The Witch from the East

In Harold’s case, there were plenty of clues, which made figuring things out considerably easier.

The injuries he had sustained were the sort I had experienced myself before, and the pain he was feeling was pain I had known as well.

Over the course of an hour and a half I ran both hands over every inch of his body. Of course that was not all I did. Through a series of simple tests I assessed his muscle strength, joint range of motion, nerve function, and more.

Hmm. Hmm. I can set the treatment plan up like this.

With the plan fully formed in my head, I spoke to Harold, who was pulling his pants on over both legs with a refreshed expression.

“Have you ever had acupuncture?”

“What’s that?”

He said it with a face that made it clear he had no idea whatsoever.

So he hasn’t.

“Lie back down there. On your stomach.”

I pulled the tools I needed for the treatment from my work bag and laid them out on the bed as I spoke.

“It’s the essence of Eastern naturalistic medicine. I never do this for the institute’s clients, normally… It’s a method that stimulates specific points on the body with needles to produce a therapeutic effect. Outstanding for pain relief, and far less taxing on the body than drugs. Perfect for treating an athlete like you. The results are immediate, and there’s zero risk of a doping violation.”

Harold’s gaze flicked back and forth between my face and the needle in my hand.

“You’re saying you’re going to stick me with that needle right now?”

“Yes. Neck and back. Moxibustion would be good too, but I don’t have the tools for that at the moment.”

“What’s moxibustion?”

“You dry medicinal herbs, place them on the body, and set them on fire.”

“…”

His blue eyes darted rapidly from side to side. I laughed.

“I’ve gotten a lot of results with this. I’m living proof. You already entrusted your body to me—so trust me.”

It wasn’t revenge for the day before, but seeing that faintly frightened look on his face didn’t feel half bad.

Afterward Harold reluctantly submitted to the treatment, then stared at me as if I were a witch from the East—someone possessed of some mysterious, unknowable power…

That’s not it.

For a racing driver, a vehicle collision was something like an unavoidable fate. I myself had ended my career because of a rear-end crash, and even during my active years I had experienced accidents more than once.

Britain’s medical system was free, but it was agonizingly slow, stifling, and fanatically devoted to the power of natural healing. So in my racing days I had preferred a bone-setting clinic in New Malden over any hospital—one that combined moxibustion and acupuncture.

Later, after I decided to become a physical therapist, I decided I needed a weapon of my own. I sought out that same clinic, explained my situation, and learned the craft by trading labor for knowledge. An apprenticeship, in other words.

Of course it was illegal.

But well…

If the pain went away, wasn’t that enough? The end had always justified the means.

“Hanna, I really want to work with you.”

In any case, the physical-therapy assessment combined with the sports massage—and above all the acupuncture—seemed to have left a deep impression on Harold.

“I’ve tried all sorts of treatments, but I’ve never had an experience like today’s.”

Whether that was the reason or not, I was later able to go to the lounge and, inside the meeting room, draft an NDA under terms far more favorable than the draft the lawyer had originally presented.

“Change this part like this. And let me say it one more time—only this season. One-year contract. No matter what conditions you throw at me, I’m not doing more than that.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you want. Fix the contract exactly the way Hanna just said.”

Even with his lawyer present, Harold stayed deferential from start to finish. It was the attitude of a man who would sell his soul if only he could get me to sign the agreement.

This is weird.

That attitude of his left me with a profound sense of unease instead. It was like putting a price on a dusty old chessboard that had been sitting in the corner of a storage shed, only for someone to suddenly appear and beg to buy it for five times, ten times the asking price, pleading for me to please sell it.

It left me with the uneasy feeling that maybe I had failed to recognize the true value of the chessboard—except in my case the problem was that it wasn’t a chessboard. It was my body.

But well… it’s not as if anyone else is lining up to buy this.

The draft was revised until the original wording was unrecognizable. The final contract was printed right there on the spot.

After checking the still-warm pages and thinking that perhaps I was the one selling my soul, I uncapped the luxury fountain pen Harold held out to me.

The moment the signature was complete, Harold’s face lit up with pure delight.

“Want to grab dinner before you go?”

“Thanks, but I’ll head home. I think I’ve got a lot to do.”

I really did have a lot to do. And I also simply didn’t want to eat dinner with him.

Next week the year would end, and according to the contract I had to begin work the following year—no later than January 15th. That was when Harold’s season started. There really was a mountain of things to handle.

The next day I reported to the institute, announced that the exclusive personal-service agreement with Harold had been finalized, and began handing over the patients I had been responsible for. I also notified the landlord that I was terminating the lease on the rented flat. Fortunately I had nearly completed the term, so the losses were minimal.

For the next year I would be moving between countries roughly once every two weeks. I discarded my belongings without a second thought; anything bulky but still useful I gave away free through the community. Before long my entire life had been reduced to two extra-large suitcases.

I joined Harold Devlin’s team as his personal staff roughly two weeks after the contract was signed. On his call I made my way to the technical center at the team’s headquarters.

“I missed you, Hanna.”

The moment I arrived, Harold—who had gotten there first—came running and pulled me into a hug.

“Was the trip hard? I should’ve sent my private jet.”

But…

Held inside his arms, I thought quietly to myself.

Were we actually… close?

To anyone watching we would have looked like the best of friends. Once again I wondered whether the crash that had forced me into retirement had cleanly erased only the memory that Harold and I had once been friends.

The official F1 calendar begins with the preseason tests that put the new cars—built to that year’s freshly updated regulations—onto the circuits. In reality, though, the season had already begun long before that.

Drivers built their bodies through high-intensity weight training and a battery of other exercises while simultaneously adapting to the new cars on the simulators installed in the headquarters simulator rooms.

F1 regulations strictly limit test running of a new race car outside the designated practice sessions and races themselves. For that reason every team, at the start of each year, builds a simulator that matches the actual machine down to the last detail, giving the driver an experience nearly identical to driving the real car.

Of course, back when I was still a driver the technology hadn’t advanced that far; a simulator was something I was seeing for the first time.

Incredible.

Harold showed me the simulation room he used. That space, dense with cutting-edge technology, left me with a feeling I could not put into words.

“Well? Cool, right?”

I stared at it in silence for a long time.

“If you want to try it, I can put you in. Everyone here does whatever I say.”

“I’m fine.”

I declined the offer and went straight to work that same day.

Harold spent roughly six hours a day, five days a week, doing various forms of hard training at the team facility inside the technical center; the rest of his time went to simulation runs. Meanwhile I either trained on my own in the staff fitness center or read papers, deciding what to add to or cut from his recovery routine.

At night we returned together to a nearby hotel, where I worked the exhaustion of high-intensity training out of his body—mainly through manual therapy and massage with my own two hands.

Harold was now my only client and only patient. Free from the pressure of other patients’ schedules, I could take all the time I needed to release the tension in his muscles and fascia, correct them, and ease the pain—using every method I knew…

While I worked on his body, the same thought kept surfacing.

If I went back ten years and told the me of that time that, among the rivals running the same track as you, the body of a man you never even noticed would one day be under your hands for treatment—would I have believed it?

I wouldn’t have. And the me of those days, whose pride had been far too fierce, might well have chosen suicide rather than accept that future.