In a split second, the buoyant mood in the ballroom shifted. And all it took was the look of pain and worry on Cristian de la Fuente’s face to change it. The Latin soap star and his partner Cheryl Burke were doing their samba when his left arm suddenly stopped working. “In the very beginning of the dance, I fell back into his arms and I heard something crack,” says Burke, who was in tears after the show. “I thought it was my dress making that sound. I didn’t think it was anything else.” De la Fuente kept going as long as he could, but by the end of the minute and a half, he was clutching his left arm. He couldn’t complete the dance. “It really did have to be more than a muscle cramp,” says Burke, “because he’s not the type of guy to just go out there and give up. He’s a strong man.”What was Cheryl thinking as she saw her partner struggling on the dance floor? “I was like, ‘Oh my god, what’s happening?’” she recalls. “I didn’t know what was going on.
