Chapter 2 #2
“Elliott wants an update,” she said. “He’s been calling. Texting. Basically everything but carrier pigeon.”
I tensed. Shook my head, fast. “Tell him… I don’t want…”
Her phone rang.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She grabbed her cell.
“Hey, Elliott, yeah. Saw him. No, we don’t know anything yet.
I’ll give you a full report once we know more.
” She paused, listening intently to whatever Elliott was saying.
“Hang tight.” More pauses. “He’s busy, but I’ll let you know what we hear. ”
She always knew how to address a situation and not let it bleed too much, at least not in public. It made her a damn good communicator, and an even better liar when the moment demanded it. That was one of my favorite things about her.
She tucked her phone away and sat beside me as though the air didn’t hum with tension and years of almosts and nevers between us. Her hand brushed mine, whether by accident or intention I didn’t know, and I didn’t move. Neither did she.
I opened my mouth to say something. No idea what. But footsteps echoed from the hallway and stopped at my curtain.
And then, because there was still more humiliation to come, another doctor guy showed. He couldn’t be older than fifteen and had the enthusiasm of someone who still believed in “making a difference.”
His energy practically bounced ahead of him and tried to static-cling stick to me. He glanced at the two of us, visibly startled.
“Hey there,” he said, the cheer in his voice falling flat. “I’m Dr. Wyatt. You must be—” he checked the tablet in his grip— “Daniel?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
Then his eyes went very wide.
“Okay,” he said quickly. “Definitely the wrong patient. I’m so sorry.”
“Actually.” Emily tilted her head a little to the right. “You’re a doctor?”
“Uh-huh,” he sort of said, sort of grunted.
“I need a consult,” she said, standing. “We have questions and I think you probably have answers.”
“You’re—” the Dr. Guy’s voice cracked. “You’re Finn Taylor. From the Stallions.”
I always thought being recognized would be kind of flattering. Turns out it’s profoundly weird when your balls are the main character.
I winced. “You want a selfie or an autograph?”
He blanched. “Oh—no! I mean—this is—I mean, I should—um—actually. What kind of consult do you need?”
“Do you have access to Finn’s latest imaging on that thing?” Emily kept her eyes locked on him.
The poor guy gulped. “I do.”
Emily clocked his hesitation.
“And he’s a fan,” Emily said to me, pointedly.
The guy nodded.
“And a doctor,” she concluded.
Another nod from the doctor, more nervous this time. His Adam’s apple bobbed as though trying to swim to safety.
Good luck there, bud. Once Emily got ahold of a bone, she didn’t let go.
“What’s your specialty?” she asked, clipped.
“I’m on a rotation right now, but I want to go into sports medicine,” he said.
“Good. Then we trust you,” she said. “Congratulations, you’re hired to be on Team Finn. We need you to look at his files and tell us why no one will talk to him.”
I adjusted slightly on the bed, wincing as my very-injured reproductive region reminded me how involved it was even in the mildest of movements. “Nobody wants to say anything. It’s freaking me out.”
“I could call in specialists and all that, but you’re here and you can tell us what is happening.” Emily smiled a villain’s smile that made even me willing to give radiology reading a solid shot.
Dr. Fresh-Outta-Med-School blinked. Once, twice. Then he checked the tablet again, as if maybe the answers had been magically rearranged into a cute infographic he could just point to.
“Well,” he said, voice sort of strangled. “Let me look.”
He pulled up a rolling stool thing and flipped through several tabs.
“It’s not straightforward,” he said. “That’s why they won’t say anything yet. There aren’t any answers to give. They ordered more tests, so that will give us what we need.”
Emily shifted next to me with that still-and-poised energy that said she was listening, assessing, filing away facts in whatever internal binder she had for life-threatening penis crises.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s start with what exactly you think could be going on.”
The guy visibly rallied.
“Right. So. From what we can see, there’s no immediate evidence of testicular rupture or torsion. Good news.” He tapped the edge of the tablet with his thumb.
“Oh, thank God,” I muttered. “Can you put that on a balloon and send it to my mother?”
“But we haven’t ruled anything out yet,” he added, perhaps a little too quickly.
Emily narrowed her eyes.
He gulped. “It’s um… based on how the injury happened with a direct helmet-to-groin impact, we’re… looking into whether certain anatomical factors made it worse.”
“Certain anatomical factors?” Emily asked.
He cleared his throat. Looked down at his tablet again. “The gear may not have… fit properly.”
I squinted. “It didn’t fit?”
“Protective cups are designed to fit an average,” he said, slipping back into professional mode. “But in your case, well, it’s possible the coverage wasn’t enough.”
