21 Winter, Year 3

Barbell Trouble

It's a lazy Sunday evening at the clinic. Harvey has locked the door and we're watching a documentary. Then someone starts pounding on the door downstairs. Harvey jumps up and runs down to open it.

"Stay here," he says to me.

In his hurry, he doesn't close the door to the stairs, so that when Penny speaks up – sounding like she's catching her breath – I can clearly understand her.

"Doctor Harvey, I'm sorry to disturb you, but is Evan here?"

"Evan?" Harvey repeats, perplexed.

"Yes, Evan. I went looking for him at the farm but there was no one there, so I thought he might be here... Maru says he's been spending a lot of time here..."

I figure this isn't going to be about a medical problem, so I move toward the stairs.

"But what do you need him for?" Harvey asks Penny.

"Well, I was just at the spa, and Alex called out from the men's lockers... he said he's stuck under the barbells. I thought Evan was most likely to be strong enough to help."

I quickly go back for my coat and hurry down the stairs.

"Alright, let's go," I say, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

"Evan, thank Yoba," Penny says. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt anything..."

"Well, we can't let a guy suffocate for the sake of a romantic night in, now can we? Have you got your coat, Harvey?"

"You want me to come?"

"Alex normally leaves the spa at 3 pm. It's nearly 8 now, so he's been lying on a hard bench for hours with a weight on his chest that's too heavy for him to lift. I'm just hoping he isn't blue yet."

Maybe Harvey just wasn't familiar with the word 'barbells', because his eyes widen and he hurries to get his coat.

As soon as we make it to the men's lockers in the spa, I yell out.

"Alex? You still alive?"

"In here," he answers, so strained I can barely hear him. I reach the exercise room in the next second and there he is, naked from the waist up, breathing in shallow bursts.

"Wasn't it obligatory to always have a partner with you if you were gonna switch to heavier weights?"

I crouch on his left side and take a close look at the weights on the barbells. There's an extra thing clamped around the bar, to prevent the wheel-like weights from sliding off.

"Get this thing off first, man," Alex grunts.

"On it."

I find something that looks like a folded clasp on the thing, manage to get it open and slide it off.

"Hang on, I'm gonna get the weights off."

The lighter weight is on the outside of the bar so I take that off first, standing back to prevent getting the bar in my face. Alex loses balance immediately and lets the bar fall to his left, but still can't lift it the rest of the way off.

The second weight is a lot heavier, but with a good deal of effort, I lift that one off the bar too. Harvey pulls the bar off of Alex from the other side for good measure, and the boy just lies there panting. His lips do look blue.

"How long have you been like that?" He asks.

"I dunno, what time is it?"

"Eight."

"Wow. I put on the extra weight around two, I think."

"And you didn't think you might end up needing help with that?" I repeat.

"Nobody wants to help," Alex shrugs, slowly catching his breath. Really, that's not too hard to understand.

"Well, I wouldn't want to be here from 9 till 3 every single day, either. But if you're gonna do dangerous shit, just... call me. I'm not gonna come before 1, but I'd say two hours of this should be enough for you in one day until you can handle the weight."

"Aw, man, really? That's awesome."

"Only because you will apparently kill yourself if you don't have someone here to prevent it."

"I don't kill myself, don't be stupid."

"You were going blue, Alex," Harvey informs him. "If Penny hadn't come to the spa today you would have stayed here all night, and that could very well have killed you."

"Really?" Alex looks suddenly distraught, as if he hadn't realized this while he was pinned under that barbell struggling to get enough air into his lungs to survive.

"Yes, really. So I would thoroughly advise you to only ever do something like this again when you have someone here to help."

"Yeah, no, I will. I don't wanna die."

"Attaboy."