by Ruby Lang
She quickly checked off another set of boxes in her head as she completed Serge Beaufort’s exam. He was murmuring in French, something about a puppy.
Oh, she was just enough of a snob to think that all those beautiful masculine reflexes could be put to something more interesting: ice sculpting, puppeteering, exotic dancing, Swedish massage. But instead, they chose to chase a little round pellet around the ice while wearing helmets and loose jerseys. It seemed like such a waste of flesh. She’d read a study that looked at whether athletes had a limited range of facial and vocal expressions because most of their concentration had gone into developing their larger muscle groups. She peered at Serge Beaufort’s slack jaw again. His eyes were closed.
Unfair to judge the poor man right now, she thought. He had, after all, suffered a blow to the head.
But the mountain behind her, Adam Magnus, he had an imperturbable athlete’s face. She sneaked a peek at him. No, that wasn’t quite true. From a distance, he seemed impassive, but up close, he was hardly vacant. There was a restlessness around his eyes and mouth. His voice, although not animated, was deep and amused. So he chose to work in a profession where he used his body more than his brain. No wonder he had a smile in his voice. She’d cackle if she were paid handsomely to fill out designer suits and hit pucks. His buddies probably thought it was fine for him to gun his sports car on a Sunday afternoon and get into traffic accidents. They probably jeered whenever he punched someone, guffawed when he kneed someone in the groin.
There. She’d put Adam Magnus in his box and shut the lid.
God, she was a horrible, judgmental shrew these days. How the hell was she supposed to be a good doctor if she was already this cynical at the beginning of her career?
She finished up her notes on Serge Beaufort, aware of Adam’s eyes on her. It was almost as if he could hear her thoughts. She felt herself redden, just a little, so she tightened her face and held her spine straight even as a small part of her failed.
It was this way all the time, now. She was angry, easily frazzled. She lost her concentration. If she kept this up, she’d be useless to her patients. There was no need to resent Adam Magnus. There was no need to be spiteful with everyone and anyone for simply being.
Except, she was.
Nurse Pham came in with the CT scan, and Weber left with her, chattering the whole time.
Helen took a deep breath. Her life was not terrible. Actually, it had been pretty charmed. Small-town upbringing in the Okanagan Valley, daughter of one of the town doctors, a house with dogs, wide-plank tables, and sunshine. She’d picked apples and done ballet. She had an older brother to assume the burden of being a perfect child. And she had been so stupid, so gloriously stupid, to take that for granted, to think that the whole thing would be forever preserved in the honey of memory, that her parents would always be fortyish, strong and wise and healthy, and that she would always return to find things that way.
She’d spent a few unhappy years in her teens at the San Francisco Ballet School, but that home—that beautiful home nestled in Canada—was the constant. When she finally quit dancing, college and medical school and residency went by in a whirl of work and studying and trying to sleep.
Everything until then had been good. Then her father’s diagnosis came, just a couple of months after she’d started practicing as a neurologist. He’d been a boxer in his youth, and he’d suffered minor head trauma from a car accident a few months prior to diagnosis. But no one could say if either was linked to his growing illness, and it wasn’t much use trying to find out. She’d handled that well at first, too. She’d conferred with her dad’s physicians when she’d flown up to see her parents. Degenerative brain disease wasn’t her specialty, but she’d researched treatments and gone about her life with the usual practical optimism that one expected from a doctor. Except that he’d only gotten worse. And now she could say that all her optimism was gone.
She was grateful that this patient was disoriented, so that he couldn’t gauge how far her mind wandered during this exam.
She pocketed her pen and tried to smooth down the ridges of her sudden anger.
“How is he?” asked Adam Magnus.
His voice was unexpectedly close to her ear.
“We’ll keep him overnight for observation,” she told him.
“We have an away game tomorrow.”
She wanted to flip him the bird.
