Chapter 28 — TEO
I’ve been to the second floor twice since September. Once when I was a name on an expansion draft list and they put me in a chair and said welcome to Atlanta. Once when Grayson asked about the shoulder at mid-season and I gave him the answer that sounded like progress and he let me keep it.
Today is the third time. Zay is next to me.
Not the measured distance from the treatment room hallway.
Not the calculated gap from the months when we timed our exits and counted the seconds between leaving the same door.
Just next to me, walking at my pace, his badge clipped straight, the rollerball pen in his breast pocket with the firebird on the clip.
The pen I gave him because his facility pen kept skipping and I couldn’t watch him fight with it anymore.
He’s carrying it to a meeting about us. I think he knows what the gift was.
Gary called him yesterday. Standard process. The disclosure needed to move up the chain. Grayson wanted both of us. Zay told me on the phone, his voice steady and already mapped, the preparation audible underneath the calm.
“Together?” I asked.
“Together.”
The same word from his kitchen, where Nan’s collards were in the fridge and his hand was on my chest and neither of us knew how many rooms we’d have to walk through before the walking was done.
Gary is already inside. Through the glass panel beside Grayson’s door I can see him seated across from the desk, coffee in hand.
Same mug. Same measured posture. The man who has been in the doorframe of the training room all season, now in a different chair in a different doorframe, holding his mug the way a person holds a familiar weight when the ground underneath has changed.
Grayson is behind the desk. Navy suit, open collar, and under the desk the sneakers that always catch me off guard.
Navy and green, deliberately mismatched, the one thing about him that breaks the polish.
Everything else reads intentional and then you look down and his shoes belong to a man who decided at least one thing about himself was going to stay exactly the way he wanted it.
Coach Bodie is in the corner chair. Arms folded across the chest of a man who still looks like he could put someone through the boards.
His face carries the specific patience of a person who has been informed that his presence is required and has noted this information and would like to return to hockey at his earliest convenience.
Zay knocks on the open frame. Grayson looks up.
“Come in. Sit down, both of you.”
We sit. The two chairs beside Gary, angled toward the desk.
My knee is six inches from Zay’s. I don’t close it and I don’t widen it.
It’s just where the chairs are. The first time we’ve sat this close in a professional room without either of us running the math on what the proximity says to the people watching.
“Gary briefed me on the disclosure.” Grayson’s voice is even, his hands folded on the desk. “I want to hear it from both of you. Walk me through the timeline. From the beginning.”
Zay doesn’t wait. “We met once before I started here. September. The night before training camp. Neither of us knew who the other was. It was anonymous.”
“And the recognition.”
“Day one. He walked into the treatment room for his initial assessment. We both recognized each other immediately.”
“And you didn’t recuse yourself from the case.”
“No.”
Grayson lets the word sit. Not pressuring. Giving it space the way a thorough person gives space to an answer that needs follow-up. “Help me understand that decision.”
“The shoulder needed the protocol I was building. The clinical work was sound from the first session. I assessed the situation and made a judgment call that I could maintain the professional standard, and the record supports that I did.” Zay’s hands are still in his lap.
His posture is straight but not rigid, and I can see the architecture of his precision from this angle, the way his jaw holds steady and his breathing stays even, the professional composure that used to be a wall and is now just how he conducts himself in rooms that matter.
“That doesn’t make the judgment call right.
It makes the clinical work right. Those are two separate things and I’m not conflating them. ”
“When did the personal relationship begin.”
“Charlotte road trip. Late January.”
“And from that point forward, you were treating a player you were in a relationship with.”
“Yes.”
The word fills the room without apology. Zay doesn’t add a qualifier. Doesn’t soften it. Just the fact, and the professional weight of it visible in the stillness of his hands.
“How long between the start of the relationship and the disclosure to Gary.”
“Two months. Approximately.”
“That’s a long window, Brooks.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You should have come to us sooner. Both of you. Not just the training staff side. Every week without that disclosure was a week we couldn’t protect anyone involved if this had surfaced differently.”
“You’re right,” Zay says. “I made a judgment call on the timing. The clinical work was sound. The judgment call wasn’t.”
