Page 48 of Triplets for the Pucking Playboys
“Vodka?” I say, managing a laugh. She grins.
The next hour is a blur of bodies and voices. A rookie with a groin pull grits his teeth through passive stretches. I demo banded squats to a defenseman who pretends not to stare at my midsection. Every time I lean over the exam table, the waistband digs deeper. I keep waiting for someone to notice, to say something, but the men in this place are masters of selective blindness. They don’t see you unless you make them.
Between patients, I duck into the supply closet to restock ace wraps. The overhead bulbs are industrial-bright, and the shelving goes almost to the ceiling. I have to reach to get the big box from the top shelf, standing on tiptoe, fingers straining. There’s a roaring in my ears, like white noise or the throb of a distant drumline. My vision narrows, the edges of the worldturning to gray static, and for a second, I think I’m going to black out and take the whole goddamn shelving unit with me.
I manage to get the box down, but I have to clutch the cold metal frame to keep from sliding to the floor. There’s a sound behind me, and then Mia’s hand is at my elbow, steadying me before I can even turn around.
She doesn’t ask if I’m okay. She just says, “Sit,” and her voice is the closest thing to a command I’ve heard from her. I obey, dropping onto an overturned bucket like my legs are made of rubber cement.
Mia crouches in front of me, arms crossed. “That’s it,” she says. “I’m done watching you pretend you’re fine.”
I try to argue, to come up with some line about dehydration or blood sugar, but my mouth is dry and my tongue won’t cooperate.
“You’re going to urgent care,” Mia says, the way a parent says you’re going to your room. “Now.”
“I have patients,” I say, or try to. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone on TV, thin and faraway.
Mia’s face softens, just a fraction. “You nearly ate it in front of six cameras and the entire O-line. Either you come with me right now, or I call Coach Ryland and tell him you’re unfit to be here.”
She lets that hang in the air, and I know she means it. I want to protest, but another wave of dizziness drowns the words before I can get them out. Mia helps me up, keeps a grip on my wrist as we shuffle down the hallway.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” she says, not unkindly, as we exit the staff wing.
“Too late,” I mumble, but it doesn’t even make her smile.
The light outside the building is harsh and blue, the wind knifing through my jacket. We get into her car, and she cranks the heat, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. For the first three blocks, we don’t talk. She keeps her eyes on the road;I keep mine on the soft fuzz of the hair tie, the single black loop holding my entire life together.
At the first red light, Mia glances over. “You want to call anyone? Next of kin, Finn, whatever?”
I think of my best friend, Cassidy, but shake my head. “Nobody.”
She nods, as if that’s what she expected. We ride the rest of the way in silence, the city blurring past, a bright and indifferent swarm.
I close my eyes, count to ten, try to imagine a world where I don’t feel like I’m falling apart.
The hair tie holds, for now.
We pull up to the urgent care. After getting inside, I find a chair and sit with my feet on the little chrome ring, hands folded in my lap, and try to keep my face neutral as a man with a bleeding nose and a child with a stuffy one take turns coughing on the carpet. Mia checks me in, gives the woman at the desk my insurance card and a story about persistent GI distress, which is almost true.
The pressure under my ribs hasn’t let up in days, a slow swell that feels too solid to be nothing but too shapeless to be something I want to name. When I press my hand to the curve just above my pelvis, it pushes back with a sort of dense resistance, like my insides are rearranging themselves. I blame bloating. Ulcers. Maybe a fibroid. I’ve had PCOS since college, and my cycle’s never played by anyone’s rules. Plus, I’m on the pill.
It only takes ten minutes before they call my name. Mia says she’ll wait, and I see her pull out her phone and settle in for a long scroll. I walk the corridor, past the cartoon animal mural and the dried-up potted plant, until a nurse in pale blue leads me to a windowless cell with an exam table and a faded poster about the dangers of dehydration.
She runs my vitals, takes my temperature, wraps the blood pressure cuff so tight it leaves a ghost ring on my bicep. “Everything looks fine,” she says, which I already know is a lie. She leaves the room and I’m alone, under the full glare of the fluorescent ceiling, every speck of lint on my shirt a fresh indictment.
The doctor comes in five minutes later. She’s got the build of an ex-rower, maybe forty, face cut from optimism and old sunburns. She introduces herself but I don’t catch the name, just the way she watches me over the edge of her clipboard.
“So, Sage, what brings you in today?” she says, flipping through the notes Mia provided.
“Fainting spell,” I say. “Nausea. Some pain, maybe dehydration. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
She clicks her pen, makes a note. “When did this start?”
“About two weeks, give or take.”
She goes down the list—bowel movements, headaches, fever, recent stress. I answer on autopilot. She’s good at not telegraphing concern, but I clock the way her eyebrow lifts when she presses on my abdomen and I wince.
“Any chance you’re pregnant?” she says, casual as a weather report.
