Chapter 10
THAD
The early morning sun beat down on my shoulders as I ran along the coast. Sand gave way under my feet, forcing my leg muscles to compensate for the shifting, wet mess my feet smashed with every step.
I hadn’t been nervous about a surgery in years. At least not a knee surgery. I’d done hundreds of them. Cash’s, despite his previous three surgeries over the last year, wasn’t any different from the ones I’d done in the past.
Only this one was different. Not the procedure. That was the same, even if the minutiae differed somewhat. No. Cash made this one different.
The kiss that shouldn’t have happened. The taste of him. The scruff of beard hair that caught on mine, even though, looking at him, he appeared clean-shaven. Then there was the press of his big, firm, strong body against mine.
Fuck!
I pushed myself harder, faster. Legs churned, but I couldn’t outrun the memory of that one moment. The only one we might ever get.
The kiss drove me nuts, and that was without taking into account the feel of his hand on my dick and the way he worked open my zipper. How his fingers tracing my cock made my heart race and blood hum. How a heaviness grew in my groin. Or how my cock and balls throbbed at his nearness.
My watched beeped and I slowed, my hands dropping to rest against my knees.
With a few deep breaths, I shoved away the memory and the anxiety and turned for the house.
I needed to get to the clinic. I wanted to greet Cash when he arrived, and if I knew anything about the kid, I knew this… he would be there early.
Walking through the lobby doors of the medical pavilion that housed my clinic, I smiled.
Cash stood, his back to me, waiting for his turn at the registration desk.
The hospital spared no expense when it came to security, given my patient list. There was also the clinic for gender-affirming care and the obstetrics offices with delivery rooms and a newborn nursery that offered a homier, less clinical experience than the hospital a pedway walk away.
Instead of making him wait, I walked over to where Cash stood. “Good morning.”
He spun, his knee showing its weakness as it threw him off balance. “I’m so ready to get that fucking fixed,” he grumbled, then pulled a face and apologized to the mom with a couple of boys standing next to us.
“You’re Cash Benjamin!” the oldest of the two boys yelled.
I stepped back as Cash went down on his good knee to talk with the kids who couldn’t be more than ten and eight. As the cacophony of the boys’ excitement drew a small crowd, I walked over to the desk, smiling at the receptionist as I snagged a permanent marker.
I held it out to Cash, who smiled up at me. The happiness and utter rightness of him with the two young fans hit me like a ton of bricks falling from the top of the building. The anxiety I felt this morning surged back. A tide of emotion that stole my breath.
Taking out my phone, I captured a few photos of the moment, then a video. Sometimes the reminders of who they were helped. Sometimes they didn’t, but I wanted to make sure Cash had this moment recorded if he ever wanted it.
Davina
You’re late. But so is your patient.
Me
IMAGE
The star athlete got recognized. We’ll be up shortly.
And we’re not late. You’re just always ridiculously early.
Davina
I rolled my eyes and stood close by as Cash signed autographs and posed for pictures.
It took awhile, but soon enough, the crowd of hockey fans—of Cash Benjamin fans—cleared and reception checked Cash in.
A formality since Davina had ambushed Cash in the office two visits ago with a stack of forms and a pen, informing him resistance was futile.
He’d signed without reading past the first page.
He glanced at me as he headed to the elevator bank. I hurried after him, grabbing his elbow to guide him to the staff elevator, swiping my badge.
Eyes locked on Cash lying stretched out on the OR table, I stood watching the surgical team prep Cash and the room.
Everything looked fine, moving along like the well-oiled machine my operating team had become over the years.
As usual, they had the PA system turned on so I could hear if they needed me.
Usually during this time, I reviewed the case notes and images.
Not today. Today, I listened to Cash joke with the staff. He had them all in stitches.
“Which of you Masked Avengers is the doc with the sleepy-time juice?”
“That’d be me, Mr. Benjamin. My name’s Michael Devenport.”
“So…the doc’s okay with nepotism. Good to know.”
I chuckled.
“Just so we’re clear, Mikey,” Cash said, pointing at Michael, “the last time I got stretched out on a table naked for a bunch of people in a cold room, somebody told me to count backward from ten.”
Michael laughed and said, “That sounds about right.”
“Yeah, well, I made it to seven. I’m looking for a better performance out of you today.”
“You planning to train for it this time?”
“I’ve had three surgeries in the last eleven months. I’ve been training all year.”
After the long conversation he and I had on the patio of Halo House, I knew what he sounded like when emotion hovered just below the surface. Unable to stay away, I headed into the OR.
