Chapter 29 Sloane #2
The lower medical wing was quiet, lowlights still warming up in the overhead panels. William stood by the monitors, one hand resting on the back of a wheeled stool, the other holding a printed chart. His lab coat was unbuttoned. His posture was straighter than usual. That alone had me on edge.
He didn’t greet me.
“Resting heart rate baseline’s inconsistent with previous weeks,” he said. “We’ve got four peaks over 160 and two troughs under 60. All within the last seven days.”
I nodded, stepping closer. “Exercise-induced?”
“Two occurred at night. One during walk-through. One post-meeting.”
I took the chart from his hand and read through the data line by line.
The timeline matched what I already suspected.
Three of the spikes were post-exertion, during walk-through and drills.
One was post-meeting, no activity logged.
The lowest dip occurred the night after the administrative confrontation.
The inconsistency, paired with the resting range swings, fit the clinical presentation.
The diagnosis sat on the page, not written out, but visible in every number.
“SVT?” I asked, voice steady despite my heart racing.
William didn’t pause. “Paroxysmal. Most likely. No visible reentrant pathway on surface ECG, but the rhythm irregularities match narrow-complex tachycardia patterns. We need EP confirmation.”
“What’s the differential?”
He pulled the vitals up on the monitor. “It’s not sinus arrhythmia. Not atrial fibrillation. Not PVCs. No skipped beats, no irregular pauses. He’s not symptomatic between episodes, but the spikes are too consistent to ignore.”
“And the referral?”
“Sent to Cardiology last night. Electrophysiologist is on Thursday rotation. If they can fit him in, we’ll have confirmation by the end of the week. Otherwise, we push him to Monday and pull him from practice through the weekend.”
I gripped the edge of the counter. “What’s your read?”
William turned to face me. “If this is SVT, it’s early-stage, manageable, and treatment-responsive. But he’s in a high-risk environment. Intensity spikes during practice, altitude travel, inconsistent recovery. Those factors make it unpredictable.”
He paused, then added, “You know what’s next. We start documentation for cumulative stress interaction and determine how often he’s red-zoning.”
“He doesn’t know,” I said.
He gave me a look but didn’t challenge it. “Not until it’s confirmed?”
“Correct.”
“I support that,” he said. “But we’re on a clock now. One more sustained spike, and I’m required to flag it to Booth.”
I nodded once. “Understood.”
He pulled the performance overlay onto the screen. We watched it loop silently for a few seconds.
“I saw the field footage,” William said. “Sunday. He was compensating.”
“He’s scheduled for neuro at noon,” I said, opening his chart on my tablet. “We’ll reassess fatigue and executive function.”
“I’ll flag Ivy to monitor his hydration post-screening. We don’t need another episode.”
I added a new note to the internal file: Pending specialist confirmation. Monitor for continued HR variance. Patient stable. Emotional stressor ongoing.
William stepped back slightly, watching me enter the data. “You’re documenting it cleanly.”
“I always do.”
He leaned against the cabinet. “I know you’re managing this professionally. I also know this is personal.”
All my blood drained from my face. He knew. He found out the truth. I was going to get fired. My fingers numbed as I remained there, frozen, unable to speak.
“You’ve been running interference for months. Balancing medical, mental health, and performance outcomes without blowing up the room. That’s not easy, and most of them don’t see it.”
Wait. What?
“Hm?” I replied, digging my nails into my palm to hide my freakout.
“I see all that you do,” he said. “And so does Ivy. If this escalates, we back your call. Every part of it.”
I met his gaze, throat tight as reality hit me.
He was complimenting my work, not outing my secret.
There was no bullshit in his voice, and guilt clawed at my gut.
They wouldn’t think this about me if they knew the truth about Oliver and me.
All this trust would evaporate. I cleared my throat, looking away from him. “Thank you.”
William picked the chart back up. “SVT isn’t the end of a career. But it’s the start of constant oversight, and we need to talk about medication. And if Mac catches wind that there’s a risk profile in flux, Oliver’s days as a starter are numbered.”
“If this gets out before we confirm, he loses leverage,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“That’s why we get ahead of it now,” I continued. “Clear documentation. Structured response. Full transparency—once we have confirmation.”
William nodded. “And until then?”
“I manage it,” I said, my stomach in shambles at the guilt and stress of my internal battle. I couldn’t tell Oliver. I couldn’t. It’d ruin him, and I wanted to throw up. Yet, I forced the bile down and nodded at William. “Same as I always do.”
He exhaled slowly, running a hand over his face. “Let me know when he’s ready to see me. I’ll get the echo scheduled.”
By the time I stepped into the staff meeting hours later, my head was already pounding.
The kind of ache that bloomed behind my eyes and refused to ease, no matter how many breaths I forced in and out of my lungs.
I’d taken the side door through diagnostics to avoid unnecessary conversation, but it hadn’t helped. Nothing helped.
William’s confirmation had cracked something open inside me.
Paroxysmal SVT. It was manageable on paper.
Treatable. It sounded like something we could handle—if this were a different player, a different case, a different set of circumstances.
But Oliver wasn’t just another athlete on our roster, and our circumstances weren’t simple.
He was mine, the man I was with, and this would kill him. Figuratively, emotionally.
He didn’t know yet. I hadn’t told him. The words stayed lodged in my throat, too tangled with fear and guilt to push out.
I didn’t know if I was protecting him or myself, and the back and forth ruined any appetite I had.
This was my fear, putting my career or him first, and I had to pick career to protect him.
