Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Scottie
When Everyone Else Fails, You Get Assigned the Wreckage
There are only three reasons Reese brings me smoothies.
One: She needs me to cover her group class because someone on her team has COVID, strep, or—last month—a mysterious rash none of us want to discuss again.
Two: She’s secured a sponsor donation that requires me to be the face of it—on camera, on a turf mat, appearing competent and charismatic while explaining something in thirty seconds or less.
The competent part is doable, but I’m not very good at cutting things short, it’s almost impossible to do.
And three?
She’s about to ask me to do something I absolutely don’t want to do. Today, she brings two smoothies.
Both eco-cups land on my desk with a suspiciously chirpy thud.
The green one’s probably kale, pineapple, and something gritty like ground flaxseed, because Reese believes in “gut health.” The second’s pink, thick, and flecked with something ominously berry-adjacent.
I stare at it as if it might start talking.
“You only bring two smoothies when you’re about to ruin my day,” I mutter, gluing my eyes back on the screen.
“So someone either rage-quit mid-lunge, or someone’s accidentally knocked someone up in the broom closet—how many times have I told you people to use protection and not sleep with each other?
Or there’s a third I might not like at all: Jason Tate has burned something. ”
Reese doesn’t blink. Just keeps gliding like she’s on a goddamn wellness retreat. “No one’s pregnant.”
“That you know of.”
She slides into the chair across from me, crossing her legs like she’s here for brunch and not a therapy ambush. “They’re mango-strawberry with collagen and adaptogens. For your stress.”
I squint at her. “You know I don’t trust adaptogens in this kind of situation. They’re like emotional glitter—useless, impossible to clean up, and probably hiding in a marketing scam somewhere.”
“You trust black coffee and malice.”
“Exactly. Bitterness preps the nervous system better than lavender powder ever will.”
I take the smoothies anyway. Not because I’m gullible—because I’m weak. It’s mango strawberry. She knows my weakness.
But I don’t sip. Not yet. Because she didn’t correct the part about Jason Tate.
I set the cup down like a trap and fold my arms. “Want me to guess, or are we skipping to the part where you say, ‘hear me out,’ and I start slow-breathing through my eye twitch?”
She doesn’t speak.
She just pulls a file from her oversized Mary Poppins bag and drops it on my desk like it might explode. I don’t like what I see, not one bit. Red stamp. Temporary Hold. Jason Tate.
My stomach sinks. Not a full-body plunge, just enough to trigger the internal screaming.
“No.” It’s instant, primal. A full-body hell no.
Reese raises a brow like I just said the sky’s not blue. “You don’t want to hear the pitch?”
“Unless it ends with me exorcising a hockey player who treats physical therapy like a prison sentence and me like I kicked his dog? Pass.”
“He’s not asking for you.”
“Perfect. That means we’re aligned. He’s someone else’s problem.”
“I’m assigning him to you.”
There it is—the guillotine drop.
I sit up straight. Drop the civility act. “First of all, you don’t have seniority. I’m your boss. Second . . . well, you have a full rotation of senior PTs. I built that roster. Any one of them can handle this.”
“No one wants him.”
My mouth slams shut so fast I hear my molars crack.
She continues as if she didn’t just sentence me to pain. “Alex submitted an official refusal. Cited two incidents of non-compliance. One full-on walk-out. A verbal altercation in the main turf area. Refused dry needling. Opted out of neuromuscular drills. Said activation flow ‘feels dumb’—”
“It does feel dumb,” I mutter.
“—and this morning, he arrived mid-somatic flow, laid flat in Savasana like a corpse at peace, and then told Alex, and I quote, ‘fuck you, you’re all fucking useless.’”
My gaze drops to the folder.
This isn’t a client spiraling. This is someone flinging themselves off the edge and lighting the parachute on fire mid-air. The fuck with Jacob’s big favor; we tried, and we’re done.
“He’s a liability,” I say. “Cut him loose before we’re all on damage control.”
Reese exhales through her nose. “He’s drowning. Not fighting. There’s a difference.”
I look out the window.
The skyline stares back—glass, concrete, taxis crawling in gridlock, and a bike messenger yelling at someone’s grandmother. Business as usual. New York doesn’t pause for anyone’s breakdown, least of all a pro athlete too proud to ask for help.
And maybe that’s the problem. He’s unraveling, and Reese is asking me to thread him back together like I’ve got a goddamn miracle needle hiding behind my credentials.
