Chapter 21 — TEO
Coach Bodie keeps us an extra twenty because nobody can kill a penalty today. The power play unit is running us ragged and Mueller keeps drifting toward the slot like he’s got a magnet in his skates and Coach Bodie’s voice cuts across the ice without rising.
“Mueller, stay on the wall. If you’re in the slot, Avi has nobody to pressure.” He doesn’t yell. He just expects you to hear him. “Run it again.”
We run it again. I jump the passing lane and get a stick on the cross-seam and for three seconds the kill looks like a kill.
Then Fontenot feeds it through my legs from the point and the power play buries it and I’m staring at the puck in the net wondering how a shot came through my legs when I was standing right there.
“That’s on your gap,” Coach Bodie says. “Close it.”
Hájek glides up next to me at the boards between reps, his stick across his knees. He’s been rotating into the second PK unit all morning with the focus of a man reading the manual in real time.
“When the puck goes D-to-D, do I pressure the puck or do I stay in the lane?”
“Depends on the setup. If they’re running a one-three-one, stay in the lane. Umbrella, pressure. But read the hands first.”
He nods. The half-second where the English catches up to the hockey sense. “I read the hands. But then my feet are late.” He says this like he’s presenting a technical problem to an engineer, not like he’s frustrated. “My brain and my feet are operating on different schedules.”
Fontenot skates past. “Welcome to the pros, kid. My brain and my feet haven’t spoken since October.”
On the last rep, Hájek jumps the lane, reads the hands the way I told him, and clears the zone with a rim that Avi chases down. Clean kill.
I pull my shoulder through its full range during the cool-down. Clean. Full rotation, no catch.
Tyler is in the corridor when I come out of the locker room. He’s talking with Coach Bodie outside the medical suite, tablet open, nodding at whatever Coach Bodie is laying out.
“We’ll run the medical briefs through you for the rest of the stretch,” Coach Bodie says.
His voice carries in the corridor the way voices carry when nobody’s trying to be quiet.
“Pre-game assessments, recovery protocols, anything the staff needs flagged before game time. I want one point of contact and I want it streamlined.”
Tyler nods. “Absolutely. I’ll have the template ready by Thursday.”
“Good man.” Coach Bodie claps him on the arm and walks off toward the coaching offices.
Three months ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
One PT getting an assignment over another is scheduling, not a story.
But I’ve been inside that treatment room enough times to know how Zay talks about the work.
The way Gary defers to his clinical judgment because his credentials earn the deference.
Tyler is competent and personable and none of that is the point.
The point is that Coach Bodie walked past the treatment room where Zay is charting, past the door that was open, and stopped at Tyler.
I see Zay through the window as I pass. He’s at his desk, writing in a chart, his face the professional version it goes when something needs his full attention.
I keep walking. Don’t stop at the window.
Don’t knock. The corridor is bright and the facility hums with a normal Tuesday and I wonder if he heard Coach Bodie’s voice carry the way I did.
My session is at two. One of the last before the discharge conversation neither of us has brought up.
“Hájek’s pulling up on his right push. I think it’s worse than last week.”
“I know. I’ve been tracking it.” Zay doesn’t look up from the chart. “Sit.”
I pull myself onto the table. “He asked me about PK reads today. Pressure versus lane. Kid takes notes in his head like he’s writing a thesis. He does it in book club too.”
“He’s thorough.” Zay’s hands find my shoulder without looking up. Press, rotate, the clinical sequence he could do in his sleep. “The groin’s on a modified protocol. He thinks he’s hiding it.”
“He’s not hiding it from you.”
“Nobody hides anything from me.” He says it flat, eyes on the chart, and I hear the second thing underneath it.
“Did you listen to the song I sent last night?” I ask, keeping my voice a register lower so only he can hear.
“I’m assessing your shoulder.”
“You can assess and answer a question about music, Brooks.”
“Flexion looks good.” He lifts my arm, holds it at the top. “Abduction is full.” His fingers are on the joint and his eyes are on the chart and his jaw has the almost-softness it gets when he’s deciding whether to let himself be a person in this room instead of a clinician. “Yes. I listened.”
“And?”
“And your taste is getting better.” He palpates the joint deeper. “Slowly.”
“My taste has always been perfect. You just think your opinions are right.”
“I have data. The first three months were unlistenable.”
“Unlistenable isn’t a word.”
