City of Champions (12 page)

"So this is the part where you fix my game to prevent further injury? I'm on board with that."

"Hold up, it's true that as surgeons go, I'm generally not as eager to resort to a quick slice and dice, but you have serious repeated trauma to your throwing shoulder, and it's affecting your whole game. Let's start by taking a look at that shoulder. Hop up here on the bed…" She suddenly blushed and looked away from him, causing him to raise an eyebrow and fight the smile breaking out fully on his face. She quickly cleared her throat and blurted out, "I mean the examining table. I need to manipulate your shoulder."

"You got it. I like an assertive woman that knows what she wants." She rolled her eyes, but he noticed her cheeks turning slightly pink. He could see he wasn't imagining it when he remembered she wasn't impervious to him.

Wyatt felt a little shitty about deliberately keeping her off-balance, especially when he thought about his real reason for selecting her as his consult physician. Part of that plan required that he make the most of the attraction she had for him. Even if she didn't want to admit it to herself, he knew it was there, and damned if he didn't really like those moments when her breath quickened and her lips parted.

"Do you want me…"

"What? I don't want you," she squeaked out.

"I meant, do you want me to take my shirt off?" he asked, standing up from his chair and stepping closer to her.

"Oh, um, yes, that would be best, sorry."

He yanked off his tee shirt and she looked away from him just as he started to jump onto the examining table. And he couldn't help but wish that he were taking off a piece of her clothing in return.

"You're going to have trouble examining me from all the way over there, aren't you, Doc?" he asked with a low voice, trying to overcome his own desire that was threatening to throw his whole plan off course.

She turned and laughed with a soft hint of embarrassment that brought back that stupid, tight feeling in his chest as she walked over to him — close enough that he caught the scent of her hair. It smelled like fresh air and that first moment when you see your home come into view after being gone for far too long.

It was nice.

Snap out of it, you idiot!
he mentally shouted to himself.

Wyatt tried to bring himself back under control of the situation. These moments of kindness from her, and her sharp eye for his game were no excuse for him to forget why he was there. It didn't matter that the sharp eye in question was part of a set of the prettiest blue ones he'd ever seen.

Oh, why didn't I tell him to leave his shirt on? Maybe I could've had him put on more clothes before I had to touch him. I can't just keep looking at his naked chest and stroking it — I might fry my brain…
Jenna thought worriedly to herself.

She was putting all her energy into keeping calm and focusing on performing a relatively simple examination she'd done numerous times before. Yet nothing about Wyatt was simple for her. In fact, she felt like she deserved a medal — or at least a participation trophy — for her efforts in keeping some kind of cool with this man. Regardless of whatever personal issues she had with dating an athlete, her stepping in to perform a consult on him meant that he was, for all intents and purposes, her patient, at least until the assignment was complete, meaning, she needed to be completely professional with him.

That ethical "out" was almost a relief to her confused emotions — forcing her to stick to her guns and avoid this man on a sexual level. Unfortunately though, when he took off his tee shirt, revealing his smooth, olive skin and muscles developed over a lifetime of rigorous physical conditioning, Jenna became sincerely worried she may have swallowed her tongue and would need to find someone to extract it out of her throat for her.

Her only solution was to commit herself to focus on his shoulder and its marked reduction in range of motion. His chart was concerning enough, but at every stage of the examination, it was becoming clear to her the trauma to his shoulder was far worse than she had hoped.

"You definitely have inflammation in this joint. In fact, it's warm to the touch — which is a good sign of inflammatory activity, though that's not terribly surprising based on the MRI images in your chart. Is this tender?" she asked him as she pressed lightly against his shoulder joint.

He turned his face toward hers at the question and said, "A little tender, but not too bad. You have a gentle touch, Doc. I like it. I hope you don't show the same attention with all your patients. I may get jealous."

"Mr. McCoy, please focus," she answered, but his teasing was getting to her and part of her couldn't help but want to giggle a little bit — if only to release the tension building in her stomach.

"I'm very focused. I'm still trying to process all the great input you gave me on my release and throwing technique. I'm so impressed, I may need to tie you up and keep you all to myself," he said, letting his mouth slip into a sideways grin, as he moved his hand off his lap and onto the examining table, lightly brushing her waist in the process.

"What?"
Jenna squeaked out, feeling her cheeks suddenly burning with heat.

He couldn't know about my dream, could he?
she pondered with fear. The memory of what she'd imagined him doing to her — touching her, pleasing her…

"Ow! Jesus, Doc, I was just kidding," he answered, jerking his arm back. Jenna realized she'd accidentally squeezed his shoulder in her mortification at the memory of her dream.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you," she quickly mumbled out, before dropping her hands and turning to her desk to make a note. "Well, um, I will make a record in your chart that you have tenderness and inflammation in the rotator cuff…" she continued, wanting to punch herself at the realization that she'd let her control get away from her at the worst of times.

If there were ever a reason to make it through an appointment quickly, this was it. I might break him before he escapes from me.

"Do you need to take a moment, Doc?" he teased, and she forced herself to glare at him — anything to stabilize her fraying nerves.

"I thought you said you were going to take this seriously?"

"I am. I'm just also making the most of my time with you. You don't make it easy on a guy."

"Easy on
a
guy or just not easy on you?"

"Let's focus on me right now."

"That's what I'm trying to do, or at least this examination, Mr. McCoy. And you can put your shirt back on and have a seat. The physical portion of the exam is over now."

