Page 14 of Waking Olivia

I look at him flatly. "Do you really expect me to answer that?"

"No, but I really expect you to go to the health center."

"Despite your years of medical training, I'm gonna have to refuse.”

For just a moment, fleeting sadness flickers over his face. It makes me wish I hadn't spoken. He sighs. "Go shower and wait in my office."

I’m either about to get bitched out for not following his directions, or I’m about to get kicked off the team. Either possibility seems fair. I refused to do what he asked. I ran when he told me not to. I was told no more temper and I nearly crushed a teammate’s windpipe. I figured I’d lose my scholarship eventually, I just thought I'd get to go out with a bang.

When I walk in, he looks at me with equal parts resignation and disdain, as if steeling himself to undertake a very unpleasant task.

"Take off your shoe," he sighs, going to his closet. He retrieves a small kit and pulls a chair up in front of mine and grabs my ankle.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"What does it look like I'm doing? You are obviously not going to the health center, since following even the smallest direction is impossible for you, so I'm fixing your foot."

I swallow. "You don't have to. It doesn't hurt that much."

He shakes his head as he looks at my foot. "I applaud your high pain tolerance, Olivia, but there's no way that doesn't hurt, and it affects your running, so for once stop arguing with me.” He swabs it with alcohol, which does hurt though I refuse to show it, and then he stitches it as deftly and assuredly as any surgeon.

"How'd you learn how to do that?" I ask.

He pauses, and his shoulders seem to sag a little. "I had some medic training at my last job.”

His tone does not invite further questions, but I barrel on anyway. “You weren’t always a coach?”

“No."

“What did you do?”

His eyes remain on my foot. “I was a guide,” he finally says. “Mountain climbing.”

Somehow this makes complete sense to me. It explains how cut he is, the tattoos hinting that he hasn’t always been this goody-goody country boy, but that’s not all. There’s something intense about him, something that demands complete immersion. He isn’t a guy meant to stand on the sidelines and watch other people achieve.

“So you, like, led tours or something?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

His jaw sets. “My father died, so I came back and took over his farm.”

"So did you evenwantto coach track?"

He closes the kit with an echoing snap. "It's a good job. I’m lucky to have gotten it."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Didn't it?"

I guess it did.

Suddenly I feel bad that I’ve been sort of a pain in the ass, that I've made so many assumptions about who he is and why he's here. I sense that even the act of stitching my foot is reminding him of things he gave up. "You'd probably make a good doctor if you ever decided to leave the lucrative world of coaching," I tell him. "Not, mind you, a doctor who needs to be pleasant, like a pediatrician or something. But one of those doctors you expect to be an asshole."

"Is that right?" he drawls, trying not to smile.

“Yeah, I mean, can you imagine yourself as, say, an oncologist? I'm pretty sure saying things like 'your healing is crappy' and 'get better faster' wouldn't be as well-received by patients as it is by me."

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