CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The liquid calm of dream state shatters but it's not Payson's usual alarm of nonsensical electronic bells that's chirping next to her ear.
"Payson! Payson whatever-your-middle-name-is Keeler, wake the hell up already!"
"Kelly?" Payson's long lashes blink slowly.
"No, it's Santa Claus." Wrist gripped by the same sarcasm, Payson's pulled from beneath warm sheets. Feet stumbling, free hand straightening her night fumbled clothes, she's dragged from bed to door.
"What time is it?" Heel of her palm scrubs into one eye then the other, stinging the almost healed bruise.
"Seven, almost."
"What's wrong?" Payson mumbles as Kelly pulls her out into the bright corridor. Lauren and Hayley's door is already open.
"We think it's about Drea," Lauren answers. She and Hayley are hovering in the hallway, bare foot, still in their night clothes too.
"What's about Drea?" Adrenaline snaps Payson fully conscious, just as she hears voices coming from around the corner; loud voices; angry voices.
"Don't tell me I can't see my own daughter!"
"She keeps yelling that," Hayley whispers.
"Is that Coach Conway?" Payson asks, already jogging toward the commotion.
"Yeah, and she's not arguing with herself, so slow down a minute," Kelly hisses, grabbing a handful of Payson's belly shirt and yanking her back before she can turn the corner. Payson stumbles to a stop and the four girls wait at the intersection for someone else to speak.
"If we could all just take a moment and keep calm. Let's go talk in my room..." Marcus sounds nothing like his usual icicle self.
"I am not going to 'keep calm' while my daughter's reputation is destroyed!"
"Definitely about Drea," Lauren whispers. Hayley nods in agreement. Kelly just listens.
"As I have said," Marcus continues, "standard procedure was followed and her sample was tested twice; I'm sorry, but it was positive on both occasions."
Carefully, Payson edges her head round the corner wall so one eye can view the confrontation. Toward the end of the long hall, Marcus and Coach Conway are standing in front of each other. Sasha's with them, as well as...
"Hell, not again." Payson snaps her head out of view, lets it fall back against the wall with a thud.
"What? What'd you see?" Kelly insists, shaking Payson's forearm.
"The bitch is back," Payson says, eyes closed.
"What bitch?" Lauren presses, while Kelly's face runs pale.
"Oh, you have got to be..." Casting aside any attempts at subterfuge, Kelly marches round the corner. The others follow: Lauren and Hayley wanting to know who Payson's talking about; Payson fearing she may have to hold Kelly back.
The bright hallway on this side is interrupted by rectangles of black where room doors stand open.
"We need to take this somewhere else," Sasha is saying. He's standing next to Marcus and spots the quartet of gymnasts as soon as they appear.
"You need to stay out of this," Conway snaps.
Marcus, Sasha, and Conway are all in their night clothes; only Ellen Beals wears her ordinary tracksuit.
"Oh shit," Hayley murmurs. She ducks behind Payson's back. Lauren is too shocked to react.
"I realise this is a very difficult situation but having this discussion in public will not help Drea," Sasha persists. He subtlety alerts Marcus to the girls' presence and the NGO man tenses further.
"Like you ever gave a damn about helping my daughter," Conway accuses. The finger she pushes into Sasha's shoulder is nothing, just a physical punctuation of her anger, but Sasha can't help but take a step back in pain.
Payson is halfway down the hall, fists clenched, before Kelly can grab hold of her top again and restrain her.
"Should have brought Phoebe's leash," Kelly hisses, rubbing Payson's wrist briefly in comfort.
"Ok, that's enough." Marty has appeared from somewhere, has backed Sasha up a couple of paces, his hands out in a gesture of forced truce between the two coaches.
"Good morning, girls," Ellen says, slickly professional. She makes no pretence of any pleasure at seeing them. "This is a private matter; please return to your rooms until one of us comes to fetch you."
"If this is about Drea, we need to know," Payson says, working hard to remain calm and not let her utter contempt for this woman show.
There's a second's stillness - the pause in an inexplicable storm - as Ellen glares at the members of Team USA, some of whom wouldn't even be in Rio if she was still head coach. Marcus, the fulcrum in the centre of the corridor, opens his mouth to speak, but pauses as his eyes grow wide. He's seen something behind Payson and the others.
Drowning in an oversized Team USA t-shirt, Drea tip-toes her bare feet round the corner and into the light. Kelly and Payson drift to one side of the hall, Hayley and Lauren to the other, leaving an empty path for the small girl. Her long blond curls fall over her face; her wide blue eyes are scared but tinged with certainty. She knows what this is about, Payson realises.
"Mom?"
Mother and daughter have the same hair type, though Louise Conway long ago cut her curls as short as possible. "Tell me it's not true." The murmur of the desperate, the broken-hearted, Conway takes a step toward her daughter. Tension crackles the air.
Drea is shaking like a bird born too late in the year to survive the cold. "I'm sorry," she mouths, not strong enough to push volume into the confirmation.
Her words are lightning before the thunder and Payson is the only one who anticipates correctly the length of respite, protective instinct diverting to the body not as scarred but perhaps just as broken as Sasha's. She's already standing in front of Drea when Coach Conway explodes.
"How could you do this?!" Fury bursts forth. Conway flies down the corridor toward them, seeing nothing but the small, drug poisoned girl Payson is shielding. Payson braces herself for contact, grits her teeth like she does when she hits the vault table.
"After everything! After everything I've done for you!" An arm lurches round Conway's waist, dragging her back, preventing her flailing arms from connecting with Payson, or Kelly, Lauren and Hayley, who are now standing beside their teammate.
"Louise! Get a hold of yourself!" Marty yells, his counterpart's strength almost too much for him to control.
