They’d be in there for 15 or 30 minutes at a time.
Every time I asked what they were talking about, Mike had an answer ready. “Training schedule.”
“Mental prep.”
One evening, I opened the study door without knocking.
Mike was standing right in front of Lily with his hands on her upper arms. They both spun round when I entered.
They both fell silent.
Mike immediately stepped back. “Everything okay?” I looked from Mike to Lily. “Yeah,” Lily said, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Of course.” Mike shrugged.
But I couldn’t help feeling that I’d walked in on something they didn’t want me to know about. That was when fear really settled into me.
A few days later, her coach pulled me aside at the rink. He was a careful man, not dramatic, which made what he said land even harder.
“Lily looks run down,” he said.
“I know she’s been training hard, but I’m concerned. She’s getting dizzy between runs. Her recovery is slower.
She seems weak.”
I looked through the glass toward the ice.
Lily was standing by the boards, tugging at her sleeves, face pale under the bright rink lights. “Has she been sick?” he asked.
I thought about her complaining about feeling dizzy. “I… don’t know.”
That night, I told Mike we were taking her to the doctor.
He shut it down instantly.
“Let’s not turn this into a whole thing,” he said. “She’s under pressure.
This is the biggest competition season of her career.”
“So we help her.”
The way he said it made me stop. “What does that mean?”
He shrugged.
“It means we support her goals.”
I felt cold all over.
“What are you not telling me?”
He laughed once, short and sharp. “You hear yourself, right now?”
I wanted to push harder. I should have.
But Lily was upstairs, and I didn’t want another screaming match where she could hear every word.
Then came the night that broke whatever denial I still had. I woke up sometime after midnight because I heard something from Lily’s room.
I went down the hall and pushed her door open. She was curled up on her bed, knees to her chest, breathing in short little pulls.
Her face looked gray.
“Lily?” I rushed to her. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at me with glassy eyes. “Mom.
I can’t keep hiding this from you anymore.”
Every nerve in my body went tight.
“Hiding what?”
“Mark and I…” She looked away. “Tomorrow… I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
She shook her head weakly.
I sat with her for almost an hour, rubbing her back while she drifted in and out of sleep, terrified and angry. Every worst-case scenario I could think of was running through my head.
I hated myself for every moment I had second-guessed my own instincts.
At first light, I made the decision for both of us. “Get your jacket,” I told her. “We’re going to see a doctor.”
I didn’t tell Mike.
At the hospital, they took Lily back for blood work, vitals, and questions.
I sat in the waiting area, twisting a tissue to shreds while every moment of the last month replayed in my head. Her saying she felt weird.
Mike telling me not to overreact. The closed-door talks.
It was all pointing to something I wasn’t sure I had the strength to face.
When the doctor finally came in, his expression was careful. He sat down across from us. Lily was beside me, trembling.
“Mrs.
R., we need to talk. The test results showed some… unexpected findings.”
“Mom, this is what I wanted to tell you last night…” Lily said.
“Please… don’t be mad at me.”
The doctor handed me a folder with Lily’s test results. The moment I saw the first words on the paper, I clapped my hand over my mouth in shock.
“Severe dehydration?” I read aloud.
“A significant electrolyte imbalance?”
The doctor glanced at Lily, then back at me. “We also found evidence that she’s been taking a strong supplement that’s generally marketed for weight control.”
For a second, I honestly didn’t understand the sentence. “What supplements?” I asked.
Lily looked at her hands.
“It’s just a herbal thing. He said they were safe.”
“He?
Lily, where did you get them?”
She hung her head. “Mike gave them to me.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
I looked at the doctor.
He gave one slow nod. “These products can be dangerous,” he said. “Especially combined with intense training.
That’s likely what caused the dizziness and dehydration.”
I turned back to Lily.
“How long?”
