Trainer work across the season: Schacht's knee, Hal's ankle therapy, the Wayne reflex-check

texture · YDAU (2009)

• When: YDAU (2009) — several dated occasions (the Wayne reflex-check is 17 Nov YDAU; the Eschaton report is 8 Nov)
• What: Loach's hands-on caseload during the novel's present: at Schtitt's order he injects Schacht's "big purple knee" with something that rolls Schacht's eyes up in his head at the P.W.T.A. meet, takes Axford's and Struck's kibitzing about punk knees on the bus home, and — with the rest of the staff, "Loach et al." — later outfits Schacht with a jointed-aluminum knee-brace (scene 183); he and deLint "are always on him," Schacht, "about not getting musclebound" in the weight room (scene 065); with deLint he prescribes Hal fifteen minutes a day of standing on the left foot as ankle therapy (scene 165), and shaves and tapes Hal's ankle on exhibition day (scene 183); after the I.-Day Eschaton debacle it is "both trainer Barry Loach and prorector Rik Dunkel" who tell Avril about the Lord/Ingersoll/Penn injuries (n.147); and after John Wayne is accidentally dosed with Pemulis's Tenuates and rants over the WETA broadcast, Loach "has done a thorough reflex-check" and Wayne is pronounced "going to be OK". Struck, tallying the day's five hours of exertion, grouses about "half an hour on the machines under fucking Loach's beady browns, sitting there with the clipboard".