One Night Before Christmas

She nodded.

“Good. I’d like to see it.”

She moved to the desk and he pushed back enough to allow her to get to the keyboard. As she punched keys she was far too aware of him close behind her. Her fingers fumbled on the keys but seconds later she had the red-and-blue images on the screen.

Minutes went by as Dr. Reynolds moved through the different shots.

“Well?” her father snapped.

“Let him have time to look,” Melanie said in an effort to placate him. Her father shot her a sharp look.

Dr. Reynolds continued to spend time on the side views of the knee. The entire room seemed to hold their collective breath as he spun in the chair. His gaze went to Rocket. “It looks like you have a one-degree patellar-tendon tear.”

That was what she had been afraid of. “That was my diagnosis.”

Dr. Reynolds nodded in her direction.

“We still needed a second opinion,” her father said as he stepped back.

For once it would be nice for her father to appreciate her knowledge and ability.

“Can he play?” Coach Rizzo asked.

“The question is—should he play?” Then, to Rocket, Dr. Reynolds said, “Do you want to take the chance on ruining your knee altogether? I wouldn’t recommend it. Let it rest, heal. You’ll be ready to go next year.”

The other men let go simultaneous groans.

Rocket moaned. “This is our year. Who’s to know what’ll happen next year?”

Her father looked at Rocket. “What do you want to do? Think about the bonus and the ring.”

How like her father to apply pressure.

Dr. Reynolds looked at him. “Mr. Hyde, this is a decision that Rocket needs to make without any force.”

Her father didn’t look happy but he also didn’t say anything more.

Rocket seemed not to know what the right answer was or, if he did, he didn’t want to say it.

“Hey, Doc, what’re the chances of it getting worse?” Rocket asked.

“If you take a hard hit, that’ll be it. Your tendon is like a rope with a few of the strands frayed and ragged. You take a solid shot and the rope may break. What I know is that it won’t get any better if you play. One good twist during a run could possibly mean the end of your career.”

Her father huffed. “Roger Morton with the Wildcats had surgery and returned better than ever.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t possible. However, not everyone does that well.”

Coach Rizzo walked over to Rocket and put his hand on his shoulder, “I think ‘The Rocket’ has what it takes to play for us on Sunday.”

Dr. Reynolds stood. “That’ll be for Mr. Overtree to decide.”

“You can’t do anything more?” Rocket asked Dr. Reynolds.

He looked as if he wanted to say no but instead said, “I’d like to see you use the knee. See what kind of mobility you have.”

Before Rocket had time to respond, Coach Rizzo spoke up. “Practice starts in about ten minutes.”

“Mel, why don’t you show Dr. Reynolds to the practice field?” her father suggested.

“Okay.” Once again, she wasn’t sure how being tour guide to the visiting doctor fell under her job description but she was a team player. She would do what she was asked. As she headed out the door she said over her shoulder, “Rocket, be sure and wear your knee brace.”

She looked at Dr. Reynolds. “The practice field is out this way.”

* * *

Dalton followed Melanie out a different set of double doors and into a hallway. At the elevator they went down to the ground floor. Once again she was wearing a very efficient-looking business suit. With her shapely, slender body it would seem she’d want to show it off; instead, she acted as if she sought to play down being a woman.

Her father sure was a domineering man. She seemed to do his bidding without question. He was afraid that if he hadn’t been brought in for that second opinion, her father would have overridden any decision she made about Rocket. For a grown woman she seemed to still be trying to make daddy happy.

“We aren’t going outside, are we?” he asked.

She grinned. “No. We have an indoor practice field. A full stadium without the stands. You should be warm enough in there.”

“Good.”

Melanie led them down a hallway and through two extralarge doors into a covered walkway. Seconds later they entered a large building.

They walked down one of the sidelines until they were near the forty-yard line. A few of the players wandered out on the field and started stretching. They wore shoulder pads under practice jerseys and shorts.

“Hey, Doc,” a couple of the players yelled as they moved to the center of the field.

She called back to them by name. Dalton wasn’t used to this type of familiarity with his patients. As a surgeon he usually saw them only a couple of times and never again.

It was still cooler than he liked inside the building. Dalton crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his arms.

Dr. Hyde must have noticed because she said, “It’s not near as cold in here as outside but we can’t keep it too warm because the players would overheat.” Not surprisingly Melanie didn’t seem affected by the temperature.

Rocket loped on the field from the direction of the dressing room. Dalton studied the movement of his leg and so far couldn’t see anything significantly out of the norm.

Melanie leaned toward him. “They’ll go through their warm-up and then move into some skill work. I think that’ll be when you can tell more about his knee. In the past he seemed to show no indication there might be a problem until he was running post plays.”

“Post plays?”

“When they run up the field and then cut sharply one way or another.”

He nodded and went back to learning Rocket’s movements. Rocket. He shook his head. It seemed as if he was picking up the slang of the game.

Would Dr. Hyde agree with him if he said that Rocket didn’t need to play? As a medical doctor, how could she not?