Chapter 3 — ZAY
Eight AM. Treatment tables wiped, charts loaded, schedule printed and pinned above my station.
Tape sorted by width, bands by resistance, rollers by density on the lower shelf.
The ultrasound calibrated. I check everything twice because the second check is where you catch what confidence skips over, and I am not in the business of being caught off guard in my first week.
The facility is quiet at this hour. Just the hum of the overheads and the faint cold seeping through the walls from the rink.
I set up my station the way I set up every station I’ve ever worked at, precise and deliberate, and I notice what I always notice in a new building.
I’m the only Black professional in the medical suite. Probably in the whole training wing.
Gary finds me reviewing intake files. He sets a coffee on my desk and drops a folder next to it, which is his way of turning a walk-by into a conversation.
“Marchetti. Posterior capsule issue, flagged in the medical, confirmed in his physical last week. Some limited range of motion, impingement, compensating on his left side more than he should be.” He opens the folder and taps the MRI.
“Long-term rehab case. Daily sessions when the team’s home, coordination with strength and conditioning. I want you running it.”
I study the imaging and initial diagnosis. Season-long management, at a minimum. The case that proves whether Gary was right to vouch for me.
“I’ll have a treatment plan drafted by Thursday.”
“That’s what I told the coaching staff.” He squeezes my shoulder on the way out. Gary put his name next to mine when he brought me in. That means his judgment is on the line alongside my performance, and I will not make him regret it.
Tyler is across the hall, arranging his station. Same polo. Same title on the badge clipped to his belt. He nods at me. I nod back.
I pull up Marchetti’s intake and start mapping the protocol.
Berger comes through for his calf at eight fifteen. He’s on the table before I finish pulling up his chart.
“You’re still tight through here. Are you rolling this out after practice?”
“I am rolling it out with the dedication and precision you asked of me.” He doesn’t pause. “But it is being undermined by whatever they’re putting in that coffee machine. Brooks, I need you to know that I’ve submitted a formal complaint.”
“To who?”
“To the group chat. Which is the governing body of this team as far as I’m concerned.”
I laugh at that. His calf releases under my thumb and I work the length of the muscle, feeling the fibers soften under steady pressure. He keeps talking. I keep working. It’s easy and natural, the way a treatment room is supposed to feel when the patient trusts you and you know their body.
“You’re good, Berger. Ice after practice, ten minutes, and actually roll it this time.”
“I always roll it.” He gives me a look but we both know he doesn’t.
“You roll it for two minutes, open your phone, and call it a session.”
“Reviews, Brooks. I’m composing reviews. That is a public service for the team.”
He hops off the table still talking and rounds the corner toward the locker room. I pull up the next chart. Review the notes. The morning has a rhythm to it and the day is going the way a first week should go.
My nine o’clock is early. The shoulder. Attached to a player I haven’t met with yet.
I hear him in the hallway first. A few bars of a song, hummed off-key. Then he comes through the door with his hand already extended and a grin that reaches every corner of his face.
“Brooks, right? Teo Marchetti. I’m your nine o’clock. Your shoulder problem.”
Wide open smile. Zero hesitation. Like we already know each other and he’s just been waiting for me to catch up.
And I do one second later. O one second where his hand is in mine and my body places him before my brain does.
The grip. The warmth of his palm. Then the rest, all at once: dark hair pushed back from his forehead, blue eyes catching the fluorescents the way they caught the club lights four nights ago, the build I had pressed against a wall in a bathroom while bass came through the floor.
The hand I’m shaking is the hand that fisted my shirt and pulled me in.
The voice that just said my name is the voice that said Zee against my neck while I worked him over and he forgot how to speak.
Teo is standing in my treatment room with his name on a chart in my other hand.
“Have a seat on the table. I’m going to walk you through the imaging.”
“Absolutely.” He hops up. Studies me while I pull the MRI onto the screen, and the studying is not subtle. His eyes move over my face like he’s checking which person I’m going to be. Zee from the club, or Brooks his AT.
“Let me walk you through the imaging.”
I point to the screen. “Posterior capsule tightening here. Inferior impingement reducing your overhead range.” I name every structure I can see because naming things is the easiest way for me to get through this.
“I’m going to assess your passive and active range, and establish a baseline for treatment.”
“You’re the boss. I’m in your hands.” His grin gets wider.
He pulls his shirt over his head and settles on the table, and that makes this worse.
The other night we were clothed, mostly, so I didn’t know what his shoulders looked like, the lines of his torso.
