Chapter 10 — ZAY
Berger is on my table at eight o’clock. He rolls up his pant leg without being told, which means he’s been here enough times to skip the part where I tell him.
“How’s it feel today, Berger?”
“Fine.”
One word answers aren’t usual from Berger but we just got back yesterday from the road trip and everyone is feeling it. I press around his ankle, moving his foot. “Your Achilles is better than last week.”
“Feels that way.”
“You’ve been following the stretching protocol I gave you.”
“Been trying.”
I work his calf wand feel the tissue responding. My hands do what they’re trained to do and I am full in the routine.
Marchetti walks in singing. A track I recognize because he sent it to me at eleven thirty last night with just the link and nothing else. He stops in the doorway when he sees Berger, but the singing dies on a delay, like he has to remember to turn it off.
“Brooks. Berger.”
“Marchetti.” My spine straightens. I keep my hands on Berger’s calf. “You’re not on my schedule until nine fifteen.”
“I know. I’m early.”
“You’re thirty minutes early.”
“I’m enthusiastic.” The grin. He drops into the chair by the door, legs stretched, taking up more of the room than the chair was designed for.
“What are we arguing about?” he asks Berger, because he knows his friend.
“Nothing today. Just my ankle.”
“I thought you’d be talking about that new Thai place on Ponce.” Marchetti looks at me with maximum offense, which is the only level of offense he has. “How have you been, Brooks?”
“Not yet. Lots of restaurants in town.”
“Name one.”
“I’m working, Marchetti.”
Berger gets a little more animated now we are on the topic of food. “Thompson scored the whole restaurant a seven without weighting the spring roll execution. One appetizer can establish a floor for the entire rating. He needs to think through his methodology.”
“One appetizer doesn’t establish the floor for a whole restaurant.” It comes out before I mean it to, and both of them look at me. Berger with the sudden focus of a man who has just discovered a locked room might be open.
“You have thoughts on the methodology,” Berger says.
“I have patients.” I press into his soleus and keep my eyes on my hands. “You’re done. Ice after practice, ten minutes.”
I finish Berger’s treatment. He leaves with the added energy of a man who has found new evidence. Marchetti is next, and the room feels smaller in the space of five seconds.
“On the table.”
He pulls his shirt over his head. The shoulder looks better: less anterior tilt, less protective posture. I track the improvement the way I was trained to, and then I track it again because the first time I wasn’t looking at his shoulder.
“How’s it feeling?”
“Good. A little tight after the game the other night.”
I press into the posterior deltoid. The tissue is responsive, softer than it was in December. “Less guarding through the lower trap.”
“Is that the good version or the bad version?”
“There’s only good and less good. This is the good version.”
“You have such a way with words, Brooks.”
“You still haven’t earned the advanced words yet.” I say it quietly, our own inside joke. “Let me check anterior flexion.” I guide his arm through the arc. Both hands steady, positioning correct. “Ninety-five percent of baseline.”
“Is that good?”
“I just said there’s only good and less good.”
“Right. So is ninety-five the good version of good, or the less good version of good?”
“It’s the version where I increase your resistance next week.”
“Whatever you say, Brooks.” He grins, and then his hand is already reaching for his phone on the side table. “You have to see this photo. Parker destroyed my shoe rack last night.”
“I don’t need to see your cat’s crime scene during a session.”
“You absolutely do.” He holds the screen up.
The orange kitten is sitting in the wreckage of what was probably a three-tier shoe rack, one paw resting on a toppled sneaker, ears forward, eyes wide with what can only be described as satisfaction.
She looks like she’s posing for a portrait of her own conquest.
I lean in to look. One inch closer than necessary. “She knocked over the whole thing?”
“The whole thing. Three in the morning. Sounded like the building was coming down.”
“Atlanta doesn’t get earthquakes.”
“I’m from Jersey. I don’t know what Atlanta gets.”
“Not earthquakes.” His thumb scrolls to a second photo. The cat has climbed on top of the remaining shelf, surveying the debris. “She climbed up after to observe her work. This was premeditated, Brooks. Premeditated shoe rack destruction.”
“That’s strategic.” I’m looking at the photo and I’m standing close enough that his shoulder is almost touching my arm and the door is open and footsteps are coming down the corridor.
