Page 6 of Last Line of Defense

Alicia finally looks away, affected by my words, and bites her lower lip hard—a gesture I find dangerously alluring. Her long fingers begin to fidget nervously with the paper sheet covering the examination table.

“Well, go ahead, you can start your magic now, Doctor. Although I’m warning you right now that you’re not going to find a single thing wrong with me,” she blurts out, putting her armor of arrogance back on like a shield. “I’ve been playing at the highest competitive level for years, and this athlete’s body hasn’t given me any problems whatsoever. I’m perfect.”

I feel like laughing just to keep from crying. Alicia has decided, out of the blue, to turn my ten years of experience and my master’s degrees in sports physical therapy into a complete joke. She’s completely convinced that it’ll be impossible for me to figure out exactly which area causes her pain when she walks or which joint is preventing her from performing at 100 percent. How naive she is.

“The club has signed you as the blockbuster signing of the season and paid a fortune for you, so we all sincerely hope that what you’re saying is true and that you’re at 100 percent.”

“They were looking for a foolproof goal-scoring machine to win the Champions League, and that’s exactly what they’re going to have on the field. No more, no less.”

“Yeah, well… Let me take a look at that knee, come on,” I say, taking a step toward the examination table.

Alicia lifts her chin slightly in a haughty manner, holding my gaze once more with clear defiance shining in her green eyes. I slip on my nitrile gloves with a sharp snap and begin the manual examination. The muscles in her leg are incredibly tense, hard as rocks under the pressure of my fingers.

“Try to relax a little, please,” I murmur in a soft voice, gently pressing the area around the patellar tendon. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. I know what I’m doing.”

“You’re just saying that right now to win my trust,” she replies with a cheeky half-smile, trying to regain as much of her usual provocative tone as possible. “But the thing is, I still don’t know if I can fully trust you, Doctor. You’re a mystery.”

“Clara,” I correct her on the spot without a second thought, running my hands up her quadriceps. “Here in the clinic, I’m just Clara. You don’t need to address me formally or beat around the bush.”

“Clara…” she repeats my name in an almost imperceptible whisper, savoring the syllables in a way that sends a shiver down my spine. “It sounds too soft, sweet, and tender for a woman who goes through life acting strict and tough.”

Lucía, from a distance, lets out a discreet giggle that forces me to put on a stern face—which I decide to completely ignore so as not to lose my concentration.

I continue with the thorough examination, carefully palpating the collateral ligaments and asking her to perform small passive flexion-extension movements. With every direct touch of my hands on her warm, smooth skin, I sense a tension in the air that goes far beyond a simple medical examination. Alicia submissively follows each of my physical instructions, but her green eyes never leave my face for a single moment, constantly analyzing me, and that inevitably causes my own body to start reacting in a way I don’t like one bit. I feel heat beneath my white coat.

“Does it hurt right here?” I ask, applying a little deeper pressure at the pes anserine insertion.

“A little… okay, damn it, yes, it stings quite a bit there,” she admits reluctantly, furrowing her brow in pain. “It bothers me most of all when I try to make a quick pivot or when I have to slam on the brakes during a sprint. That’s when it feels like it’s going to pop out.”

“That perfectly explains the incomplete data that kept popping up in your previous reports,” I say, removing my hands and jotting down the information on the tablet. “We’re going to need to run a few more comprehensive diagnostic tests—a follow-up MRI and a high-resolution ultrasound this very afternoon—but at first glance, I think we can work with this. It’s not as badly damaged as I feared when I read your file.” There’s hope.

Alicia immediately breaks into a huge, relieved smile and leans back slightly on her elbows.

“See? I told you, Clara. You’re such a drama queen. I never lie about my physical condition.”

“My only job here is to confirm, using scientific data, whether what your mouth is telling me is exactly the same as what your body is screaming at me through your muscles,” I reply simply and professionally, pointing to her left knee with my pen. “Although this afternoon’s images will be what give us the real, detailed picture of what’s going on inside you.”

“You’re so meticulous, such a perfectionist, and so controlling, Clara…” Alicia whispers in an intimate tone, without taking those big eyes off me for even a second. “I’m sure any of your other colleagues would have taken my word for it and cleared me to train tomorrow.”

“Well, then you’re lucky to have ended up with me, because professional players usually keep their injuries to themselves and tough it out out of sheer pride until their bodies say ‘enough’ and completely break down,” I blurt out as I quickly type the test orders into the computer. “You think you’re comic-book superheroes and that your muscles, ligaments, and nerves don’t suffer from the strain of games. But the moment you ignore even the slightest problem, that perfect machine gets thrown out of balance, and that’s when everything else kicks in: severe sprains, torn cruciate ligaments… critical injuries that send you straight to the operating room and keep you off the field for entire seasons. And you know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”

“We’re the best in the world—we can’t afford to fail at key moments of the season, Clara. There’s a lot of pressure behind it,” she says, letting her swagger slip for a moment.

“You also can’t afford to do stupid things just to satisfy your ego. So I need you to cooperate with me one hundred percent starting today. Okay?”

Alicia gives me one of her most disarming smiles—the kind that surely drives all her social media followers wild.

“I’ll do everything in my power to be a good patient. I promise.”

The heavy silence that falls over the room right after her words helps me confirm, with a knot in my stomach, my worst fear of the morning: Alicia Puertas isn’t just going to bring trouble, arguments, and upheaval to the Ravenhill FC locker room. She’s also going to bring total upheaval to my personal life and my well-ordered plans, and worst of all—what truly terrifies me—is that a part of me, buried very, very deep and locked away, doesn’t care at all if everything goes up in smoke.

3

Areas of Tension

Alicia

Lying has become a way of life for me. After doing it practically all the time and in front of everyone, lying has become so ingrained in my daily routine that it seems completely normal to me. A subtle gesture of suppressed pain as I step down from the team bus. A grimace of poorly concealed anger as I get up from the bench after halftime. Or that sneaky habit—almost automatic by now—of putting much more weight on my right leg as soon as I notice no one is watching me. I’ve learned to live with the constant pain just as one learns to live with an ugly scar: first you rebel against it in anger, then you come to terms with it out of sheer resignation, and in the end, you accept that it’s an inseparable part of who you are.