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The first few days in the hospital passed in a blur of white coats and sharp needles and unforgiving machines. Nina watched it all from a distance. Her mother was at her side constantly, of course. Even when the nurses ushered her out of the room to give the patient a bit of space, she was there. Watching and waiting. Saying over and over again that she’d tried to warn her stubborn child. Blaming everyone except the woman who had stopped her daughter from building a life outside the ballet studio.
Thomas visited once or twice. He kissed her chastely on the cheek and left a bouquet of flowers on the bedside table when he departed. For a moment, Nina – drifting in and out of consciousness like a piece of flotsam in a turbulent sea – confused the rich red bloom of the flowers with the rich red bloom of blood on the White Swan’s dress. She cried out so loudly that she brought the doctors running and faded away into the shadows as they tried to work out how her wound had reopened.
They gave her new medication after that. New medication and harsher machines.
Her mother made sure that visitors were kept to a minimum.
***
Sometimes, she dreamed of Lily.
Unlike Nina, Lily hadn’t been born into the role of the Swan Queen. She’d simply fallen into it. She lived her life with a glorious and reckless abandon, taking what she wanted when she wanted it and dismissing everything that wasn’t of interest. She was the Black Swan to the core, but she didn’t have enough innocence to dance as the White Swan.
That was what her mother said, talking in hushed whispers with the nurses on the other side of the glass door.
That was what the reviews said, in the newspapers that Nina slipped out of the bin in the nurse’s station.
That was what Nina had believed all along.
***
When Lily visited for the first time, it was outside normal visiting hours and Nina’s mother was asleep in a cheap plastic chair in the corridor. The hospital was dark and silent. She crept through the halls with a dancer’s preternatural grace, charming the grim faced guards and slipping under the usually sharp radar of the nurses.
“What are you doing here?”
Lily closed the door softly behind her, giving Nina a mischievous smile. The dim light filtering through from the hallway stretched her shadow and made wings of her slender arms as she slid off her coat.
“I came to see you.”
Nina sat up in bed, painfully aware of her tousled hair and unflattering hospital gown. Her face was pale and pinched from too much medication and too little sleep. Lily looked both radiant and wicked.
“It’s been a month since you danced the Swan Queen, you know,” Lily informed her. She sat down on the edge of the bed. The worn springs creaked. Her ebony wings formed a barrier that shut out the rest of the world. “We all miss you.”
A month. It could have been a life time ago.
“No, you don’t.” She hadn’t been popular in the company. She’d been too quiet, too isolated, too much of a perfectionist. “You were my understudy. With me out of the way, you can dance the lead.”
Every dancer in the company wanted the lead. They hungered for it. They lived for it. Sometimes, they were even willing to die for it.
“Why would I want you out of the way?” Lily almost laughed. The laugh sounded alien – beautiful, but alien – in the clinical hospital room that had been Nina’s home since her first and final lead performance. “I watched you dancing, Nina. I’ve never seen anyone dance like that.”
“You dance like that.”
“I want to dance like that. We all want to dance like that.”
“Thomas said that you’re more natural than I am …”
“You looked pretty natural when you were performing as the Black Swan. And, one day, you’ll get to do it again.”
Suddenly, Nina found herself wondering what would have happened if she had kissed Lily after her dance, rather than Thomas. Would she have kissed back? Would Lily have been seduced by the allure of the Black Swan – the freedom and power that had surged through Nina as she had finally given herself over to the dance – as well? She couldn’t ask. She couldn’t ask but she needed to know.
It was impossible to tell who moved first. It could have been her, gripping the other woman’s hand in an attempt to prove that it wasn’t a dream, but it could just have easily been Lily herself. Her hand was far warmer than Nina’s cool skin. It was the first time she’d felt anchored – felt real – since being brought to the hospital. Since her dance.
She wasn’t surprised when her mother burst into the room. She was the one who controlled Nina’s life and she would never willingly relinquish her hold on her daughter. In the ensuing chaos, she tried to draw back into herself, but Lily wouldn’t let go.
“I’ll be back soon,” she called over her shoulder, “I’ll visit you again.”