I step back smooth, my hand finding the chart on the desk behind me.
Marchetti locks his phone. By the time Thompson appears in the doorway, I’m holding the chart with both hands and reading it with the focus of a man reviewing a surgical plan.
“Brooks.” Thompson leans against the frame. “KT tape? I’m out.”
“Cabinet by the sink. Second shelf.”
“Thanks.” His eyes travel from me to Marchetti, shirtless on the table, to the chart I’m gripping like classified intelligence. “Marchetti. How’s the shoulder?”
“Good.” Marchetti waves. Completely casual. The man was born casual.
“Cool.” Thompson finds the tape, holds it up, and walks out.
The hallway swallows his footsteps. Marchetti looks at me.
I look at Marchetti. His mouth twitches.
Mine twitches. Neither of us laughs but the effort of not laughing is a full-body event.
His eyes are bright and ridiculous and I have to look at the ceiling for three solid seconds before I can speak.
“Your anterior flexion is at ninety-five percent,” I say.
“You mentioned that.”
“I’m reiterating for the chart.”
The not-laughing settles. And underneath it, the part that isn’t funny: Thompson was in the doorway. Thompson saw me standing a step too close, holding a chart I wasn’t reading.
He puts his shirt back on. The room returns to professional dimensions. He leaves the way he always leaves, with a “Thanks, Brooks” that sounds identical to every other player’s but I know isn’t.
Gary finds me after the morning rotation. He leans in the doorframe with his coffee, which is how every conversation with Gary starts “Marchetti shoulder. How’s it tracking?”
“Ahead of schedule. Ninety-five percent anterior flexion, less guarding through the posterior chain. I’m increasing resistance next week.”
Gary nods. The nod means he trusts the assessment without needing to verify. “Good work. Clean case, Brooks.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Coaching staff’s happy with your communication. Keep it up.”
“I will. Thanks.”
He pushes off the frame and heads toward his office. Clean case. Every time Gary calls the work clean it helps steady my security with this team.
Tyler passes in the corridor while I’m resetting my station. Navy polo, badge at his belt, file in his hand. He nods and I nod back. He moves toward the weight room at the unhurried pace of a man who has never had to calculate whether he belongs in this setting.
The afternoon has its own rhythm. Two more treatments, standard work.
Through the wall I can hear Marchetti in the weight room, something about his nonna’s bolognese, his voice carrying the way it carries into rooms he isn’t even trying to reach.
I chart. I reset. I run my hands under warm water between patients.
I’m heading to the staff kitchen when Marchetti rounds the corner with Berger. They’re mid-argument. Marchetti’s hands are involved, which is how Marchetti argues about everything.
“It’s not about the pasta.” His hands carve the air. “You’re adding to the sauce. You’re enhancing the sauce. It’s an improvement.”
“You’re committing a crime against the entire Italian population,” Berger says.
They stop when they see me. Berger pivots immediately.
“Brooks. Hot sauce on pasta. Verdict.”
“I’m not rating food for you.”
“Please,” Marchetti says. “You’d love my pasta. I make a bolognese that would change your entire professional opinion about nutrition.”
“My professional opinion about nutrition is evidence-based.”
“My nonna’s bolognese is evidence.”
“That’s not how the scientific method works, Marchetti.”
“It’s exactly how it works. You taste it, you form a conclusion, you revise your position. That’s the scientific method, Brooks.”
“That is not how it works.”
“It is if the bolognese is good enough.”
His grin is wide open and I haven’t stopped smiling. I don’t catch it until Berger tilts his head. His eyes move between us, cataloguing everything he sees.
The smile pulls back. Not fast enough. I feel the half-second where it was still on my face after it should have been gone, and that half-second is the tell.
“Having both of you is a terror,” I say, and my voice finds the flat register it keeps for this building.
Berger looks at me for one second longer than Berger usually holds anything without commentary, and then he’s off into a theory about hot sauce preferences correlating with on-ice aggression. The corridor fills with his voice, and Marchetti is contributing, nodding, being Marchetti.
I walk to the staff kitchen and pour coffee and think back to the pictures Teo was showing me earlier. Thompson walked in on a man looking at his patient’s phone to see a photo of a cat, and the fact that I’m replaying the scramble like it was a bank robbery is its own kind of ridiculous.