Page 93 of Just One Look
Game of Skill
Luka wasn’t huddledinto himself, blinking back the tears. He was sitting more upright than ever, his expression thunderous, and there was some furious calculation going on behind the brown eyes.
She looked at her watch and said, “I have a surgery. How soon are you able to do this, Nils?”
“I’ll work him in this week,” Nils said. “The sooner we get it done, the faster he’s in physiotherapy. The rate of recovery among these players is quite astonishing. Something to feel good about,” he told Luka.
Luka said, “Cheers,” because he had to be polite, she guessed, and she thought,There’s nothing for him to feel good about here.Would his pain be vastly improved, almost at once? Yes. Would he care? No.
Nils noted the lack of enthusiasm and said, “Perhaps the impatience is the reason for the rapidity. If you’ll hang on a moment, Luka, I’ll explain the procedure more thoroughly and answer any questions.”
Elizabeth said, “And if you want to talk about it after that, I’ll be around. Working, but you know. Around sometimes.”
Luka said, “I won’t want to talk about it. But text me when you’re free.”
* * *
His surgery was setfor Thursday. The boys would be flying across the Ditch to Aussie, and he’d be getting his throat sliced open. They’d be missing Marko, too, which didn’t make him any happier. A team could do without its starting No. 8 or blindside flanker, if it had a deep bench. Doing without both of them was another thing entirely, like an underpowered car trying to crest a hill.
And, yes, Manu Tanuvasa was good enough to start at 8. That was the problem. Six months for Manu to impress? No. Luka healed fast. It wasn’t going to be any six months.
Elizabeth didn’t text, either. He picked up the phone to text her a few times, but put it down again. Just because he needed something new to think about, that didn’t mean he needed to chase a woman. He didn’t chase. Not ever. He wasn’t starting now.
He was meant to be on full rest for the neck, other than his treatments by the Blues physio, but by Wednesday evening, he was barking mad. Six weeks after surgery before he could do any serious training to start his comeback? Six weeks of becoming more unfit every day? He couldn’t sit at home anymore. He went to the gym.
He’d do simple things. Take it easy on the neck, but work out some aggression. It would be fine.
* * *
“Wait,”Elizabeth’s partner, an orthopedic surgeon named Gerald, said. “Let’s get a snap for posterity of you surviving your very first squash game.”
She said, “I’m sure I’m red-faced and sweating, but you’re right. Let’s memorialize it.” And posed in the middle of the hardwood court, bent forward with her racket in her hand like she was going to do something memorable and squashily impressive, instead of hitting the decidedly-non-bouncy ball at some exceptionally nonstrategic angle, after which it would bounce sluggishly once or twice and then roll to an ungainly stop like a dying animal.
She’d text the picture to Jordan. He’d probably suspect the dying-animal aspect, but he’d still be impressed. Squash wasn’t the elliptical machine. You did it in the gym, and it had performance criteria. She didn’t do things outside of work that had performance criteria, but here she was, right? Also, it was social. Again—here she was! Going to dinner with people! Playing squash with people! All right, withperson,in both cases, but still. You had to start somewhere.
It had actually been fun, and nice of Gerald to teach her. Of course, she’d been terrible, and she’d been tense about that at first, had kept apologizing, but somewhere around the twenty-minute mark, when he was behind her, his hands around her wrists, saying, “Hold your body like this, so you’re side on as you’re hitting it,” she’d thought,Screw it. Nothing is riding on this, and I don’t care if he thinks I’m uncoordinated and not “in good nick.” What’s it to me? Besides, he’s a man. Men love instructing women on things they aren’t good at yet. I’m probably making his day.
After that? She’d actually started enjoying herself a little. While still apologizing too much. Baby steps. Surgery required perfection. Squash did not. One did not have to be flawless at all times in all aspects of life to be acceptable. Et cetera.
Gerald said, when they’d taken the stairs down to the main floor, “Get changed, d’you think, and have a drink? Quite nice outside.”
She said, “It’s windy and about to rain again.”
He said, “Hasn’t rained yet. Until it does, why not sit outside?”
What was this Kiwi mania for sitting outside? Yes, she was possibly a little vampire-ish, in that she had to supplement her Vitamin D due to not getting enough sunlight, but who sat out in the wind? On purpose?
“Compromise,” she said. “We’ll sit close to the doors. That way, we can feel the wind blowing on us, but we won’t actually be in the midst of the cyclone.”
“You’re a tough customer,” he said with a smile she couldn’t help suspecting was practiced. “But you win. Meet you out there whenever you’re done.”
Twenty minutes later, she was wending her way around the kind of weight machines that made her body involuntarily seize up in anticipation of torture, heading toward the bar, and definitely not worrying that she was wearing what she’d gone to work in, which was her usual uniform of black trousers and white shirt. Not to mention that her makeup was minimal, her face was still flushed, and her hair was much more “high braid” than “sexy, tousled mess.” This outing was recreational. It was spontaneous, resulting from idle conversation in the attendings’ lounge. It wasn’t a date, it was anactivity.It might be a date next time, and that was … fine. That would be fine. She was supposed to go on dates. She didn’t have a wardrobe for it yet, but she was going to fix that. And Gerald was fine, too.
She was thinking it, and seeing Gerald notice her from the bar and get to his feet, when she recognized the man doing a series of walking lunges along the back wall, a truly enormous dumbbell in each hand.
Oh, no. Oh,hell,no. She was charging over there, saying, as she got closer, “Luka!” Well, nearly shouting it, before she thought better of it. He was going to turn his head, carrying those things, which had to weigh … She couldn’t even imagine how much. That was going to besucha bad idea.
He didn’t turn his head. The man doing bench presses on the machine nearest him gave out a sudden and extremely loud grunt, like a wild hog fighting for breeding rights, or like he wanted everybody to notice how much work it was to lift something this monumentally heavy, and Luka didn’t turn his head at that, either, even though it made her jump. He finished his lunges with the kind of rock-steadiness you just did not see, crouched down to set the dumbbells in a rack, turned his entire upper body to her as he rose—from histoes,which was balance—and said, “Hi. How ya goin’?”
