Lady and the Champ by Katherine Lace Read Free Book Online

doctor, as if he thinks I can’t hear him. Of course I can hear him. I fucked up my knee, not my ears.
    “Yeah. Get one.”
    That makes me blink. I’ve never been stretchered off the field before. Can’t be good, then. Maybe my leg really will pop off at the knee if I move it wrong.
    “I’m going to straighten this out,” the doctor tells me, a hand closing on my thigh. “It’s probably going to hurt like a motherfucking son of a bitch.”
    I clench my teeth. “Any chance we can wait until I can get some morphine or something?”
    “Suck it up,” the doctor shoots back. “It’ll just be a second. I need to get everything straight.”
    “Fine.”
    “You ready?”
    “Not really.”
    He gently draws my foot out from under me, and everything goes red, then black again. Goddamn, that hurts. Actually, “hurts” doesn’t come close to describing it. It’s like my knee is full of glass, and it’s all tearing out pieces as the doctor moves it to a normal angle. Suddenly I start to wonder where Chloe is. Surely she’s on hand somewhere. Surely if she were here she wouldn’t be twisting me around into some kind of human pretzel. Or twisting me out of a pretzel. That’s probably more accurate. But it all just hurts like hell.
    “Holy fuck fuck fucking pissass shitballs.” I think that’s what I’m saying. It’s hard to tell. I keep kind of passing out about every other word. “Shit… balls . Balls of shit.”
    “Easy,” says the doctor. “Almost there.”
    I feel the joint sort of pop into place, and the pain eases back a little, although it can still be described as motherfucking balls of shit on a piece of baked shit from the worst shit-store in shitland. A few seconds later, the stretcher is there, and they’re putting me onto it, strapping me down.
    “Where’s my PT?” I demand. I want Chloe. I want her hands on me. They’ll make me feel better. Just looking at her would make me feel better. “Where’s my doc?”
    “I’m your doctor,” he says.
    “No, you’re not. My doc is a chick.”
    He raises an eyebrow. “I’m the team doctor. There are no other physicians—”
    “Get me Chloe, dammit.”
    His eyes bulge. “Chloe hasn’t been to four years of medical school.”
    “I don’t give a rat’s ass. I want my PT.”
    We’re heading off the field now, into the tunnel. I hear cheers behind me as the crowd rejoices that I’m not dead and they can get back to the rest of the game without feeling guilty about celebrating over my mangled body.
    He leans over and peers into my face through the helmet, which he didn’t bother to take off me. “You’re going to be just fine, Sherwood. Just relax.”
    “ I want Chloe .”
    “Fine,” he says in a snippy voice. “We’ll get her.”
    “I’m right here.”
    I almost lurch off the stretcher trying to twist around so I can see her. Her voice is a little breathless, like she’s been running. Sure enough, she half-jogs into my line of sight and lays a hand on my shoulder as they roll my stretcher down the hallway.
    “Doc,” I say, relieved.
    “I think I asked you to stop calling me that.”
    “What took you so long?”
    She leans over the gurney so I can see her, and one hand gently brushes over my forehead. There’s a crease between her eyebrows as she studies my face. I’m not sure what she’s looking for.
    I do know I’m relieved beyond any kind of logic to see her there. I know the team doctor would take perfectly good care of me—he’s fixed me up before—but I need Chloe. Need her. Like somehow I’m convinced nothing will be fixed properly in my body if anybody else does the fixing.
    “Of course I’m here.” Her tone is cool, but there’s a look of strain on her face. “Where else would I be?”
    She pushes a strand of unruly hair back behind her ear. Has she always been this pretty, or did something happen after the last time I saw her? Did she wrap up in some kind of cocoon that made her even more drop-dead