by Amy Brent
They hadn’t discussed marriage too seriously yet, but Colton knew the day was coming where he would propose. Hell, he might do it in the hospital room.
When he went to meet his new coach and collect his shirt, Colton held it against him and grinned as cheers filled the room. He could feel her in the room with him as he watched the cameras flash and shook hands with the men around him.
The future was going to be amazing.
THE END
Play Me
Dr. Sharise Johnson was having a slow night in the emergency room of the West Woodbury Memorial Hospital. She'd been there for almost eight hours, and so far all she'd had to deal with was a man who'd cut himself with a kitchen knife was slicing vegetables at a local restaurant, an elderly woman brought in for dehydration and dizziness, and a pair of paranoid new parents who'd brought their newborn in for what had turned out to be a simple rash. She'd stitched up the first man's cut without any problems, gotten the old woman onto an IV drip to get some fluids into her, and then given the last patients some cream and an informational pamphlet on common infant health concerns, so they hopefully wouldn't overreact next time their child had a simple medical issue that they could handle at home.
She was sitting in the back room and chatting with a couple of the nurses. They were all Game of Thrones fans, though Sharise was the only one who had actually read the books. She had been trying to convince the others to pick up the books for years, but so far, she had never had any luck. Over the last few seasons of the show, she'd had to bite her tongue on more than one occasion to avoid revealing spoilers to her friends. Though since the new season was starting before the next book came out, the tables were about to be turned.
“I'm not even going to watch it,” Sharise said as she went over a few patient charts. “I need to read the book first. I'll wait to catch up on the show until after the book comes out.”
“But aren't those books like, a thousand pages long?” Linda asked. She was one of the younger nurses, fresh out of school. “I've never read anything that long in my life.”
“You read Harry Potter, didn't you?” Sharise asked. “Add all of those together and it's over a thousand pages. Probably two of them together is the same as one of Martin's books.” She had never approved of people being lazy when it came to reading. A good book deserved the time and attention that a person devoted to it. Her mama had taught her that when she was young. Mama would read to her almost every night, and it was a big part of why she'd developed into someone who cared about learning. Sharise knew she wouldn't have gotten through medical school without that sort of dedication.
“I don't know,” Linda said, shrugging. “I don't see why you'd read the books when you can just watch the show.”
Sharise rolled her eyes. They'd had variations of this conversation on more than one occasion. Sometimes Sharise didn't know why she bothered trying to convince Linda to broaden her horizons. But she didn't get the chance to argue the point further, because just then, the doors to the ER opened and two men came rushing in, carrying a third man between them.
“Help!” one of them called out. “We need help. I think his leg is broken.”
Sharise and her staff dropped what they were doing and rushed into action. Linda and another nurse rolled a gurney out, and they helped the men deposit their friend onto it.
“What happened?” Sharise asked. She checked the man's pulse and did a quick visual examination. His left leg was bloody, and he was clearly in a lot of pain. The patient was the athletic type, with a good physique and muscular legs. He was also covered in mud.
“We're Mudders,” one of the men said. “He slipped on the trail and took a bad fall.”
“Mudders?” Sharise asked.
“Tough Mudders. Runners. Ten mile outdoor obstacle course.”
That told Sharise enough. They started pushing the gurney back into the operating area. “Does he have any allergies to any medication? Any medical conditions we should be aware of?”
“Umm.” The two men exchanged a panic look. Both of them looked pale and sweaty. The first man shook his head. “I...I don't think so. Not that I know of.”
“Okay, you'll have to wait here. We'll take care of him.”
Sharise left the two men in the waiting area, where one of the receptionists started getting more information from them. Sharise and her staff focused their efforts on the patient. They cut off his pants to get easier access to his wounded leg. It was purple and swollen, and Sharise didn't need an x-ray to determine that it was definitely broken.
They gave the man something for the pain before getting to work. His eyes started to glaze over. Just before the medication knocked him out, he looked up at Sharise and said, “I'm in good hands, right Doc? Don't tell me I won't be running again.”
“You're going to be just fine,” Sharise said. She pressed a hand over his forehead and smiled at him. He was an attractive man, underneath all of that mud. “Just relax, and we're going to take good care of you.”
The man gave her a grateful nod, then laid his head back. Within a few moments, the medication knocked him out.
Hours later, the man started to wake up while Sharise was standing by his bed. Fixing up his leg had been a fairly straightforward procedure, as such things went. Fortunately for him, he was in good shape, and the break hadn't been a bad one. His leg was in a cast and hanging from a sling attached to a metal pole that hung over the bed. The nurses had cleaned all of the mud off of him, revealing a number of other scrapes and bruises, though none had been particularly bad. The rest of his scrapes had been treated with antibiotic ointment and bandaged up, and would heal in no time.
He opened his eyes and look up at Sharise, his eyes a bit droopy. The medication he was on would keep him groggy for a bit longer. She gave him an encouraging smile while she made a few notes on his chart. She still hadn't had a chance to introduce herself yet, but his friends had identified him as Benjamin Caldwell.
