“Never settle for red”
Rashida Birdlong

    “Come on, Kristin, one more lap. Don’t stop now,”
Coach Azi says to me clapping his hands rhythmically.
    I continue swimming as asked, like always. Doing
whatever is asked of me. Polite, obedient Kristin
Bower.
"Great practice, Kristin," coach Azi says as I get out
of the pool and grab a towel. "Next year there will be
many more first place blue ribbons and medals for
you".
"Yeah. I’ve been meaning to talk to you," I say
pondering how I should tell him that I quit. "I'm not
sure I’m cut out for swimming competitively next year.
I have enough ribbons and medals and trophies to
satisfy me for the rest of my life."
Coach Azi looks at me disappointed, he hates quitters,
"You know what I always say, Kristin.”
***
Where am I? It's so bright in here. Who is that? Don’t
touch me. Please!
"Kristin?"
Who?
"Are you feeling better?" a woman in a white cap and
lab coat asks me.
I nod confused. "Where am I?" I say drowsily.
The woman looks over her shoulder at a man in a
lab coat, then turns back around. "You're at the Gold Medal
Hospital."
"Hospital, why am I in the Hospital?" I exclaim.
The nurse leaves the room.
A woman crying rushes into the room, and holds my left
hand, "Kristin, honey. We'll have you home in no
time".
I look down at her hand on mine; I slowly pull away
from her. This is too creepy. “Who are you? Who...is
Kristin? Where am I? Why am I here?"
The woman looks at me startled and begins to cry again
as she walks away.
The nurse comes in again. “You don't remember your
parents?"
"Parents? I don’t have any. My mom died of a drug
overdose when I was ten and I never knew my father."
"Kristin --."
"Kristin? Who is Kristin?"
The nurse looks over her shoulder again, now at the
crying woman, "Well...you are."
"Uh... no I'm not," who the hell in this Kristin
person?
"Do you know how you got here?" the nurse asks
stupidly.
"If I did, I wouldn't have asked you were I was."
"Right," the nurse walks away down the hall and speaks
to the man in the lab coat.
The man comes into the room and introduces himself as
Dr. Hatcher. As I reach up to shake his hand I notice
that there is nothing there. Nothing, from my elbow to
where my fingers should have been. I look at him
confused.
"Oh…my. Oh…my…god. What...what happened to my arm!" I
motion frantic to my missing arm.
"Well, Kristin, you --."
"I...am...not...Kristin!" I exclaim.
"Ok, well then who are you”, he speaks so damn calmly.
"Heather Rae," I say quickly, still panicking.
"Ok, Heather, I think you should calm down a little,
just breathe," he takes deep breathes like some sort
of cheesy yoga instructor.
"I’m, calm. Oh yeah real calm. I wake up not knowing
how I got here, where I am, what happened to my arm or
why people are crying over some Kristin person who
they think I am. Oh yeah, I'll calm down."
"Kristin --"
"Heather!" get it through your head.
"Heather, right, if you calm down I can answer all of
your questions."
"Ok, start with why my arm is missing."
"Well, it was twisted and crushed when they found you,
before --"
"Found me... were, who?"
"On the side of the road. I have no knowledge of
anything before that."
"Ok, next question, who is Kristin?"
He takes a deep breath nervously.” Well, everyone out
there," he turns and points to the occupants of the
hallway. “Think you are", he continues.
A picture of a missing girl on the TV catches my eye.
It’s me, but it’s not me. She has long wavy reddish
brown hair and blue eyes. The newscasters say her name
is Kristin. I then take a breath and look at the woman
crying in the hallway. How is it even possible that a
girl who looks exactly like me, turns up missing then
I show up and everyone claims me to be her.
***
As Kristin wakes, she groans with pain. I turn on a
single light shining in her face. She squints and
begins to panic as she notices my face, realizing who
I am, gagging on the blue cotton fabric placed in her
mouth resisting her to scream.
I look further down her body now at her right hand,
which is placed between two slabs of hot ice. Her
fingers have changed color. They are now blue, dark,
deep, blue. I begin to remove the top slab. Her skin
begins to rip away from the bone. She screams in
excruciating pain, as loudly as possible, but not loud
enough to pass the mass in her mouth.
I smile a bit as I look at her hand, her precious
hand. “Why?” I say as I caress her hair. She turns
away quickly, tears filling her eyes.
I reach across her face to a small table with blue
glass tools on it. I pick up one, which looks like a
small axe with a jagged blade. I place it on her face,
moving it down slowly, from her forehead to her chin,
without cutting her. She moves her face slowly away;
staring at the blade, hopping it won’t pierce her
skin. She swallows hard and begins to breathe heavily.
Kristin closes her eyes for seconds, awaiting the next
moment of pain.
I begin to cut her thumb as she opens her eyes, wider
than ever and lets out a scream louder that before. I
carve off each of the other fingers, one by one, each
coming with an even louder scream than the one before
it and tears pouring from her eyes. I place each of
them in a pool of sterilizing fluid. Her dark red
blood expanding in the bowl the longer it sits.
***
“Ms. Rae” the doctor says as he enters my pale blue
hospital room again.” You seem a bit absent.”
“What do you mean?” I ask annoyed yet interested.
“Well, It seems you may be a hallucination of
Kristin’s, a persona.”
I look at him amused.
“That isn’t the only evidence of you possibly being
Kristin.”
He shows me a piece of paper on his clipboard with a
bunch of letters and numbers on it.
"What is this?" I ask him, examining the paper.
"This shows the DNA of you, Heather Rae, and the DNA
of Kristin Bower," the doctor says pointing to either
side of the paper.
I continue to look at the paper as he watches me
“They’re exactly the same," he states with raised
eyebrows.
I look at him, then the paper again. How is this
possible? I know this girl looks like me, but DNA?
