Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
JACKSON
Park City, Utah
I arrive at the Center an hour early, and find TJ exactly where I know he’ll be, in the free weight section of the gym getting his own workout in before the athletes arrive.
“You just going to stand there staring at me, or do you want to come make yourself useful?” he calls from his horizontal position on the bench. I don’t know how he can even see me behind him.
“You know what I’m going to say about this workout, don’t you?” I ask as I walk from the doorway toward the bench press.
“Save your lectures, Jackson Hole,” he says as he lifts the bar from the rack above his head.
“If one of our athletes bench-pressed this much weight without a spotter, you’d rip them a new asshole. One wrong move and you could crush your ribcage, or worse, your neck.”
“Yeah, well,” he grunts out as he holds the bar high above his chest, “I didn’t know you’d be happening along. Lucky me.”
“Lucky you indeed.” I throw his sarcasm back at him and slip my hands under the bar while he lifts it to its full height.
His face contorts into a grimace as he lowers it down toward his chest before pushing it back up. “What’s on your mind?” he grunts out before lowering the bar for his second rep.
“What makes you think I have something on my mind?” I ask, keeping my voice light and casual.
“You have your thinking face on,” he says once the bar is back up and he’s taken a deep breath. “Spit it out.”
“I can’t train Nate,” I tell TJ. “You know our history. There’s no way we can have a positive professional relationship. He needs someone who can support him unconditionally, who wants the best for him, and who will stop at nothing to help him win. I’m not the right person for that job.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but I barrel on.
“I think Nicolette could be perfect for this position, though. She has so much experience training injured athletes, and for all intents and purposes Nate has been an injured athlete for years. He needs someone like her. I could stay behind and work with the recovering athletes. I know them all pretty well, and I have the skill set to oversee their recovery. It’s a perfect swap. ”
When the weight bar reaches its full height again, TJ eases it back onto the rack and sits up with a huge groan. He only did four reps, so I know he’s not racking the weights because he’s done working out. The fact that he needs to sit up for what he’s about to say is not a good sign.
He turns and looks up at me. “Jackson, I have tremendous professional respect for you, so please believe me when I say this. You are the perfect person to train Nate. You are the best at what you do. You are the one who can get the most out of your athletes, pushing them to do more than they thought they could and keeping them healthy while they exceed their own limits. Not Nicolette or anyone else.” TJ points at me like he’s trying to drill this information into me as he repeats, “You. That’s why he was assigned to you. ”
In any other circumstance, hearing these words from my boss would be immensely gratifying.
“TJ, I can’t.” My voice is practically a whisper as I force it out past the lump in my throat. I break eye contact and glance out the window at the bright sunshine.
“You don’t have a choice,” TJ says, his gruff voice rolling out softly.
My head snaps back to him. “What do you mean?”
“Remember when I said there were some higher-ups making noise about your relationship with Marco? Well, this is their litmus test for you. If your loyalty is to the team, you’ll train Nate.”
“That’s not fair, TJ. Even if I weren’t dating Marco, Nate would be the one person I would never, ever want to work with. You know why I can’t train him. You have to understand.”
“I do, Jackson, and I fought for you. But this is out of my hands. Even Coach McCarthy wants you working with him. And you should take it as a compliment. You’re the best at what you do, and Nate needs that if he’s going to live up to all that potential.”
“This is a trap, and I’m the one who’s going to get hurt.”
“I’m sure you two can manage to keep things professional,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Your faith in us is unfounded.”
“It’s been years, Jackson. That must be water under the bridge by now, no?” he asks as he wipes his palms on his workout shorts.
I wish. “Yeah, sure. Water under the bridge.”
“Listen, you need to get in the right state of mind for today. You have a training session with him this afternoon. Go do some yoga or whatever you need to do to get your head right. Clear your schedule for this morning if you need to, but be back for our team meeting after lunch. And be ready to face Nate after that. Okay?”
I look down the aisle of free weights toward the mirrors, and am surprised to see that I look calm. I can fake my way through this. At least for today.
“All right. I’ll see you after lunch then.” I turn and walk past the balance boards and the wall of TRX suspension belts and battle ropes, toward the door.