“Mr. Caldwell,” Sharise said. “How are you feeling?”
He looked around a bit woozily, taking notice of the cast on his leg. “Not bad, I guess. There's a dull ache.”
“You can thank the medication for that,” she said. “And lucky for you, it was a clean break. It could have been a lot worse.”
“How long until I'm back on my feet?” he asked.
“You'll be on crutches for a few weeks,” Sharise said. “But after that, you can switch to a medical boot you can walk in and take off at night.”
“A few weeks?” He sat up in the bed, shaking his head. “No. No way. Sorry, Doc, I've got a big race coming up. I've got to be in shape.”
Sharise held Ben's chart at her waist and gave him her most stern look. “Mr. Caldwell, you need to give your leg time to heal. If you push yourself too hard, it could fracture again, and be even worse next time. If that happens, you might never run again. I'm sure you don't want that.”
He leaned back in the bed, looking her over. There was something in his eyes that was different from what she was used to seeing in her patients. Like he was admiring the way she stood up to him. The look threw her off balance, and she felt the hints of a blush start rising into her cheeks. “Well, no offense, Doc, but I think I'll have my regular physician give me a second opinion. This isn't the first time I've been hurt. I can't afford to be out of this race.”
Sharise shook her head and hung Ben's chart back up on the wall. “You're free to do as you like, Mr. Caldwell. But I recommend taking it easy. I'm sure this race is important to you, but it's not worth permanently crippling yourself over.”
He smirked at her. “We'll see. And please, call be Ben.”
She turned to leave, but stopped when he caught her eye. They shared a look for a moment, and his gaze was so steady, so sure of himself, that for a moment, she couldn't look away. Her face heated up and she cleared her throat. “Well, Ben, try to get some rest. You'll be discharged in the morning. If you need anything, just buzz the nurse.”
“Thanks. Oh, and Doc?”
Sharise paused in the door and turned back towards him. He looked deep into her eyes again, a confident grin on his lips.
“I never got the name of the lovely lady who saved my leg.”
Her face heated up again. It wasn't often people called her “lovely.” She didn't exactly have the kind of tall, thin figure that the media portrayed as the standard of beauty these days. “My name's Sharise,” she said. “Or Dr. Johnson, if you prefer.”
A mischievous smile spread on his lips. “Oh, I definitely prefer Sharise. It has a lot more character.”
He held her gaze for another long moment. She tried to think of something to say, but the tone in his voice and the look in his eyes had her flustered. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Good night, Mr. Caldwell. Ben.”
“Goodnight, Sharise.”
She left his room, then put in her final reports so she could go home for the night. She had been at the hospital for more than twelve hours, but that was how it went sometimes. Though now she was ready to go home, take a nice long shower, and try to get some rest before she had to be back for another long and grueling shift. One of the downsides to being an emergency room doctor was that sometimes she worked such long shifts that she never seemed to get enough rest.
Sharise didn't see Ben again for several weeks. She hadn't really expected to run into him again at all. As an emergency room doctor, she was used to seeing patients once, usually when they were having a particularly bad day, then never seeing them again. Sometimes she had thought about switching her profession to family practice, in order to build bigger bonds with her patients. But she knew she did good work, and she was glad to have the job she had.
Fortunately, Sharise's next encounter with Ben wasn't an emergency. It came after a chat she had with Linda one day while they were on their lunch break. Sharise still hadn't forgotten about her encounter with Ben, and while she sat with Linda over lunch, she brought up a question that had been bugging her since that day.
“Hey,” Sharise said. “Have you ever heard of this 'Tough Mudder' thing?”
“Oh!” Linda clapped her hands together, a big grin on her face. “Yes, I have. One of my cousins does it. It's completely nuts.”
“What is it, exactly?” Sharise asked. All she knew was what Ben's friends had said about it being some kind of outdoor obstacle course racing. She had never been much of a sports person, and she didn't really know the difference between this kind of race and any other.
“Well, they do some of the most extreme racing out there. It's all about endurance and psychological strength.”
“Psychological?” Sharise asked with a frown. “For a race?” She didn't understand how psychology had anything to do with running a race. It didn't make much sense to her.
“Well, it's based on military training courses, taken to an extreme.” Linda pulled out her phone and booted up a website about it, then showed it to Sharise. “They have to do crazy stuff like swimming through ice water, crawling under electrified wires, running through mud, climbing a huge wall, squeezing through narrow pipes, and all sorts of other stuff. It's hard, it's super scary, and it takes an immense amount of training. Some of the racers don't make it through not because they can't handle it physically, but because they don't have the guts to face some of the challenges.”
Sharise scrolled through the descriptions on the website, looking at some of the pictures of people running through the crazy obstacle courses. She couldn't begin to imagine participating in that sort of thing. She had never been a particularly athletic sort, though she at least tried to keep herself in decent shape. She had some extra pounds packed onto her graceful ebony curves, but she was a healthy girl. The idea of running through this sort of obstacle course made her feel out of breath just thinking about it.
“You should come out and watch sometime,” Linda said. “My cousin is competing in a race next week. He's been training for months. This is the first time he's going to an official event. It's a lot of fun to watch.”
