Page 100 of Hard Hitter
“I’ll bet. I have some news—the police are done at your place, and the fix-it people are on their way over there.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. So keep yourself busy here for a few hours and then you can go home.”
She couldn’t wait.
THIRTY
After the morning skate, O’Doul’s phone glowed red with an urgent meeting someone needed him to take.
With two doctors.
Fuck.
But, hey, at least doctors weren’t the ones you’d see if they were about to throw you off the team. So when both Dr. Herberts and the team shrink, Dr. Mulvey, ushered him into a treatment room, he made his face as impassive as possible and followed.
If he’d failed his drug test, he’d be in Hugh Major’s office right now, right?
Dr. Mulvey shut the door and hopped up on the treatment table, leaving the chair to O’Doul, who sat down and steeled himself for whatever discussion was forthcoming.
Doctor Herberts spoke first. “Your drug test yesterday revealed no banned substances, no narcotics and no recreational drugs.”
O’Doul would have sagged with relief if they weren’t watching him so closely. He didn’t know what the right response was, either. He didn’t want to be cocky, sogotcha, suckerswasn’t going to work. “All right,” he said instead.
The two doctors exchanged glances. “So let’s have ahypothetical conversation,” Dr. Mulvey suggested. “Because Herberts and I get paid by the hour and we like talking.”
O’Doul managed not to roll his eyes. “Okay. What hypotheticals do you feel like discussing?”
“Well, you’re the captain of the team,” Mulvey said. “So you should know a few things in case one of your guys ever needs the information.”
“All right. Shoot.”
Herberts took a shift. “If a player had a wrist injury earlier in the season, and was given some painkillers, he might become addicted to them through no fault of his own,” he said.
Ah. Maybe the guy was just covering his own ass, then.
“Sometimes a player who has a wrist injury doesn’t even fill his prescription after the hospital procedure because Vicodin made him throw up the one other time he took it,” O’Doul said. He’d never forget the time a minor league physician gave him some Vics after a knee injury. The pills made him so nauseated he didn’t eat for two days.
“All right,” Herberts said thoughtfully. “From time to time a player might have use for other kinds of pills. Uppers, maybe. In that case, the team’s doctors would still offer that player a treatment program to free himself of the addiction. And if the player doesn’t feel comfortable telling his troubles to someone who works for the team, that player ought to know that there are other doctors in the city, and other ways of getting help.”
O’Doul’s throat became inexplicably dry. Shit. The fact that they were willing to play this silly game, pretending they weren’t discussing him had to mean they really wanted to help. He hadn’t expected this. Not at all.
He cleared his throat and decided it wouldn’t hurt to keep the farce going. “That is encouraging. And I’ll make sure my team knows it. But sometimes a player tries something, and even though the effects are awfully attractive, it’s hard to get. And maybe after he burns through his ill-gotten supply, he quits because asking around for it is embarrassing.”
“Okay,” Herberts said slowly. “If that has been any player’s experience, I’d like to point out how lucky he is.” The man’s eyes held his, and they were dead serious. “Your player should know that methamphetamine is highly addictive. And those who take it soon find they need more of the substance just to feel that same rush. Quickly they’re needing two, three times as much to get by. And by now, the comedown is a bitch. Then a host of long-term problems start to kick in—heart trouble, high blood pressure, weight loss, increased risk of stroke, memory loss and severe tooth decay...”
O’Doul probably did a very bad job of hiding his discomfort then. “I get it,” he said suddenly. “It’s a bad idea.”
“A disastrous idea,” the doctor said quietly. “Everyone who gets hooked on that drug ends up wishing he’d never seen it before. Still, if that happens to anyone you know, there are people who would help a guy get off it.”
He cleared his throat a second time. “That’s good to know.”
“Let’s just take it in a different direction for a second,” Mulvey said. “Somebody who took that drug before games might do so because he felt he had no other choice. Would you say that’s a possibility?”
Oh, boy. Here comes the head-shrinking bullshit. “Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Maybe,” Mulvey said slowly. “Or maybe he was in a rut and looking for a way out.”
