Chapter 27 Sloane
SLOANE
Iwashed my hands three times before I looked in the mirror.
The soap burned a raw spot on my knuckle from scrubbing too hard.
I didn’t stop. I pressed into the motion like it could scrub away the feeling of him collapsing in front of me.
I kept hearing the way he said my name. Not just scared—shaken in a way I hadn’t seen from him before.
He’d looked at me like I was the only thing anchoring him to the floor.
Like I was the last thing he could trust.
I turned off the water and braced both palms on the counter.
My breath didn’t come easily. It wasn’t panic.
It was control. Tight, measured, clinical control.
I forced each inhale through my nose, each exhale steady, until my jaw unclenched.
I couldn’t go back out there looking shaken.
If Ivy saw me like this, she’d pull me into a side room and demand answers I didn’t want to give.
If Mac saw it, he’d start watching me too closely again.
He’d question if I was still objective. If I could still separate my personal ties from the job.
I was separating them. I had to. That was why I documented everything the second Oliver sat up.
I logged his vitals with full clinical accuracy.
I flagged the episode, categorized the symptoms, and coded the entire event within internal mental health protocol.
I followed policy. I did what I was trained to do.
Every line in that report was medically sound.
But it was also the cleanest, most sterile version of what actually happened.
Because I didn’t document how hard he gripped my hand.
I didn’t note how long I stayed with him on the floor or how fast my own pulse was climbing when I thought he might lose consciousness.
I didn’t say how it felt to see someone I care about completely unravel and know the system I worked for would eat him alive if I wrote the wrong thing.
I dried my hands and didn’t look back at the mirror.
I shut the file. I closed the report. I reset my office like nothing had happened.
The tablet went back to standby. The schedule for the day stayed on screen.
I had four appointments on my calendar and two more performance meetings before walk-through review.
That meant I didn’t get to process any of it.
Not the fear, not the guilt, not the relief that he calmed down with my voice in his ear.
I stepped into the hallway and walked like I always did. Spine straight. Eyes alert. Neutral expression. I said hello to three players, waved at a staff assistant, and answered a scheduling question from the strength coach. No one looked at me twice. No one asked if I was okay.
It meant the mask worked.
But underneath it, I was spiraling. Not because Oliver scared me.
Not because I didn’t believe in his ability to recover.
I was spiraling because I knew what came next.
The second this escalated—if he crashed again or pushed too hard in Denver—the League would start asking questions.
If he went on the record with a second episode, they’d flag him.
They’d start charting him as a cardiac risk, a psychological liability, someone with an inconsistent performance profile.
I’d seen it happen to other players. I’d written those reports myself.
And that scared me more than anything.
Because I cared about him. Too much. More than I should.
More than was safe. And no matter how carefully I filed my notes or how professionally I maintained the boundaries, there was still the fact that it was my hands on his face, my voice in his ear, my body on the floor next to him when he couldn’t breathe.
He didn’t ask for anyone else. He didn’t want anyone else.
And I hadn’t left him.
Now I had to act like none of that mattered. Because if I slipped, even once, they’d take the case from me. They’d pull him. They’d bench him under another department, another doctor, someone who wouldn’t know how to read between the lines of what he wasn’t saying.
I couldn’t let that happen. So I put my mask on and went back to work.
Quinn was already waiting outside my door when I returned from the bathroom.
He was pacing with his hands in his hoodie pocket, eyes locked on the floor like he was reviewing a play he couldn’t get right. When I approached, he looked up, but his shoulders didn’t loosen.
“You good?” he asked, voice low.
I opened the door without answering and nodded toward the chair. “Come in.”
He dropped into the seat with a soft grunt and slouched back, elbows braced on the armrests like they were too heavy to hold up on his own.
He didn’t make eye contact and pulled at the edge of his sleeve until the fabric twisted, then let go and did it again.
That was his baseline when he hadn’t slept, and it tracked with what Ivy noted in his last weekly check-in.
I powered on the tablet and kept my posture steady. “Talk to me. Headaches?”
“No.” His voice cracked slightly before he cleared his throat. “Not really.”
“Sleep?”
He hesitated, jaw tight. “Five hours. Six if you round up. I did the breathing thing you gave me, but my brain wouldn’t shut off.”
