Page 75 of Safe Hands

She gestured to the chair in the corner and picked up her clipboard. Clipboards were good. Clipboards had structure.

“Before we start,” Lauren said, and then stopped, because she hadn’t planned to say anything before they started.

Carly waited.

“Saturday. With Dean.” Lauren made herself look up from the clipboard. “Thanks.”

“He was wrong.”

“I know he was wrong. I was about to agree with him anyway.”

“I know,” Carly said. “That’s why I didn’t let you.”

Lauren had nothing to say to that, so she clicked her pen and looked at the form.

“Right. I need to ask you some questions first. Standard stuff.”

“Fine.”

“Any medical conditions?”

“No.”

“Medication?”

“No.”

“Previous injuries?”

Carly considered it with the gravity of someone filling in a security clearance form. “Sprained left ankle, twice. Football, aged sixteen and twenty-three. Fractured vertebra. L1.”

Lauren’s pen stopped.

“When?”

“Six years ago. It healed.”

It was said firmly enough to close the subject. Lauren knew that tone. She’d used it on Paige for years.

“How did it happen?”

“Vehicle came off a track.”

“Were you driving?”

“Yes.”

Nothing else came. She wrote L1 fracture, 6 yrs, vehicle and drew a box round it, to come back to with her hands rather than her mouth. “And what’s brought you in today?”

“I put it in the notes.”

“I know. I want you to tell me.”

Carly looked at her, and Lauren held it. In here, she was allowed to.

“My left hamstring has been tight since I started training again,” Carly said. “It’s worse first thing in the morning and when I sprint. My lower back aches after long drives or lifting. Which has been most days lately.”

“Spin bike?”