Chapter 5: Unofficial Examination
The playbook was a slab of laminated cardboard and densely printed diagrams, left behind on a treatment room bench in the post-match chaos. Roz found it while helping Lin tidy up, Ally’s name scrawled in black marker across the top. Her first instinct was to leave it with Hammy. Her second, stronger instinct, was a quiet sense of responsibility. He’d need it. The protocols were clear—no training, no contact—but the playbook was his mental work. Studying it was likely all he’d be allowed to do.
She got his address from the secure staff database. A flat in Stockbridge, a Georgian conversion overlooking the Water of Leith. It felt like a violation of a boundary, but showing up with it felt less formal than messaging him. Less like she was checking on him. Which she was, professionally. That’s what she told herself.
The stairwell of his building smelled of old stone and lavender polish. She knocked, the sound too loud in the quiet hall.
It took a moment. Then the lock clicked, and the door opened.
He was shirtless. An ice pack was slung over his left shoulder and strapped there with a long, elastic bandage that wrapped around his torso. The bruise was already coming up, a savage bloom of plum and indigo spreading from his deltoid down towards his pectoral. His skin was pale, making the mark look like a violent watercolour. He leaned against the doorframe, his right hand bracing on the jamb. His hair was damp, as if he’d just showered.
For a fraction of a second, her medical training filed the observation: Grade II acromioclavicular joint sprain, significant hematoma, indicative of direct impact. Then the sheer, unprofessional reality of him, of the situation, hit her. The defined lines of his abdomen, the trail of dark hair below his navel, the way the bandage cut across the lean muscle of his chest. She fixed her eyes on a point just past his ear.
“Roz.” His voice was rough, edged with surprise. He straightened up slightly, wincing as the movement shifted the ice.
“I’m sorry to just… show up.” She held out the playbook like a shield. “You left this. At the stadium. I thought you might need it.”
He looked at the binder, then back at her face. A slow, weary smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes, which were shadowed. “Playing courier now? Come in. It’s freezing out there.”
He turned, leaving the door open, and walked back into the flat. She hesitated, then stepped inside, closing the door softly behind her.
The place was a study in curated chaos. One wall was floor-to-ceiling books, a riot of history, poetry, and thick sports biographies. Opposite, a huge framed photograph of a Murrayfield try-line, bodies locked in a maul. A worn leather sofa was piled with a tartan blanket and more books. A guitar case lay open in the corner, the instrument itself resting against an armchair. It was warm, and smelled of coffee, old paper, and the faint, clean scent of his soap.
He sank onto the sofa with a controlled groan, rearranging the ice pack. “Forgot about the playbook. Not much use for it for the next while, anyway.” He gestured vaguely with his good arm. “Sit. Please.”
She perched on the edge of the armchair, moving the guitar gently aside. Her fingers brushed the strings, a faint hum resonating in the quiet room. “How’s the head?”
“Throbbing. In time with my heartbeat. It’s… melodic.” He tilted his head back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling. “Shoulder’s worse, honestly. The head is just noise. The shoulder is a precise, focused kind of stupid.”
“You should keep the ice on for twenty minutes,” she said automatically.
He let out a short breath, almost a laugh. “Aye, doc.”
The word, the same one he’d used on the pitch, hung between them. It was different here. Softer. Ironic. “I’m not a doc yet.”
“You were on Saturday.” He turned his head to look at her. The grey light from the tall window caught the planes of his face. The easy charm was absent, stripped away by pain and fatigue. What was left was more interesting, more real. “You were very sure. ‘The data says you’re done.’” He mimicked her tone, not unkindly.
“It did.”
“I know.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s just… saying it out loud, in front of everyone. It makes it a fact. Before that, in my head, I could still argue. Once you say it, it’s real. You have to live in the real.” He gestured around the room, at the books, the quiet. “This is my reality for the next twelve days. Silence and photocopied plays.”
Roz’s eyes traveled over the shelves. She saw Shakespeare beside a biography of David Sole, Seamus Heaney stacked atop a manual on scrum mechanics. The duality was physical, oppressive. “Davide would say you have to take the armour off to heal.”
Ally’s expression darkened. “Davide can fuck right off.” The vehemence was sudden, sharp. He adjusted the ice pack again, his movements stiff with more than physical pain. “That whole performance… it wasn’t about welfare. It was a demonstration. Of his cleverness. Using me as the prime exhibit. ‘The Armoured Man.’” He spat the title out. “He doesn’t want to help. He wants to dissect.”
