by Amy Brent
“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.”
She gently prodded his leg, checking where it hurt. He winced in pain at her touch, but not badly enough for her to think that it was broken. “You'll need to get down to the hospital,” she told him. “I don't think it's broken, but you need to get an x-ray just to be sure.”
“I'll be fine,” Ben said. He touched his leg against the ground, pressing down on it a bit. “It doesn't feel too bad.”
“You really shouldn't put any weight on it. I'm serious. Don't make me get tough with you.” Sharise gave him her sternest glare, the one she reserved for the most troublesome patients. He'd already risked himself by going forward with the race despite his injury. She didn't want to see him putting himself at further risk just because of his own stubbornness.
He grinned, his eyes lighting up, almost as if he enjoyed her getting tough with him. “Well, who am I to argue with the doctor.”
They got some help carrying him to a car. One of his friends, who Sharise recognized from the day at the emergency room, got into the driver's seat. It took a bit of work to get Ben into the car without jarring his leg, but Sharise instructed the men with the same experience she had directing nurses in the emergency room. While they were loading Ben into the back seat, taking care not to jostle his leg too much, he looked up at Sharise and asked, “Are you going to be my doctor today?”
She met his eyes. He looked eager, and Sharise got the feeling there was more to it than his trust in her medical expertise. She blushed, then nodded. “I'll follow in my car.”
“I'll see you there.” He winked at her, then settled in for the ride.
They drove down to the hospital. Sharise wasn't on duty, so she didn't get directly involved in Ben's treatment, but she did spend some time consulting with the physician on duty. They went over Ben's previous history with his broken leg, and Sharise explained what she'd seen when the accident first happened. Ben was taken in for an x-ray. Sharise joined Ben in his room while the on duty doctor went over the results with him, and she was relieved when she saw that it was good news.
“You're very lucky,” the doctor said. “The bone didn't break again, though you definitely put your leg through some unneeded stress. You really should still have your leg in a boot, and you definitely shouldn't have been running.”
“But, Doc,” Ben said, grinning and leaning back with his hands cradled behind his head. “I almost took first place!”
Sharise crossed her arms and glared at him. “Ben, this is serious. If you keep taking such risks with your health, you could wind up with an injury that will be a lot harder to recover from.”
Ben laughed and shook his head. He nodded to the doctor and asked, “Do I have to stay here? Or am I free to go?”
The doctor sighed and made a
note on Ben's chart. “There's no reason to keep you here, but I recommend saying off that leg for at least a few more days. And I can prescribe you something for the pain.”
“No thanks, Doc.” Ben climbed out of the bed, gently setting his leg down and putting weight on it. He winced in pain, but he powered through it. Sharise and the doctor shared a look. Both of them had seen patients like this plenty of times. Sometimes, there was nothing you could do when it came to dealing with a stubborn patient who didn't want to take advice, even when it was for their own good.
Sharise discussed the situation with the doctor out in the hall for a few minutes while Ben got dressed and ready to go. When Ben emerged from the room, Sharise fell into step by his side. “At least let me get you a pair of crutches,” she said. “I don't want to see you back in the emergency room in a few days because you didn't take this situation seriously enough.”
He put a hand on her shoulder, leaning slightly against her as they headed for the door. “You doctors worry too much. I've been running for years. I know how to work through the pain.”
“You know how to get yourself hurt even worse, you mean,” Sharise said. “God, I just don't understand men sometimes.”
“Men?” Ben paused in the hallway, arching an eyebrow at her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Isn't that a little bit sexist, Doc?”
She crossed her arms, staring him down. “I've never seen a woman decide to act all macho and push herself like this because she was trying to prove something.”
Ben laughed, shaking his head. He stepped back to let another patient walk past them, then stepped closer, looking down into her eyes. “Is that what you think? You think I'm being macho?”
“How else do you explain why you'd try to run that obstacle course? Especially on a wounded leg. There's no reason to do something like that unless you're trying to prove something.”
Ben laughed again. “Maybe. Maybe you're right. But I don't think I have anything to prove.”
“Then why do it?”
He pursed his lips, thinking it over. “Maybe because I like the challenge. It doesn't matter whether I win or lose, so I'm not trying to prove anything. But I have to at least try.”