"Dose?" he asks.
"Eight hundred."
"When was the last?"
"Morning."
He hands me the pills. Watches me take them. Not like a manager. Like a man counting because he cares whether I am lying.
"Can I check the ice placement?"
"You a trainer now?"
"No. But if it's sitting too far forward, you're numbing your flexor and not the joint."
I look at him.
"Katie told me that during a medical-policy briefing," he says.
"Of course she did."
"It was relevant."
"To what?"
"Apparently my job used to include knowing things about your hip."
The sentence lands between us. Used to. Not anymore. The boundary is still here in a hotel hallway, sitting cross-legged in a wrinkled shirt with ibuprofen in its hand.
"You don't have to," I say.
"I know."
I let him move the towel.
His hand is clinical at first. Careful, efficient, almost impersonal. He lifts the edge of the ice pack, checks the angle, adjusts it slightly backward and higher on the joint. The cold hits the right place and I hate that he was right.
I also make a sound.
Not much. A breath breaking wrong.
Caleb goes still. "Too much?"
"No."
"That one I believe."
I close my eyes.
We sit like that for a while. Him beside me. The ice biting. The hotel quiet around us. Somewhere three doors down, a TV plays low. Somewhere beyond that, the elevator dings again and a couple gets out laughing, sees us, and lowers their voices the way people do around pain even when they do not understand what kind it is.
After ten minutes, my breathing levels.
Caleb says, "You should be in the room."
"Probably."
"Can I help now?"
