Page 4 of We Were Never Lovers
“Who the fuck is Lola?” Sean asked, his voice still rough.
Jack jerked, eyes widening; it would’ve been funny except he looked scared. “What? She’s our—”
“Sean Hiller,” the man doctor said again with a smile in his voice. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you awake. Really stretching the old payroll, eh? This isn’t quite a torn ligament.” He laughed heartily.
Jack was standing, frantic; Sean could feel his energy, and it was making every hair on his body stand up.
“He can’t remember,” Jack said and faltered.
“Can’t remember?” The doctor, Harris, this was Harris, directed at Jack, smiling warmly.
“His head, he’s had a head injury, could his memory…?” Jack asked like he hoped he was wrong.
Harris frowned. “Sean,” he turned back to him, “do you think something’s off with your memory?”
“How in the fuck should I know?” Sean asked, which was a legitimate question—how would he know? It was sure as shit strange that Jack was there, acting like they were friends, but that was probably guilt for their fight.
Harris chuckled. “Fair. Tell me who the Premier is,” he said and took a seat, clicking his pen open and glancing at Sean’s notes like he wasn’t concerned at all.
“How in the fuck should I know?” he replied again, aware he was being abnormally rude and this doctor probably thought he was another angry blackfella, but he couldn’t stop the irritation from infusing his words with Jack so close. “No one gives a shit about State politics, they ain’t got no real power,” he finished.
Jack snorted. Sean whipped his head to the side to look at him, which was a mistake since it made a sharp pain shoot up his neck and ricochet through his skull. “Don’t need no uni degree to know that.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “I don’t think you do. It’s just, you know, funny,” he finished weakly.
Sean narrowed his eyes.
“Alright, well, some people care about the state of the roads,” Harris replied around his laughter. “But maybe an easier question. What’s the last thing you remember? Before the accident?”
Sean stared at him. He didn’t think Harris was asking for explicit details here, but the memory made Sean feel hot anyway. The fight with Jack. Sean had thought he was alone in the change room after their loss. It’d been the worst kind of loss. Two points in it and Jack’s kick should’ve meant six points and a five-point lead and instead he’d missed the middle for a shot on goal and it’d dribbled through the outside posts for a behind, his point inching them to a one-point loss. Sean had been seething. But he’d been seething at Jack all year. Jack had gotten his trade back home to Perth from Melbourne, forcing his presence into Sean’s life as someone he had to see every day rather than twice a year, still so insufferablyhim. Certainly not the Jack Sean met in high school, not the guy who’d almost ended Sean’s career before it’d begun and never even deigned to take responsibilityfor it. By the time Sean had dragged himself out of the change room and into the showers and seen who was under the lone spray at the end of the row, he’d been furious all over again. All of it, a year of it, rushed back in. He’d stood under his own showerhead, doing his best to ignore Jack and those feelings, had tensed when he heard Jack’s shower turn off. His feet had slapped on the tiles as he approached, and then, unbelievably, stopped behind him. Sean breathed deeply, if Jack wanted to fucking go, they’d fucking go—
“We’d just lost the preliminary final by one point,” he said now.
Harris frowned. Jack sucked in a sharp breath.
“You boys weren’t in the prelim this year,” Harris said.
“Against Adelaide,” Jack choked out. “He means against Adelaide.”
Harris frowned. “Sean, what year do you think it is?”
Now Sean frowned. “2020. We just lost the prelim, then I musta had an accident on the way home?”
Jack’s chair scraped loudly on the floor. He crossed the room in a few long strides and left.
Sean watched him go around the side of the nurse’s station, his eyes down and those two stupid takeaway coffees in his hands. He collided with a nurse, righting the coffees just in time, apologised, spun, then disappeared down the corridor.
“Hmm,” Harris said. He didn’t sound too concerned. Sean returned his eyes to him. Harris smiled warmly again. “So, do you know who I am?”
“Ya said you’re Harris?” Sean asked.
“I am, Doctor Harris, Chief of Sports Medicine at Fremantle footy club, I took over from Doctor Antionette Lees at the end of 2020, treated you through a ligament tear in 2021, your best mate Jack there through a knee reconstruction in 2022 andsince you boys are so close, you helped him with rehab and aftercare. We saw a lot of each other at Jack’s appointments.”
Sean was speechless. It felt like he was hearing a story from another time, another life, which he guessed he was, but how?
“How?” he asked.
“Well, I’m not sure yet, but we’re gonna run some tests and I’m going to ask you a few more questions…”
