Chapter 85

Chapter 85

Heath and I requested a public hearing, delayed until he was well enough to attend.

The International Olympic Committee, in its infinite wisdom, denied our request. The fate of our careers would be decided behind closed doors in a glorified conference room, and I would have to speak for both of us.

“Remember what we talked about,” my lawyer said as we took our seats. The table was oval, probably intended to convey equality and transparency, but it looked like a noose to me.

The rules he’d sternly laid out in our meeting before the hearing were similar to the rules for skaters in competition: Stay respectful and polite. Never speak out of turn. And no matter what happens, don’t forget to smile.

The members of the disciplinary commission entered the conference room single file: first, the jowly, bespectacled president of the IOC, there to supervise the proceedings. He was followed by two other middle-aged men I didn’t recognize. And finally, there was Jane Currer, her shock of dyed red curls framing a stern expression I knew well from her years sitting at the judges’ table. She had always scored Heath and me harshly, and I couldn’t imagine she’d be feeling any more generous on this occasion.

“Thank you for joining us today, Ms. Shaw,” Jane said. “I hope Mr. Rocha’s condition continues to improve?”

As soon as he’d been deemed stable enough for transport, we’d moved him from the Russian state hospital to a state-of-the-art private facility in Geneva. Even under their expert care, though, he remained weak and bed-bound, waking dozens of times per night to cough up more blood from his damaged lungs. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting much sleep either. After the first few nights, he started pleading with me to check into a hotel so I could get some rest. But there was no way in hell I was leaving him again.

“I appreciate your concern,” I told Jane—so respectful and polite my jaw ached with the effort. “Heath is on the mend. He sends his sincere regrets that he couldn’t be here.”

“Of course,” she said. “Shall we get started?”

A representative of the World Anti-Doping Agency was summoned to speak first. He displayed a bunch of slides and chemical equations to explain that the substance found in Heath’s bloodstream could not be definitively identified by any current laboratory tests.

“It appears to be a designer drug of unknown origin,” he said, “which taken in excess could certainly cause the cardiovascular damage Mr. Rocha has suffered.”

The fact that the drug was unidentifiable and therefore not specifically included on WADA’s Prohibited List didn’t get us off the hook. Far from it. Any drug not already approved for medical use, no matter its effects, was automatically considered banned in competition.

Then it was my lawyer’s turn. He laid out the case that Heath and I had been the victims of sabotage in Sochi—though he refrained from making any accusations about who might have vandalized our belongings and tricked Heath into ingesting a harmful substance without his knowledge or consent.

“As the records we’ve provided clearly show”—my lawyer paused so the commission members could shuffle through the folders in front of them—“Ms. Shaw and Mr. Rocha were tested in Boston before leaving for the Games, and tested again upon their arrival in Russia. Both of those tests were clean.”

There was no proof that I had taken anything, but my refusal of a post-competition drug test meant I was considered in violation of the doping rules too. I’d been so overwhelmed, between the camera flashes and the sirens and then the crush of doctors shouting in Russian, trying to shove me out of the way. Away from Heath, unresponsive on the stretcher, his face so ashen I feared he was already gone. I refused to leave his side, refused to let anyone touch me. It wasn’t until later that I thought about how it would look.

Whatever Heath had taken, I’d taken too—though apparently my dose had been small enough that I suffered no noticeable ill effects. We had skated well in spite of those drugs, not because of them. But it didn’t make a damn bit of difference.

“Unfortunately,” Jane said, “regardless of how or why Mr. Rocha ingested the substance in question, the fact remains that it was found in his bloodstream during Olympic competition. So I’m afraid we have no choice but to—”

“How do you explain the other clean tests?” I blurted out. My lawyer cringed beside me.

“You must understand, Ms. Shaw,” Jane said. “If we make an exception to the rules for you, then we’ll be expected to make exceptions for everyone.”

My lawyer laid a firm hand on my elbow. I ignored him. I was tired of all this politeness and propriety. All this pretending anything about this situation was fair. I was so tired.

“You seriously think,” I said, “we made it all the way to the Olympic final and then decided to do some dangerous drugs just for the hell of it?”

Jane pursed her lips. “Ms. Shaw, if you could please refrain from using profanity in—”

“Heath almost died. You really believe he took that shit on purpose?”

My lawyer’s grip tightened. “Katarina, I suggest you—”

“Oh, like it fucking matters what I say.” I shook him off and turned to face the commission members. “You know exactly who did this, but why tell the truth when you have Heath and me to take the fall? You all made up your minds about us years ago.”

We weren’t enough, and then we were too much. We would never be worthy of the gold in their eyes, no matter what we did.

“I assume you’re referring to the claims posted by Ellis Dean,” Jane said. “His theories are certainly quite…imaginative. But we must rely on the facts, not wild, libelous conjecture.”

So far, Ellis had been the only one willing to point fingers at Francesca and Dmitri, at least in public. They’d both stayed above the fray since the Games, releasing separate statements conveying their hopes that this matter would be resolved swiftly, and their total confidence in the IOC arriving at the right decision.

“If his claims are so ‘wild,’?” I shot back, “then why did Gaskell Pharmaceuticals slap him with a cease and desist and try to shut his site down?”

“Ms. Shaw,” Jane started.

“Why is he getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from men with Russian accents? He’s changed residences twice in the last month, and he’s still receiving threats.”

“We are not here to discuss Mr. Dean, or your competitors.” Jane fixed me with a stern look. “We’re here to discuss—”

“We were sabotaged, and we still won.” I stood. My pencil skirt had ridden up, and I didn’t bother to tug the hem back into place. “Those gold medals are rightfully ours. You know it, and everyone who saw us skate that night damn well knows it too.”

“Sit down, Ms. Shaw,” Jane said. “We’re not finished here.”

“Yes,” I told her. “We are.”

—

I took the next train to Geneva. By the time I reached Heath’s hospital room, the IOC committee had sent out a press release with their decision.

The ruling had been unanimous. We would be sanctioned. Our medals would be stripped, our winning score stricken from the record books. We were no longer the Sochi gold medalists.

Heath was looking better that afternoon, sitting up in bed, the bright alpine sunshine lending his complexion a little color. From the expression on his face, though, I could tell he’d already heard the news.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

The question sounded so absurd in his hoarse, feeble voice, I almost laughed.

“Don’t worry about me.” I flung my suit jacket on the chair in the corner, where I’d spent the majority of my time the past several weeks. “How are you feeling today?”

“We can still appeal the ruling. Take it to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or—”

“No.” I sat on the bed, my hip brushing his. “Let them do what they want. I don’t care.”

“Sure,” Heath said.

Then he realized I was serious. He stared as if he were seeing me for the very first time.

“But…” He swallowed. “We won.”

“We did. I know it, you know it. The whole world knows it.” I took his hand. “So who cares if we don’t have some shiny hunks of metal to prove it?”

I meant every word. I didn’t care about the medals anymore. I didn’t care if we were immortalized in the record books, or forgotten tomorrow. A bunch of washed-up bureaucrats in some bland Swiss conference room didn’t get to decide if we were champions or not. I decided who I was. I decided what I wanted.

“Are you sure, Katarina?” Heath asked. “Are you sure that will be enough for you?”

You’re my home, Heath had said to me once. Despite all the years we’d spent apart, all the time we’d wasted, he was my home too. He always had been.

“We have the rest of our lives,” I said. “That’s more than enough.”