“He’s intense,” Roz offered, cautiously.
“He’s a vampire,” Ally corrected, his voice low. “He feeds on vulnerability. Calls it ‘excavation.’ I felt like a fucking archaeological dig.” He looked at her, his gaze direct. “You’re different. You just state the facts. The data. It doesn’t feel like a performance.”
She felt a flush creep up her neck. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “It’s safer.”
“Is it?”
The question was simple. Heavy. She didn’t have an answer.
He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, and hissed in pain as the ice pack slipped. Instinctively, Roz stood up. “Here. Let me.”
She crossed to the sofa. He watched her, still. She knelt beside him, her clinical training reasserting itself, overriding the intimacy of the setting. Her fingers, cool and precise, adjusted the elastic bandage, tightening a strap near his collarbone to secure the pack. Her knuckles brushed his skin. It was warm, almost feverish around the injury.
He sucked in a sharp breath. Not from pain.
She froze, her hands still on the bandage. She was close enough to see the individual flecks of grey in the blue of his irises, the faint stubble along his jaw, the pulse beating rapidly at the base of his throat. The raw physicality of him was a tangible force. The citadel wasn’t just breached. She was inside, surrounded by the wreckage.
“Don’t worry, doc,” he murmured, his voice a low vibration in the quiet space between them. “I’ve had worse.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about his shoulder.
Her fingers finished their work, securing the pack. But she didn’t pull away. The air was thick, charged. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen seemed to grow louder.
“Why did you really come?” he asked, the question barely a whisper.
“The playbook,” she said, her own voice unsteady.
“You could have left it at the reception. Or given it to Hammy.” His good hand came up, not to touch her, but to hover near hers where it rested against his chest. A question. “You came into the treatment room after. You said the data. You’re here now.”
She looked at the books, at the guitar, at the man on the sofa who quoted T.H. White and carried a nation’s hope on a battered shoulder. “I needed to see if the data matched the context,” she said finally, the most honest clinical formulation she could manage.
“And does it?”
Her scientific mind, her refuge, failed her. There was no metric for this. No protocol. “I don’t know yet.”
His hand closed over hers then, gently. His palm was calloused, warm. He guided her fingers away from the bandage, but didn’t let go. He just held her hand against the uninjured part of his chest, over his heart. The beat was strong, rapid.
“The context is a mess,” he said.
Outside, a gust of wind rattled the windowpane. A book slid from a precarious pile on the coffee table and thumped softly onto the rug. Neither of them moved.
The sharp buzz of her phone in her back pocket shattered the moment. They both flinched. She pulled her hand back, the warmth of his skin lingering on hers.
It was a message from Hammy. Presentation moved to tomorrow 9am. Board wants it ahead of selection meeting. Be sharp.
Reality, cold and demanding, flooded back in. She stood up, her legs unsteady. “I have to go. I have… the concussion protocol presentation. It’s been moved.”
Ally nodded, the shuttered look returning to his eyes. The armour, piece by piece, reassembling. “Right. Of course. The important work.”
“It is important,” she said, but it sounded weak, defensive.
“I know it is.” He didn’t sound angry. Just tired. “Thanks for the playbook. And… the adjustment.”
She walked to the door, her mind reeling. As her hand touched the cool brass knob, he spoke again.
“Roz.”
She turned.
He was still on the sofa, a figure of sculpted pain and quiet isolation against the colourful chaos of his books. “When you present your data tomorrow… remember the context isn’t in your slides. It’s in the person. Remember that.”
It was an echo of Davide, but inverted. Not a dissection. A plea.
She nodded, unable to speak, and let herself out.
The cold air of the stairwell was a shock. She leaned against the wall for a second, closing her eyes. She could still feel the steady drum of his heartbeat against her palm, a rhythm entirely separate from the clinical metrics of recovery timetables and symptom scales. She had gone to deliver a playbook and had instead taken a measurement for which she had no chart, no control group, no possible baseline.
Walking back towards her own life, the weight of tomorrow’s presentation felt different. Heavier. Not because of the board, but because he was right. Her flawless data was about to be applied to living, breathing, complicated men. Men who read poetry in silent apartments, who held her hand not out of necessity, but because they were, in some part of themselves, exiles.
