by Emily Forbes
‘That’s correct. There are a thousand athletes registered from around the globe competing across a dozen different sports and most of the Aussies are competing in at least two sports, some three. The Games programme has been arranged to allow this. I haven’t seen the final programme yet, but I’ve heard it’s massive. Most of the competitors have multiple events.’
‘That was my plan too,’ Mark said, ‘but I’m getting a pain in my arm when I lift it above shoulder height. It’s bad timing; it’s affecting my aim in archery and also my stroke in the pool. Have you got time to take a look at it for me, Doc?’
‘I’m consulting most of the day,’ Cam said as he checked his watch. ‘I’m due to start in twenty minutes. Head over to the clinic now and I’ll make sure we squeeze you in.’
He turned back to Viktoria. He had work to do and he hadn’t thought about the logistics of getting her back to the city. He should have let her driver bring her. ‘Do you want to call your driver to collect you when you’re done? I’ll be busy for the next few hours.’
Her reply was unexpected. ‘I am happy to stay. I can wander around until you are free. I can chat to the competitors if they are willing to talk to me. You have my cell phone number if you need to get hold of me.’
‘I don’t think I want you fraternising with the enemy,’ he said, only half joking.
‘I am not the enemy. I know there are medals on the line but Berggrun doesn’t have any athletes in the Games and, even if we did, the Games are about more than competition. They are about mateship, camaraderie, a sense of belonging.’
‘All right, I’ll come and find you when I’m finished.’ He couldn’t be bothered arguing and he knew she was right. It irked him. She irked him. But it wasn’t her confidence or even her tendency to challenge him that bothered him. It was simply the fact that he was aware of her.
His head was all over the place as he left her to go and tackle his consulting list. She was affecting his equilibrium, leaving him quite unsettled. He felt as though he’d been living in a haze, unaware of the world around him for two years and now, all of a sudden, he was noticing things. He was noticing her.
A pretty face and a foreign accent shouldn’t be enough to make her interesting, but he knew he was kidding himself. He was intrigued but he wasn’t willing to admit that he found her attractive. That he wanted to impress her.
She was calm, happy and relaxed. He was tense and grumpy. He had never thought that opposites did attract, and he couldn’t speak for her but he was certainly attracted.
He focused on his patient list, squeezing Mark into his diary, and tried not to think about Viktoria von Grasburg.
Several of the competitors had aches and pains from training, Mark included. Mark had been medically discharged from the army following a crippling leg injury and multiple surgeries. He was still battling depression but being chosen to compete in the Legion’s Games had marked a big turning point in his recovery. Cam knew how important this competition was for him and he reluctantly gave him his diagnosis.
‘I think you have sub-acromial bursitis,’ he told him after conducting his assessment.
‘What’s that?’
‘Inside the shoulder joint is a bursa, which is a small pouch filled with fluid that helps to reduce the friction of shoulder movements. That has become inflamed and swollen, which is affecting the quality of movement and causing your discomfort.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘It can present as a result of a fall, but it is most commonly an overuse injury, usually caused by repetitive overhead movements.’
‘Like freestyle swimming.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do I do now?’
‘Make an appointment with one of the physios.’
‘What can they do?’
‘A number of things: treatment, taping, exercises.’
‘What about my events?’
‘We’ll know more once you’ve seen the physio. With your shoulder taped, archery might be possible; swimming might be more problematic, but don’t write it off yet.’
‘I’m sure I’ve heard about people having cortisone injections in their shoulders. Would that work?’
‘Possibly, but if we went down that path I’d want you to rest your shoulder following the injection for a couple of weeks, which would mean you’d definitely miss your events. I’ll organise an ultrasound scan just to be sure,’ Cam said as he wrote a referral, ‘but I’m pretty confident my diagnosis is accurate. Make an appointment to see the physio and we’ll go from there.’
Cam finished his clinic and went in search of Viktoria. He found her in the gym, chatting to the athletes, just as she’d intimated. He stood inside the doorway for several minutes, observing her interaction with the competitors. It was obvious she had no shortage of people willing to talk to her.
That in itself was unusual. He knew from his own experience that many of the veterans were reluctant to talk to strangers. Many of them were physically or emotionally damaged, or both, and often that made them reticent to talk to people. Their scars went deep but they seemed perfectly happy to talk to Viktoria and she, in turn, seemed perfectly at ease talking to them. He was aware that she was able to draw people out. Or maybe she drew people in. He couldn’t deny she had drawn him in.
She did seem very approachable. Despite her looks.
Maybe she was used to people giving her what she wanted, he thought. Beautiful people had a tendency to get away with things that ordinary people didn’t.
With that slightly harsh thought, he left the shadows of the doorway and stepped into the gym. She noticed him approaching and smiled and Cam felt as if the sun had come out.
That reaction was unwanted, and he could feel grumpy Cam returning. The best thing he could do now was to drop her back to her hotel.
He needed time.
He needed space.
The smell of her perfume lingered in his car even after he’d dropped her back to her hotel—a floral scent, but not sweet. It was light, feminine, and enveloped him gently. It was pleasant, soothing.
