"Last season ended in a tough way for you personally," she said. "Being held out of the final two playoff games—how did that feel? And looking back, do you think it was the right call?"
Would there ever come a time when a reporter didn't ask about those two games?
Probably not.
I had the answer ready. I always had the answer ready.
"The medical staff made the right call," I said. "My health has to come first. That's something I've had to learn, and I'm still learning it if I'm honest. We have an incredible team around us, including our medical team, and those decisions exist to protect the players long-term." I smiled. "Do I wish I'd been on the ice? Obviously. But I trust the process."
Bianca nodded. Made a note. "Dr. Cross made that call himself, correct? There was some commentary at the time about whether it was overreach—"
"He made the right call," I said.
Cleaner that time. No smile attached to it, just the words, and I heard them come out of my mouth with a weight that wasn't in the media-trained version. Bianca heard it too, I could tell, but she moved on professionally, and I moved on with her.
The afternoon went the way these things went: different looks, different setups, the same twenty feet of space cycled through fifteen different configurations. I did what I was supposed to do. I stood where they pointed me. I gave the camera what it needed.
Caleb came back between setups with a different jacket, something darker, and did the shoulder thing again, and said something low about the cut, and I laughed at whatever it was because I laugh at things people say, it's reflexive, it doesn't mean anything.
Cross walked past.
Not through. Past. Along the edge of the room, coat on, tablet in hand, going somewhere with purpose, and he didn't stop and he didn't look and I tracked him across the room the way I always tracked him across rooms and watched him not look at me and felt the wrongness of it settle somewhere in my chest.
Whatever he was going to call it—lapse in judgment, professional mistake, one more item on the Morrison liability ledger—he hadn't said it yet. But I could feel it coming, hadbeen feeling it coming since the corridor, and watching him walk past without looking was just more evidence for the case he was building.
Caleb stepped back. "Perfect. That's the one."
I looked at the camera and smiled.
The shoot wrapped at four.
The ballroom went from controlled chaos to the quiet aftermath of a space that had been full of people and wasn't anymore: equipment being broken down, lanyards disappearing, the lighting rigs going dark one by one. I was back in my own clothes, which felt slightly wrong after a day of things that fit correctly, and I was looking for my jacket when Caleb found me near the exit.
"Good working with you," he said. Easy, genuine, professional. He held out his hand.
I shook it. "You too."
"If you ever need—" he started, and then stopped himself, and smiled instead, and it was a good smile, and it meant exactly nothing to me, and I think he knew that, and we were both fine about it.
"Take care of yourself, Morrison," he said.
"Working on it.”
He paused, hand still extended from the shake, like he was deciding something. Then he said, easy and without agenda: "For what it's worth? The way that doctor looks at you when he thinks no one's watching?" He picked up his bag. "That's not nothing.”
He left before I could say anything.
I stood there for a second.
That’s not nothing.
I picked up my jacket.
I found the corridor that led to the service exit the team had been using to avoid the hotel lobby, and I was almost at the door when I heard someone behind me.
"Morrison."
I stopped.
