ I answered.

‘Ah, well,’ he removed a crescent moon pair of glasses from the end of his nose. ‘I am interested in strategy. Both behavioural and psychological.’ He gestured at me with
the glasses as he spoke. ‘Do you play chess?’

‘My father taught me. I haven’t for a while.’

‘Perhaps we will begin to play soon. Everyone’s lives, Miss Brodvich, are led by a strategy that they have decided to deploy. My job as a Psychiatrist is to untangle the strategy
that you have been using to date. And to only release you back into the world when we feel we have adjusted that strategy, where necessary, so that it is more likely to result in
victory.’

‘I think I follow.’

My eyes were in fact following those softly sketched chess moves, clearly drawn by Ibarra during some quiet moment on the ward. As he turned back to the front page of my notes I caught the words
at the top of the page. ‘An episode of paranoid psychosis caused by acute stress’.

‘That?’ he asked, noticing what my eyes had been fixed upon. ‘That is the working hypothesis as to why you have ended up here. But it is nothing more than a hypothesis. It
might well be completely wrong.’ He opened his arms out with a small smile. ‘But don’t worry about that. For now, you should rest. We can begin coordinating strategies once the
time is right. For now, the priority is to keep you safe.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You have endured a lot of stress in recent times, Miss Brodvich. When you have not been given stress, I wonder if you have sought it out. Therefore my job is to prevent your brain from
doing so again, which is why I must recommend that Mr Stepanov refrains from visiting you until you are back on your feet.’

‘You really think that will help?’

I felt my body grow cold. How long would you be kept from me? I wanted to protest and yet, as he placed his glasses back on his nose I could not help still wanting to please him. He tapped the
chess strategy in his notes. ‘You see, we have already begun playing.’ He adjusted the glasses and glanced quickly at me. ‘Rest yourself,’ he said, before rising and leaving
the room.

During his first few visits, Ibarra focused on understanding my childhood in Ukraine, my family background and the details of my medical history. As far as English medicine was concerned I had
not previously existed, but such high quality care evidently required that they quickly gain a detailed understanding of me. I tried to avoid mentioning Bruna, but as time went on I could sense,
from the tone of my voice, that I’d betrayed that she was significant. Not much later, at the conclusion of a session he said, ‘I think next time we need to talk about this lady a
little more.’

I didn’t know how to respond. ‘I’m not sure we do. In fact, I can’t see how discussing her will help me now. I think walking is my biggest problem.’

He seemed to balance the words that he should use next very carefully. ‘But perhaps walking isn’t your biggest problem, Yelena.’

‘I think it is,’ I said, too tired to be as withering as I’d have liked.

He leant forward. When he replied it was with more precision than he’d ever used before. ‘Whatever it is, Yelena. Whatever might have happened, we can find a way to start fixing
it.’

I looked at him, wanting the expression in my eyes to overpower his offensive instincts and his constant confidence.

‘We can find a way to start fixing it,’ he repeated.

I looked back at him, and slowly became aware of what he wanted me to relive.

Suddenly, I felt something grip me and hold me tight. In a horrible instant all the air trickled out of my throat, and my body felt empty, winded. I had the powerful sense that Bruna was back in
my life. Ready to begin tormenting me once more.

My body went still. As I gradually looked up, Ibarra was looking right at me. I swallowed.

He looked concerned, but as if it was perhaps for another day. ‘Okay, Yelena,’ he said, resolutely,

‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

The words sounded thin. As if they had been forced out without the power to shape them normally.

He exhaled. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’he said, reassuringly. ‘And then I’d like us to focus on your stepmother a little more when we talk.’

I heard her laugh. The room felt cold.

‘Please. Don’t go,’ I whispered, as quietly as I could. I didn’t want her to hear.

I could hear Bruna breathing.

Slowly, he gathered his notes together. As he stood up, wrapping his coat around him, I felt my body stiffen even more. ‘Wait,’ I said, and I reached out and took his hand. With a
gentle smile he stopped, and allowed me to hold it.

I could still hear her breathing. I closed my eyes. My head was bowed and I refused to let go of his hand. ‘Yelena,’ he said.

‘Please just stay. Just for a minute.’

He exhaled, and in his eyes I could see something in him give way. He tussled with it for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll stay here for as long as you want me to.’

I sat there, my head down, gripping his hand until the breathing stopped.

I tried to avoid the next session, but the purpose with which Ibarra entered the room told me that he was only interested in Bruna. If I had known a way to open up to him I would have done, but
where could I start? How could he possibly understand all that happened?