His car suddenly felt too large for just one person. He was aware of a void, a feeling of emptiness.
That was ridiculous. He was used to being by himself. He’d spent a few hours with her; that wasn’t long enough for her to make an impression. It shouldn’t be long enough for him to notice her absence.
But a few hours in one day was more time than he’d spent with any stranger in the past year and more than he’d spent with many of his colleagues too. He could count on one hand the number of people he spent time with. Probably on three fingers—his sister, her husband and Doug. Not even his ‘dates’, for want of a better word, lasted more than a couple of hours. He’d become a bit of a recluse. Work, an occasional beer with colleagues, sporadic visits to his sister’s farm and an even rarer date night were the sum total of his social activities. Even his exercise regime was solitary. He walked his dog and swam. Neither of which he did with company.
He didn’t think he needed interaction with other people, he certainly didn’t seek it out, yet he replayed snippets of the day, snatches of his conversation with Viktoria, as he drove home. He was surprised to find he remembered a lot of what she had said and even more about the way she spoke, the way she mixed her languages, the way she walked and smiled.
He let himself into his house, still thinking about Viktoria. That made a pleasant change to where his thoughts usually lay but he found it a little unsettling to be thinking so intently about a woman he’d just met.
He changed his clothes. He’d take his dog for a walk on the beach while he tried to clear his head.
The dog was a border collie, a retired farm dog, given to him by his sister. Skye had insisted that Cam take him when the dog was too old to work with the sheep any more. He wasn’t a trained therapy dog, but his influence was th
e same. Cam always felt some of his stress dissolve when he walked Rex and today was no exception. Just the dog’s company was enough to invoke calm; he had the same effect if they were just sitting still. Cam liked to keep one hand resting on Rex’s head and that connection to another living, breathing being was always restorative.
He threw a ball for Rex—despite his age, the dog still wasn’t truly happy unless he had a purpose—and let his mind wander as the dog ran up and down the small beach.
All his life, Cam had always had a plan. He’d always known what the next thing, the next five things, on his list of goals was. Where he was headed. He’d been certain of his path. Until two years ago.
What was the expression? Man makes plans and God laughs. Well, God had more than laughed at him. He’d given up on him altogether and Cam had struggled for the past two years. Since losing Gemma he’d felt rudderless.
The ache in his chest was gradually diminishing; emotionally and physically, he knew he was recovering, but it was a slow process. He knew he’d always hold Gemma in his heart but, even though the pain was no longer as acute, his future still looked bleak. There wasn’t a lot he looked forward to. He was still just getting through one day at a time. As best he could. He’d forgotten what it was like to be excited about things.
Meeting Viktoria was possibly the most excited he’d felt about anything in a long time. He wasn’t even excited about work. Work was a means to an end, but what end he wasn’t sure. It was something to occupy his time.
Doug had tried to persuade him to compete in the Legion’s Games. After all, the Games were for injured soldiers, those with both mental and physical wounds, and he knew he fell into both categories, but he’d resisted, hiding behind the apparent need for his services as a medic—using his job as an excuse to keep himself isolated.
He smiled wryly as he scratched behind his dog’s ears and threw the ball again. He knew what he would say to any of his patients who were doing the same thing. He knew what he had said to them. But he was a firm believer in his patients doing as he said, not as he did. And he wasn’t ready to let go of his pain just yet.
He was driven by guilt. Guilt was making him hold on to his pain as a punishment. He blamed himself for Gemma’s death. He should have been able to save her.
He knew that if he hadn’t been there that day, in the chopper when it went down, he would feel differently. If he hadn’t been there the outcome would have been the same but that was different to being there and doing nothing. He knew in his head that she was dead before the chopper hit the ground. He knew there was nothing he could have done, but that didn’t stop the guilt.
Survivor’s guilt.
But giving it a name didn’t make it any easier to live with. He would punish himself for a bit longer. He wasn’t ready to let go of it just yet.
He had got used to the fact that Gemma was gone. That he was alone. He’d even got used to the idea that he would be alone for the rest of his life. But he hadn’t got over the idea that all of it was somehow his fault.
He’d been through therapy—that had been non-negotiable under army guidelines—but he couldn’t honestly say he felt any better for it. He knew all the statistics. He’d heard the spiel, read the research, but the fact of the matter was that nothing was going to make things return to the way they had been before the incident and he just had to get on with it, on with his life.
He was trying but he wasn’t finding life very enthralling any more. The joy was gone.
Viktoria had arranged for Hendrik to drop her off at the base and she had spent the morning interviewing Games competitors. The base was busier today; veterans from other countries had arrived in Sydney and many of them were on site, utilising the training facilities ahead of the competition.
There was a lot of camaraderie between the competitors, which Viktoria had not been expecting. But, as they described their involvement, it became clearer. The veterans talked a lot about mateship and survival and the role the Games played in their recovery. While the Games were essentially a competition, Viktoria was realising they were about challenging yourself rather than beating others.
She wandered through the gym, past the stationary rowing machines where a solitary athlete was vigorously training. A Chocolate Labrador lay by her side and it was the dog that initially caught Viktoria’s eye. As she got closer the woman’s pace slowed.
