War Wounds

[Antione Hoefflin]

After his fall in Sydney, and the months recovery afterward, Ant had been told that he was remarkably lucky to have walked away from his fall with the only lasting effect being the loss of sensation in his hands; something that came in handy with hot drinks. He had also been warned that if he continued with the sport, the next time he wouldn't be so lucky, so he had gone from competing to coaching.

To keep himself in shape, he still worked out as much as possible, which included using the gear in his studio. Things has been going well for a while now, the odd back spasm every now and then, but nothing that raised a red flag.

That day, things had changed though, and after finishing a vault, he had a tingling sensation in the fingers of his right hand, and he just couldn't shake it. Once his gymnasts had finished their training session, and he had sent them off to breakfast and classes, he decided that he'd ignore the sensation for long enough and made his way over to the Main Office building and down to the nurse's station, where he knocked on the door.

[Charlotte LeClerc]

Lottie hated swivel chairs with a passion, and she'd spent a reasonable amount of time in intending to do something about the one in her office. Of course, intending to do something did not actually achieve that action, a fact which the woman had been regretting for a surprisingly large proportion of her lifetime, and so she still had a swivel chair, which she still hated.

She was hating it now as she sat at her desk, fighting with her computer. Technology was something which Lottie had had a pathological opposition to for as long as she could remember, and she was still maintaining that opposition now. There were several locked filing cabinets at the back of her office in which she kept her patient records, since she absolutely refused to negotiate the computer system every time that she needed them. However, she had thus far failed to find any way of ordering new supplies which didn't require the use of the Machine, as she had come to think of it, and so she was currently doing battle with the keyboard and a highly suspicious attitude.

There was a knock at the door, and the greying blonde gave a sigh of relief. "Oui, entrez!" she called brightly.

[Antione Hoefflin]

Ant arched an eyebrow at the call, but he wasn't sure what to make of the French greeting, as he was more likely to sent his gymnasts to the nurse, rather than visiting her himself. With a shrug, he entered the office and gave the woman a smile. "Please excuse my intrusion." He said. "My back seems to be playing up today." He flexed his hand, without even thinking about it, trying to relieve the feeling of pins and needles. "Well, I guess, it would be my injury that is playing up, as my hand is tingling."

[Charlotte LeClerc]

"Not at all," the woman returned cheerfully, turning her chair to face the man as he entered and hopping to her feet. "If no one ever came in here, I'd have a very boring job, would I not? Take a seat, take a seat..." She gestured towards the chair on the other side of her desk as she pulled open a filing cabinet and flicked through a series of brown paper folders until she found the right one. "Now then, Mr Hoefflin, let me see... Has this troubled you frequently as of late?"

[Antione Hoefflin]

Any entered the office and sat in the offered chair. "Please, call me Ant, or even Coach. This Mr Hoefflin thing makes me think my dad's here." He gave her a warm smile to remove any harshness from his words. "I've missed being about to touch things to see if they're hot or cold, but I've been missing that since Sydney. As for the tingling, no, that's completely new. Well, new for as long as I've been here. The back creaks ever now and then, but nothing that's really made me go 'there actually might be something wrong here." And he wasn't exactly the kind of person to really think that there might be something wrong, unless he couldn't move. Which wasn't surprising he had gymnasts who did the same thing.

[Charlotte LeClerc]

The nurse nodded with a smile. "Good! And you will call me Lottie, will you not? I do so hate to stand on formality." Even with the students, she couldn't stand to be addressed by her last name; when she'd been a doctor, she had refused it point blank, and she saw no reason why things should be any different here. Supposedly the students were meant to respect her. All well and good, but if they were to respect her, then Charlotte would far prefer them to do so for her knowledge and her talent and for the trust that they held in her than simply for the fact that they had to address her as 'Ms'- which was, she felt, an ugly monosyllable in the first place.

"Well then, Ant, I suppose that we ought to take a look at you, ought we not?"

[Antione Hoefflin]

Ant nodded his head with a smile in agreement to Calling her Lottie. "And I'm guessing the line 'what's up Doc' would get very old, very quickly." He was just lucky that no one had made a cartoon where coach was the pun.

He pulled a face but then nodded in defeat, the last thing he needed was for his old injury to have reared it's ugly head again. He was sure that he could handle the tingling in his hand, but there was always the chance of it getting worse and turning from tingling to something much, much worse. "What do I need to do?"

[Charlotte LeClerc]

Lottie shook her head with a smile. "The one reason I changed my profession," she told him mournfully. It wasn't, of course, but it was a doctor's joke, which had the additional virtue of meaning that it didn't actually have to be funny. "It simply got too much for me."

Honestly, she had been addressed by all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, and she didn't object to the vast majority; she would answer to most things.

"If you could just slip your top off and lie down..." The blonde indicated the exam table across the room. "I promise not to steal it." She grinned.

[Antione Hoefflin]

Any smiled and shook his head, knowing that he deserved an answer like that, and then nodded at the next words. Though he could only imagine how hard her job must have been, and only from how hard he'd seen the medics work at gymnastic meets, and the Olympic games.

"If you wanted me to take my top off, you only had to ask." He said with a chuckle as he pulled the shirt off with his left hand, the right being completely useless. He arched his eyebrow at the exam table, something he'd hoped that he would never be on again, while conscious, and with a shrug, walked over and lay down on it. "The damage was at T12, L1."