Look out for the <>

"El, I have to show a house around downtown. I'll be back in two hours. Are you sure you'll be ok?" mom asked me with concern in her voice the next day.

I was used to spending long amounts of time at the rink alone. How different could spending time at the hospital be? "I'll be fine," I said as I looked at the IV attached to my arm, still not understanding why that was necessary since I felt better today than I did yesterday.

She cupped my cheek and smiled lightly. "Hang tight."

It was as if I had a choice in the matter. I crossed my legs on the hospital bed I sat on then wrapped a blanket around myself, knowing I would be here for a while so I might as well bucker in. "I wouldn't do anything else."

She slipped on her boxy black pinstripe suit coat, then buttoned it. "Your father will be here in the next hour. Please text us if you need anything," she said right before she left the room.

I nodded. "See you later," I said, watching her leave, wishing I was leaving with her, but I had to do testing in here the rest of the day.

After the doctors deemed me stable enough to leave the hospital yesterday in Seattle, my parents drove record speeds to get me back to Portland. We got home late last night, and I went straight to bed, exhausted from sectionals and everything else that happened. With the sun barely raising this morning, they woke me up then shuffled me to the Children's Hospital here in Portland. By now I felt like I was running on zero sleep.

Shifting my thoughts, I felt my phone buzz, and I skimmed the text message from Garret wanting to hang out, but I was stuck here unknowing when I could leave.

He would never know I was here. No one would. I couldn't let the rink know I was sick, if the rink knew, word would get out, and the idea of going to nationals would be crushed. Whatever happened in here would stay in here. "Sorry, shopping with my mom. Maybe we can hang tomorrow?" I texted him back.

I looked at the time on my phone and gave a tired sigh. It was only noon, but I would be here for hours more since I still had more tests to do. I stretched with a yawn, feeling my body ache with almost every moment. It felt like I had the flu. I pulled a soft blanket that I brought from home closer to me and snuggled into it, making myself comfortable as possible.

<>

Breaking me from my comfortable, cozy moment was a knock on my door, causing me to see Garret standing in the doorway looking uncomfortable, with a frown etched across his face. I had seen so many frowns in the last few days and I didn't like it. "Hi El," his voice sounded tired. "How's shopping?"

Puck. He caught me in my lie red-handed. There was no way that I could lie my way out of this one. I was in a hospital room with an IV in my arm. It was as clear as it looked.

He walked over to me and sat down in an empty chair. "El, I didn't know."

Of course, he didn't know. I would have never talked about this. But how did he know now? Who told him? I felt like my privacy has been violated.

"I overheard your mom talking to mine this morning, saying that you were here. I can't lie, I'm hurt." Garret said.

Mom, puck-it. I was so worried Kris would spill, I didn't even think about mom. It made me worry about who else she could have told? Once again, I would have to do damage control. I hadn't put out so many fires in my life.

"I'm sorry." After all, I was sorry that he found out.

He nodded in silence as he chewed on his lip, mulling over his thoughts as he looked at me. "El, I don't know if I can do this," he said finally.

At first, there was silence as I tried to understand what he meant. Then I got it. He couldn't do us. He didn't want to deal with me being sick. I felt my eyes well up with tears as his word crushed me. This was one reason I wanted to keep this quiet. He didn't want to date a sick girl; he wanted to date an ice princess, not a hospital queen. He was breaking up with me because this wasn't in his plans.

He sighed as he put his hands on his knees. "My team wanted me to date you. They thought this would bond the rink."

Anger shot through me as his words sunk in like knives. His team made him ask me out. He was only dating me for my title, and he probably never liked me. I wondered if I never got sick, how long this would have gone on without me noticing. How could I be so stupid?

"Dating you, it'll be a little too much work. I heard your mom say that you will not be skating as much anymore and if you aren't going to be at the rink, then you'll lose your title."

I brushed the tears from my eyes as his words stabbed into me. I never thought about that but as he said those words, they became a possibility. Mom thought I was done skating. She was already convinced that I couldn't skate, and we didn't even know what I had. I thought that this would all blow over, but I wondered if she knew something that I didn't.

"This is all for peace, El, and if you aren't pack leader, this isn't worth continuing," he said with regret in his voice.

I wanted to slap him. This was pathetic, all of this was. It was pathetic that I fainted at the rink. It was pathetic that I was here. But most of all, he was pathetic. He shouldn't be team captain. He was just a coward, willing to give up when things changed or got hard. "You're breaking up with me in this damn hospital."

Just like Jaimie, he saw me as broken. I was sure my parents thought the same. They didn't think I was well, but they were wrong. I would show him and all of them. I would keep my title, then make him and his team's life hell. This was the last time he would want to listen to his team.

"El, I didn't mean to hurt you."

But he did. He played with my emotions like toy cars, driving them there ever he wanted, not caring what damage he would cause.

"I didn't mean for you to get so deeply involved in this," he said with a sigh. "I never wanted this relationship to go this far. You know, I always just wanted you as a friend."

My heart dropped. He never was going to love me. "Then why did you ask me out? We could have worked everything out as friends. We didn't need to get into this mess to begin with," I snapped.

He shook his head as if there was more to the story. My heart was being crushed in his hands and he was getting out unscathed. Here I was, thinking we could be something. He pushed his way into my life like he wanted to be there. He led me on for a few weeks. I wondered who decided that he would be the best candidate to do this. "Did you date me because of a dare? Did you draw straws?" I wiped the tears from my eyes.

He was silent, but that was enough of an answer for me.

I didn't want to have this conversation any longer. Just the sight of him made me feel sick. I didn't want to hear his voice, and I surely didn't want to see his face ever again. "Get out," I commanded as I pointed to the door.