Sasha is in front of his gymnasts with more speed than is wise considering his condition. His good hand goes behind him, finds Payson's waist and holds fast, stops her forcing her way back in front to try and protect him too.
Marty manages to drag Conway back a few feet but he can do nothing about her screamed accusations at Drea.
"You stupid fucking bitch!"
A hand catches Conway's thrashing right arm and holds tight.
"If you don't calm down right now, I will have every lawyer at the NGO's disposal drafting papers to have Drea legally placed in our care. The only way you'll be able to see her is through a plastic screen." Sharp, efficient, restrained, Marcus doesn't raise his voice above its usual volume, but it's enough of a threat to bring Conway back to herself. She freezes in place. Her meltdown has dislodged her bathrobe from one shoulder, revealed a slice of green pyjamas underneath. Marty warily withdraws his arm and steps away.
Stillness again. A mausoleum of horrified faces lining a nondescript corridor. Payson's heart is thumping like that of a petrified mouse. She frowns. It's not her heart. Only then does she realise she has Drea wrapped in a hug, the tiny girl quaking in her arms. She stares down the mother willing to attack her own child.
"Get. Out." Payson doesn't mean to speak, but the growl comes anyway, trickles through the stunned silence.
The coach's eyes flare as the order connects. "Excuse me," she spits, her scorn blinding, "if I don't take instruction from the harlot who fucked her way onto the national team."
Silence again and then Marty is grabbing Conway by the wrist. "You need to leave, now," he spits, as Conway wrenches her arm free, throws a look at Ellen Beals, then marches into her hotel room and slams the door, hard enough to nearly break the hinges.
"Come on, sweetie, it's ok." Suddenly Darby is beside Payson, trying to unfold Drea from her arms. "It's ok," she switches to reassuring Payson, who won't let Drea go. "I'm just going to take her to my room."
Payson, still stunned, strokes Drea's hair one more time before releasing her. She watches Darby usher Drea into the room a few doors away from Conway's.
Strong fingers press on her bare waist. "Pay?" Sasha's voice matches the intensity of his grip.
"What the hell is going on?" She looks up at Sasha, only then realising she's crying, though whether from anger or shock she hasn't time to comprehend.
"Coach Belov?" Marcus, running a hand through his hair as he tries to get a hold of this spiralling situation, looks over at Sasha. "Can you take the girls back to their rooms? Explain? It'll probably be best coming from you." It's the most sensitive thing Marcus has ever said concerning these gymnasts and their worry multiplies.
Sasha nods and starts to usher the girls back to their side of the corridor, focus still landing mostly on Payson. As she turns, Payson sees Ellen lean in to say something to Marcus.
"Yes, probably right," Marcus mutters, then raises his voice. "Perhaps you could also have a word with them about wearing suitable attire outside of their rooms?"
Payson thinks she must have misheard; they can't possibly be clamping down on dress code right now.
"They're night clothes!" Lauren finds her voice again, though it's hollow and she keeps glancing at Darby's door. "What? You want us to sleep in moo-moos?" She gestures at her own pale pink short slip and Kelly's vest and basketball jersey combo.
"Come on," Sasha gently pushes Lauren along. Payson is the only gymnast who sees the expression of frustration he glares back at the NGO reps.
"Tested positive, that's what Marcus said, right?" Kelly demands, as soon as the five of them are outside her and Payson's room. "Tested positive for what?"
Sasha's eyes close. Standing directly under one of corridor's spotlights, his cuts seem to glow red. "Cocaine."
"No way," Lauren breathes.
"Holy hell," Kelly mutters at the same time.
"Um, guys?" Hayley tugs at Payson. It takes Payson a few moments to register and respond.
"What?"
Hayley just points over to the open door next to her and Lauren's room. In the shadows, a checked nightshirt falling to her knees, Beth is clutching her Yankee baseball cap and shifting her weight slowly back and forth between her feet.
"Where's Drea?" She asks, bewildered, as she shuffles toward her teammates and coach, still strangling her hat.
The girls exchange glances; Sasha sighs so deep it hurts Payson. "She's with Darby. There's been..."
"I got this, Coach," Kelly intervenes, taking some pressure off Sasha, slinging an arm round Beth and leading her through the open door. Lauren and Hayley follow behind, shocked into compliance to any authority.
Payson and Sasha stand alone. An elevator bell dings. Apart from that the corridor is silent.
"Why is Ellen Beals here?" Payson murmurs, weaving her fingers through Sasha's and looking up at him. His eyes are glazed with the residue of medication and he strokes his thumb along Payson's palm as she grips tighter with worry for him.
"The NGO put her on a plane last night when they got the news from the lab."
"But cocaine? How? Why..." Suddenly, Drea's pained face pops into Payson's mind. "She wanted to talk to me." Horror runs through her. She turns to Sasha in panic. "Sasha, she wanted to..."
"Rebel?"
MJ is clad in sweatpants and vest instead of her usual smart attire. She's frowning as she walks toward them.
"Is it out?" Sasha says, not bothering with a greeting.
"Hit the wires about fifteen minutes ago. The lobby's already piling up with journalists." She watches the way Payson is holding Sasha's hand, how close they are standing. "We need to make a plan," she says, carefully, glance flicking between her client and the coach as they sharply pull apart.
"Yeah," Sasha agrees, scrubbing his short hair. "Payson, can you..."
"We'll look after Beth," Payson fills in, shooting MJ a strained smile and deliberately not looking at Sasha. She pushes her room door shut behind her.
MJ's arms are folded as Sasha finally looks at her.
"Please, please tell me that doesn't mean what I bloody well think it does."
