I sit at my desk. The drawer is empty. The file boundaries are clean. The relationship has been turned into a timeline and survived.
I type:
Terrible. Clean. Both.
He sends:
Sounds right.
Then:
You okay?
The correct question, returned.
I look at it for longer than necessary.
Yes.
Then I add:
I had to shred the OVERCOMMIT note.
Three dots.
Then:
Good.
Then:
It was bad handwriting.
I laugh alone in my office.
The process is unsexy and bureaucratic and emotionally exhausting. It is also the most mature thing I have ever donein a relationship: subjecting my personal life to institutional review because the alternative is the kind of secret that corrodes everything it touches.
The boundary is still there.
Now, at least, it has windows.
NOLAN
The surgeon is kind.
This is inconvenient.
Cruel would be easier. Dismissive would be easier. A man with a golf watch and a tight smile telling me the hip is finished would give me somewhere to put the anger. Instead, Dr. Maureen Ellis sits across from me in a small exam room with my MRI images on the screen and tells me the truth like she respects me enough not to decorate it.
"Advanced cartilage degeneration," she says. "Femoroacetabular impingement, progressing. Early-stage osteoarthritis. The joint space has narrowed significantly since your last imaging."
Katie is beside me. Team doctor on the other side. Alderman is not here. Callahan is not here. Caleb is not here. This room contains medical people and me, which is correct, and still feels wrong because the person I want in the room is the person who has no official reason to be there.
Dr. Ellis clicks to the next image.
Black and white. Bone. Joint. Damage made visible. The body turned into weather radar.
"Can I play through playoffs?" I ask.