Emily went very still in the way she did when she was already three steps ahead of a conversation.
The doctor flushed bright pink. “To put it plainly, gear misfit can cause more harm than protection if there’s too much, uh, compression. Especially if the…if the anatomy is larger than average.”
Emily turned to me.
I decided to become an expert on the ceiling in this room and map every inch.
“Please tell me you did not say I got injured because I’m too blessed,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t say ‘blessed,’” the doctor replied quickly. “But yes. That’s the gist.”
There it was. Official medical confirmation that my junk was publicly working against me.
“This is a nightmare,” I muttered.
“Wait,” Emily said softly, eyes darting between me and Dr. Puberty. “What kind of injury are we talking about here?”
He exhaled, clearly relieved to switch back to medical speak.
“There are a few possibilities. First,” he said, swiping the screen, “testicular contusion. That’s basically a bad bruise. Most common in these cases.”
“Great.” I gave him a thumbs-up I definitely didn’t mean. “Bruised berries. Love that for me.”
“Symptoms include swelling, discoloration, and pain.” His voice had that this-is-totally-routine tone down. “Treatment is usually rest, ice, anti-inflammatories.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Define ‘rest.’”
“No workouts, no intense activity, nothing that would cause an erection,” he clarified.
Emily gave me a look that was part sympathy, part holy shit.
“But,” he continued, tapping to the next screen, “it could also be testicular torsion.”
I sat straighter. Immediately regretted it. “Torsion?”
“Where the testicles kind of twist inside the skin.”
Emily made a noise in her throat that I could totally relate to.
He nodded. “That makes the cord twist, too, cutting off blood flow. It’s a surgical emergency.”
“Oh my God,” I choked. I wasn’t even cold, but I yanked the blanket higher hoping it might offer some kind of protection.
I understood why the other doc didn’t want to say shit about this.
“We’d probably already know if that were the case,” the doctor quickly added. “That one usually comes with severe pain, nausea, vomiting, and happens suddenly.”
“None of those happened, right?” Emily asked, turning to me. “No vomiting?”
“No.” I hissed. “I mean, not yet. But I’m about to.”
The doctor shook his head. “It’s unlikely, but we won’t know for sure until we get better pictures.”
He flipped to the next image.
“Now, there is the rare possibility of testicular rupture.”
This kept getting worse. How could it keep getting worse?
Emily stiffened. “Rupture?”
The word alone made my entire body clench. “Please tell me that’s slang.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But you’re not showing the usual signs. No major bruising, and you walked off the field. So not the top theory.”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“We just want to be thorough,” he offered, clearly sensing I was a flight risk. “And you asked.”
“Okay, listen,” I said, raising a hand. “Is there any chance this isn’t even a testicle thing? Maybe it’s something else entirely. Something less mortifying?”
“Actually,” he said brightly, “yes.”
Hope bloomed.
“We’re also considering a torn adductor or pelvic strain.”
Hope was immediately strangled.
Emily, however, perked up. “That sounds less terrible.”
“If you’re not an athlete,” I said.
She placed a hand on my arm, obviously unsure what to say for once.
“Lower on the trauma scale but still painful,” the doc confirmed. “When the cup presses in on a hit, and if the anatomy underneath is, uh, generous… it can push tissue toward the pelvis. That can strain nearby muscles or even pinch nerves.”
“So, basically…” Deep breath. “It’s likely that my bits got slammed so hard, and my dick is so big, that everything knocked into the rest of my body and broke shit?”
He nodded solemnly. “Most likely.”
“And what does that mean for the season?” Emily asked, the question careful.
The doctor exhaled. “That depends on what the full imaging shows. Best case, it’s soft tissue—six to eight weeks of strict rest and physical therapy. Worst case…” He paused. “We may be looking at surgical repair of the pelvic floor musculature.”
Surgical.
The kind of word that ended seasons. Even careers.
“So, the season,” I said.
“Is almost certainly over for you,” Dr. Puberty agreed. “We’ll know more once we have the full imaging.”
“Awesome,” I said flatly. “Just how I wanted to end the season.”
Emily murmured something under her breath that sounded like, “This is medically impossible.”
But it wasn’t. This was happening.
There would be scans. There would be headlines. And, at some point, some poor radiologist would have to annotate an MRI of my junk and send it to the team doctor.
I dropped back against the bed with that reality.
Too big to play.
There were worse problems, right?
But right then, with every nerve ending screaming in protest and no clue whether I was going to spend the next eight weeks in recovery or getting surgically un-knotted? This was a trap I got stuck squarely in.
I opened my mouth. Tried for a joke. But nothing came.