"Speaking of this appointment, did you get my text and voicemails? I never heard back from you. Maybe I need to call my cellphone carrier and complain," he mused, though his eyes were scanning her face intently.

"I got them. I must say, I felt that was pretty inappropriate of you — to contact me like that.
How'd you get my number?"

"Eloni was nice enough to give it to me. I told him you left something in the locker room."

"Oh, did I? And what was it that I left there?"

"My number," he answered with a smile, and Jenna couldn't stop the laugh that escaped her mouth, though she did quickly recover and straightened her face before Wyatt continued speaking. "I wanted to give it to you, but you ran off before I could."

"I guess that makes me some kind of cyber Dr. Cinderella?"

"Phone numbers are much more efficient than glass slippers, but
that
Cinderella was more receptive."

"
He
was a charming prince."

"And I'm not?"

"Oh no, not going there, Mr. McCoy. But I appreciate the information. I will be sure to, um, thank, Eloni when I see him for his next appointment."

"Don't be mad at him. I tricked him."

"I'm not mad. Actually, I'm a little flattered."

"I knew you had it in you, Doc."

"But flattered or not, I am seriously concerned about your shoulder, Mr. McCoy," she said, sitting down at her desk and taking the MRI results out of his chart. "Look at these images, particularly right here. These are from the MRI that your team had done after the Denver game. We aren't just looking at impingement and tearing, we have evidence of serious and repeated damage to that right shoulder. Basically, you had a sudden trauma during a prior game. From the notes here it was a few weeks before the Denver game. Your arm bone was forced hard into the shoulder socket. Add onto that, the repeated trauma you are seeing in other games, and the damage is simply not healing on its own. That is quite serious."

"I've been doing physical therapy."

"I saw that in the notes. I had hoped the physical examination would show some progress from it, but it doesn't look that way."

"I can get a cortisone shot to my shoulder before games."

"Cortisone shots are great. But, they need to be used sparingly, and you can't rely on them.

"I'll do more PT."

"Physical therapy hasn't been enough, so far. A treatment course based solely on PT could be a possibility, if you were a pharmacist that happened to enjoy playing softball on the weekends. But you're not. You're an elite professional athlete. Your performance will never improve and that pain won't go away, unless you have this surgery. The good news is that as long as you don't re-injure that shoulder more seriously, you
should
be able to make it through the last few games of the season. Then I recommend you have surgery immediately at the beginning of the off-season."

"There's got to be another way, Doc. Eloni said you had other advice for him, too. Gave him relaxation exercises or something."

"That's true. I treat the whole athlete."

"I'm not just an athlete, though. I'm a person."

His words jarred her back to her meeting with Richard.

Am I doing it again?
she asked herself.
Treating the athlete and not the person? Only seeing a chart and not a human being? If it truly is a barrier to my success, then maybe I need to step back and listen to this man.

"That’s very true, Mr. McCoy. I do try to take that into account — to understand the emotional strain you face. The accommodations athletes need to make to address those challenges. Your body is your life and your livelihood… I get that."

"Because you were an athlete?"

"Excuse me?"

"Eloni told me you played basketball, blew out one of your knees."

"Um, yes. I just don't talk about it much. Most of my patients know it, though, that's true." Jenna looked down at her notepad and tried to regain her composure. The memory of that injury was still fresh and sharing it with Wyatt felt incredibly intimate.

"But I'm not a patient. I'm a consult."

"What? That's true," she said, looking up and focusing on Wyatt again. "I take it just as seriously, though. Yes, I do try to bring my experience as an athlete to bear in all I do. The benefit is that I understand the strain of being at least a collegiate scholarship athlete. To have all those responsibilities."

"And you know football? I played with a guy at UT your dad coached in high school. They don't get much better than him apparently. He even used to coach at Georgia."

"Wow, you really did your homework, Wyatt."

"I told you I take my career very seriously. Georgia's a pretty good gig. You don't see a lot of assistant coaches step down voluntarily."

"True, but that's a hard life to have as a solo parent with a young child."

"My mother would agree with you on that point," Wyatt said darkly.

Jenna paused, wanting to pry so much into his life, but knowing it was wrong.

Instead she simply said, "Yes, I read once that your parents are divorced. Being married to an NFL player can't be easy."

Wyatt's face creased in what looked almost like anger, but it wasn't aimed at her, she could tell that. It looked more like the face of someone with an old hurt — an unhealed wound. It was an expression Jenna had seen on her own face more than once.

"So, your dad decided to become the king of high school football and summer quarterback camps, instead?" Wyatt went on quickly, changing the subject back to Jenna's personal life.

"Yep. And he's really great at it. I hate to be rude, but we should really get back to talking about your shoulder." Jenna definitely felt off-kilter when she was around Wyatt, and all this talk about her dad was all the more unsettling. This guy had a knack for getting under her skin and she couldn't let that happen anymore. She'd already relaxed too much around him.

"Right. We're here to talk about my shoulder. Eloni swears by the extra advice you offer, so bring it on."

Jenna had to fight back a little laugh.

"Eloni had serious stress issues. And his stretching was atrocious. Yoga and sewing with his wife turned out to be very effective."

"You're suggesting I do yoga?"

"You'd have to be careful not to strain your injury, but it could have some benefits to your overall awareness of your body and its cues. It doesn't have to be that. It can be anything you find which makes you feel centered and calm — able to refocus on your body and then, hopefully, your playing style and goals. Have you ever found something that had that effect?"