The same sentence he gave Gary. Word for word. He didn’t rehearse it to repeat. He said it that way the first time because it was the truth, and the truth sounds the same in every room.
Grayson holds his eyes for a beat. Then shifts forward.
“I need to ask you both something. What happens if this surfaces outside this building. A reporter. Social media. A photo someone didn’t know they were taking.” He looks between us. “Not a threat. A practical question about a practical reality.”
The room is quiet. Zay’s jaw works once, a motion so small I only see it because I know where to look.
“We’ve discussed it,” Zay says. “We’re aware of the visibility. Neither of us is looking to make a statement, but neither of us is going to deny it if it comes up directly.”
Grayson nods. Turns to me. “Marchetti. Anything from your side.”
I look at him. Alex Grayson, thirty-nine, the man who watches games from the press box with both hands flat on the glass when a play connects on the ice. The man who wanted to go to tacos with the group and checked his phone and said he had a call with ownership.
“I’m here because he shouldn’t carry this alone. He told Gary the truth and I’m telling you the same truth. This is real. It started before either of us planned it and it became what it is. The work was clean. We should have told you sooner. That’s on both of us.”
Grayson looks at Gary. “The clinical side.”
Gary sets his coffee down. “I’ve reviewed the full case file. Every session documented. The protocol Brooks designed for Marchetti’s shoulder is the strongest work this department has produced since I assembled the staff.”
The sentence lands in the room and I feel Zay go still beside me.
Not the professional stillness he wore through the questions.
A different kind. The kind where a thing you built got taken away from you and then got handed back, and you don’t know yet if your hands are steady enough to hold it.
Gary withheld that in his office. He needed the audit first. He needed to look at every chart note with new eyes before he put his name back next to the work.
And now he’s putting it back. In this room.
In front of Grayson and Bodie and both of us.
“I’m not questioning the clinical outcome,” Grayson says.
“I’m establishing the record.” He pauses.
Looks at both of us. “I want you to know that voluntary disclosure counts for a lot in this building. This isn’t disciplinary.
This is procedural. The organization has a responsibility to document and handle this properly. ”
The reassurance arrives after the questions. After the hard beat about the timeline. After the external dimension. It lands differently here than it would have at the top. It lands like something that was earned, not offered.
He sets his pen down. “Here’s what happens next. HR drafts a memorandum that formalizes the disclosure, establishes the recusal, and protects everyone. It’s not punitive. It’s documentation.” He looks at Gary. “Tyler handles any future treatment for Marchetti. Formal reassignment.”
“Already in process,” Gary says.
“Good.”
Bodie shifts in the corner chair. He has been quiet for the entire meeting with the patience of a man who considers words a finite resource and meetings a necessary cost of doing business near people who aren’t hockey players.
“Anything from coaching, Coach?”
Bodie looks at me. Then at Zay. His eyes move the way they move when he’s reading the bench during a power play. Three seconds. Everything covered.
“Is there a hockey problem?”
“Full clearance,” Gary says. “Shoulder is clean.”
Bodie nods once. Then: “Game day. Marchetti takes a hit, goes down, needs attention on the ice. Who goes out?”
“Tyler or myself,” Gary says. “Brooks stays off any situation involving Marchetti. Protocol is clear.”
“And the room knows that.”
“The room will know that.”
Bodie looks at me again. Direct. The same eyes that read the bench, now reading the player.
“You ready for April?”
“I’m ready for April.”
He nods once. Recrosses his arms. Done.
Grayson stands. We all stand. He shakes Zay’s hand first, then mine.
The grip is firm and brief and when he lets go his eyes pass between us once, and whatever he registers stays behind his face where I can’t reach it.
But underneath it, for less than a second, the surface shifts.
Not a change in expression. A stillness behind his eyes that deepens before it passes, his gaze resting on both of us, on the two men sitting six inches apart with nothing between them.
I can’t name it. For half a second, it looks like recognition.
Then it’s gone and the neutral is smooth again.
“HR will have the paperwork by end of week. Gary coordinates.”