“Good news is the MRI is clean,” she said, directing it at me the way doctors directed things at the patient when they knew the patient wasn’t going to be the one making the decision. “Badnews is a mild concussion that still requires observation. You can’t be released to an empty hotel room.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound chill—like I’d grown up dodging worse back on the lakefront in Chi-town.
“You’ll be fine until you’re not,” she said, with the flat patience of someone who had watched people be wrong about that exact statement all the time. “Someone needs to be with you through the night. Checking responsiveness every two hours, watching for changes in pupil response, nausea, disorientation.” She looked up from the clipboard. “Is there someone who can do that?”
Renaud shifted in the doorway. I could see him doing the calculation—him in my room, which meant leaving Cole and Keegan unsupervised in a city where three drunk men in Grizzlies jerseys had already decided I was a reasonable target. He was the captain. He needed to be with his team.
“I can—” he started.
“I’ll do it.”
Kincaid’s voice came from the window.
Silence cracked like thin ice. He’d been facing the loading dock till then; by the time I looked over, he’d already turned, his face that same unhurried mask. Gray eyes that missed nothing.
“I’m his coach,” he said. “I’ll stay with him.”
The doctor blinked, then looked from him to me and back, maintaining that ER-shift neutrality. “You know the protocol? Every two hours—”
“I know,” he said. “And if there’s any doubt, we’ve got team medics on site.”
She jotted a note. “Good. Nurse will bring discharge instructions. He needs rest—no screens, no booze, minimal stimulation. If he vomits or can’t be roused, bring him back immediately.”
She left for the paperwork.
Nobody moved. Renaud studied Kincaid like a calculator stuck on an unsolvable equation. Keegan stared at the floor like it owed him money. And I sat on the exam table, jaw dried with blood, ribs screaming, my heart doing its own two-step.
“Coach,” Renaud finally said.
“Get them back to their rooms, Max,” Coach replied, his voice calm, final. “Game in two days.”
Not dismissive—just the tone you used when something was settled. Renaud got it at once. He looked at me with that steady, cataloging stare, then nodded.
“Get some sleep,” Max said.
“Yeah,” I muttered as they left.
I stared at my hands—the knuckles on my right scraped raw, dried blood caked in my palm lines, like a broken CTA train up on the rails. I flipped my hand over and back, just to have somewhere to look.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said quietly.
“I know.”
“Renaud could have—”
“Renaud has seven other players to manage, and at least three of them are going to want to do something about tonight that would create significantly more paperwork than I’m prepared to file.” He moved away from the window, pulling a chair from the corner and setting it a few feet from the examination table with the calm efficiency of a man arranging things to his liking. “So I’ll do it.”
I looked at him then. I couldn’t not.
He’d come from the hotel in a hurry—I could tell from the jacket, the same one he’d been wearing after the game, the one with the lineup card pocket, now slightly rumpled at the collar in a way his clothes never were when he’d had time to prepare himself for being seen. His hair was the same. His face was the same. But there was something in the way he’d moved justnow, pulling that chair, that was different from the controlled economy of the locker room and the corridor and every other space I’d watched him occupy for two months.
He sat down and put his forearms on his knees and looked at me. “Want me to call your mom? Brothers?”
I winced which he took as an answer, but Marco and Nicky had been to all my home games when I played for Chicago, and tonight I’d said not to bother because it wasn’t likely I was playing. Marco had plenty to say about that, and I’d promised to visit with Mom tomorrow.
“How’s your head?” he said.
“Hurts.”