“Dr. Weber will confer with your team physician,” she said crisply. “But the fact is, Mr. Beaufort has had a concussion. He needs to rest, and air travel would exacerbate his condition.”
He was only looking out for his friend’s job, she told herself. No need think the worst of him.
“Your turn,” she said. “Sit down.”
She should just go on her way, she thought. But for some reason, she needed to establish some sort of authority over him. And he did indeed have a head injury, minor though it was, and head injuries interested her.
“I’ve already been checked,” he protested.
“Scientific curiosity. This isn’t really an exam,” she said, giving his sturdy chest a little push. “And you’re not my patient, and I’m not really your doctor. Just call it an opinion.”
“I guess some opinions are stronger than others,” he said, with that glint again.
Mercilessly, she shone her penlight right into his laughing eyes. His pupils constricted immediately.
She went through the motions of an exam, but there didn’t seem to be much to see, just as he had pointed out, she told herself. Alps was fine. More than fine. Sure, he had a few nicks and dents, but he was still solid and golden. She felt a little foolish for pushing him around, making him sit. She had just wanted to put him in a separate place, but it hadn’t worked. For some reason, he made her jumpy. She felt transparent. She had needed to put him where he couldn’t touch her, and now she was the one touching him.
She moved her hand away.
His phone trilled with an irritating, old-fashioned telephone ring, and he glanced at her apologetically.
“You’re fine,” she said curtly. “I’ll get a nurse in to finish up with your friend.”
She turned on her heel, and Adam stood with his back to her as he talked quietly on the phone.
She closed the door and walked down the hallway to give Weber the lowdown. She checked in with Nurse Pham and signed her forms. The hockey players had been the last of her patients. She was off the clock. Now would be a perfect time to call her mother. She hiked over to the physicians’ lounge.
“It’s your dad’s naptime,” May Yin Frobisher said over the phone. “I hate to wake him when it’s so hard to get him to sleep.”
Helen knew it was. It was why she had chosen to call now instead of later. She squelched down her guilt and became brisk. “Just a quick check-in today. How is his depression?” she asked. “How is the new medication working out for him?”
She and her mother ran through their set list of questions. While they talked, it was easy to forget that this was her mother and that the patient with parkinsonism was her own father.
Satisfied, she was about to hang up, when May Yin said, hesitantly, “Helen, I’ve been thinking. With your dad’s condition being the way it is, we’d like to move to a smaller place. Somewhere without stairs.”
“Mum, Dad’s doing fine right now. The new medication has been working well. The tremors are under control.”
May Yin was silent. She was probably twisting her still-black hair. Her husband and daughter often ganged up to veto her. It never did any good, Helen thought with a sick twist in her stomach. Besides, with her father deteriorating every day, he didn’t have a say.
When May Yin spoke again, her voice had become precise and distant. “It would be better for us to move before your father gets worse—”
Helen wanted to open her mouth, but May Yin kept talking, ruthlessly and without inflection. “It is only going to go downhill from here,” she said. “I’ve been asking your br
other to look for condos in Vancouver, so that we’ll be near him and Gordon, closer to the kinds of medical services that your father needs. Helen, I know it’s your childhood home and you love it, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take care of your father by myself. I can’t drive hours every week to take him to specialists. I can’t pick up after him and cook and keep the house clean—”
“I’ll send you money for a housekeeper. And you can hire someone to drive you.”
She grimaced as she heard herself. This was exactly the kind of illogic she discouraged in patients and families. And here she was thinking magically, If I don’t go back, my father won’t worsen. He’ll stay the way I left him. The house will be perfect and welcoming. Everything will be okay.
She closed her eyes and wished her words back, but her mother, who had a lot to deal with these days, had a short fuse, too. “I know this upsets you, Helen. But I’ve already made a decision. Besides, if we move, it’ll make it easier for you to visit.”
May Yin hung up.
