Chapter 4 Elise
ELISE
The MRI machine hummed around her like a living thing.
Elise lay flat on her back on the narrow sliding table, her injured shoulder immobilised with foam wedges and straps, staring up at the white curve of the scanner bore.
The machine was loud in a way she hadn't expected: a rhythmic knocking, like someone banging on a pipe, punctuated by longer whirring sounds that vibrated through the table and into her teeth.
They'd given her earplugs, but the noise still pushed through, relentless and mechanical.
She was supposed to stay still. She was supposed to relax. She was supposed to not think about the fact that somewhere inside this machine, radio waves were mapping the damage in her shoulder and the results would determine the next few months of her life.
She couldn't relax.
The fluorescent light visible beyond the bore of the machine was flat and impersonal.
The room smelled of sanitiser and the faintly metallic tang of electronics.
She'd been playing well tonight. She'd been winning faceoffs and controlling the neutral zone and doing everything right, and then Kowalski had come from behind and her shoulder had buckled and now she was lying inside a tube while a machine decided her future.
Six weeks. Sienna had mentioned that as a possibility. Maybe more. Six weeks of watching from the stands while Lex played her position, scored her goals, won the approval that Elise had spent five years earning.
The machine knocked again, louder this time, and Elise closed her eyes.
Her shoulder throbbed dully beneath the foam wedges.
The pain had become constant, a deep ache that flared whenever she shifted, and beneath it the instability was worse.
The wrongness was there in the joint, how it shifted when she breathed too deeply.
Tissue in there was torn. She didn't need an MRI to know that.
She'd been around sports medicine long enough to recognise the difference between a strain and structural damage.
Sienna was right. There was damage beyond the dislocation. Elise had known it on the ice, in the seconds after the impact, when the shoulder had made that grinding pop that she'd never heard before. She'd known it and she'd argued anyway, because admitting it meant facing what came next.
She lay in the machine and stared at the featureless white interior and tried not to think about what she would be if she couldn't play hockey.
The answer, when it pressed in, was nothing.
Or nothing she recognised. Hockey was the structure she'd built everything else around.
It was how she'd escaped the small, quiet house in Southern California where nobody talked about feelings and everyone worked too hard.
It was the reason she'd moved to Phoenix Ridge, the reason she had friends, the reason she got up in the morning with purpose.
Without it, she was just a thirty-year-old woman alone in an apartment that used to have a roommate.
The machine knocked and whirred and knocked again.
The scan took forty minutes. When the table finally slid out of the bore, the technician was gentle and efficient, helping Elise sit up and offering her a cup of water. The hospital gown rustled around her. The sling went back on, its weight pressing into her good shoulder, a constant reminder.
The corridor outside the MRI suite was hushed and nearly empty at this hour.
Phoenix Ridge Hospital at nine o'clock on a weeknight was a different world from the arena: hushed, smelling of floor polish and hand sanitiser.
Elise walked slowly, her skate guards swapped for the hospital-issued slippers she'd been given, and rounded the corner to the waiting area.
Sienna was there.
She was sitting in one of the moulded plastic chairs with her ankles crossed and her posture straight, reading on her phone.
She'd changed out of her game-day clothes and was wearing the smart trousers and navy silk blouse she kept in her office for post-game.
Her glasses caught the overhead light. Her dark hair was pulled back in its usual ponytail, but a few strands had come loose around her face, softening the sharp, professional lines of her.
She looked up when Elise appeared, and her expression shifted. Concern first, then a quick scan of Elise's face that was both clinical and personal, and then a softening. "Hey. How was it?"
The "hey" was new. That wasn't how Sienna usually greeted her.
"Loud." Elise sat down in the chair beside her. The plastic was cold and uncomfortable and she sank into it anyway. "And boring. And my shoulder hurts."
"We'll get you some proper pain relief once we've spoken to Dr. Mars." Sienna stood, tucking her phone away.
She held the corridor door open and Elise ducked through. "She's ready for us."
Elise followed her down the corridor. Walking beside Sienna, she could smell her perfume, subtle and clean, a scent that cut through the hospital antiseptic.
Their arms were close enough that they almost brushed, and Elise's mind went back to the medical room, to Sienna's hand on her chest, to the moment Sienna had touched her and then pulled away as if she'd been burned.
Something had happened when Sienna touched her. She wasn't imagining it. Sienna's breathing had changed, and her eyes had widened, and then she'd pulled away and retreated behind that professional calm so fast it was like watching a door close.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe Sienna touched all her patients' chests to stop them from getting off treatment beds. Maybe that little catch in her breathing and how her eyes had widened was just standard medical procedure.
Elise didn't believe that for a second.
Sienna led her to an office at the end of the corridor and knocked once before opening the door. "Dr. Mars? Elise Moreno is here."
The office was warm and softly lit, a welcome change from the harsh fluorescence of the corridors.
Medical journals were stacked neatly on the desk beside a small framed photo and a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST DOCTOR.
The woman behind the desk stood as they entered, and Elise's first thought was that she was tiny.
Dr. Josephine Mars was petite and feminine, with sandy hair pinned back from a face that was lined with age but bright with energy.
She was in her early sixties, and there was a commanding presence to her that had nothing to do with her size and everything to do with how she held herself: straight-backed, sharp-eyed, completely assured.
"Elise." Josephine came around the desk with quick, decisive steps and took Elise's good hand in both of hers.
Her grip was surprisingly firm for someone so small.
Up close, the laugh lines around her eyes were visible, and reading glasses hung on a chain around her neck.
She radiated competence and care in equal measure.
"I'm so sorry about what happened tonight.
I was watching the game in my office and that hit was absolutely disgraceful.
The officials should have acted sooner."
Elise blinked. "You were watching?"
"I'm a hockey fan. Have been for thirty years. Season ticket holder since the Valkyries played in the old rink." She squeezed Elise's hand before releasing it and gesturing to the chairs in front of her desk. "Please, sit down. Both of you. Let's see what's going on with this shoulder."
Elise sank into the chair, and the tightness in her chest loosened.
There was a quality to Josephine Mars that made you feel like everything was going to be handled.
Like you'd walked into the office of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and cared about doing it well.
The mug helped. The photo, Elise noticed, was of a cat sitting in a surgical cap and there was another photo of Josephine smiling with another woman and a red haired smiling girl of about twelve years old.
Sienna sat in the chair beside her, close enough that their knees were almost touching. Josephine settled behind her desk and pulled up the MRI images on the large monitor mounted to the wall.
"Right. Let's have a look." Josephine tilted the screen so they could all see.
Sienna stood up immediately, drawn to the images.
She moved beside Josephine, and the two of them leaned in, studying the cross-sections of Elise's shoulder.
Sienna pointed at the screen and Josephine nodded, murmuring about "anterior-inferior" and "SLAP" and other terms she half-followed from years of being around sports medicine but couldn't fully parse.
They talked between themselves for a minute, voices low and technical, and Elise sat in her chair and watched them and tried to read their faces.
Josephine's expression was neutral. Professional. Sienna's was harder to read, her eyes narrowed behind her glasses, her hand hovering near the screen as she traced the outline of a shape Elise couldn't see properly.
Then they turned to face her. Josephine was the one who spoke first.
"The good news is that this isn't a complete tear.
Your labrum is partially torn, here." She pointed to the screen, circling an area on the image with her finger.
"There's some joint instability as a result, which is what's causing the laxity Dr. Park identified during her examination.
But the bone is intact and the rotator cuff is largely unaffected. "
"And the bad news?" Elise's voice was steady. She gripped the arm of the chair with her good hand.
Josephine exchanged a glance with Sienna. Sienna gave a small nod.