“You running through plays?”
“Yeah. And Jordan kept lighting up the group chat. They were all trash-talking Denver like we didn’t lose to a third-string defensive unit.”
He didn’t try to hide the bitterness in his voice.
I pulled up his neurometrics from Sunday’s game and tapped through his heart rate spikes during the second half.
He’d stabilized quicker than most, but his cortisol level flagged higher than usual in his recovery window.
Paired with reduced sleep and irritability…
I didn’t like the direction it was heading.
I glanced at him again. He’d gone quiet. Staring past me at the bulletin board like he wasn’t even here.
“You blaming yourself for the loss?” I asked.
His mouth twisted, but he didn’t answer.
I waited.
He finally looked at me, eyes bloodshot. “I shouldn’t have gone no-huddle in the fourth. We had a drive built. I got impatient and forced it. Jordan wasn’t even in the right spot, and that’s on me.”
“That’s a lot to shoulder by yourself.”
He huffed. “Comes with the number.”
“It doesn’t have to come with isolation.”
“I’m not isolating.”
I didn’t push that part. I noted it in his chart—denial of social fatigue.
Defensive about team responsibility. Elevated internal pressure, likely rooted in personal perfectionism and fear of perception.
He hadn’t had a major flag in over three weeks, but the slope he was on looked familiar.
It was the same one I saw in high-achieving rookies who never learned how to fail publicly.
“I want you in a follow-up Friday morning,” I said, logging the note. “We’ll check again after the week settles and before travel prep. If your sleep drops further or your focus shifts, we might need a short rest protocol.”
“I’m fine,” he said quickly. He ran both hands down his face. “I’m tired. That’s all. I’ll be fine.”
I nodded once and didn’t push. I flagged the entry anyway and sent a silent alert to Ivy to monitor his hydration and reaction times during tomorrow’s walk-through. If he slipped below his performance floor again, I’d bring Mac in.
“Anything else on your mind?” I asked.
He paused, then shook his head. “Don’t bench me. I can fix it.”
“You’re not being benched. You’re being managed.”
He stood up slower than usual. No snark. No sarcastic comment. Just a tight nod and a quiet, “Thanks, Doc.”
He left, and I used the few spare minutes to document more notes.
I had two more check-ins with two of the defensemen, both also taking the loss personally, and then I’d have to check in with Mac, William, Ivy, and Booth.
My stomach twisted with worry as I smoothed my shirt down, my pulse pounding as I approached Booth’s office.
Booth shut the door before I even reached the chair.
Mac leaned back with his elbows braced on the armrests, eyes unreadable.
Ivy sat with her laptop open, cursor blinking on a partially redacted chart.
The page was Oliver’s. I could tell from the flagged entries—elevated HR, low oxygen recovery, post-exertion crash.
I didn’t sit right away. I waited for the weight in the room to settle.
“He’s stable,” I said before anyone could ask. “Pulse eventually slowed and in a normal sinus rhythm. Respiratory rate improved. All vitals improved without pharmacological intervention. Cognition intact.”
Booth nodded once but didn’t look away from me. “What happened?”
I didn’t answer right away. I pulled the tablet closer and flipped to my private version of the report. “What I documented is accurate. Episode consistent with acute physiological stress response and dehydration. Triggered under team review context. No physical incident occurred.”
Mac leaned forward. “Sloane.”
“I’m being honest,” I said, voice steady. “But I’m also honoring his privacy. If I write the exact words that were said in that meeting, I lose trust. Not just with him—but with every player who ever walks through my door again.”
Ivy looked up from her screen. “We’re not asking you to quote him. We need to understand the context. Is this a one-time event or the result of a pattern?”
I kept my tone clinical, but it took effort.
“His vitals have been trending up all week. He’s reported fatigue, minor appetite suppression, and intermittent shortness of breath.
He masked it until walk-through when the constant discussion of the next game and worries about altitude became overwhelming.
The confrontation pushed him into overload.
His body shut the rest of him down before he could override it. ”
Booth narrowed his eyes. “So this wasn’t physical instability.”
“No,” I said. “It was exhaustion. Emotional, cognitive, physical—all at once.”