Chapter 22
PENNY’S EYES FLEW OPEN AND SHE HAD TO BITE HER LIP TO keep from screaming.
Alex, in his sleep, had kicked out his foot and hit her ankle, sending an explosion of pain through her entire leg.
She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth, trying to fight back the pain, inhaling and exhaling quickly through her nose.
On the other side of the bed, she heard the buzz of his phone, an alarm they’d set the night before, sending it vibrating across his nightstand.
“Pen, you awake?” he rumbled from the other side of the bed.
“Yeah,” she managed to squeak out. “You grab the shower first. I’m going to get a few more minutes.”
As soon as the bathroom door closed behind him, she slid her legs from under the covers and sat up.
She stared at her ankle in the dim light that was fighting its way into the room through the closed blinds.
It was swollen, like it had been recently, but not too bad.
Still, it ached. Gingerly, she put her feet on the floor, and again, the pain, agonizing and overwhelming, shot through her leg, spreading quickly through her whole body.
“Fuck,” she muttered. She didn’t know how long she sat there trying to will the pain away, but Alex eventually came out of the shower and dressed. “Meet you downstairs in a bit,” she called out to him.
“Yeah, you want a banana for the car?”
“Yes, thanks.”
He was gone and she had to get up and get moving. She had a match today.
Less than a week. That was how long the relief from the cortisone shot lasted, through second- and third-round matches that she probably would have won even if she only had one foot to play on.
Now the pain was back, even worse than it had been on that court in Paris when the trainer had wrapped the swollen joint and eyed her warily.
All she could do now was grit her teeth and bear it as she got ready for the morning.
The pain didn’t lessen as the morning wore on.
She walked down Alex’s stairs on her own so he wouldn’t see her limping but did catch the concern flashing over Ahmed’s face when she gritted her teeth in pain walking to the car.
The damn thing hurt like a bitch, but it was the Wimbledon Round of 16, and she was about to be announced to the No.
1 Court crowd. Withdrawing simply wasn’t an option.
“Game plan,” Dom said from the corner of the trainers’ room. He was clearly done arguing with her about her ankle, but she almost wished he’d bring it up. If he asked her right now whether she wanted to play, she wasn’t sure what her answer would be.
As that thought settled in her head, she felt her stomach twist.
She’d never withdrawn from a match before.
She didn’t think she had it in her to just give up without even trying, but this pain, this was something she’d never felt, and it was really, really scary.
She must have torn it worse, playing on it the way she had, and sooner than the doctors had suggested.
The pain had subsided long enough to trick her into thinking she was okay.
But it was back, just as things were heating up in the most important tournament of her life.
Now she didn’t know if she’d done the right thing.
In fact, she was pretty sure she’d been wrong all along.
Dom and the trainers and Alex and everyone else had been right.
Her ankle throbbed again; apparently, it wanted to be included in there as well.
It had tried to tell her. It had swelled and twinged, but she’d kept on playing anyway. What had Alex called her?
A stubborn mule.
That was her, a total ass.
“Keep her moving, vary up my shot selection, especially on her second serve.”
“Good,” he said. “You don’t have anything new to tell me about, things you’ve been working on with Alex without informing me?”
Penny snorted. The miraculous appearance of Jasmine’s one-handed backhand was still rankling their coach days after she’d debuted it at Crystal Palace.
“No surprises, I promise.”
“Good. I’ll see you out there.”
Her coach left, but just as he made it through the door, another familiar face peeked in. “Hello, mind if I join you for a bit?” Anna Russell said, slipping into the room after nodding a goodbye to Dom.
“Sure.”
“I just sent Alex off to his match, so I thought I’d come in and say good luck to you before yours.”
Penny stood up to give Alex’s mom a hug, but as she did, the pain shot up her leg and her entire body buckled. She blinked and a lump formed in her throat. It choked her for a moment and her eyes watered.
“Oh, sweetheart, what’s the matter?” Anna asked, rushing forward and taking Penny’s hands in hers, squeezing lightly. “Are you okay?”
Inhaling a shaky breath, she let the tears fall. “No, I don’t think I am.”
“What do you need? What can I do?”
“Nothing. You can’t do anything.” Something inside of her broke. “I have to withdraw.”
The trip to the hospital was a quiet one.
