Excerpt
Two Left Feet
Sunday, January 1, 2017: West Bromwich Albion at CamdenMatchday 19Blink and you’d miss it—a
whoosh and then a sickening
thunk.
And there he is: suddenly and involuntarily sprawled at the base of the freezing stairs, clutching his upper leg, pain radiating down to his toes. Oliver Harris is beginning to suspect that 2017 might not be his year.
“Ah,
Christ,” someone, probably Garcia, shouts from behind him. The remainder of the squad follows suit, bellowing and cursing as they converge in a protective ring around Oliver’s prone form. He feels as if he’s looking up at the chief mourners from his own grave.
It falls to Anthony Moss, center back and team captain, to make sense of the chaos. It always does. He assumes a crouch beside Oliver, stern in the face.
“Easy, lad, sit up now. What did you do?”
“Careful, it’s slippery,” Oliver jokes weakly, before he’s hit with another queasy wave of pain. “Oh f***, that hurts.” He scrabbles his way to sitting, but finds it impossible to shift his left leg, his good leg, at all.
“We’re getting Sebastian and Willem,” Anthony says. “You stupid bastard.” His tone brooks no argument, even if Oliver were inclined to disagree with the assessment. He nods resignedly, trying to regulate his labored breathing as it puffs into clouds in the cold air.
Anthony motions the rest of the men out into the stadium so only the two of them are left in the mouth of the tunnel. The squad can’t wait for a diagnosis; there’s a match to start, though Oliver won’t be playing in it. The massive lights of Regent Road cut through the rain, streaming over the crowd, across the pitch, and down the tunnel to the changing room, a beacon for forty thousand witnesses to Oliver’s private despair.
The sheen of the damp grass paired with the guttural roar of the crowd can make a man larger than he really is. Oliver doesn’t believe in magic, yet he can’t deny he’s felt the air in the stadium fill his lungs with something more than oxygen. Now the familiar surge of adrenaline has turned poisonously inward, flooding his veins with anxiety and a stabbing in his hamstring. He lets his head fall back again as the medics swoop in to stretcher him away.
Hours later, he’s still horizontal and he’s still not alone, on a cot in Anna’s office at the training grounds, Camden Crossing. It’s only ten minutes in the car, with traffic, between Regent Road and here, but the small complex of brick buildings and manicured grass where Oliver’s spent the better part of his life feels a million miles away from where his New Year’s Day began.
Sebastian Carr had cheerfully stuck his head in around three to tell him Camden Football Club beat West Bromwich Albion decisively, and that Henri Dupont of all people had scored in the thirtieth minute to put them ahead. Oliver had tried to ask to see a clip of the goal before Anna shooed Sebastian from the room, telling him that he’s not to bother patients in her care, no matter how many times he gets promoted. Oliver had felt vaguely smug at the dismissal; a few months ago, Sebastian had been a good-looking physiotherapist and his genuine friend, but since his elevation to the role of fitness manager and assistant coach, right-hand man under the reign of new manager Willem de Boer, he is no longer to be trusted.
Dr. Anna Zhang is a different story. It’s not the fact that she’s a brilliant physician—although she is, of course, specializing in orthopedics, plus a background in internal medicine, and some expertise in psychology; that would be true of any doctor at any club. It’s that each of her patients is a sportsman, with all the money and the ego that comes with and yet when they’re submitting themselves to treatment, they know for certain none of them are a match for her.
“All right, Mr. Harris,” she says, smoothly sliding next to him on a rolling stool. She’s sharp in wool trousers and a crisp blouse, only the sloppiness of her plait and a slight smudge on her glasses’ lens betraying her day of work. “I’ve finished with the imaging. Shall we have a chat about where we are?”
“Start with the good news, please.”
“I didn’t say there was any,” she warns, but she touches his knee with a gentle hand while she says it. The MRI reveals a barely visible tear, tiny fragments of splintered white muscle glinting against the glossy black of the photograph. He’d like to think there’s been some kind of mistake, but even without a medical degree he can sense that the swelling matches what’s looking up at him from his leg. “It could be much worse. Hamstrings bounce right back, and yours nearly held itself together,” Anna continues briskly, taking the picture out of his hands and cutting his questions off at the pass. She rattles on in doctor-speak without missing a beat. “I’m more worried about recurrence than initial recovery. If you listen to me and we have just a bit of luck, you’ll play again before the season’s over. Late March, maybe April. And you’ll certainly be able to keep fit—this won’t preclude cross-training exercises. A couple days off your feet to start, all right? Just to be safe. I’ll give you a pamphlet.” She always gives them the damn pamphlets, and they never say what’s actually going on, which is, of course,
You’re screwed. “I know this is a bad time of year to get this kind of news,” she adds, more softly.
“Mate, any time of year is a bad time to get this kind of news,” he says. He’s still afraid they might try to make him go to a hospital.
“Don’t call me that. Oliver, people get injured in this line of work, even you. And I won’t prescribe anything for your mood unless you see a therapist, so do try to meet me halfway.”
He slumps back and rubs irritably at his tired eyes with the flat of his palms. Even though he knows that she wouldn’t talk to him this way if she didn’t care about him, it still rankles. Oliver hates being hurt, forced to stop moving. Until recently, he considered himself someone who always takes painstaking care at terminal velocity. He doesn’t go for the stupid challenge. He won’t let a defender catch him unaware. Recently, though, he can’t stop taking himself down—and he’s never learned how to account for that.
•
Anna releases Oliver with crutches in hand, making him ring for a cab in front of her and swear on his life he won’t walk back home. He’s done it before.
There’s something deeply undignified about the process of shoving oneself into the back of a stranger’s car in a full football kit on a frigid January evening, toting two massive aluminum sticks and a bad attitude. Despite his wish for the earth to swallow him whole, or at the very least grant him a moment’s peace, the cabbie recognizes him immediately. The whole of Camden, anyone born and bred in its borders, always does: if he’s nothing else, Oliver Harris is their golden boy.
The man is sorry for such a tough break. He doesn’t ask if the injury is serious, or how things are going with Willem, or for a selfie, just if Oliver might sign something for his nephew. The driver even has a Camden scarf at the ready, draped around the rearview mirror like a talisman. Oliver can’t bring himself not to, circumstances aside. Even now, there’s a tenderness to the recognition, a kinship in it. A pen is unearthed from the glove compartment with one hand as they snake their way through the honking cars and the spitting rain, so he scrawls his messy, practiced signature and adds a tiny number
6 for good measure.
When they pull up to the elegant, narrow townhouse, the cabbie shoots Oliver a look.
“A lot of stairs,” he says leadingly. “You’ll be all right?”
Whether or not he will be all right feels immaterial—he’ll crawl up to the landing and sleep on a sofa if he has to, but he needs to be at home, alone, expeditiously.
“I’ve got it, mate,” Oliver replies. “Appreciate your help.” He stuffs sixty quid of crumpled banknotes from his wallet in the seatback pocket as he exits, in thanks and in penance.