Here it is under fluorescent lights at nine in the morning, and I am about to put my hands on those muscles in the name of treatment.
“You can call me Teo. Most people do. Or just Tee.”
The room gets very small as the grin on his face gets bigger.
“I’m not calling you either of those things.” I pick up his chart. “Marchetti.” I say it with enough weight that it should land. It should tell him everything he needs to know about what is and isn’t happening in this room.
He tilts his head. The grin doesn’t move. “Marchetti works. For now.”
His shoulder is in front of me. I have read his MRI. I have mapped the protocol in my head. My hands know exactly where to go and what to feel for and none of that preparation accounted for the fact that the other night those same hands were on the back of his neck.
I press two fingers into the posterior capsule and talk through the palpation because the words keep the hands and the brain on the same page. “Tell me when you feel restriction.”
“Right there,” he says a minute later.
I note the point and shift lower. “Here?”
“Little bit.” He’s watching my hands. Not the nervous tracking of someone checking whether you’re about to cause pain. He’s watching like he wants more of them.
I move to the rotator cuff insertion, pressing and noting. The muscle holds when I push, releases when I ease off. His body is responsive. He’s been stretching on his own.
“You’ve got good hands,” he says. Casual. Like it’s a professional observation about my technique. We both know it isn’t.
“I went to school for them.”
“I bet you did.” He watches me note something in the chart. “That’s a professional observation, by the way. Completely clinical.”
His skin is warm under my fingers. He breathes out slow during the stretch and the exhale lands on the inside of my wrist and I note the tissue quality in my head because that is my job. Dense, responsive, warming under manual pressure.
I move to range of motion. His arm in my hands through flexion, abduction, external rotation. I talk through each measurement as I take it because the numbers are concrete and remind me of where my focus should be.
Flexion, one sixty-two. Abduction, one-sixty, limited. External rotation, thirty-eight degrees. I note each one in the chart. “End feel is capsular, not bony. That gives us room.”
“Room? Meaning you can fix it?”
“Room meaning the tissue can change. I’ll have the full protocol by end of week. Manual therapy and targeted stretching, three sessions a week when the team is home. I’ll coordinate with strength and conditioning on your load.”
“Three times a week. In here with you.” The corner of his mouth moves. “I’ve been prescribed worse.”
“In this room with the door open.” I put my tablet down and look at him. “We’re done for today.”
He pulls his shirt back on but doesn’t leave. Sits on the edge of the table with his hands on his knees, watching me with an expression that is patient, direct, and entirely too settled for a man who should be heading to the locker room. He catches my eye and doesn’t look away.
“So…” he says. “We’re going to just pretend?”
I close the door. I cannot have anyone overhear this. “What happened the other night doesn’t exist here. Whatever that was, it stays outside this building.”
“Okay. I hear you. Can I ask why?”
“Because this is where I work. Where we work.” I pause because I really need him to hear this. “Where we work together.”
“So it’s the working-together part?”
“Yes.”
“The player-staff part?”
“Yes.”
“Was I terrible?”
“The hookup is not the issue.”
“So I was great!” He’s grinning and I am sure it is going to be the death of me.
“Marchetti.”
He holds up both hands, still grinning. “Kidding. Mostly. I hear what you’re saying.”
“I need you to actually hear it. Not charm your way past it.”
The grin fades. Not all the way, but enough that I can see him recalibrate. He looks at me and for half a second I see the guy underneath. Serious. Paying attention.
I square the folder on my desk. “Gary Miller brought me in. He put his name on the line for me. This is my first position at this level and I got it because someone believed I was worth the bet. I’m not going to prove him wrong.”
He’s quiet. First time since he walked through my door.
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it. I treat your shoulder. Trainer and player.”
He stands. Rolls the shoulder once, testing it, and I can’t tell if it’s habit or if he’s underlining the word I just used.
“Okay, Brooks.” His eyes hold mine for a beat longer than necessary. A look that says he heard me and he’s respecting the line. Then the grin comes back and he walks out humming whatever he was humming on his way in.
I straighten the treatment table. Wipe it down. Across the hall, Tyler is talking Jensen through a mobility drill, his voice carrying through my open door.
I sit down and open Marchetti’s chart. I work through the protocol, the calendar, aligning his treatment schedule with road trips and game days.
Every field in the form has a blank and every blank has an answer I can measure.
Three sessions a week, in this room, and try to imagine just how long this season is going to be.