Instead of an ambulance, Penny insisted that their driver Ahmed bring her, and so she sat in the back of his car while her phone blew up, blinging over and over again in her hand until she just couldn’t stand it anymore and she turned the damn thing off.
Across the car, Anna Russell sat, her face carefully blank.
“Thank you for coming with me,” Penny whispered, even though she was facing the window, staring unseeingly out onto the London streets.
“Of course. Alex would want me here with you when he couldn’t be.”
Penny glanced back at her and tried to smile, but it was impossible.
She was hustled into the hospital to avoid any cameras spotting her, but she knew the paparazzi were all still back at Wimbledon, watching the actual matches.
There was a wait for scans and Dom showed up, slamming his way through the doors and rushing over to them, breathing heavily as if he’d run all the way from Wimbledon.
“Dom,” Penny said, but that damn lump reappeared, stopping her words.
He had other places to be. Alex was playing right now on Centre Court; Indy and Jasmine were about to go head-to-head in Crystal Palace.
He didn’t need to sit here with her, waiting for a doctor to take a picture of her ankle and tell her what she already knew.
She was hurt, maybe worse than she’d ever been in her life, and it was all her own fault.
“No arguing, okay?” Dom took a seat on her other side, sending a nod to Anna, and out of the corner of her eye, Penny caught him mouthing “Thank you.” Her coach took her hand in his and squeezed. “You’re gonna be okay, Pen. I promise. Whatever it is. You’re going to be okay.”
“Miss Harrison,” a nurse called out after what felt like an eternity. A middle-aged, slight woman with light blond hair approached and moved behind the wheelchair Penny had been positioned in when she arrived. “Let’s go take a look at that ankle, young lady.”
The MRI machine was an older model, quite loud, and anyone who suffered from claustrophobia would have lost their mind as the machine groaned its way to a scan.
When Penny’d had her scans done in France, the hospital had used a new 3D-imaging scanner that had created an amazing computer image of her ankle, but the MRI was good enough to show the doctor everything he needed to know.
“You tore your posterior talofibular ligament,” he declared after looking at the image on the computer screen.
“That’s the same one I hurt in France,” she muttered.
“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “You played on that ankle too soon, Penelope.”
“I know.”
“See that it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “Four to six weeks. Minimum.”
That lump was back and her mind was whirring. Four to six weeks. The beginning of August. Most of the summer would be completely lost, and that would leave her with only a few weeks, maybe less, to prep for the US Open.
“Penny, are you listening to what the doctor is saying?” Dom asked, knowing that she wasn’t.
“Yes, sorry. Four to six weeks. Stay off it. Rest. No playing on it too soon.”
“Next time, you might not be so lucky,” the doctor said, gathering up the files and handing them over to her. “I’ll be available to consult with your medical team back in the States if you need.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Dom said, reaching over the desk to shake his hand.
“Yes, thank you,” Penny said, standing on her brand-new air cast and adjusting the crutches under her arms, not quite believing that she’d just thanked someone for telling her she couldn’t play for more than a month.
“Do you want to go home?” Dom asked. “I can get you a car.”
“No, I want to go back. Alex is still playing, right?”
He wasn’t just still playing. He was locked in a five-set marathon with his third-round opponent, an American veteran named Frank Masters, a player they all knew well.
Masters was on the downside of a decade-long career on tour, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have a lot of good tennis left in him.
“Game, Mr. Russell,” the chair umpire said just as Penny slid into her seat in the player’s box on Centre Court beside Anna Russell.
She could feel the cameras turning and zooming in as both Alex and Frank headed for their chairs and the TV stations went to commercial break.
The crowd murmured around her, and Alex’s gaze was drawn to them.
Someone must have told him what happened.
Penny just slid the necklace she always wore out of her shirt and held it in her hand, lifting it for him to see.
His mouth was tight and he didn’t smile but simply nodded, and then she saw his eyes glaze over as he slipped back into competition mode, focusing on what he had to do to finish out the match.
“He’ll be fine,” Anna said from beside her. “He knows how to turn off the world out there, almost as well as you do.”
“Yeah, I know,” Penny said, leaning back in her seat.
“He told me he’d given you that,” she said, nodding toward Penny’s clenched fist.
“It’s the best present I’ve ever gotten.”