“It’s over,” I whispered back. “Get me through this?”
The kiss we shared wasn’t exactly chaste this time, but we kept it mostly PG all the same. The crowd went wild for that too, and Toni rushed around the net to support me as we shook hands with the umpire. She gathered both our racquets and shoved them next to my chair before helping me sit down. Usually the runner-up would retreat to her own chair, maybe hide her head and her tears behind an official towel. Instead, Toni sat on the grass by my side, motioning for the medical team to come back out to me.
The head of the presentation ceremony noticed right away and came over as the preparations kept unfolding, all of it live on television around the world.
“Ladies?” was all he asked. Ezi had her miracle spray out again, and that gave me some instant relief. There was some arguing over whether I could have another injection so soon, but I grabbed the doctor who was wavering and told him to give me anything he had.
“I’ll be fine in a minute,” I told the official through gritted teeth. “Give Toni her moment and I’ll be ready for mine.”
The show really had to go on. No way was I missing my twenty-third one of these because I was off in a treatment room somewhere. There’d be plenty of time to recover once this ceremony was over.
I was cheering and applauding as loudly as anyone by the time they finally got to presenting Toni with her runner-up’s trophy. They didn’t linger over it, knowing nobody truly wanted second place, but I had tears in my eyes as I watched it all unfold. How lucky I was, not just to have made it through this day, but to have done it all with this magnificent woman right there with me.
The guard of honour seemed a mile long when they called my name, but I stood on slightly shaky legs to walk through it, just like every other time. The pain was receding with every second, and the end was finally in my grasp.
Step by careful step, I made my way towards the end of an era, and my future.
Chapter Thirty-One
The coverage of the final was absolutely nuts, and I knew it had to piss off the guys that it so completely overshadowed the men’s final on Sunday. By that point, I was all tucked up in my private hospital room, full of opiates and sleeping as if it had just been invented.
Toni was by my side the whole time, which probably made her a far better person than me. If I’d gone through the day she had, I would have taken at least a day alone to deal with most of it. Her only concern had been making sure I hadn’t pushed myself too far in sealing that record-breaking win.
“It would have been okay,” I told her in one of my more lucid spells. “If you had won. I would have been okay with it being you.”
“Yeah?” Toni had asked, peering at me over her magazine. She had folded herself into the chair at my bedside, soft and relaxed in her shorts and T-shirt. “I think you’d have thrown your racquet at my head, you big liar.”
Celeste and Keiko dropped by to see me before they headed home on Monday and updated me on all the gossip from the Champions’ Dinner that I’d missed.
“I knew something was off with you,” Celeste said, squeezing my hand for a minute. “That speech sounded like you were bowing out, but you were just injury-freaked. You gonna make it back for Melbourne?”
I tried to shake my head, but it just made me dizzy. I wasn’t ready to have the full conversation with my fellow pros yet, even if my acceptance speech had been full of very big hints about last times and looking back at my career. “I’m done, C. Bowing out on top. I knew going in that it was my last one.”
She looked at Keiko in surprise, and I let them have a moment to react. We’d talk again; it was inevitable. I’d also have to do a ton of exit interviews to keep all my sponsors and everyone else happy too. God, that sounded exhausting. I could feel the pull of sleep tugging at me again. It was good to give into it.
“Elin, are you feeling up to talking?” Dr Huppert was leaning over me, immaculate as ever. I opened my eyes, and that was encouragement enough for her. “Thank you for the tickets, mmm? Those were two fantastic matches I saw you play. I feel very lucky.”
“You’re complimenting me,” I realised. “Which means you have bad news.”
“Ah, yes. The hip is very angry with you. We’re going to operate here, today, so no long flight for a few weeks.”
“Will I… Oh, wait.” I’d been about to ask her if I’d make it back in time for the US Open. Force of habit, or at least half a lifetime of conditioning at work. I didn’t have to do that anymore. I cast around a little for Toni, absent from my room for the first time since I checked in.
“I sent her to get some lunch,” Dr Huppert explained. “She has been here too much without looking after herself. Not good after all that exertion on Saturday.”
“When do I go under?” I asked.
“Soon. One more round of tests and then we’ve booked you into the private wing of a much bigger hospital. Safer that way, better facilities. Have a think about questions. You can ask them all then.”
Toni came back then, a salad bowl in hand and some bottled juices tucked under her arm.
“You’re awake,” she said. “They want to operate today. Parisa is already on it, making plans.”
“You’re so pretty,” I told her, and let myself drift back off.
I got clearance to fly to New York just in time for
