4. Chapter 4
Cade
Iam sitting in Dr. Reyes's office with my wrist taped as usual, watching him shuffle papers that will determine whether I get to spend the next ten weeks here in the city I know or somewhere remote I have never been.
The fact that I cannot predict which option I want more is the first sign I am already in trouble.
"Media exposure," Reyes says, sliding a folder across his desk. "Cortisol levels. Sleep disruption. The data is clear, Cade. Your body is responding to Boston like a threat."
I pick up the folder because he expects me to, but I already know what the numbers say. Two weeks of rehab and the sessions are clean, but the stress markers aren't budging. My elbow can't heal what my cortisol levels keep activating.
Two hours of sleep last night. My mind ran the headline career-ending on a loop — some blogger's take that has no business living in my head at 3 AM.
The cameras outside the facility every morning don't help. They are waiting to catch me limping, grimacing, looking anything less than certain.
"Quinn's protocol is working," I say. "The sessions are good."
"The sessions are excellent." Reyes leans back in his chair, and he looks tired in a way I haven't noticed before.
He has been fielding calls from the front office all week, and I am the reason.
"Her numbers are the best conservative UCL outcomes we have on record. Which is why I want to protect them."
I set the folder down. "What does that mean?"
"It means I want to move your rehab out of Boston. Somewhere with a lower stress environment. Fewer cameras. Better sleep architecture." He pauses. "Graham McKenzie mentioned they have a family ranch in Montana that might work."
The McKenzie Ranch. I know that ranch from ten years of Graham's stories, and I know what it means to him.
"Montana," I repeat.
"The facility would be improvised but adequate.
Quinn has already reviewed the space requirements.
Her brother Noah lives on the property." Reyes is watching me with the careful attention of someone who has delivered this kind of news before.
"The question is whether you are willing to complete your rehab in an environment that requires you to rest."
I think about the dugout at Fenway. The empty bench. The light flickered when I last walked through it, and I have not been back since because it hurts too much to stand where I cannot play.
"Quinn would come?"
"Quinn is the protocol. Without her continuity, there is no point."
I nod, turning the folder over in my hands without opening it again. Montana means ten weeks away from everything I know. It means the ranch, the family, the life Quinn keeps so carefully separate from her work. It means proximity I have not earned and cannot ask for.
It also means quiet. Real quiet. The kind I have not had since I was a kid throwing fastballs in my grandfather's backyard, before anyone cared whether I could catch.
"When do we leave?"
Reyes looks surprised, which tells me he expected me to argue. Three weeks ago, he would have been right.
The drive back to my apartment takes forty minutes in traffic, and I spend most of it on the phone with Marcus, who is not happy.
"Montana," he says, in the tone he reserves for decisions I have made without consulting him. "For ten weeks. During the season."
"The season is happening without me anyway." I merge onto the highway and let the city blur past. "This is the path back. Reyes says the stress markers in Boston are slowing my recovery."
"And you believe him?"
I think about Quinn's hands on my elbow this morning, adjusting the resistance band with the precision of someone who has done this a thousand times.
I think about her face when she looks at the goniometer reading and says good in a voice that carries no extra weight, and how that single word means more to me than any pep talk a coach has ever given.
"I believe in the PT," I say. "And she is going."
Marcus is quiet for a long moment. "Graham's sister."
"Yes."
"The one who spent the last couple of weeks making you follow through for once."
"Also yes."
"Cade." He sighs, and I can hear him pinching the bridge of his nose through the phone. "If this goes sideways, it is going to look like you prioritized personal dynamics over professional judgment."
"It is going to look like I followed medical advice," I correct him. "Because that is what I am doing."
"Is it?"
I do not answer, because I am not sure I know anymore. Two weeks ago I could have told you exactly where the medical decision ended and the personal one started.
I can't anymore.
"Just don't give them a story," Marcus says finally. "No headlines. No complications. Get healthy and get back on the field."
"That is the plan."
I hang up and drive the rest of the way in silence, the folder from Reyes sitting on the passenger seat like a question I have already answered.
Graham meets me at Clancy's that night, sliding into the booth with two beers and the easy grin of someone who has not spent the last few weeks worrying about whether his body will ever work right again.
"So you are doing it," he says. "Montana?"
"Your idea, apparently."
"Reyes's idea. I just mentioned that Noah has space." He takes a long pull of his beer. "You know, when I introduced you to Quinn, I did not expect it to end with you living on my family's ranch."
"I am not living there. I am rehabbing there."
Graham raises an eyebrow. "For ten weeks. In the same house as my sister."
"Separate rooms."
"Obviously." He sets his beer down. "Look, I told you before. Quinn is the best. If she agrees Montana is the right call, then Montana is the right call. But she has been through things, Cade. Things that make her careful. Things that make her keep walls up."
I think about the rubber band on her wrist. She snaps it when she needs to recalibrate. She hands me my protocol sheets without any warmth in her voice, but her hands are always gentle when she checks my range of motion.
"I know," I say.
"Do you?" Graham leans forward. "Because the guy I have known for ten years would already be trying to charm his way past those walls. And Quinn does not respond to charm. She responds to honesty. To consistency. To people who show up and do the work without expecting anything in return."
"I am doing the work."
"I know you are." He finishes his beer. "That is why I suggested the ranch. Because in ten years I have never seen you do the work without negotiating it first."
I don't argue, because he is right.
The session the next morning is the best one yet. Quinn runs me through phase two resistance work with the focused intensity she brings to everything. My elbow responds cleanly through every angle.
She marks the numbers on her chart, looks up at me, and gives me nothing extra. Just the numbers.
"The elbow work is tracking well," she says.
"Yeah."
"Which means Montana has a real chance of working." She sets the chart down. "Dr. Reyes told me you agreed to the transfer."
Quinn is quiet for a moment, her hand drifting toward the band on her wrist before she catches herself and stops. "My family is going to be there," she says. "Noah. Probably Paige at some point. This is not exactly going to be a clinical environment."
"I understand."
"Do you?" She meets my eyes, and I see something in her expression I have not seen before.
Not wariness, exactly. More like the careful attention of someone standing at the edge of something they are not sure they want to step into.
"Because the ethics policy still applies.
The professional boundaries still apply.
The fact that we are sleeping under the same roof does not change anything about our relationship. "
"I know."
"Then why did you agree so quickly?"
The question hangs in the air between us, and I think about all the ways I could answer it.
I could tell her about the stress markers and the sleep disruption and the media noise.
I could tell her about the empty dugout and the way Boston has started to feel like a prison.
I could tell her any of the true things that are safe to say.
Instead, I tell her the truth that is not safe at all.
"Because honestly, these two weeks are the only time in my career someone has treated my recovery like it matters for its own sake. Not whether it performs, or whether it makes the playoff roster. Just whether it heals. And I want to see what happens when I let that continue somewhere quiet."
Quinn stares at me. Her hand twitches toward the band on her wrist again, and this time she doesn't stop herself.
"That is a complicated answer," she says finally.
"It is an honest one."
She holds my gaze for a long moment, and I watch her face change. Not softening, exactly. More like recalculation. The careful attention of someone deciding whether to step forward.
She turns back to her chart.
Behind me, she says it without looking up.
"The plane leaves Thursday. Don't be late."