Ivy slid the updated recovery report into my hands as I sat. I clicked the shared screen on the wall, pulled up the performance dashboard, and kept my expression neutral.
My fingers moved through the tabs like muscle memory. Ty. Quinn. Jordan. The list of flagged metrics was long but familiar. I barely registered the words. The only file playing on loop in the back of my mind was Oliver’s.
“Ty’s migraines are back,” Ivy said quietly beside me, her eyes already on her tablet. “That’s three this month.”
“Flag him for full neuro if he reports one more before Monday,” I said automatically. My tone was clinical. Flat. Controlled.
“I already did it this morning,” she replied, without judgment.
I nodded and kept going. Quinn sat near the far end of the table, slouched in his chair, arms crossed. His posture told me more than any of his biometrics. His cortisol had spiked again. The sleep numbers were trash. He was overtraining, overstimulated, and still pretending he could handle it.
“Quinn,” I said, still not looking directly at him. “You’re not logging your sleep. I want a full recovery log by Friday. Food, hydration, screen time, hours in bed.”
He rubbed the side of his face and muttered, “Seriously?”
“Yes,” I said. My tone didn’t waver. “And no caffeine after noon. That includes those powdered drinks you hide in your locker.”
That got a small reaction. A shift in his shoulders. A flicker of acknowledgment. But no argument.
I checked off his name and moved to the next entry. I ran the slides fast. Too fast. I knew it, but I didn’t care. I was trying to get through it without falling apart.
Booth raised a brow. “That’s it?”
“Yes,” I said, closing the dashboard. “The rest is stable. No new red flags.”
No one pushed back, but I felt the pause.
Mac leaned back in his chair. His arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes locked on me. “Update on James?”
My stomach clenched. I didn’t flinch.
“He’s scheduled for a neuro screen at noon. I sent his labs to Cardiology yesterday. Referral to EP was processed this morning. We’re expecting confirmation within forty-eight hours.”
Mac didn’t say anything. His silence was weighty in a way that made my palms sweat. I didn’t need him to spell it out. I knew what this meant for Oliver, and I knew he suspected more than he was letting on.
I shut down the projector and gathered my tablet. The room emptied slowly, voices low, the energy heavy.
Ivy didn’t leave.
She waited until the door closed behind Booth before she spoke. “You want to tell me why you ran that meeting like you were checking off a grocery list?”
I didn’t answer. I moved back to my desk and reached for the binder on the top shelf.
She followed. Her voice didn’t change. “Sloane.”
I placed the binder on the desk and flipped it open.
She looked down and read the title: Policy Manual, Player Health and Performance.
“You’re not doing this,” she said, quieter now.
I didn’t respond. I turned to the page I already knew by heart. I didn’t need to look. I needed her to see it.
Page 12, Subsection B. No employee in the Performance or Medical department may pursue a personal relationship with an active rostered player.
I stared at the text, my pulse racing as Ivy sucked in a breath. She reached out and squeezed my forearm, and I met her gaze. Understanding reflected back, and there wasn’t any judgement. The relief was instant.
If she hated me for having a relationship with him, I’d never forgive myself.
“Sloane…it’s mutual. I’ve seen how he is with you. I’ve known him since college, and he’s one of my oldest friends. There is always gray area when you work so closely with the team. This—"
“He has SVT, Ivy. If it confirms, if this escalates, he’s high-risk, and I’m too close,” I interrupted her, letting my guard down and showing honesty. It felt wrong to admit the truth. I was supposed to be strong, consistent, not… vulnerable.
“You haven’t shown bias toward him. You’ve been consistent and damn good at your job, Sloane. What is this second-guessing?” Ivy frowned and shut the manual. She stacked it with my other folders.
“I wrote the report on his episode like he was a stranger, like I didn’t know him or his struggles or what he goes through every night.” I pinched my nose, my voice cracking.
“And it was clean. Thorough. William said the same. Why are you questioning yourself?”
“I don’t know how to do both,” I admitted, hating how weak I sounded.
I needed to be the best here, so they respected me and I had a home.
I couldn’t show this insecure version when I was getting respect.
“I don’t know how to be his person and his lead.
I don’t know how to sit across from him in an exam room and pretend I’m not afraid of what happens if I lose both. ”
She didn’t speak right away. Then she sat down across from me, resting her elbows on her knees. “You’ve already been doing both. You’ve been making impossible calls and doing it without bias. You care for him, but you still held the line. You’re going to continue to hold the line.”
My chest tightened. She said it so easily, but yes, I did care for him. But that wasn’t enough. Caring for someone didn’t mean anything. I’d learned that the hard way with my parents, brother, and any other casual person in my life.
“The only difference now,” Ivy continued, “is that the rest of them are watching. And you don’t trust that they’ll let you keep doing your job.”
I didn’t trust that at all.
“I have to go prep the neuro screening,” I said, standing even though my legs felt stiff and unsteady.
“Let me take your 10:30,” Ivy offered. “Give yourself breathing room.”
“I can handle it.”
She gave me a look. “Okay. I care about both of you, and I’m worried about you, Sloane. We’ll talk soon.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I turned toward my desk and opened my tablet. The screen lit up with Oliver’s chart. I clicked past it and opened a blank document. I typed one title.
Resignation Draft.
The blinking cursor stared back at me.
I didn’t write anything.
But I sat there, staring at the screen, wondering if this was the moment I finally stopped trying to be two versions of myself at once because this wasn’t sustainable.
I didn’t get to be Doctor Mercer and Oliver’s girlfriend.