Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Calming herself with the armor of her physician’s mantle, she stood up.
Her movement was deliberate and slow. Holding herself under control, keeping the tremors pounding through her from taking over, holding back the heart-stuttering nerves from reaching her facade, she forced herself to face Violet.
“Excuse me.” She turned and passed by the others in her row, making her way to the aisle.
“Sorry, honey. Hope your man is okay,” Violet called after her. Looking back for an instant, Charline nodded at the real sympathy in the woman’s eyes.
She’d never felt more like a fraud. Not just because she’d been playing this parody of a real engaged couple with Trent, but because she was responsible for his injury.
She may as well be stabbing him with a knife.
She’d given him the booster serum and it was all her fault he was out there taking this crazy risk, putting his life on the line in the name of football. F—cking football.
She had no right to feel her heart squeezing with concern, no right to the sympathy. Not when she was the one who’d enabled him, put him in this position. All in the name of her research project.
It had seemed important enough at the time, but now as she rushed down the stairs to the door that would lead to the tunnel and to the field, she knew nothing was important enough to endanger Trent’s life.
Dear God, please don’t let him develop blood clots from the trauma.
Walking past the security guard and down the stairs, she didn’t hurry until she reached the tunnel.
Coach Parker, Ralph Nunley, and two other men she’d seen around, one she knew was a team physician, hurried alongside Trent ahead of her in the tunnel.
They were headed to the training room. Running now, now she got to the training room door where the group of men had all gone inside.
Stopping where she stood, she suddenly felt unsure of barging into the room with all those team professionals, wondered whether they would allow it.
She had no choice. She couldn’t let them interfere with the treatment and, most of all, she couldn’t let them discover that he was being treated with a form of HGH.
Couldn’t let them examine too closely, do too many tests.
Trent would run interference for her. He would convince them she had to be there.
She knocked as loudly as she could, banging with her fist. Nunley pulled it open and relief didn’t slow her heart as it hammered, urging her on.
Rushing inside the door, she zeroed in on Trent, seated on the table with a doctor examining his shoulder, moving it through some motions designed to test for pain and extent of injury.
The doctor stopped when Trent grimaced and he started probing with his fingers.
“Take a break doc, Charline’s here. I need to talk to her,” he said.
She noticed the sweat popping out on his face and knew the doctor would see it too.
It was going to be tricky to convince them he didn’t need their treatment.
She didn’t even want them taking his blood pressure, afraid if it was too high they’d probe further.
Afraid they might find clotting. Most afraid that there might be evidence of mini-strokes, that mini-strokes could even be responsible for the lapse that led to his injury. He was under too much physical stress.
Her heart skipped a beat, feeling like she’d jumped off a cliff into frozen water, until he met her eyes. With her focus on Trent, she went forward.
“Charlie,” he said. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”
“How about if you wait outside for now, Miss—”
“It’s Dr. Morneau,” Trent said, “and she’s staying. She’s my personal physician. You can work with her, Dr. Briscoe.”
She moved to the table and when she got there, as Trent pulled her in with one arm, she shouldn’t have been startled, reminding herself they were theoretically engaged.
It was funny that Trent never seemed to forget this role, seemed to embrace the role—and her—every chance he got, public or private.
Switching gears, she embraced him, careful to avoid jostling his right shoulder and arm, and gave free rein to her heart-wrenching worry for him, for his well-being. He might think it was all an act for the benefit of their audience, but God help her, the fear, the feelings were all real.
His jersey had been torn away and his pads removed to expose his right shoulder. His right shoulder. The one he’d previously injured, the side of his throwing arm. Clenching her teeth at the internal screech of disappointment, pain, and sorrow for him, she touched his shoulder and began her exam.
She felt around Trent’s rotator cuff and the infraspinatus, supraspinatus and subscapularis muscles.
She knew the tendon of the infraspinatus was a weak spot of his from her exhaustive testing and strength measurements.
When she pressed on the spot where the muscle joined the bone, Trent, who had stoically borne her examination until then, flinched. Dr. Briscoe spoke up.