“It is when your playlists are the evidence, Marchetti.” And there it is. The tug at the corner of his mouth I have been working for since I sat down.
He writes the numbers. The session is over in minutes. The chart is done. There’s no clinical reason for me to still be on this table and there’s no clinical reason for him to still be standing this close.
I don’t move. Neither does he.
He puts the pen down. Stands there with the chart on the desk beside him and looks at me and the treatment room is quiet and his face is right there.
My finger finds the inside of his forearm.
Just above the wrist. Light. The pad of my index finger tracing a slow line up toward the crease of his elbow, and I feel him not pull away.
His skin is warm and I trace the path back down, slow, the way I’ve been touching him for months whenever we’re alone and the door is closed.
His breath shifts. Not a catch. A settling.
His arm stays where it is. His eyes are on my hand and his mouth is slightly open.
Then the door opens.
Coach Bodie is halfway into the room before either of us registers the handle turning.
Zay steps back and his hand finds the chart on the desk in a single motion that looks practiced except for the part where his knuckles go pale around the pen.
My hand goes to my own shoulder. I press into the trap like I’m testing tension.
My heart is thumping and Coach Bodie is standing in the doorway looking at us.
“Brooks.” Coach Bodie has his tablet under one arm. His face is neutral, a man with a question and a schedule. “Sorry, didn’t realize you were still in session. Quick question about Hájek’s groin. He’s been favoring it in the drills. You tracking that?”
Zay’s voice comes out level. Perfectly level. “I am. He’s been compensating through the hip flexor. I have him on a modified protocol.”
“Good. Can you send me the notes? I want to adjust his deployment for Seattle.”
“I’ll have them to you by end of day.”
Coach Bodie nods. His eyes move to me on the table. My hand is still pressing into my own shoulder, into a trap that is fine, that was fine this morning and last week and has been fine for a while now. “How’s the wing, Marchetti?”
“Good.” My voice sounds normal and I don’t know how. “Brooks was just checking a spot in my trap that’s been pulling.”
“Good to hear.” He taps the doorframe with his tablet. Turns. Walks out. His footsteps go down the corridor and around the corner and then there is nothing in the hallway but the hum of the fluorescents.
I look at Zay.
He’s standing at the desk with the chart in both hands and his face has something on it I have never seen.
His eyes are on the door Coach Bodie just walked through and the chart isn’t moving because his whole body has gone still in a way that isn’t composure.
His jaw is tight and his fingers are white on the edges of the chart.
I have seen him composed. I have seen him guarded. I have never seen him look like this.
“Hey.” I slide off the table. “He didn’t see anything. He was asking about Hájek.”
Zay looks at me and whatever is on his face doesn’t change.
“He saw where I was standing relative to you on that table. If he thinks about it for ten seconds, it doesn’t explain the positioning.” He takes a breath. Lets it out.
“You were standing by the desk. You had the chart. That’s where you always stand.”
“That’s not where I was standing and you know it.” He rubs the back of his neck, pressing into the muscle there.
“Okay. So what do we do?”
“He’s not going to ask. He’s going to mention it to Gary, or he’s not.
We don’t get to control which one.” His eyes are doing the math in real time.
Gary Miller. The man who brought him in.
Whose trust holds up the floor Zay stands on in this building.
“One sentence from Coach to Gary about a session that looked off, and Gary starts watching. And if Gary is watching, it’s over. ”
“Zay…”
“Not here.” The quietest he’s ever been in this room and the most final. His eyes move to the corridor. His face is the clinical face and the man I was touching thirty seconds ago is behind it, unreachable. “I have the Hájek notes to write. You should go.”
I stand there. My hands want to reach for him and I keep them at my sides because reaching for him in this room is what caused this. My finger tracing up his arm because I got comfortable.
I leave. Walk down the corridor with my bag over my good shoulder, past the rehab room where Tyler is setting up for an afternoon session, past the whiteboard where someone has written the magic number for the playoff clinch in green marker, past the double doors and into the parking lot where the afternoon sun hits my face and nothing about the outside matches what just happened inside.
I don’t text him. I stand by my car with the sun coming through the windshield and I think about the man in that treatment room and the word arrives without permission.
Love.
My sisters nailed it weeks ago. Not someone I think I love. Not someone I might love if I let myself. I love him. The word is plain and sure. I love him and it changes nothing about what just happened inside that building.