In silence, he stood up from his chair, knowing there was nothing he would say to make it better. There was nothing he could hide behind. What he did was wrong, and he knew it. He looked at me for a second, as if trying to find something to say that would make all of this better. "I'm sorry, El," he said right before he left my room.

I threw a ball of wadded up paper at the door that he closed. I shook my head as I tried to wrap my mind around this. He was unbelievable. His entire team was. I hated all of them. If they wanted to make some kind of bond, that was all over now. We figure skaters would never make a deal with them. Ever. The figure skaters at the rink would make their life hell because of this. They were the scum of the earth and they would realize what figure skaters did to scum.

For a second I was glad I fainted. Without me being here, I would have continued blindly into the relationship in which I thought he loved me. At least this brought an end sooner than it started.

Minutes after Garret left, dad walked into the small room with a small smile on his face. His dark curly hair was messy and not combed. He just woke up, he was still getting used to the time change. "Hey, El," dad said as he walked into the room but his smile dropped as he looked at me, sensing something was wrong. "What happened?"

I wiped the stray tears from my eyes and shook my head. "Nothing. It's nothing. Just something foolish," I said as he sat down next to me.

He pulled out his phone and skimmed a message, frowning at it as if it was important. I had seen this look on his face too many times. He was busy and didn't have time to listen to my little dramas. "Try me," he said and put his phone on the table to avoid distraction.

I eyed him to see if he really meant it. He hardly ever put his phone away like that. For a second, I felt like I didn't have to crawl for attention, but he was giving it to me willingly. "Garret just broke up with me."

"Weren't you only dating him for only a week?" he asked.

I raised my eyebrows, surprised he even knew.

"Your mom's a saint and kept me up to date," he explained.

I smiled. "She's always good at that."

"So what happened?"

I shook my head, not wanting to talk about it even if he was giving me the time since I was embarrassed that I was even in the relationship to begin with.

He nodded, understanding that I needed space. "Ok, but if you change your mind, I'm here," he said as a doctor came into the room.

This doctor differed from the man I saw this morning. Her black straight hair was pulled into a tight bun, showed her narrow face even more. She looked like she didn't want to be here. "Hello, I'm Doctor Wells," she said to us.

"Hello." We both said to her.

"And you are Ellis da Souza," she asked me.

I nodded. "I go by El."

"Nice to meet you, El," she said with a small smile, showing she was polite, but nothing more than that. She walked over to a seat and sat down by us. "Is Eliza coming back soon?"

"Eliza has a showing. She may be another hour or two," dad explained to him.

She nodded. "Ok, I need to talk about this now, before I get off for the day."

We nodded as I sat on the edge of anticipation, waiting for her to stay that the brief fainting spell was only because of stress and lack of fluids.

"After all the tests that we did this morning, it's clear that you have multiple endocrine neoplasia. This is causes your hashimoto's thyroiditis."

It sounded too clinical, too severe and the words caused me to frown. I shook my head, knowing that wasn't me. I couldn't have that. All my life, I've been as healthy as a horse. I still believed I was. I didn't even know what it was, but it wasn't me, so they had to be wrong.

Doctor Wells sighed and looked at my dad for support.

"Ellis, please just listen to her," he said with a tired voice.

I looked at her, then saw that dad was worried about me.

"It took us a little longer to find the cause because multiple endocrine neoplasia is normally a genetic disorder. Only 10% of the people diagnosed with this have no one in the family with the disorder. We call people like you De Novo," she explained.

So lucky me and my great genes. "So what does this mean? All I'm hearing are words I don't understand. None of this means anything without reference," I snapped at her with probably too much attitude.

She nodded, looking nearly as tired as my dad. This was the last thing on her to-do list and it was last for a reason. She didn't want to talk to us so it had to be serious. "Multiple endocrine neoplasia are caused by gene mutations. It causes several endocrine glands to develop noncancerous or cancerous tumors or these glands can grow without forming tumors."

I hung onto every word she said. I was a mutation, there was something wrong with me. Fear of the unknown took hold, but I had no time to cry about this since all I could think about was skating. What did this mean for me and my skating?

Dad reached for my hand and squeezed it. "What do we do to treat it?" dad asked her.

"We need to do some more tests tomorrow. I would suggest that El stay the night, she's still a little too dehydrated and it would allow us to be properly ready for tomorrow morning. As of right now, we think she has MEN Type 1."

With a slight frown, I nodded, knowing that tomorrow was Monday, and I had school and skating tomorrow. I couldn't stay here for the night since I had things to do, after all, I was a busy person. I wanted to protest, but I knew dad wouldn't like that. I would just have to talk to him after she was gone. I could convince him to skip out on testing for a least a few days.

"Ok. Thank you," dad said as she stood up from her chair.

"I'll be back tomorrow to help with the testing. I'll see you tomorrow El," she said kindly, then walked out of the room.

I frowned at dad in silence while he frowned back at me. We shared this silent fear together a moment until he broke the silence. "I need to call your mother."

"Sure," I said as I watched him leave the room. Minutes ticked by, then finally he came back in, looking more tired than when he left. "I don't want to do tests tomorrow," I said to him.

He sighed, not wanting to deal with me right now. "El, this is serious. We need you to stay."

I shook my head, not willing to budge on this. "I have to go back to skating. Tomorrow's Monday. People are waiting for me there. If I'm not there, they'll start to question," I said as tears welled up in my eyes. "Please, dad."

"No. I can't let you do that. Now stay here, I'm going to get some coffee. Mom will be here in the next thirty minutes."