“He may have a torn rotator cuff. He needs an MRI. We were about to—”
“It’s a reinjury to his shoulder,” she said, cutting the doctor and his talk of an MRI off.
“It happened when he got dropped. I saw the way he fell. There are sprained ligaments according to my preliminary exam. An MRI won’t change the treatment for that.
” Charline spoke with absolute confidence and command, keeping her eyes on Dr. Briscoe.
She felt Trent’s eyes, and when he slipped his hand to touch hers, a well of warmth and pain washed through her.
She didn’t want him to be hurt, didn’t want him to have any setbacks, but she knew they could handle this one. They would handle it.
She would take care of him. Most of all, she could not let Dr. Briscoe start poking around, getting too close a look at his unusual muscle growth and strength, didn’t want him seeing the injection site or jumping to any wild conclusions.
It would look like he’d been taking steroids of some kind to Briscoe because he’d never guess at the truth.
“You specialize in sports injuries, Doctor?”
“No. That is, except when it comes to Trent. As he said, I’m his personal physician.”
“That’s all well and good,” Coach Parker said.
“Yes, it is,” Trent said. “I trust Charlie. She knows me inside and out. She knows what she’s doing.
This is a re-injury and nothing serious.
” Trent shifted his shoulder and she knew it cost him to do it, but he pretended it was nothing.
She put a hand on the spot she knew was inflamed and slightly swollen, not enough for anyone else to notice.
But Trent was right. She knew him like a daily prayer.
There wasn’t one small detail about his physical being that she didn’t have emblazoned in her memory, and sometimes even her dreams.
Another doctor came into the room then, or so she presumed since the older gentleman carried a black bag. She’d seen him on the sidelines before. He stepped forward and nodded at Trent, then introduced himself to Charline.
“I’m the team’s orthopedic surgeon. I wanted to have a look when I saw the injury on the field.”
“Everything’s under control, Doc,” Trent said. “No need for the knife today. Sorry to disappoint you.” Trent wore his big party smile as if he were hosting a social, playing the southern gentleman. Charlie thought all he needed was a straw hat and a tall frosted glass of Southern Comfort over ice.
For his part, the doctor laughed, but he gave her a sharp look and said, “You let the team physician and me decide that.”
The man’s words spun fear in her veins. She didn’t like the implication that Trent was a piece of meat owned by the team. She didn’t want those men deciding his fate. She wanted to be the one—
Then she brought herself up short. Was she no better than they? Did she think of him as a piece of meat that she wanted to control?
“Last time I looked, Doc, I was the only one in charge of making decision about my health, and that includes any and all surgeries.” Trent’s voice was steely and the tension in the room ratcheted up.
Ralph, who’d stood in the background, took a step closer to stand behind Trent.
She wanted to hug him for it. She put a proprietary hand on his bare shoulder in support.
“Of course you do, Trent,” Coach Parker said, “Doc only meant that he and Briscoe have the expertise—”
“No further expertise needed,” Trent said. “You heard Charlie. It’s a sprain. The cure is RICE. Rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Simple.”
“Can I ask what your area of specialty is, Dr. . . . Charlie?”
“I’m . . . a pediatric doctor.” It wasn’t a complete lie, but she didn’t want to admit to being a research doctor. She’d volunteered at the Shriners pediatric clinic often enough so that it was close enough.
“It’s Dr. Charline Morneau,” Trent said.
The spark of recognition in the orthopedic surgeon churned up her nerves. Was it possible that he’d read an article of hers? She hoped to hell that he hadn’t read her NEJM article summarizing HGH research. It was two years old now, but he seemed to be a sharp man and might remember.
“I think we can agree that Trent’s shoulder is sprained,” Coach Parker said, “but let’s do the MRI or maybe an x-ray or CT scan.”
Worry about Trent and about getting discovered jumped back to top priority.
“You could do an MRI if you want, but we all know it’s not any better a diagnostic tool for a strain than a physical exam is.” She proceeded to probe Trent’s shoulder again, this time for show, pressing her fingers along his muscles to the ligament, feeling for each nuance in his shoulder.