“Jackson,” TJ calls, and I turn to face him. “Tread carefully. Don’t let your emotions make your decisions for you here.”
I know this warning is coming from a place of love, that he’s giving me this advice because he wants what’s best for me. Still, all I want to do in this moment is to make Nate and the pain of the past five years go away. I nod at TJ, then head out the door. I know exactly where I need to go.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!
” Nurse Patty says as I stop by the desk to check on Ms. Juarez before I show up in her room.
“And you picked a good morning to stop by. She’s been up since the crack o’ dawn and she’s already complaining about the lack of entertainment today.
No cards or bingo happening, so she’s agitated. ”
“Well I brought her some books of crossword puzzles and word searches, so maybe that will help. She’s not too agitated for a visit, is she?
” Agitated is the term we use for when Ms. Juarez becomes so mean you just can’t stand being around her.
At ninety-four, it doesn’t take much to get her worked up, and she stopped holding her tongue years ago, long before I met her.
“Nah, it’s a fairly good day so far, all things considered. And good on you, trying to keep that mind of hers sharp!” Patty says, her southern accent coming through nice and thick.
“Thanks, Patty,” I say, sliding three different packages of Swiss chocolate and Italian candies off the pile of books in my arm. I set them on the counter in front of her. “This is for the nursing staff, so make sure you share.”
“Ooh, you got us some fancy-ass candy from Europe. You have the best time over there in Italy with that hottie boyfriend of yours?” She reaches across the counter and squeezes my forearm affectionately.
“Sure did.” I wink, then head off to visit Ms. Juarez in her private room at the end of the hall.
She’s sitting in the reclining chair—the kind you always find in hospitals, with very little padding and a wipeable vinyl fabric—looking out the window.
She’s got pillows propped on both sides of her to hold her steady.
Her hair is a bright white against her dark skin, the long, wavy locks are wrapped in a bun on top of her head, and she sits with her hands folded in her lap.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” she says, after glancing sideways at me in the doorway. “It’s been so long I thought maybe I outlived you.”
At ninety-four, she’s outlived everyone she once knew.
When I met her a few years ago doing clinical rotations in a rehabilitation facility during my doctoral program, she’d just had a hip replacement.
She wasn’t able to live independently anymore, so she moved to a nursing home and has been here since.
“Now Ms. Juarez,” I say as I come and sit on the end of her hospital bed because it’s the nearest seat to her. “You knew I was going to Italy for a month.”
“Did I?” She looks back out the window with her chin jutted in the air, sounding disinterested rather than confused.
“I sent you three postcards just so you wouldn’t forget,” I say, scanning the room because I’m sure she has them somewhere. Sure enough, they’re taped along the bottom edge of the mirror that hangs over the dresser.
“Hmph. My dementia isn’t that bad.”
“I’ll start worrying about your dementia when you forget to tell me about it,” I say.
She’s got a mind as sharp as someone half her age, though according to her own self-diagnosis her memory is failing.
Granted, she was a legal scholar back in the day, a trailblazing career woman who was the first Latina judge in her county and retired after nearly two decades on an appellate court in Texas.
So I’m sure her ninety-four-year-old memory is not as exceptional as it once was.
“So, was Italy with Prince Charming everything you hoped it would be?” she asks, her tone flat with an undercurrent of bitterness.
She’s still looking out the window rather than at me, and her frail hand now clutches the blanket that’s draped around her shoulders with such force that her hand is shaking.
I never claimed Marco was Prince Charming or set any expectations about this trip, so I know that this isn’t about me.
Her propensity to lash out when she’s hurt or scared makes her so human that I can almost feel her pain.
It’s her one vulnerability, and I think it’s this commonality that’s kept me coming back and visiting her weekly for years now.
“Have you ever been to Italy?” I ask, rather than answer her question.
“I was supposed to go once, more than sixty years ago, but it didn’t work out.”
“You never wanted to visit since then?”
“I never wanted to be reminded of Jack.” She says his name the way you’d talk about a restaurant that gave you food poisoning.
“I don’t think you’ve mentioned Jack before,” I say, wondering why she doesn’t want to be reminded of him, and why going to Italy would make her think of him.