It took a long time for the feeling of her hand to fade. When Nina finally drifted off to sleep, that dangerously bright smile continued to burn behind her eyes.
***
Together, they would have given a performance that would have changed the world. Apart, they would never truly achieve perfection.
***
Nina was permitted to use the shower now, as long as she didn’t lock the door. (Her mother hadn’t wanted to listen to the nurses when they’d told her to remain outside, but they were forceful in a way that Nina would never manage to be and, in the end, she’d had no choice but to listen to them.) She stood with her eyes closed as the water cascaded down her body, soaping her breasts.
No razors. No scissors. No mirrors. Just herself and sudden freedom.
One hand slid downwards, following the contours of her damp skin. She spread her fingers over the puckered scar tissue on her stomach – a war wound from a battle that she should never have fought – before allowing them to inch downwards. By the time she gathered up the courage – or had she simply relaxed enough to lose her inhibitions? – to press the heal of her hand between her legs, it was no longer her hand. It was Lily’s hand. Lily’s slender fingers caressing the innermost part of her. Lily’s devilish smile burning behind her eyelids.
“Nina?”
Her mother, sharp and anxious, calling from the other side of the door
“I’m all right!” Hastily, tangling herself in the shower curtain, Nina stumbled out of the shower and snatched up her towel. “I’ll be out soon.”
The room was empty again. She didn’t even have her reflection for company.
***
Nina had been waiting for Lily’s next visit with impatient eagerness, but she hadn’t realised how desperately she’d needed it until her mother tried to keep them apart.
This time, Lily played by the rules and arrived during ordinary visiting hours, but her mother confronted her in the hallway. It was only the swift actions of the nurse at Nina’s bedside – marching into the corridor with the blood pressure monitor still in her hand – that prevented an argument from erupting. Gently but firmly, she persuaded her mother to allow Lily into the room. More than that, she persuaded her to give them a little time to themselves.
They were left entirely alone and, for a horrible moment, Nina struggled to find a way to fill the silence.
Lily, on other hand, wandered around the room as if it belonged to her. When she reached the window, she pushed it open – as wide as it could go, which wasn’t very wide – and fished a cigarette and a lighter out of the pocket of her jeans.
“You must get bored in here,” she noted, taking a deep drag and leaning an elbow on the windowsill, “You don’t even have a TV.”
“I have some books,” she said helplessly, but Lily was right. She was bored. Dancing had been her life. It had crafted her professional life and it had eaten up all of her free time and now she had nothing to fill the void. “And my CD player.”
“Which is covered in dust.” Lily stubbed out the cigarette on the windowsill before moving over to the bedside table and examining her meagre music collection. “Besides, this isn’t the sort of music you listen to …”
“Its music you dance to,” Nina agreed, flushing a little when she realised how forcefully she’d spoken. The Black Swan was still inside her. She’d been buried, but she hadn’t been extinguished. She wanted to dance. She wanted to fly.
“So why don’t you?”
“I can’t dance anymore.”
“Why? Because you’re not well enough?”
She wasn’t goading. It was a genuine question born out of genuine concern. Her tone made Nina’s heart beat a little harder in her chest.
“Because …” Because I’m afraid I’ll never feel that perfect again. “Because my mother won’t let me.”
“I thought you’d stopped listening to her,” Lily pointed out, reminding Nina inexorably of the night at the bar and the way their bodies had moved so seamlessly – so perfectly – together. Not just in her bed afterwards, but in the club. They’d danced like two parts of the same whole. She’d never felt so free. “Listening to her is what got you here in the first place.”
Nina perched on the edge of her narrow bed, pale and tense with worry, as Lily closed the distance between them and held out her hand.
“Dance with me.”
Nina had felt free when she’d been dancing with Lily. If she said no now, she’d never have the chance to feel free again.
“Ok.”
***
And so they danced.
In the harsh hospital room, with the smell of antiseptic in the air and Nina’s hospital gown brushing against their skin, they danced.
The Black Swan and the White Swan.
Lily and Nina.
They danced and they were perfect.
She felt perfect.