by Ruby Lang
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 through 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.
Not one reporter had bothered to come.
CHAPTER TWO
“Oh dear God,” said Helen, shuddering as the players slammed into the boards again, “I’ve counted at least four bloody noses, four lacerations to the scalp, and three potential concussions.”
Helen and her friends and practice partners, Sarah and Petra, were watching the Wolves get pounded by the Los Angeles Kings. Apparently, this happened on a regular basis. No one else in the bar was paying attention to the game.
“You’re supposed to be keeping track of the number of goals and assists, not the number of trau
matic head injuries,” Petra said, rolling her gray eyes.
“Look at the way that guy is shaking himself. He’s dizzy, trying to clear the impact, but he’s still skating,” Helen said.
She covered her eyes, then peeked through the cracks.
The television in Maloney’s Pub was on mute, but Helen could imagine the dull thuds of impact, sharp sounds of skates on ice. She remembered watching her brother at practice. It had been just as horrifying and fascinating then as it was now.
Sarah, Helen, and Petra had met in medical school. They had all matched to Portland hospitals, and even though they had gone into different specialties, they remained friends. They had recently begun a multispecialty practice together in the downtown Pearl District. Petra was an allergist, Sarah an obstetrician/gynecologist, and Helen a neurologist. Keeping up the relationship through medical school and residency had not been easy. Aside from the long hours that they’d kept during their residencies and fellowships, they were competitive and opinionated. It came with the territory. The lack of sleep probably hadn’t helped any of their tempers either.
Helen winced again as another pair of players erupted into a brawl. “Damn, that number fifty-two keeps on getting hit with the stick and bounced on the ice. And that’s just one game. How many of these do they play every year, anyway? I’d be surprised if he doesn’t end up developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy.”
“You’re really bumming me out, you know?” Sarah said. “Why are we paying attention to this, anyway?”
“It was on when I got here. And I saw a couple of hockey players yesterday, and Dr. Weber called me out for not knowing about the team. It caught my eye,” Helen said, perhaps a bit defensively.
Sarah blotted an invisible spot in front of her with a napkin and pushed her straight, dark hair back. “So you’re studying up on hockey to suck up to Weber?” she said.
“Maybe I thought the players were cute,” Helen said.
Sarah and Petra laughed and laughed.
“What, you mean one of them was wearing a black turtleneck and discussing celestial navigation?” Petra chortled, her blond curls bouncing.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“She means hockey players are so not your type,” Sarah said.
“I don’t have a type. I find many different men attractive.”
“Yeah, but you only date one kind,” Petra said.
“The kinds with high foreheads and long noses they can look down,” Sarah said.
“Mopey,” Petra said.
“Serious.”
“The kinds who launch into long monologues about how real books are better than e-books because of the texture and smell of the covers. Guys who moan about the sensory experience,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes.
“The sensual experience,” Petra corrected. “Like, I can only love a real book that gives paper cuts to my fingers and my soul, not some robo-book that can’t love me back.”
“The kinds who would spend a lot of time explaining what feminist means, to you and me, and to the world.”
“That was just one guy, and I only went out with him once—okay, twice,” Helen protested. “I was in my twenties. We all went out with that dude.”
“I didn’t.”
“Me neither.”
“Maybe it just felt like you went out with him forever.”
“Well, you did go out with Dr. Mike for a long time, too, and he was full of himself,” Petra said.
Helen winced.
Her first year after finishing her residency had proven particularly bumpy. As if the slog of work and getting her license weren’t enough, there had been her father’s diagnosis. At the time, she hadn’t told anyone. Not her friends, not her boyfriend, Dr. Mike Hardcastle. Then Mike had made noises about getting married. They would have another ideal life, with their careers, and later, kids.
But it wouldn’t be perfect, would it? Her father’s illness was ugly and getting uglier. It would drain her family. It would take all of her. Helen just could not. She couldn’t work, be responsible for her father, and be all that Mike wanted her to be.
So. She’d had a one-night stand, broke up with Mike, and confided to Sarah that she’d cheated on him. Upstanding Sarah found her trust in Helen shaken, too—it had nearly ruined their friendship.
But now they were all stumbling along again. And despite the fact that her friends were having fun bringing her down a peg—or several—at least they were still around to do it. Helen knew she liked the chatter better than silence.
Petra and Sarah were still arguing about something or other. Sarah was wrinkling her nose, her brown eyes wide with alarm and laughter.
Helen wished she could join their mirth.