Her mother was quietly angry, which Helen was used to. She could hardly blame her mother. Helen had not been to see her parents since summer. She didn’t live that far down the coast from them. And added to the fact that she and her father had always been close, she was a neurologist. She could be of use to him.
Except when she couldn’t.
She shoved the phone back in her pocket and strode out of the room as if she knew where she was going.
Her father’s central nervous system was failing. His brain was shutting down and dying, and here she was with her fancy medical degree, and there was not a thing she could do about it.
• • •
Adam could not afford to be distracted, least of all by the woman who had just left the room. But her gestures had been so deft, her movements so precise—it was fascinating to watch her, and much more pleasant than the task at hand.
He was dimly aware that the first doctor—Weber, his name was—had come back in and was reassuring him about Serge’s health. Of course Serge would be fine. He’d taken worse hits before. But the media attention for this traffic accident was probably going to be ugly, even though the kid was fine. The season had barely started, and the Wolves were already in a losing streak. Worse, this was only the team’s second year in operation, but already it was their second year occupying the bottom of the NHL rankings. The town was indifferent to the team unless the players did something stupid. Their billionaire owner was reviled. Hardly anyone showed up to games. Hell, they hadn’t even been able to get crowds into the goodwill pancake breakfast they’d held.
And then there was the arena.
The stupid fucking arena.
They needed all the positive publicity they could get. Two team members getting into a car accident with a seventeen-year-old girl would not make for pretty headlines: Teenager. Accident. Hockey Goons. Bad optics, someone might say, even though Adam hadn’t been drinking or speeding or doing anything reckless. They’d been coming back from a Sunday afternoon benefit for a sports camp when the girl had run a red light and plowed into them. Luckily, the kid was fine, if a little shaken up. Adam felt sorry for her. But now Serge and Adam had a light shining on them, just when it was best to lie low.
Adam already left a message with his and Serge’s manager. No doubt the team’s GM would be alerted soon enough, as would the media. Adam winced. Some Norwegian player they’d brought in to replace the kid from Duluth had been fired last week. A rookie from Ontario had been dropped two weeks ago. The team was playing badly. Everyone was hanging on to their jobs by a thread. All it took was this kind of thing for someone to find an excuse to can Adam too.
It had taken seven years, but he was now a realist about his career; he wasn’t much longer for this gig. If he had been a better player on a better team, he might have looked forward to a career in coaching, or maybe he could become a sportscaster, run a themed bar with decent memorabilia and Guinness on tap. Maybe he could have started a camp. But he wasn’t particularly gifted as a player—not like some of the other guys on the Wolves’ roster who might have thrived in a different environment. Adam hadn’t scored all season and was unlikely to in future. He was the muscle. Muscle was abundant and cheap. It didn’t last.
He blew out a frustrated sigh.
Dr. Weber was now offering tips for how to improve his game.
Adam gave him a weak thumbs up. He should be considering his survival strategy. He should be totting up his finances, sweeping the supermarket for dented cans of soup, and making damn sure he could afford to live over the next few years.
But a good part of his mind was preoccupied with Helen Frobisher, neurologist.
She was pretty, in a sober, sheltered, breakable way. Brown hair—not chestnut, not auburn. Brown. And in a ridiculously tight bun. No makeup. She had delicate ears, a graceful neck, a long thin nose with a slight bump in it, and thin lips, which made her look fastidious and intellectual. Her skin had an olive cast, and yet, it still looked like she spent a lot of time indoors, peering at CAT scans, probably, or mixing up mystery formulas. She seemed delicate from far away. But that wasn’t what had made him notice her.
After a moment talking to her, looking at her, he’d realized it would be a mistake to think of her as fragile. Her posture was perfect. She spoke crisply, and her eyes were ever alert. It was her hands that really captured him. There was no way she was any sort of weakling, not with such strong, deft hands, which sliced through the air quickly and ruthlessly. The movements of fingers and palm were controlled, but they spoke. Expressive, he thought. Angry. That was a little surprising. When the gloves came off, guys he’d met on the ice who had less aggression in their fists than Dr. Helen Frobisher.
