Chapter 6 Elise #2
Sienna stepped closer. Her fingers were warm as she began to palpate the shoulder joint, pressing along the joint line, testing the swelling.
The bruise from the hit was still dark, a deep violet spreading across Elise's deltoid and down toward her bicep.
Sienna's touch was gentle and assured, her fingers sure and practised.
"External rotation," Sienna murmured, guiding Elise's arm outward with both hands. One hand cradled her elbow, the other rested on her scapula, and each fingertip was distinct and warm through her skin.
Elise's breathing went shallow. The room was too bright and too quiet and Sienna was standing close enough that Elise could smell her perfume, clean and subtle.
Her eyes tracked the movement of Elise's arm, focused behind her glasses, and her lips were slightly parted in concentration.
A strand of dark hair had escaped her ponytail and was resting against her neck.
"Does that hurt?"
"A bit. Less than last night."
"Good." Sienna moved her arm through another range, and her fingers shifted on Elise's shoulder blade.
The contact sent a current through Elise's skin that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with the fact that Sienna Park's hands were on her body and her body was paying very close attention.
Sienna tested forward flexion, abduction, the apprehension test. Her movements were slow and careful and entirely professional, and Elise sat still and breathed and tried not to think about the heat of Sienna's palms or how her forearm brushed against Elise's bare skin when she adjusted her grip.
When Sienna moved her arm into the apprehension position, Elise tensed, the memory of pain sharp in her muscles, and Sienna's grip tightened instinctively, protective.
"Breathe," Sienna said. "I've got you."
Elise breathed. The tension in her shoulder released a fraction, not because the position was less scary but because Sienna's hands were steady and her voice was calm and Elise believed her.
"The laxity is improving," Sienna said, stepping back. She picked up her tablet and made notes, her eyes on the screen. Was there colour on her cheeks, or was that just the overhead light? Elise couldn't tell. "The swelling is down significantly. That's a good sign."
"So I'm not a lost cause."
Sienna's mouth curved. Not quite a smile, but close. "You were never a lost cause."
The words were quiet and professional and they made Elise's chest ache.
She pulled her training top back on and sat on the edge of the bed, watching Sienna input data on her tablet.
The room was quiet except for the tapping of Sienna's fingers on the screen and the distant sounds of the facility beyond the door, music from the gym, voices in the corridor, the bang of a locker.
"I've got a gym slot in twenty minutes," Elise said. "With Kylie. Do you have time to come? I'd feel better if you were there for the first session. In case I do something stupid."
Sienna glanced at her watch. A small crease appeared between her eyebrows as she calculated. "I have a staff meeting at eleven. But I can spare forty minutes."
"You don't have to."
Sienna tucked the tablet under her arm and was already heading for the door. "I know. Let's go."
The gym was on the ground floor, a large open space with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the practice rink.
The morning light flooded in, golden, and the room smelled of rubber mats and chalk and the faint sweetness of energy drinks.
Kylie was already there, setting up a station near the squat rack.
Kylie Harris was compact and muscular, with cropped blonde hair and an energy that made everyone around her feel slightly tired. She had tattoos running up both arms and a smile that was ninety percent enthusiasm and ten percent chaos. She was new and Elise liked her immediately.
"Moreno! Welcome to the Shoulder-Friendly Zone." Kylie gestured expansively at the equipment behind her. "Everything here is approved by your very thorough doctor. No overhead pressing, no push-ups, no pull-ups, nothing that makes your shoulder go 'hey, what the hell.' Clear?"
"Clear."
"Dr. Park." Kylie nodded at Sienna. "Good to have you here. I've programmed exactly what you sent me. Squats, Romanian deadlifts, split squats, glute work, core stability. Twenty-minute circuit, three rounds."
Sienna reviewed the programme on Kylie's clipboard, asking quiet questions about load progression and rest intervals. Elise watched them confer, two professionals absorbed in the details of her recovery, and a wave of gratitude moved through her that she didn't quite expect.
She started the circuit. Goblet squats first, holding a kettlebell against her chest with her right hand while the sling held her left arm still.
The kettlebell was sixteen kilos, lighter than what she'd normally use, but Kylie had been firm about starting conservative.
The weight felt good. Her legs were strong, the muscle memory of thousands of training sessions firing cleanly, and for the first time in four days she felt like an athlete instead of a patient.
Sienna stood near the squat rack, arms crossed, watching Elise's form. "Deeper. Get your hips below parallel."
"I'm going deep."
"Not deep enough."
Elise sank lower, her quads burning, and caught Sienna's eye on the way back up. Sienna gave a small, approving nod, and the tiny gesture made Elise work harder on the next rep than she had any right to.