“I don't know,” Sharise said. “I'm not sure if that's my sort of thing.” She didn't even like going to football games or that sort of thing. An extreme race like this sounded like more than she could handle.
“Well, think about it. My cousin always likes having a few extra people around to cheer him on.”
“I'll see,” Sharise said. She had to admit that she was a bit curious, despite her reservations. It would certainly be a new experience.
Linda kept asking her about it for the rest of the week, until Sharise finally decided that her curiosity had to be sated. It had developed into a sort of morbid curiosity. They headed down to the obstacle course on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. It was a bit chilly outside, and Sharise was bundled up in her jacket. There was a huge crowd of people there when they arrived. Some of them were runners, stretching and getting ready for the race. Others appeared to be coaches and assistants, helping the runners prep for the race. Then there was the crowd of friends, family members, and people just there to watch. Race officials moved through the crowd, registering the runners and giving them their numbers.
Sharise mingled with Linda and her cousin for a little while, chatting and asking about what the race would be like. A good number of Linda's family members had shown up to show their support. Sharise hadn't met most of them before, but they turned out to be a fun group of people.
Then, right before the race was about to start, she heard someone call out her name.
She looked around, wondering who could possibly be there who knew her. She didn't have any friends who were involved in racing. She spotted a figure trotting towards her. When he got closer, she recognized that it was Ben.
“Hey there, Doctor Sharise,” he said. He held out his hand and she shook it. He had a firm, strong grip that went well with his muscular physique.
“Ben,” she said, giving him a concerned smile. “I didn't think you'd be here today. How's your leg?”
He patted his leg, grinning at her. “Been doing fine. A bit of pain, but nothing I can't handle. I'm ready to run today. I'm pumped.”
Sharise looked at his leg. It certainly looked fine, but the real damage had been on the inside. There was no way of knowing how well the bone had knitted together. “Did you have your doctor clear you for this? You could seriously hurt yourself.”
“My doctor said it's okay. I'm not worried about it.” He grinned, stretching his back out and limbering up for the race. “I've been prepping for this for months. No way I'm sitting it out.”
Sharise frowned in concern. There was nothing she could do about it, even if she thought it was a mistake. She wasn't Ben's regular doctor, and even if she were, all she could do was offer him advice. It was up to him if he wanted to risk his own health on such a foolish endeavor.
“Just be careful out there,” she said. “If you feel any pain in that leg, you had better sit the race out. Respect your body's warning signs.”
“Sure thing, Doc,” he said with a smirk. She could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't taking her seriously. He seemed like the type who liked to live dangerously, no matter what anyone else said.
The runners were starting to line up. Sharise nodded to the lineup and said, “You'd better get going.”
“Wish me luck,” Ben said. He winked at her, then jogged over to the starting line and joined the other racers.
Sharise joined Linda and the other spectators while they waited for the race to start.
The runners took off, and the race was quite a spectacle to watch. The runners trudged through a muddy field, then raced up a hill, before rappelling down a zip line and into the main obstacle course. Some of the runners slipped and fell on their faces when they trudged through the mud, but they picked themselves back up and kept on pushing through the race. During one leg of the race, the runners had to race across narrow wooden beams, and several slipped and fell off, landing on the muddy ground several feet below. They had to
climb back up onto the beams and get back to their feet before they could keep running. Sharise felt her muscles aching just looking at it all.
Towards the end of the race, the runners had to drop down onto their bellies and crawl under a line of wooden logs suspended low over the obstacle course. They trudged through the mud, slithering and pushing with their elbows and knees until they made it to the far end. There, they pushed back to their feet and started racing across the field, pumping their legs high to hop over wooden slats that covered the last hundred yards.
When they were nearing the end, Ben and Linda's cousin were at the head of the line, pushing hard and leaving the other runners behind. Sharise leaned forward over the railing at the edge of the field, watching as they ran for the finish line. For a few moments, it looked like Ben was going to pull ahead. Sharise found herself rooting for him to win, and she clutched at the railing, tense, waiting to see how the race would end. But then his leg caught on one of the wooden hurdles and he fell over, landing hard across the wooden slats. He cried out in pain, his limbs tangled among the hurdles. One of the runners stopped to help Ben back up, while the others raced for the finish line.
Linda's cousin took first place, to the cheering of his friends and family in the audience. While they were cheering, Sharise hurried over to check on Ben. Several people had carried him off to the side and set him down on the ground. He was clutching at his leg, his face scrunched up in a painful grimace. Sharise knelt by his side and started to look him over, trying to determine if he'd re-broken the leg. There was no sign of blood, but his skin was purple and bruised.
“Lay down and hold still,” Sharise said. She asked one of the people helping her to take off his sweatshirt, and they bundled it up and shoved it under Ben's head. “How bad does it hurt?”
“It's not too bad,” Ben said. His face was scrunched up in pain and he had to clench his teeth to keep from crying out. “I'll be okay.”
“Stop trying to be so tough,” Sharise said. “You'll be lucky if this isn't broken again.”