Read Online The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi - Free Book Online

tour, but that wasn’t all. In addition to that, Eliot had big plans for the New York performances upon our return to the States. He started choreography on a new work that would have three company dancers—including me—dancing with none other than the great Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was coming in to perform as a guest star. This was a huge opportunity for a young dancer, the big chance I’d been waiting for.
    Eliot started rehearsing me hard-core to get me ready, and I pushed myself even more, to a degree I hadn’t thought possible. My knee was giving me as much trouble as ever, but I was determined to overcome it. A couple of months before the tour was to launch, I had one more knee surgery in an attempt to stabilize the joint. Looking back now, I can’t believe how hard I worked my knee just after that surgery, and how much pain I forced myself to ignore. I also had no choice but to keep draining the knee, as it was swelling up as much as ever after eight to ten hours of rehearsing a day.
    But as the tour dates drew near, I found myself having second thoughts about what I was putting myself through. Lisa and I had just gotten married, and I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving her for two months. I’d even be missing our first wedding anniversary, which upset both of us. And I was afraid of getting my knee drained in South America, worried that conditionsthere would be less sanitary than those in New York. I’d already had my leg threatened by one staph infection, and I feared the same thing might happen again.
    But could I really bow out of this amazing opportunity? After all the work and sweat of the last three years, I was going to tour South America with one of the most respected ballet companies in the world, not to mention performing back in New York with Baryshnikov. How could I possibly step away now? Wasn’t this exactly what I’d been working for my whole life?
    I decided to “cowboy up,” ignoring all the pain and burying my worries. But then, one afternoon, a single freak incident changed everything.
    I was riding my motorcycle on the West Side of Manhattan, heading downtown for a rehearsal on a bright, sunny day. The lanes narrowed as I approached the West Side Highway over-pass, and suddenly a car cut right in front of me. I braked, but he’d cut too close—I had to maneuver to the left, trying to squeeze between his car and the guardrail. It was a dangerous moment, but it looked as if I’d managed to avoid a collision— until I suddenly saw a boy on a bicycle directly in my path. He’d been riding the wrong way down the street, and now there was nowhere for either of us to go as I careened toward him.
    I knew in a flash we couldn’t avoid colliding, so I instinctively hit the rear brake and let my motorcycle shoot out from under me, sliding sideways along the road. That way, the motorcycle would at least hit the kid’s bicycle, rather than the kid himself. If we hit head-on, there was no doubt he’d be killed.
    The maneuver worked perfectly: My motorcycle slammed into the boy’s bike and he flew off, ending up with scratches but no serious injuries. I was okay, too—at least physically. Ihad some cuts and bruises, but was still able to rehearse that day. Emotionally, though, this accident really shook me up.
    All the rest of that day, I was haunted by the thought that in that brief moment, if the accident had happened slightly differently, my dance career would have been over. When you’re a professional dancer, everything hinges on your physical condition. I had worked my butt off, fighting pain and ignoring the signs of my body’s rebellion—but none of that would have mattered if I’d hurt myself in that accident. It was as if I realized for the first time that my whole professional life hung by a thread, and that I’d been fooling myself thinking I could have a dance career with the knee problems I had.
    The next day, I still couldn’t shake these feelings, and all of a sudden I