Between sets, they talked. Elise sat on the bench with a water bottle and watched Sienna lean against the squat rack, relaxed and unhurried, as if she had nowhere else to be.
Kylie kept the energy up, cracking jokes about players who tried to bench press with injuries and the time Frankie had attempted to do a deadlift in flip-flops.
But it was the quieter moments, when Kylie moved away to adjust a cable machine and Elise was resting between sets, that the conversation drifted somewhere warmer.
"How long have you been in Phoenix Ridge?" Elise asked, wiping her face with a towel.
"Fourteen months." Sienna was leaning against the wall beside the squat rack, arms still crossed, her posture relaxed in a way Elise hadn't seen from her before. "I came from the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Before that I was in San Diego, and before that, briefly, in London."
"London?"
"I did a fellowship at a sports medicine clinic in Harley Street. Two years. I loved the city but not the weather." A pause. She tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Or the food."
Elise took a long drink from her water bottle, watching Sienna over the rim. "What made you come here?"
Sienna's gaze drifted toward the windows, where the practice rink was visible through the glass. Empty now, the ice smooth and white under the overhead lights.
"Phoenix Ridge offered me the head physician role for the Valkyries.
It was the PWHL's inaugural season. A chance to build a programme from scratch.
" She was quiet for a moment. "I'd been working in men's sport for fifteen years.
The politics were exhausting. The pay gaps were depressing.
And the culture was..." She trailed off, choosing her words.
"Resistant to change. The PWHL felt different. It felt like it could matter."
"And has it been?"
Sienna looked back at her. The light from the gym windows caught her glasses and made her eyes hard to read, but her voice was warm when she spoke. "Yes. It has."
Kylie returned with a medicine ball and Elise moved into the core section of the circuit. Kylie demonstrated each exercise with a running commentary that made Elise laugh despite the effort, comparing dead bugs to "what happens when you try to put on trousers after leg day."
Her left shoulder protested at the planks but Sienna was there immediately, adjusting her position so the load transferred away from the injured side.
Her hand was on Elise's lower back, correcting her alignment, and the touch was brief and professional and Elise still felt it after Sienna stepped away.
They finished the circuit. Elise was breathing hard, sweat beading along her hairline, her legs shaking from the squats.
She felt good. Better than she had in days.
The endorphins were cutting through the fog that had followed her since the injury, and her body felt like her own again instead of a thing broken and borrowed.
"Same time tomorrow?" Kylie asked, scribbling notes on her clipboard.
"Same time tomorrow." Elise grabbed her towel and water bottle. Her legs were shaking pleasantly, as they used to after a hard practice, and the endorphins had smoothed the jagged edges of her mood into near-manageability.
Kylie clapped her on the good shoulder. "You did well, Moreno. We'll bump the weight up next week."
Sienna walked with Elise back toward the medical wing, their footsteps echoing in the empty corridor.
The facility was quieter now, the morning skate finished, the players scattered to their various commitments.
Elise could hear the hum of the ventilation system and the distant sound of someone vacuuming the team lounge.
"Thank you," Elise said. "For coming to the gym. And for all of this. The programme, the coordination with Kylie. You didn't have to do that much."
"It's my job."
Elise tilted her head. "You keep saying that."
Sienna's mouth twitched. "Because it keeps being true."
They stopped at the medical suite door. Sienna had her hand on the handle, ready to go back inside, and Elise stood in the corridor with her gym bag over her right shoulder and her hair sticking to her temples and her pulse loud in her ears.
She had a crush on Sienna Park. That was the simple, stupid truth of it.
Not a lightning bolt, just a tide that had been coming in for days without her noticing.
Not just the physical awareness, though that was there too, vivid and insistent.
It was Sienna listening when Elise talked, fully present, as if nothing else in the building mattered.
Coordinating with Kylie before Elise had even asked.
Making scrambled eggs without being asked, as if taking care of Elise was what her body did automatically, before her professional brain could object.
She had a crush on her team physician. On the woman who examined her shoulder every morning and texted her at midnight and made scrambled eggs in her kitchen and said "you were never a lost cause" in a voice that was too quiet for a doctor talking to a patient.
"See you tomorrow, Doc," Elise said. Her voice came out softer than she'd intended.
"See you tomorrow." Sienna held her gaze a second too long, and the corridor shrank to just the two of them, standing three feet apart with the medical suite door between them and a pull that neither of them acknowledged.
Then Sienna disappeared into Medical and the door swung shut. Elise stood in the corridor, the sweat cooling on her skin. She pressed her hand against her sternum where her heart was beating too fast.
She was in so much trouble.