Viktoria stopped beside the rower’s right side and bent down, letting the dog sniff the back of her hand. ‘What a gorgeous dog,’ she said. ‘What is his name?’
The athlete didn’t acknowledge her, although the dog’s ears pricked up. Viktoria hadn’t meant to interrupt, she’d assumed she was finishing her regime, but perhaps she was doing interval training. Viktoria was about to apologise for interrupting and walk on when the athlete turned her head.
‘Sorry, were you talking to me?’ She pulled headphones out of her left ear as Viktoria spoke.
‘Yes, I was just admiring your dog.’
‘Would you mind standing on my left side?’ the woman asked. Viktoria thought it was an odd request but moved around the machine as the woman explained, ‘I’ve lost the vision in my right eye and I’m deaf in my right ear.’
‘I asked what your dog is called.’
‘This is Leroy—’ the dog turned to look at the woman when he heard his name ‘—and I’m Fiona.’
‘My name is Viktoria.’
‘You don’t look like you’re defence force?’ Fiona said as she slid her feet out of the straps and stood up.
Viktoria heard the question. Fiona was obviously curious about why Viktoria was there. ‘I am not defence force, but I am working for Prince Alfred.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I am in charge of updating all the social media around the Games. Prince Alfred wants to keep the athletes connected but he also wants to promote the Games to the general public. He is keen to raise awareness of mental health and the benefits of exercise.’
‘I can vouch for the benefits of exercise,’ Fiona said as she scratched behind Leroy’s ears. ‘Exercise and my four-legged mate have made all the difference to me.’
‘Is Leroy a guide dog?’ Now that Fiona was standing, Viktoria was well aware that she had lost the sight in her right eye.
‘Not exactly. He has multiple hats to wear. Technically, he is a service dog and he will assist me with my hearing and vision issues, but he’s really been trained as a therapy animal. He does help me when I’m out or when someone stands on the wrong side of me. I had no idea you were there until his ears pricked up, then I knew to look out for something.’
‘He is a therapy dog?’
‘Yes. I sustained a head injury and lost the sight in one eye and the hearing in one ear on a tour of duty when a roadside bomb exploded under a vehicle I was travelling in, but the thing Leroy helps most with is managing my PTSD. Since the incident I struggle in traffic, big crowds, unfamiliar environments. Leroy helps calm me down.’
‘But you are competing in the Games?’ Viktoria asked. Sweat was dripping off Fiona; she certainly looked as though she’d been training hard. ‘The organisers are expecting large crowds. Is that going to be a problem for you?’ Viktoria wondered how Fiona would cope with the crowds and the noise that would come with them.
Fiona nodded. ‘I am competing but only in the stationary rowing. That’s a controlled environment. Indoors. Only a certain number of people competing, limited by the number of machines. And it’s not going to be quite such a popular spectator sport as, say, the basketball or swimming. Fewer spectators, less noise. And Leroy can stay beside me. He couldn’t do that in most of the other events.’
‘He really helps?’
‘Definitely. I don’t leave the house without him.’
As Viktoria spoke to Fiona she thought about the tales other athletes had already recounted to her and the role she could
play took shape in her mind. There was a bigger story to be told. She could do much more than post pictures on social media. She would write brief articles on the competitors—delve into their stories if they would let her, take their stories to the world. She would use the Games to highlight not only the benefits of exercise but to show what these competitors from all over the globe had in common. Some of the athletes had physical disabilities, others emotional, but they all carried scars and it was those scars that united them. She would showcase their resilience, their mateship and their determination and maybe inspire others through those stories.
She wandered through the gym and out onto the pool deck as she thought about how to get the ball rolling. She wondered if she could ask Cam for help. He hadn’t made any plans to meet her today and she had no idea if he was even on the base, but she kept one eye out for him anyway.
As she walked beside the pool, she spied Mark, the ex-soldier she had met yesterday, sitting on the edge. He looked up as she approached and smiled in recognition.
She stopped to say hello. ‘Have you been swimming? I thought you were injured?’
‘I have a sore shoulder.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse injuries.’
Mark was heavily tattooed across his back and arms but sports tape over his shoulder partially obscured some of the tattoos.
He pushed himself up out of the water to stand on the edge of the pool and Viktoria noticed that his left leg had been amputated below the knee. She hadn’t realised yesterday.
He hopped easily over to a chair on the pool deck, where he sat to towel himself dry. A prosthetic leg stood beside the chair.
Viktoria followed him. ‘I thought you said swimming aggravated your shoulder?’
‘Yes, it does. But until someone tells me I have to stop I’m going to keep swimming. I guess I don’t like being told I can’t do something,’ he said as he slid his prosthesis on.
‘And Dr Hamilton did not tell you to stop?’
‘No. He sent me to get some scans done of my shoulder, which showed I have an inflamed bursa, and he sent me to the physiotherapist. I’m going back to see her shortly for more treatment.’ Mark pulled a pair of trackpants over his bathers and stood up. ‘What are you doing here?’