Sometimes, at night, she’d stare at the ceiling wondering exactly how she’d gotten here. She couldn’t say that the reckless one-night stand that ended her relationship had been about her dad’s condition. Association, after all, was not causation.
Now she admitted that maybe she was not handling her father’s illness as well as she’d hoped.
As Petra and Sarah continued to spar, Helen stared moodily at the television screen. Her phone call with her mother yesterday was just another in a series of jolts. If Helen could afford it, she would buy the old house herself. But she had recently invested in the practice, and she had mortgage payments to make on her condo and student loans to pay off. And really, what would she do with a big empty house? She had to preserve her money in case something happened to her father. At least her parents lived in Canada, and the cost of medical care wouldn’t deplete their savings. But her father’s disease was unpredictable, if inevitable. As May Yin had said, he was only going to deteriorate. All sorts of things could come up: Maybe at some point, her mother would need to hire extra caregivers for her father. Maybe May Yin would need someone to help with housekeeping. Maybe her mother would succumb to the strain and fall ill herself.
Selling the house made sense. If only Helen could admit it out loud.
Helen and May Yin fought a lot more now, but quickly and in hisses. Her brother, wisely, stayed out of it.
She took a swig of her beer and slouched down in her seat.
Her dad had been the last one to accept the diagnosis. He demanded to look at the MRI and CT scans. He saw several neurologists. He even had Helen examine him as if her knowledge of him could reach deep inside and find one misfiring neuron, one small block of misbehaving brain, and tweak it. But they all knew that Harry’s doctors could treat his symptoms, but there would be no cure for the disease. Her father’s brain was dying, cell by cell. Soon the man who had taught Helen how to listen to a heartbeat, shown her the stars on a clear night, quizzed her about spelling and history and anatomy, delivered her brother, danced with his wife on the porch, soon he would disappear. In a way, he was already gone. The degeneration robbed him of sleep. It made a once vigorous, cheerful, curious man slow and stiff and angry. And the progression of his disease, once they discovered it, had been fast. It was almost as if once Harry had agreed on the diagnosis in his mind, he’d simply opened his fist and let his true self flutter away.
Petra nudged her with her beer bottle. “Hey,” her friend said. “You okay there?”
Her friend’s gray eyes were sympathetic. And a little worried. That was Petra, always trying to fix things and trying to take on the burdens of the world.
Helen nodded and practiced her deep breathing. She had read a study that found a correlation between meditation and regions of the brain associated with empathy and response to stress. Considering how her thoughts had drifted yesterday with that hockey player, Adam Magnus, she probably needed to improve both her empathy and stress responses.
But she made the mistake of looking at the screen again. “Now they’re not even playing, they’re just fighting,” she yelped, horrified. “They’re just going at it, bare knuckled.”
“They’re wearing helmets,” Sarah said, ever contradictory.
Helen winced a
s the camera closed in on the two players.
“I don’t think that’s helping,” she said, as the dark-haired player’s head snapped back. Sweat flew off of the men and onto the Plexiglas behind them. Blood started streaming down the player’s nose.
She, Sarah, and Petra leaned in closer to the television set. The men slugged at each other resignedly, with the blond seeming to have the upper hand for a while. Helen watched them slamming into the boards again. And suddenly, she was irrationally angry. Again.
She was getting a little predictable.
“It’s kind of mesmerizing,” Sarah said, moving a fry to her mouth.
“You’re the only one who thinks so,” said Petra.
“Not true. Doc Weber’s totally with me on this. Right, Helen?”
Petra snorted. “Oh pardon me, n=2, where subject one is you and subject two is Weber. Every study population has outliers. In this case, it’s the entire population of the Pacific Northwest versus you two. The Wolves madness that afflicts you and Weber is not statistically significant.”
“Why are they so unpopular?” asked Helen.
“They’re the losingest team in the NHL,” Sarah explained. She liked to know everything about anything. “Last year was their first year, so that was at least excusable. But now, they’re just an embarrassment. Plus, there’s the fact that they want a brand new arena built with city and state funds, even though there are already two perfectly good venues in town for them.”
“I heard something about that,” Petra said.
“The owner is some billionaire. Totally shady.”
Sarah ate another fry while still staring intensely at the game.
On screen, a fist connected with the blond’s nose.
“Do they do that in every game?” Helen asked.
“Yeah, I think it’s pretty standard,” Petra said. She was watching Sarah.
Helen pushed her stool back. “The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Neurology have called for a boxing ban for years. I can’t believe they haven’t extended it to hockey. At least boxers have gloves and a padded ring. Ice is hard and sticks and skates are sharp.”