"Maybe if it turns out you are actually, Kristin,
going to the Bower's home may bring up some memories."
***
Her room was painted ocean blue. She has many first
place trophies on shelves, blue ribbons and gold
medals hung on walls. Her queen size bed also
has a blue bedspread and decorative pillow shams. She
has posters of her and her swim team hung on the
walls.
"This is, Kristin's room," Mrs. Bower says as we enter
the girl’s room.
"She was a great swimmer, too bad she quit though,"
Mrs. Bower tells me as I walk through the room. "She’s
been swimming for nearly her entire life," tears begin
to fill her eyes.
"Angel should be here soon. He said that he would come
by for a visit," Mr. Bower says changing the subject,
then soon leaves the room.
"Who's Angel?" I ask.
"Kristin's, boyfriend," Mrs. Bower answers clearing her
face of moisture.
This will be interesting.
***
I sit on the living room couch waiting patiently for
Angel to arrive. I already have an impression of him
in my head. He is tall, probably a baseball player,
and has blue-green eyes. An all-American boy, who
lives in a big white picket fenced house with both of
his happily married, loving parents as the precious
only child. He probably drives a nice car, maybe a BMW
or a Mercedes that he received as a sweet
sixteen-birthday gift, who has already been accepted
to Yale or Harvard with a full tuition scholarship
waiting for him.
In the midst of my thoughts, Angel walks in; he looks
exactly the way I thought he would, dressed in a light
blue button up shirt and dark denim jeans. He walks in
through the front door, the sunlight from outside
shining behind him like a Broadway spot light,
carrying blue roses. He walks over and looks me dead
in the eyes as he sits down.
"Why are you doing this?" he asks in a low whispering
tone.
"Why am I doing what?" I ask in the same tone of
voice.
"Playing this game with everyone, this character. Kristin, you have to stop this charade."
"I'm not Kristin."
"Then who are you?" he asks.
"I'm Heather."
He sighs and stands up to leave, disappointed.
My leg begins to ache, like it's being twisted
completely out of socket. My heart begins to beat
faster and my vision blurs. It’s getting darker and
darker now and my leg feels even worse.
***
As I place the device on her leg, Kristin awakes;
tears begin to swell in her eyes. With the blue gag
still placed in her mouth, she breathes heavily as I
turn on the machine.
It cracks as it turns in opposite directions and
continues to wind up. She bites hard on the gag, eyes
closed, tears heavily leaving her face and dripping
onto the floor below her. Her bones begin to twist and
her knee pops out of socket. She screams as the first
bone pierces her skin and rips through. The machine
continues to turn and twist, her face now red
withholding pain.
When I turn off the device, I can see her chest
expanding and contracting as she breathes. her eyes
roll to the back of her head after looking down at her
now deformed leg.
***
Beeping and blinking lights wake me. I’m back in the
same pale blue hospital room, and all I see in front
of me is my left leg elevated in a sling. I try to
extend my leg in front of me, but from my knee down
there's nothing there. The remainder of my leg is
bruised blue. I begin to cry, and then Dr. Hatcher
comes in looking at another of his charts.
"What.... happened?" I ask panting.
Dr. Hatcher looks down at his stupid clipboard
and tells me that my leg had somehow been twisted and
crushed which caused excessive bleeding and had to be
amputated to stop bleeding, and pain.
I can’t believe this is happening again. I continue to
cry cradling my face with my left hand.
***
    As I limp down the stairs, I see Mr. Bower in his
office. I've decided to ask him a question that may
conclude what I've been feeling the last few weeks.
    He looks up at me from his writing, attentively, "May
I help you?" he asks firmly removing his glasses.
    "Yes," I say as a matter of factly, sitting down
cautiously as to not hurt myself any further. "This
may be a dumb question, but is it possible for me and
Kristin to be sisters? Like twins?"
    He looks down at his desk sadly," Heather, this is
too big to tell."
    "So, you'd rather kill us both, than to tell your
secret?" I begin to stand, when he stops me.
    "Look, he says guiltily getting my attention, "After
Mrs. Bower gave birth, there were
some...complications."
    "Complications? Like what?" I ask sympathetically.
    "She lost the baby."
    "Then --," I say questionably.
    "I never told Mrs. Bower, I didn't have the heart to.
So, I paced the halls to think, clear my mind, when I
spotted a woman who looked like she needed help. She
was pregnant and about to give birth."
    "She was having twins?" I interjected.
    He nods.
    So Kristin and me are twins.
I have to find her. I run up the stairs as fast I can.
As I sit in Kristin's room again, I notice a picture of
her when she was a little girl. It must have been her
eighth birthday, I assume due to the cake in front of her. She
was wearing a light blue dress and a blue bow in her long
curly brown hair. It was strangely similar to the
picture of me on my eighth birthday, except I wore a
red dress and had a single cupcake with a candle.
I've always felt like half a person, the bad half,
like there had to be a better side of me, another side
of me.
It was weird how similar photos of her were like the
memories of mine. The swim poster of her in a blue
swimsuit sitting with her swim team reminded me of the
photo I had taken with my ballet class in a red
leotard. Also, the fact that I had always been second
in my division of winnings and she being first in hers,
amazed me. She must have had a great deal of support
and encouragement from friends her parents and
coaches.
As I look for clues. I pace –more or less-- across the
room. What am I looking for, What do I look for?
    I stop in front of her bookcase, where all of her
awards for swimming are. I begin to read quotes from
ribbons that catch my eye:
    “Never settle for red, go for blue.”
    “If you don't use it, you’ll lose it.”
I remember back to when Mrs. Bower told me Kristin was
a great swimmer and how she had quit a few days before
I showed up.
    I know who is doing this.
    Coach Azi. But why?
    I hope I’m not too late.