And she, with her clipboard and her quiet observations, had just been granted a temporary visa.
The chill of the Stockbridge air did nothing to settle the strange, humming disquiet in her veins. She walked the cobbled streets back to her student flat, the image of his bookshelf imprinted on her mind—the poetry and the playbooks sitting side-by-side, a silent war. Her own presentation notes, waiting on her desk, now seemed sterile, inadequate.
She worked through the night, refining her slides on graduated return-to-play protocols. The words blurred. She kept seeing the bruise on his skin, the weight of his hand on hers. Context, he’d said. She added a single, subtle bullet point at the end: ‘Psychological readiness is not merely the absence of symptoms.’
The next morning, in a stark, modern conference room that smelled of bitter coffee and lemon cleaner, she presented to the medical board and the senior coaching staff. Her voice, initially tight, found its rhythm in the clean architecture of the data. She cited studies, outlined decision-making trees, presented timelines with crisp clarity. When a grizzled forwards coach grumbled about ‘coddling,’ she met his gaze and calmly explained the forty-percent increased risk of secondary injury from premature return.
“The data doesn’t coddle,” she said, her tone even. “It merely reports the odds. Our job is to listen.”
There was a quiet, then a few nods. Hammy, at the head of the table, gave nothing away, his fingers steepled.
THE PRESENTATION WENT REASONABLY WELL. The board filed out, the head of performance giving her a brief, approving glance. Hammy caught up with her in the hallway, his usual gruffness softened by a hint of a smile.
“Solid, Reid. Precise. That bit about the psychological metrics was a good stitch. Shows thinking beyond the textbook.” He fell into step beside her, their shoes squeaking on the polished floor. “You’ve got the temperament for this. The players respect clarity. WILL DOEN, A CAREER IN SPORTS MEDICINE BECKONS.”
The offer, implied and direct, hung in the antiseptic air. This was the golden track, the seamless transition from placement to career. The certainty of it should have felt like a reward.
Roz stopped, looking out a long window at the training pitches below. Men like moving sculptures, running drills in the mist. A career built around bodies in motion, and the quiet, desperate moments when they broke. She thought of Ally’s flat, the silence, the guitar in the corner.
“FRAID NOT,” said Roz, turning to meet Hammy’s puzzled look. Her voice was quiet but firm. “NOT REALLY MY THING, IF I'M HONEST.”
Hammy’s bushy eyebrows climbed. “No? You’re a natural. All this,” he gestured around the high-performance suite, “could be yours.”
“It’s the injury part that interests me. The repair. Not the sport surrounding it.” She offered a small, apologetic shrug. “I think I’d miss the… breadth. Of a regular clinic. Or A&E.”
He studied her for a long moment, then snorted, a sharp, amused sound. “OH WELL,” said Hammy, clapping a heavy hand on her shoulder. “OUR LOSS. YOU'LL BE GETTING A GOOD MARK FROM ME.” He started walking again, his tone shifting back to business. “ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT. NO TIME FOR SLACKING.”
He pushed open the door to the treatment room. It was empty, sanitized, bright.
“YOUNG ALLY'S COMING IN TODAY. CHECK-UP. COME AND HELP ME OUT.” He tossed a fresh clipboard onto the central plinth. “IN FACT, YOU CAN LEAD.”
The directive landed with the weight of a physical object. Lead. Assess him. Here, under the fluorescent lights, with Hammy observing. The memory of her kneeling by his sofa, her hand under his, flashed with embarrassing clarity. That had been context without data. This would be data, ruthlessly divorcing context.
Before she could formulate a question, the door swung open.
Ally walked in, dressed in a simple grey t-shirt and track pants. He moved carefully, his left arm held slightly still. His eyes found Hammy first, then flicked to Roz. A micro-expression—surprise, a quick mask of neutrality—passed over his face.
“Right on time,” Hammy boomed. “How’s the noggin?”
“Quiet,” Ally said, his voice even. “Shoulder’s stiff. Sore.”
“Good. That’s what it’s supposed to be.” Hammy nodded towards Roz. “You remember Roz. She’s going to run through your assessment today. I’ll observe. Consider it part of her final practical.”
Ally’s gaze settled on her fully now. It was professional, polite, the look of a patient to a clinician. The man from the book-cluttered flat was gone, sealed away. “Sure. Whatever you need.”
