Chemo at 9. You said you’d drive me.
Shit. I did say that.
Be there by 8:30. Promise.
Which gives me exactly one hour to assess the captain’s shoulder, design a twelve-week protocol, and pretend I didn’t notice the way his breathing changed when I held his hand to test nerve function during his eval.
The main door slams open at 7:02.
“You’re late,” I call out, not looking up from my paperwork.
“You said seven.”
“I said seven sharp. That was two minutes ago.”
Roman appears in the doorway of the treatment room, and I make the mistake of looking up. He’s in athletic shorts and a Puckaneers t-shirt that’s probably a size too small, hair still messy from sleep, looking annoyed and unfairly attractive for someone who just rolled out of bed. Which is an observation I have no business making about a patient, but my brain apparently didn’t get that memo.
“It’s not even preseason,” he says, moving into the room which feels significantly smaller with him in it. “There’s no one here.”
“I’m here. And if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.” I gesture to the treatment table. “Shirt off.”
He pauses for just a second, and I catch something flicker across his face before his usual stoic expression returns. Then he’s pulling the shirt over his head in one smooth motion, and I’m reminded why I needed the early morning appointment with no one else around.
The man is built like a classical statue if classical statues had access to modern strength training and tattoo artists. There’s a constellation design that starts just above his right knee, disappearing under the hem of his shorts. His right forearm is covered in geometric patterns that look vaguely Nordic, and there’s text in what looks likeCyrillic wrapping around his ribs. Another design on his left shoulder blade that I can’t quite make out from this angle. All the things that I didn’t stop to appreciate two weeks ago.
“See something interesting?” His voice is flat, but there’s something underneath it. A challenge, maybe.
“Scar tissue from a prior dislocation.” I move closer, keeping my voice clinical even though my pulse is doing things it has no business doing. “You can see where it healed incorrectly.”
It’s not a lie. There is scar tissue, visible and raised against his skin. But I’m also noticing the way his obliques cut down toward his shorts, and how his skin still holds warmth from his bed, and that he smells like body wash that smells so good I almost lean closer to figure out exactly what brand it is.
I don’t.
“Range of motion first.” I position myself behind him, one hand on his shoulder blade to stabilize, the other guiding his arm through the movement. “Tell me when it hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
I ignore the blatant lie and move his arm through abduction, feeling the catch at about 110 degrees. “There. That’s where the impingement starts.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. It’s compensated. You’ve trained your body to work around the damage instead of fixing it.” I move to face him, which was a tactical error because now we’re close enough that I can see the darker blue ring around his pale gray irises, can count the faint freckles across his collarbone. “Twelve weeks minimum. We rebuild from scratch.”
“The season starts in three months.”
“The season starts October 9th. If we start today and you follow every protocol exactly, I can have you cleared by October third. That’s six days before the opener.”
He’s doing the math in his head, jaw tight with tension that suggests he’s calculating every possible risk. “That’s cutting it close.”
“That’s what happens when you let a shoulder dislocate five times.” I step back, needing space to think clearly because proximity to this man is apparently hazardous to my professional judgment. “Unless you’d prefer to rush it and make this number six?”
The air conditioning kicks on, raising goosebumps on my arms. Or maybe that’s from the way he’s looking at me, wondering if I’m a challenge or an ally.
“Fine,” he says finally. “Your protocol.”
“My protocol. Which means when I say stop, you stop. When I say rest, you rest. No extra work, no pushing through, no tough guy bullshit.”
“You enjoy ordering me around?”