Cash’s voice carried over the sounds of surgery prep. “I was promised that anything I say after the drugs start doesn’t leave this room.”
Everyone chuckled, but it was Evan, our resident Breakers fan, team clown, and my physician assistant, who said, “Nobody promised you shit, Money. That would ruin all our fun.”
“That’s bullshit. I wanna speak to management.”
“They’re supposed to be working, kid,” I said with a smile, patting Cash on the shoulder.
“Oh good. Management. You gotta rein these fuckers in, Doc.”
Everyone laughed, used to brash, foul-mouthed professional athletes. Especially hockey players.
“Yeah, I’m not pissing them off for you, kid. I’ve got to work with them day in and day out,” I responded and caught a few eyes sliding my direction.
“I’m seriously questioning your hiring standards, Doc,” Cash said, pointing at Rochelle’s, my surgical nurse, scrub cap.
A diehard hockey fan, Rochelle wore one of her many team-branded caps. But she hated Vancouver, and the Breakers as their affiliate. Rochelle rooted for San Jose and didn’t give a shit what anyone had to say about it.
“You’ll get over it,” Rochelle said with a laugh, moving away to help Luis gather the items needed to create the sterile field.
I usually left when the field started getting set up. I looked at the door and back at Cash before I pulled a stool close to sit near his head. The moment my ass hit the stool, everyone faded away, and I asked, “You doing okay?”
His eyes bounced away from mine, flitting from person to person and surface to surface before he said, “Yep. I’m an old hat at this by now.”
The words were meant to be yet another joke, but I hated that he’d gone through so much over the last year. Giving him a minute to collect himself, I let my eyes wander around the room, checking over the team and their prep work.
“Nina, do we have what we need?” I asked, watching her work at the graft prep table.
“Yes, Dr. Vale. Everything looks good here.”
“Hey, Doc?”
I looked down at Cash. “Yeah?”
“Odds?”
We’d had this discussion a few times over the last few days, but Cash kept asking, which led me to believe he was more nervous than his joking demeanor let on.
“Three out of four make it back.”
“After their first surgery?”
“That’s right.”
“One in four. Two in eight. Three in twelve.”
“That’s right,” I said, my throat thick with how much I wanted him to be the one in four.
“Thad?”
I looked at Michael and nodded. It wasn’t unheard of for me to come into the OR before the patient was put under, but…I never stayed to talk, and I didn’t fucking joke with the patient.
“Michael’s going to start the meds now, Cash. Any last questions?”
He shook his head, and Michael asked, “Cash, can you tell me your full name?”
“Caspian Benjamin.”
“What are you having done?”
“Shit, I don’t know the name for it. Doc’s fixing the cartilage in my knee. Something condyl allo graft.”
I laughed. “Close enough. Osteochondral allograft transplantation to the right medial femoral condyle.”
“Cash, which leg?” Michael asked to confirm.
“The right one. It had to be the fucking right one.”
“Why’s the right worse than the left?” Nina asked.
“I’ve not been able to drive in nearly a year. I even sold my truck. No use making payments on something I couldn’t use,” Cash said, his voice slowing down.
I kept myself from looking at my staff. It wasn’t the worst thing we’d heard come out of an athlete’s mouth who was willing to sacrifice everything for their sport. It was just the first time one of their stories throat-punched me the way Cash’s did.
“Thad?” I looked down at Cash. His eyes slow-blinked several times. Then he said, “Don’t fuck up,” just as his face slackened and his breath slowed.
Standing, I walked out of the OR to the scrub room. I needed to get a hold of myself. The only issue with that was, I’d been trying to do that exact thing since my eyes opened this morning. The man kept drifting into spaces where the doctor should be. Needed to be. Had to fucking be.
I returned to the operating room, scrubbed, gowned, and sterile, and Cash was gone.
Or almost.
Underneath Luis’s sterile field lay the sexy, funny kid who drew me like a moth to a flame.
Michael at his head, monitoring every breath and heartbeat.
Evan waiting for me at the table. But the laughing man who’d told me not to fuck up was gone.
All that remained of him was his right leg, prepped from thigh to foot.
As much as it unnerved me, this was good. This I could handle.
I stepped into position beside the table. Evan took his place opposite me while Luis moved the instrument table within reach.
“Ready when you are, Dr. Vale,” Rochelle said.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Rochelle called, “Time-out.”
Everything stopped. Everything but the routine of Rochelle going through the procedure.