“There’s something about you, Kylie. You just seemed to be the type of girl that I wanted to know more about, and when I saw you sitting alone at dinner, you looked like you needed a friend. So I figured I could get to know you, and you accepted. Now I get to solve the enigma of Kylie.”
“Enigma. That’s a nice way to put it. I don’t think I can be solved though, I’m a puzzle that’s been broken a million ways to Sunday.”
“What about me? If you’re so broken, why did you agree to come here?”
“I don’t know. I guess there’s something about you too. For one thing, you’ve been here three days, you should be detoxing from your drugs right now. I know everyone reacts differently, but when I was at the stage you are I was curled up in a ball in my bed wishing for death.”
Daniel’s face hardened somewhat. I noticed his eyes darkening, the pools becoming deeper.
“It’s hard. Yes, it’s hard. I’m trying to keep my life as close to what it was before, although it’s not the same. I feel what you feel. I just want to scream. I want to cry out, I want to hit anything I can get my hands on.”
“I guess you just have better self control than I do,” I replied.
“I wouldn’t say that. But you’re right, it’s very, very difficult. Now, why don’t we try lunges?”
“I’d like that,” I replied, smiling as Daniel helped me up from the bench I was sitting on.
“First I’ll show you how it’s done,” Daniel told me. He stood up straight, then explained what he was going to do. “I’m going to step forward, bringing my front leg down to a 90 degree angle, until my back knee just about but doesn’t quite hit the ground. Then I get back up and repeat the same thing with the other leg.”
I watched from my bench as Daniel began the movement. As soon as his front knee bent to 90 degrees however, I saw the pain in his face. He was brave, he pretended it wasn’t there, but I had seen it.
“God, Daniel, your knee!” I exclaimed, jumping up from my seat.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing,” he replied, sitting on the ground clutching at his right leg.
“Don’t lie to me, I know that’s not nothing.”
“The pain will go in a minute.”
I was shocked by the amount I cared about this injury.
“Was it an injury to your knee, the hockey one?”
“Yeah.”
Immediately I went into doctor mode. Well, wannabe doctor mode I should say, seeing as I never managed to finish medical school, and never would now.
“Come here, I want you to sit down on the bench. Let me help you.”
“I swear, Kylie, it’s fine.”
“You’ve been showing me your skills all day, now it’s time for me to take charge. Get up and I’m going to help you move over to the bench.”
I guess my voice must have held all of the authority I wished it always had, since Daniel stopped protesting. I sat down next to him and wrapped my arm around him. I still felt that spark passing between us, but I forced it away. I had to be serious here, Daniel was dealing with an injury, a bad one.
He hobbled over to the bench and sat down, still wincing. I handed him my bottle of water.
“Drink. It won’t do much, but seeing as I’m not going to give you so much as a 200mg pill of ibuprofen, you get to consider this water as your painkillers for a while.”
Daniel chugged my water. “Thanks,” he muttered, throwing the empty plastic aside. I looked at his knee. “Lie down on the bench,” I ordered.
“What are you going to do?” Daniel asked.
“A few tests.”
Daniel obediently lay down on the bench. It wasn’t as long as I liked, so I dragged another one over and had him lie flat along the two benches.
The first thing I did was a Lachman test to test Daniel’s ACL. I bent his knee slightly, stabilized his thigh with my left hand and pulled his shin forward with my right. I was only too aware of the fact that my left hand holding his thigh was only inches away from his shaft, I was so close to his most intimate areas I could feel my breath catching in my throat. I forced the thoughts away, ordering my body to forget its desires and focus on the task at hand.
I instantly knew from the movement in his leg that his ACL was torn. I was far from an expert on the topic, but I was also fairly confident it was a bad one.
Next I performed a Valgus test, which was pretty similar to the Lachman test.
“Tell me if this hurts,” I ordered, keeping Daniel’s knee bent slightly and applying outward pressure on his leg.
“Yeah, fuck” Daniel replied almost instantly, wincing.
“Sorry, I just had to check. Do you know your ACL and MCL are both torn?”
Daniel grinned at me as he sat up. “Yeah. Believe it or not, the Sea Lions’ payroll involves more than seven figures a year being spent on doctors. At that price, I would hope to hell they can diagnose that sort of thing. But how come you know the Lachman and Valgus?”