He wondered what had set her off, and as he’d watched more closely, he grew more conscious of the movement of fine muscles under the arms and shoulders of her white coat. He had learned some things about how people moved, and—well—it was a pleasure to watch her. He had found himself moving closer just to observe. Of course, that had gotten her hackles up, until she pushed him into a chair to make him behave.
And he had liked that last part. A lot.
It was funny. People prodded Adam all the time. Trainers, physios, masseurs, teammates, opponents were always poking him, punching, or grabbing his arms, looking at bumps, positioning his limbs and torso. There was always a physician checking his knees, his arms, his hips, a coach eyeing his hands and legs. His body was not his own. But he’d never been examined quite this way by a steely, young woman. When she shone a flashlight in his eyes and started firing questions at him, he felt his skin and guts jump to her commands.
She was compelling. Formidable. She was a long line of adjectives fit for an army general. She’d made him focus almost as if she were an opponent, someone facing him on the ice. Her serious, fine-boned face, her sharpness, it was all completely new for him. She made him feel alert, he thought, a little surprised; it hadn’t occurred to him that he had been going through the motions lately.
More interesting, she’d clearly reacted to him too. She bristled when he drew near. Sure, her tone seemed even and deliberately mild, her face controlled. But he wondered if she had any idea how vivid her hands were. From the white doctor’s coat, her wrists emerged as fragile as a paper crane until they tightened around a pen or sliced through the air to illustrate her thoughts. And then those sinews and bones flexed, and she flashed her penlight right into his eyes like she wished it were a dagger.
He had admired it all way too much.
He had also enjoyed the way she’d needed to stand very close to him, too. One huge brown eye had been practically in his. If she’d tilted her head and he’d bent his and she moved a fraction of an inch sideways, they would have been lip to lip, teeth to teeth, tongue pressed to tongue. Luckily, she pulled back for a minute, and because it was right there, he looked past the curve of her neck and right down her blouse. Sky-blue bra, he noted dizzily. The sight of her skin peeking thr
ough fabric and lace would be imprinted in his brain. Not cool, Magnus, he had told himself, looking away. Not cool at all.
He blinked himself back to the present, thanked Dr. Weber, then went back to the hallway to call Bobby, his manager, again.
Bobby jabbered worriedly.
Adam said, “No, we weren’t drinking at all. Girl plowed through a stoplight and right into us. Serge is out of tomorrow’s game.”
Bobby wasn’t the sharpest manager, but then, Adam wasn’t the best player. He and Serge were Bobby’s two major clients. He had signed them both years ago, back when their bones were more or less intact and their futures had looked sunny. The rest of Bobby’s roster comprised softball players, lesser American marathoners, and a couple of minor league pitchers. He wasn’t a shark. Bobby was more of a clownfish, darting in and out and feeding off of the scraps.
Adam being a scrap.
He paced the hospital hallway and tried to concentrate. “Look,” he said. “I’m fine. I’m being discharged. Just tell me where they want me to be and what they want me to say, and I’ll do it. But Serge is pretty banged up, and he isn’t going anywhere.”
Within minutes, text instructions began arriving. Adam said good-bye to a sleeping Serge, signed his discharge papers, and looked around for Helen Frobisher.
She strode past him and gave him a short nod. But her eyes looked sad. Never mind. He would never see this woman again.
He took a cab back to the team’s offices. He had to admit, the management team was better at crisis than the players were at playing. They’d had more practice. He changed his shirt and went up to the press center. A few people briefed him, but he knew the drill: Say as little as possible, look blank and bland. He would sit beside Coach and answer questions monosyllabically, with long pauses in between words. There was no need to talk about Serge’s condition. After less than an hour, they threw the doors open to face the bloggers and writers and sportscasters. After a moment of silence, the management team’s faces fell.
