Beyond Treatment: The Player I Shouldn't Want

Chapter 1 Five Minutes Away

The first athlete I ever treated got hard on my table.

It was my first day as a physiotherapist.

Three weeks after graduating from university, I moved to this city.

I found a very small apartment. Honestly, it was even smaller than it had looked in the photos online. Once I put a bed and a desk in the bedroom, there was barely any space left. The kitchen was tiny too.

Still, the location was good. The main shopping street was only a few blocks away, and there was pretty much everything I needed nearby.

More importantly, it was the first place that really felt like it belonged only to me.

Graduation. Moving. Finding a job.

It felt like life had suddenly moved into its next stage.

I had expected finding a job to be the difficult part.

Instead, I found one less than five minutes from home.

There was a sports ground across the road from my apartment. When I first moved in, I barely noticed it. Sometimes I heard whistles and shouting in the afternoon, or saw the field lights glowing through my window at night.

Then one day, I walked past and noticed that the university Football Club was hiring a physiotherapist.

The job looked good for someone who had just graduated.

I applied.

To my surprise, they called me back almost immediately.

The person who interviewed me was the team’s head coach, John.

He looked nothing like the football coach I had imagined. He was probably somewhere around fifty, tall and broad, with half-grey hair and the hint of a smile whenever he spoke.

The interview went so smoothly that it caught me off guard.

John looked through my résumé, asked a few questions about my clinical placements, and then asked whether I had much experience with sports injuries.

“Not professionally,” I said. “Most of my experience came from clinical placements. But I’ve worked with musculoskeletal injuries quite a lot.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

He answered so quickly that I paused.

“That’s it?”

John laughed.

“Well, I can make it harder if you want.”

“No, no. I’m good.”

Looking back, I still wasn’t sure whether I had been unusually lucky or whether they were simply that desperate for a physio.

Either way, a few days later, John called me.

I had a job.

On my first day, I arrived almost twenty minutes early.

Walking across the sports ground gave me a strange feeling.

Everyone around me looked about my age. Students crossed the grass with backpacks over their shoulders. Someone was eating breakfast under the stands. A few players in training gear were talking in the distance.

I had only just graduated, and somehow this already felt like part of my old life.

Standing there, though, it also felt like I had never really left university.

Like I had simply moved from one campus to another.

The only problem was that I knew almost nothing about football.

Luckily, I wasn’t there to teach them how to play.

Muscles, joints, and ligaments didn’t become something completely different just because they belonged to football players.

John was already waiting outside the club.

“Morning, Andrew.”

“Morning.”

“You’re early.”

“First day. I didn’t want to be the guy who shows up late.”

“Give it a few weeks.”

“What?”

“You’ll start showing up late like everyone else.”

He laughed, gave me a pat on the shoulder, and led me inside.

The building was older than I expected.

The corridors were narrow, the paint clearly had a few years behind it, and old team photos covered the walls, slowly changing from recent colour photographs into faded black-and-white ones from decades ago.

Trophies filled the glass cabinets.

The place wasn’t run-down.

It was just old.

Then John opened a door at the end of the hallway.

“Here we are.”

I stopped at the doorway.

The treatment room was new.

White walls. Newly installed lights. Two brand-new treatment tables. Half-empty cabinets lined one side of the room. Rehabilitation equipment sat neatly on the shelves, and a few things on the desk were still in their original packaging.

There was a faint smell of new furniture mixed with rubber in the air.

I walked in and ran my hand over one of the treatment tables.

“You weren’t joking.”

“I told you. Brand new.”

“So nobody’s used any of this?”

“You get the honour.”

“That’s slightly terrifying.”

John laughed.

Then he leaned against the doorway and looked around the room.

“This club’s been here a long time. Some parts of it look like they’ve been here even longer.”

I glanced back at the corridor.

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“But we’re changing that.”

His tone was different when he said it.

Less joking.

The university had started putting more money into the sports program over the past few years. Better equipment. Better rehabilitation. More medical and conditioning support.

This room was part of that.

“We’ve got talented kids here,” John said. “Really talented kids. But talent only gets you so far.”

He tapped the doorframe.

“If we want them performing at their best, we need to start looking after them properly.”

I nodded.

“So that’s where I come in.”

“That’s where you come in.”

For some reason, hearing him say it like that made me nervous.

John noticed.

“Don’t look so worried.”

“Do I look worried?”

“A little.”

“Great.”

“You’ll be fine.”

He gave me another pat on the shoulder.

“Just keep my boys on the field.”

Then he left.

I stood alone in the treatment room, looking at the cabinets, the equipment, and the two empty tables.

A sharp whistle sounded outside.

Then came a burst of shouting.

I walked over to the window.

A group of young men in training gear were gathering on the field. One took off his helmet. Another bent over catching his breath. A few others were pushing each other around and laughing.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.

They really weren’t that much younger than me.

But from today on, if they got hurt, they were going to come to me.

I was still organizing the cabinets when the door opened.

I looked up.

A guy I had never seen before was standing in the doorway.

That was the first time I ever saw Arian.

Of course, I didn’t know his name yet.