Snap, Crackle, Pop

f o u r

Richelle wasn't one to get scared.  Every once and while she would get nervous; like before her regionals duet with Noah.  When she was younger she had some pretty scary experiences, but since then, nothing scared her.

At least not until now.  

She had only been inside of an ambulance once.  Sure, she had spent a fair amount of time inside of hospitals when she was younger, but inside of an ambulance, she wasn't even awake when she was in the ambulance the last time.  She gripped Elliot's hand out of fear in the back of the ambulance.  The paramedics couldn't do much, but they still tried to determine what was wrong with her damn hip.  

When she was nine she broke her arm attempting to do a double back handspring double back layout.  Miss Kate drove her to the hospital because she refused to go in an ambulance.  She got a neon green cast, because, why not?  The bone only took three and a half weeks to heal because of how strong her bones had been (she had been able to eighty-five pushups at just nine).  But even then, she hadn't been sacred.  Sure, in pain, but not scared.

"Excuse me, could we have your legal guardians name and phone number so we can call them?"  One of the paramedics, named Michael asked her.

"Um, well, my adoptive mom is actually in Asia.  China, maybe, I'm not complete sure to be honest.  She travels a lot.  But her name is Macy Astor."  Richelle continued to recite Macy's phone number.  She wasn't sure if she would pick up.  It was somewhere around 8:30am in China, which meant Macy was probably working.  The ambulance stopping suddenly interrupted her thoughts and Michael, the paramedics said,

"Alright, lets get her out."  She was wheeled out of the ambulance and taken into the emergency unit of the hospital.  They asked her the questions you would expect.  After she admitted she had been diagnosed with Snapping Hip Syndrome, they quickly rushed her into a MRI.

And Richelle hated the MRI.  It was basically a tube that she was't aloud to move in.  Richelle hated small spaces to begin with, but asking that girl to sit still is a whole other battle.  It was horrible for her.  To make it worse, it was loud, which just added more to her pounding headache.  It would take the doctors fifteen hours for the MRI to be complete developed and examined, so that meant Richelle got to wait in the hospital for the next fifteen hours.  They attached her to an I.V. drip for constant pain medication.  And she would tell anyone, that stuff really does calm you down.

Sometime around ten o'clock Elliot insisted on calling Miss Kate.  They doctors had reached Macy, but she would not be able to come back from her business trip till Monday night.  Elliot made the call to Miss Kate, since Richelle was a little drowsy from her pain meds.  Not to much of a surprise to Richelle, Miss Kate came to see Richelle right away.  She had been visiting TNS so she could be with them when they found out if they made it to regionals.  As soon as Miss Kate got to Richelle, she insisted that Elliot went home and that she could stay the night.  And as soon as Elliot left, thats when the questions from Ms. Kate started rolling in.  The first one being,

"Did anyone know that something was wrong with your hip?"  And Richelle isn't sure if she was just tired of lying to everyone who had been so kind to her or if it was her pain meds that were making her delusional, but she confessed everything.  From what losing the dance captaincy had really done to her and to the fact that Lola had just broken her shank just to protect her and how much she wished she had listened to her former best friend.  And all the sudden, around one am, Richelle told Ms. Kate how she had just lost the best friend she had ever had and she wasn't sure what she was going to do without her.

"Oh goodness, Richelle.  I had no idea so much had been going on since I left.  I'm sorry you had to go through all of this alone.  But Richelle, what happened to your friendship with Noah.  I would figure he could have been someone you could have turned to during all of this.  I mean you guys look amazing back during your regionals duet."  Richelle sighed.  She wasn't completely sure, but after they had done their spider duet at the beginning of the dance season, she knew he wasn't the friend she remember. 

"I guess It started right after we auditioned for the internationals team.  He was so focused on Abi and proving himself to A-troupe that we drifted apart.  And then once we both on the regionals team, it was just about his back and Amanda.  Sure we would take and I visited him after his surgery, but nothing has really been the same as we when we were younger.  And yes, our regionals duet was really great and It's something we were both so proud of, but after that, that was it.  Once we lost regionals, I guess I got busy with up-ing my dance hours and Noah started spending more time with Henry and working out.  I guess you could say we drifted apart. We both knew it, neither of us did anything to change it.  He used to be an old friend, someone who I would share smiles with sometimes during rehearsal.  Or old A-troupers would ask about our friendship and we could say we were still friendly.  Then Emily had us do a duet, and low and behold, Noah wanted to trade me for another girl.  He thought we were having trouble connecting and that Jacquie would be a better partner or something like that.  He went to Emily first, without even talking to me.  I got mad at him, and ruined everything in that relationship too.  Just like I did with Lola.  And like I'm probably going to do with Emily now.  Maybe even Elliot after I lied to him.  I'm slowly but surely ruining everything, even dance.  I though I would aways have dance, but now I've lost that too."