19. Greer
Greer
The team's chief medical officer keeps her office on the fourth floor of the practice facility, two corridors east of mine, in a room whose door does not have her name on it.
The door says Medical Director . Behind it, this season and for the eleven seasons before it, is Dr. Priya Mehta.
I am at the door at one o'clock on a Wednesday in the first week of February.
I am nineteen weeks pregnant. The kick yesterday was the first kick hard enough to be felt from the outside, and Kieran was at the kitchen island at six AM with his hand on the front of me, looking like a coach who had just been read into a play he did not know was in the book.
The kick was the second-best moment of yesterday.
The first was the look on his face when he felt it.
I knock.
"Come in."
I open the door. I go in.
Priya is at her desk in a navy blouse and the small gold reading glasses she has been wearing since I started in October, her hair in a low knot. She is in her early fifties. She has run team medical for the franchise for eleven seasons.
She closes the laptop on her desk. She nods at the chair across from her.
"Greer. Sit."
I sit.
"You scheduled this appointment two weeks ago. You told my assistant the reason was personnel-medical disclosure under league protocol."
"I did."
"I am a doctor, Greer. I have been working two corridors from your office since October. You do not need to spell the rest of it out for me."
"No."
"You are not the first staff member who has come to me with this conversation in eleven seasons. You will not be the last. I am going to tell you the parts I have to tell you, and you are going to tell me the parts you want on the form, and we are going to keep this short."
"Okay."
She opens the laptop. She turns it so I can see the screen. The screen is the league's standard disclosure form — a fillable PDF with the league logo and twelve fields.
"Whatever you tell me in this office stays in this file.
Whatever you do not tell me, I will not ask.
The league requires team medical to be told the fact of the pregnancy and the projected delivery month.
The league does not require any more than that.
Anything else you put on this form is information you are choosing to give the organization. The choice is yours."
"Okay."
"How far along?"
"Nineteen weeks."
"Due date."
"July twentieth."
She types it into the form. She types in nineteen weeks . She types in my employee ID and the date.
She looks up.
"Field nine is the partner of record. It is optional. If you put a name in that field, that name becomes part of the league record and lives in this file as long as the file exists. If you put nothing there, the field auto-fills with the text confidential per state law ."
"Then I am putting nothing there."
She nods.
She tabs past the field.
"Field eleven is the work-modification request. Under league safety protocol, physical-therapy staff are not allowed in the active locker room during practice or game-day past twenty-four weeks.
That part is hard. The treatment-room side, you can keep working as long as your OB clears.
I am going to file transition to treatment-room only effective March 15 unless you want something different. "
"March fifteenth is fine."
"Field twelve is your signature."
She prints the form. She slides it across the desk with a pen. I read the form. I sign. She signs. She countersigns, the way she signs every protocol form for every staff member in the building, with her name and her medical-license number and the date.
She puts the form in a folder. The folder goes into a drawer she locks with a small brass key. She puts the key in the pocket of her blazer.
She looks at me across the desk.
She says: "Greer."
"Yes."
"I will protect you within the limits of my role. I will tell operations what they need to know. They will be told you are transitioning to clinic-only duty effective March 15 for personal medical reasons. They will be told nothing else."
"Thank you."
"What I cannot protect you from is the rest of the building. Not the locker room. Not the press box. Not the people in this league who watch women like us for a living."
"I know."
"I am telling you, in this room, that I have seen this end well, and I have seen it end badly. The ones that end well end well because the woman in your chair had people outside this building she trusted before she sat down in it."
"I have them."
"Good."
She does not, in the next several seconds, say anything more.
Then she stands. She walks me to the door of her office.
At the door, she says: "I will see you at your fourteen-day check-in."
"Okay."
"Have a good day, Greer."
"Thank you, Dr."
I go.
* * *
I drive to my apartment in the South End after work. I pack a small bag — the long charcoal cardigan, two pairs of soft maternity pants, the wool socks, the paperback novel Kieran gave me at Christmas. I put the small zip pouch of prenatal vitamins in the bag.
I text Lena.
coming tonight. is the spare room free?
She writes back inside a minute.
yes. drive safe. soup is on.
I write back: I love you.
She writes back: I love you.
I text Kieran.
driving to Lena's tonight. Priya was kind. I'll be back Monday. I love you.
He writes back in ten seconds.
Be safe. Call me when you get there. I love you.
I pick up the bag. I lock the apartment.
I have driven to Providence on a Wednesday night in February a hundred times in three years — south on the Pike to 95, south on 95 to Lena's exit, the heat on low, the radio quiet. The traffic is light. The trucks are the trucks of a weeknight on 95, in their lane, going north.
I pull up to Lena's house in the small dark hours of the evening, a little before nine. Lena opens the front door before I am out of the car. Her two daughters are in the doorway behind her in their school sweatshirts and slippers. The older one is holding a bowl.
I get out of the Subaru. I walk up the path.
Lena hugs me at the door without saying anything.
The older daughter holds out the soup.
"Tía Greer."
"Hi, mija."
"Mama made it for you."
"How nice."
"Eat the soup."
"I will."
I take the soup.
I go inside.
In Lena's front hallway, I stop. I put my hand on my stomach.
The kick comes.
It comes hard.
Lena puts her hand against the front of me. The kick comes a second time.
Her face does a small thing.
She says: "Welcome to my house, baby."
I close my eyes.
I lean against my mentor's shoulder in her front hallway with the soup in one hand and her hand on my stomach and her older daughter watching from the doorway of the living room.
Kieran has been carrying this with me since November, on top of everything else he is carrying.
Lena has been on the phone with me about it since the morning after.
Indie has been carrying her half of it since the All-Star Break.
Priya, as of one o'clock this afternoon, is carrying the league's half.
Tonight, in Lena's front hallway, I have the feeling, for the first time since the morning I figured this out, of being held by someone who does not also need me to hold them back.
It is not a feeling I am, this year, going to take for granted.