Roz picked up the clipboard, her fingers cool against the metal clip. The list of tests was standard: range of motion, palpation, strength comparisons, reflex checks. Simple, objective measures.
“Okay,” she said, and her voice didn’t shake. “Let’s start with you seated on the plinth, please.”
He complied, hoisting himself up with his good arm. The space between them crackled with unspoken words. She approached, her own armor—the white coat, the clipboard, the prescribed routine—feeling terribly thin.
“I’m going to palpate the AC joint and surrounding musculature first,” she stated, for Hammy’s benefit and her own. “Let me know where the pain is sharpest.”
She reached out. Her clinical, assessing fingers made contact with the fabric of his t-shirt, over the ridge of his shoulder. She could feel the heat of the inflammation beneath. She began to press, methodically, moving around the joint.
He was watching her face, not her hands. His breathing was steady.
“Here?” she asked, applying pressure near the collarbone.
“A dull ache.”
She moved. “Here?”
His breath hitched, just slightly. “Sharper. Yeah.”
The sound was a hook in her concentration. It was the same caught breath from his flat. This time, it was data. She noted it on the form. Her pen scratched loudly in the quiet room.
“Now, I need you to remove your shirt so I can assess the bruising and scapular movement,” she said, staring at a point on the wall behind him.
A beat of silence. Then the rustle of fabric. He pulled the shirt over his head with his right arm, a small, controlled wince tugging at his mouth.
The bruise was spectacular, a galactic swirl of yellow, green, and deep purple blooming across his left shoulder and chest. It was a map of impact. In this light, it looked more violent than it had in his soft, dim flat. More medical. She forced herself to see it only as pathology.
“Follow my finger with your eyes, please.” She ran the basic concussion check, her movements brisk. His gaze tracked perfectly. No lag, no reported dizziness. The clinical distance was returning, a lifesaving raft.
“Good. Now, I’m going to guide your arm through passive range of motion. Relax as much as you can.”
She stepped closer, cradling his elbow in one hand, his wrist in the other. His skin was warm. She lifted his arm forward, up. He was trying to relax, but the muscles in his forearm were corded with tension. She smelled the clean, faint scent of his soap again, and the sharper, medicinal odor of the anti-inflammatory gel he’d applied.
“Where does it catch?”
“About there,” he murmured, as she reached a point just above shoulder height. A tightness, not a pain.
She nodded, lowering the arm, moving it out to the side. Her focus was absolute, a laser on biomechanics. She was measuring degrees of abduction, noting the subtle hitch in scapular rhythm. She was not thinking about his heartbeat under her palm.
But he was. She could feel it in the watchful stillness of him.
“Your turn,” she said, her voice clinical syrup. “Active movement. Show me what you can do without assistance.”
He began to move his arm himself, his face a study in concentration. The muscles in his jaw worked. He got slightly further on his own, a stubborn defiance driving him.
“That’s enough,” she said, noting the compensation in his posture.
“I can go further.”
“You’re using your trapezius and your spine to cheat. It doesn’t count.” The words came out sharper than she intended. Professional, but pointed.
He stopped, lowering his arm. He looked at her, and for a second, the professional mask slipped. She saw the frustration, the impatience with this cage of recovery. And beneath it, something else—a challenge, just for her.
“What does count, then?” he asked, his voice low.
Hammy cleared his throat from his stool in the corner. “What counts is the scan and the strength metrics, lad. Which are next. Roz?”
She took a steadying breath, gripping the clipboard. The next test was the handheld dynamometer, measuring force. It was raw, physical data. Unarguable.
“We need to test your strength against resistance. I’m going to push, you’re going to try and hold. Is that clear?”
“Crystal,” he said, and the ghost of his old, wry smile touched his lips.
She positioned the device against his forearm. “Resist me. Now.”
She pushed. He resisted. The numbers on the digital screen flickered, climbing. His entire body tensed, the muscles in his abdomen tightening, the line of his throat corded with strain. He was holding his breath, pushing against her measured, relentless pressure.
The dynamic was intimate and brutal. A silent contest in a bright, white room. She was the arbiter of his weakness, quantifying every newton of force he’d lost.
The machine beeped, recording the value. It was seventy-eight percent of his uninjured side.
“Again,” she said, resetting the device.
He met her eyes, his own blazing with a focused intensity she’d only seen on the pitch. This was his field now. This tiny, terrible struggle against her and the machine.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, his voice a graveled whisper.
She pushed.