"And that should be all."
After the airport, both of them had places to be.
Pedri dropped Mateo at the training centre on his way, because it was on his way, and then carried on into the city to meet his own agent, who had called him twice that morning and had clearly wanted to talk about something.
"Everything seems to be fine as far as I can see."
The team doctor straightened up and pulled the gloves off his own hands, and he was smiling as he did it.
"Which means I can finally get those people off my back."
He balled the gloves up and dropped them.
"They are going to be very happy to hear that. Everybody has been asking about you since Saturday."
He picked up his pen and tapped it twice against the back of his own hand.
"So. Now we just wait for the rest of the results to come back, and once those are in, you are cleared."
"As for the sharp pain."
He pulled a chair over and sat down.
"Honestly? Most likely a soft tissue response. Some inflammation around the peroneal tendons, possibly a little bit of irritation where the tendon runs behind the lateral malleolus, which is the bit right here."
He tapped the outside of his own ankle.
"That would explain it. It comes on sharp, it goes away, it comes back when you load it, and then two days later it is gone and nobody can find anything."
He shrugged.
"It happens more than people think. Especially at the end of a long season, especially in a young player who has been playing more minutes than his body has ever handled before."
"Oh, and."
He pointed with the pen.
"I hear you have been doing a lot of endurance work lately."
"Ehm." Mateo shifted on the bed. "Yeah. A fair bit."
"How much?"
"A lot."
"Mm."
The doctor nodded to himself.
"Right. Well, there you are. That would do it as well. When you significantly increase your aerobic loading over a short period, the calf complex tightens up, and when the calf tightens the whole chain underneath it starts compensating. Ankle takes the difference."
He spread his hands.
"That is usually what a mystery ankle pain in a seventeen-year-old actually is."
"Huh."
Mateo laughed.
It came out about a quarter of a second late and slightly too high.
"Yeah. That would. Yeah. That makes sense."
Because he could hardly say the other thing.
He could not sit on that bed and tell a qualified physician that it had not been a soft tissue response, that it had in fact been a fractured talus, and that it was gone because something in his own head had decided at four o'clock in the morning to repair it while he was passed out on top of a duvet with one shoe on.
"Makes a lot of sense, actually."
"Good."
"Yeah."
"You should stretch more."
"I will."
"You will not."
"HAHAHA."
"Right."
The doctor stood up.
"That is us, then. Everything looks good. I will go through the results properly when they land but I am not expecting any surprises."
"Thanks, doc."
"Do not thank me. Thank whoever landed on you."
"HAHAHA."
He collected a folder off the side and clipped his pen into his top pocket.
"Okay. I have got something else at eleven, so I need to—"
Then he turned round.
Mateo had not moved.
He was still lying flat out on that examination bed with his hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling.
"Do you—"
"Oh."
Mateo lifted his head slightly.
"Ehm."
He put it back down.
"Is it okay if I stay here for a bit?"
The doctor looked at him.
"I just feel a bit tired," Mateo said, to the ceiling.
And the doctor smiled.
"Knock yourself out."
He picked up two more things off the counter and headed for the door.
"By the time I am back your results should be in anyway. Later."
Mateo raised a hand without looking.
The door shut.
"Huff."
He let his whole body go flat against the bed, and stared at the ceiling tiles.
Because when Mateo King had walked into that training facility that morning, he had received the biggest shock of his life.
Honestly, he should have seen it coming. The crowd outside the gates should have been the warning. There were people out there in shirts at nine in the morning on a Monday, standing at the fence with flags, some of whom had very clearly been there a while.
That part he had expected. It was two days after a Champions League final. Of course there were people at the gates.
What he was not prepared for was what happened inside.
Mateo had been a La Masia kid. He had been in and out of that complex since he was eight years old. He knew the cleaning staff by name. He knew which of the kitchen people would give you extra and which of them would not. He knew the man on the front desk had a son who played for a junior team in Sabadell.
He was used to being comfortable in that building.
Today, that building lost its mind.
It started in the car park. Two of the grounds staff spotted him getting out of Pedri's car and one of them shouted something, and by the time he got to the door there were four of them.
Photographs. Every single person wanted a photograph. Not a nod, not a well done, a photograph.
A woman from the accounts department, who he was fairly sure had never spoken to him in his life, hugged him in a corridor and then immediately apologised for hugging him.
Somebody produced a shirt to be signed. Then somebody else produced a shirt. Then a third person produced a shirt that belonged to his nephew, and then apologised, and then produced a second one that belonged to his other nephew.
One of the security men shook his hand with both of his and did not let go while he explained, at length, exactly where he had been standing when the bicycle kick went in.
It took Mateo nineteen minutes to walk a distance that normally takes four.
And the media team were considerably worse.
Sarah had found him about halfway down that corridor with a tablet in her hand and a list on it, and she was extremely pleased to see him.
There were three separate pieces of content she wanted. There was a TikTok trend involving the medal. There was something about a quiz. There was a sit-down thing that somebody wanted to book for later in the week, and a request from a sponsor, and a thing she described as "quick, ten minutes, honestly" in a tone that suggested it was neither.
Mateo had said yes to all of it and then very quietly got himself into a medical room.
So now that he finally had a minute to breathe, he was not remotely ready to walk back out into that circus.
Not yet.
He got his phone out and held it up above his own face.
And he opened the thread.
Olivia ⭐💗
you > wow
you > you actually left 🙃
you > hmm
you > just got to the centre. the outside is PACKED. there are people at the fence with flags at 9am
you > genuinely I think one man has been out there since yesterday
you > just reached the medical building
Not one of them had been read.
Mateo smiled at the screen.
She was somewhere over the Atlantic in a seat her label had paid for at about four hours' notice, on an aircraft with no wifi, and she was not going to see any of this for another nine hours at the earliest.
He knew that.
He typed anyway.
you > the doctor just finished checking me
you > told you I was fine 😌
He hit send and lay there watching the little icon sit there and fail to turn into anything.
Then he scrolled up.
There was something from his uncle, sent about twenty minutes ago, probably while he had been on that table with a man holding his ankle.
Uncle Andrew
Mateo. Are you free later today? I need you to come and meet me at the hotel, there are a few things I want to run through with you properly. Let me know what time works.
Short. Businesslike. Not one wasted word, which is how Andrew King has texted since approximately 2011.
Mateo thumbed back:
you > yeah no issue
you > just tell me when
And while he was still looking at that, something dropped in from the top of the screen.
The squad group.
FC BARCELONA — FIRST TEAM
Media (Sarah): Morning all 💙❤️
Media (Sarah): Reminder that the documentary is LIVE from today.
Media (Sarah):BARÇA: MORE THAN— streaming now, worldwide, Netflix only.
Media (Sarah): Assets are in the shared folder. Please post today if you can, tag the club account, and use the hashtag. Story posts are fine.
Media (Sarah): And watch it!! 😄
Mateo sat straight up on that bed.
"It is out."
A/N
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