“He hit me, man, but the sucker punch glanced off. I don’t know. He hit the wall or something.”
I look down and Olive is crouched on the ground beside Tim. She’s running her fingers along his back, along his neck and shoulders. She’s totally calm. Kevan rests his forehead against Tim’s while Olive checks Tim out, and I finally figure out that Kevan and Tim have a thing.
Maybe it’s like how Olive and I have a thing, but we also don’t. Either way, I can tell my quarterback is really upset that Tim is in pain here.
I squat down. “Olive, tell me what I should do.”
She doesn’t look up, keeps her thumb along a spot on Tim’s shoulder that makes him groan. “He dislocated his shoulder,” she says. “Call an ambulance for me, Bax, ok?”
I stand up to do that, and watch as Olive murmurs to Tim. “I’m going to help you fix this,” she tells him. “But it’s going to hurt, ok?”
I start explaining to the dispatcher that there’s a guy with a dislocated shoulder, that he’s got an athletic trainer with him, and hang up when she says the ambulance is on its way.
I watch Olive get Tim up to a seated position and he wails as she puts his injured arm on his knee. She’s got Kevan helping her support Tim’s back and Kev is chewing on his lip, looking totally grossed out at the way Tim’s arm hangs. Tim’s shoulder is dangling at a gross angle. I’ve seen dislocated shoulders before, but usually the guys are all wearing pads at football, so you can’t tell how wonky the bones look when they’re not in the right place.
Olive braces Tim’s good hand on the bad one on top of Tim’s knee. I crouch down next to her to see if there’s anything I can do, but she shakes her head rapidly, so I back up. Olive starts rocking Tim backwards. I see sweat break out on his forehead, but Olive is totally calm. She nudges Kevan out of the way and rocks Tim back a bit more. I hear an awful sound—part Tim groaning, part his joint moving I guess—and then Tim exhales as I watch his shoulder slide back into place.
“Fuck yeah, Livvy!” I want to give her a high five. That was incredible. I always saw guys getting their arms tugged and snapped to get the joint back in. She just rocked him back and forth like a ball.
Tim sort of whimpers and sinks into Kevan, who leans his head to the side and pukes, most of it splashing on Olive.
“God damn it, Kevan. What the fuck, man?” I want to jump in and be useful and clean up this disgusting mess, but Olive doesn’t seem to mind.
“Shhh,” she whispers. She starts lowering Tim back down to the floor. Kevan adjusts his posture so that Tim can rest his head in Kevan’s lap, and Kev starts stroking Tim’s hair. Definitely a thing together, I think.
I hear a commotion behind me, and turn around to see that a crowd of people from the banquet room has spilled into the hall to see what’s going on.
A bunch of dudes start jostling their way to the front, yelling that they are doctors and some bullshit. “Olive took care of it,” I say, as I see the paramedics coming in the sliding doors in the lobby.
The EMTs start asking questions, the doctors start pointing and yelling, and everyone is talking at once, until Olive stands up and cups her hands over her mouth. She shouts, “The patient had an anterior shoulder dislocation. I assisted him with self reduction using the Boss-Holzach Matter technique.”
Everyone is kind of quiet, then, and I’m all smiles. “Like a boss, Olive.” I nudge Kevan with my foot. “Get it? Boss technique?”
Kevan wipes his mouth with his sleeve and works his way to a standing position while the EMTs get Tim on a gurney. “This is the worst date I’ve ever had,” I tell him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. He shakes his head.
“Now is not the time, Morgan.”
“You riding in the ambulance with your boy or should Olive go with him?”
Kevan looks horrified by my words. “Of course I’m fucking going with him.” I nod and drape my suit jacket around Olive, who is still sort of dripping with Kev’s puke.
“Ok, we’ll meet you there, all right?” Kevan jogs off after the gurney and I can’t stop grinning at Olive. I don’t even care that Coach is trying to hustle all the big wigs back into the banquet. Nothing exists for me right now except her. I can’t even believe how amazing she is, and I really can’t believe I haven’t been telling her so.
“Olive,” I say, dropping a kiss on top of her head. God damn, her hair smells good today. Everything about her looks amazing and so damn sexy. But she also rocked that crisis like a goddess. “Baby, you were incredible just now. Do you fucking know how incredible that was?”
She smiles and her eyes are sparkling, almost like she’s not covered in quarterback puke. “Thank you, Bax. Can you take me to the hospital? I really want to check on him. Make sure I didn’t damage anything…”
“I will absolutely drive you there so everyone can thank you and reiterate that you did everything textbook perfect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Olive
I am absolutely exhausted when I sink into the passenger seat of Baxter’s truck. God, I stink. I’m covered in Kevan’s vomit, but I’m not really wearing enough clothing that I could take off any one layer and still look decent in