If I shut this down now, he’ll get routed out not only of this practice but the team. He’ll be another failure on paper. Another note in the file that says: non-compliant, unreceptive to care. Someone else’s headache.
But it’s Jason fucking Tate, and I know more about him than any other person in this building. He’s not just another injury. There’s a history behind making it into the big leagues.
This Jason gave his signing bonus check to pay off his sister’s college debt.
This Jason built an ice rink in his old neighborhood so kids didn’t have to drive two hours to the nearest one. He is the same guy who showed up to a children’s cancer ward in full gear because a five-year-old told a nurse he wanted to “meet a hockey superhero.”
I know that kind of story. It’s tattooed into my bones.
It’s Papa. It’s my brothers. It’s the dream you chase with everything because you were raised to believe it’s the only way out—and once you’re in, you carry everyone with you.
He bought his parents a house. Built one for his best friend’s mom too, after she lost hers to a fire.
He’s not just skating for himself. And he hasn’t been for a long time.
So why is he torching it all?
What the fuck is he scared of?
The guy could ride for two more years, maybe three. Then, transition into the league as staff or player development. Hell, he could probably call games if he wanted.
His stubbornness screams of trauma. This is why I sent him to Dr. Parker. Has he even reached out to her?
“Let me think about what I want to do with him.”
My voice scratches out, low and reluctant, like it’s dragging its heels across gravel. Reese nods as if I said yes instead of maybe. Then she walks off—like she’s been waiting for me to come to my senses.
I probably will regret this.
But I also can’t sit back and watch him sabotage his career because no one else had the courage to slap the grenade out of his hand.
Once alone, I wake my laptop from its nap and dive into Jason Tate’s notes. It doesn’t take long to find Eliza’s evaluation. And, God help me, it reads like a final obituary.
Eliza isn’t one for dramatics. She’s precise.
But this?
This isn’t clinical.
This is a fucking eulogy.
Despite passing all physical benchmarks, the client exhibits consistent physiological distress in anticipation of exertion.
Neural pathways appear conditioned to anticipate failure, not just pain.
Presents with severe performance-related trauma.
Trust in body = fractured. Emotional deregulation during physical milestones = high.
Current assigned PT team unable to stabilize. Recommendation: athlete requires high-tier trauma-informed physical therapy with elite-athlete language fluency. Must be someone who understands identity displacement in post-injury regression.
Suggested lead therapist: Ella Crawford.
I stare at that last line. Read it once. Twice. Third time’s the charm, and then . . .
“Fuck.”
It slips out on a sigh that sounds way too much like surrender.
This isn’t fair.
But neither is watching a guy bleed out emotionally while everyone keeps handing him Band-Aids and bad advice.
Can I even help someone who’s made a full-time job out of resisting help?
I clench my jaw. Not because I’m angry. Because I know what Eliza saw. What Dr. Park saw. What every goddamn therapist worth their certification sees when they look at Jason Tate.
He’s not just scared of pain. He’s terrified of hope.
I’ve seen it before. Runners flinching at the memory of a snapped hamstring. Gymnasts choking on their breath mid-vault. Soccer players hearing the echo of an ACL tear every time they plant a foot.
And, yeah—I’ve been there too. I lived there. I was the girl who broke and didn’t think she deserved to be put back together. I crawled out of that hole with my teeth bared, my knuckles torn, and a rehab team who refused to let me quit when I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror.
But that’s the thing. I’m not that girl anymore. Also, I’m not here to save people who want to stay broken.
Still, I created this program to rebuild what’s collapsed—whether it’s knees, confidence, or someone’s entire identity. I don’t have to be Jason’s cheerleader.
I just have to make sure he doesn’t crash alone.
God, I know what it’s like to crash alone.
I hate that I know it. Hate more that someone important to Leif might end up there, too.
I grab my phone and hit call.
“Yo,” Leif answers on the first ring. “It’s still a hard maybe on the godmother thing. You people are relentless.”
Some of the tension in my chest breaks loose. There’s been an ongoing battle between Hailey’s best friend and me for the position of godmother to their beautiful baby girl—Luna. Since he brought it up, I decide to bargain. “Okay, what if I fix your friend, and you hand over your firstborn?”
He laughs. “Why the fuck would I give you my baby?”
“I just want to be her godmother. It’s not like I’m asking for a kidney.”
“Considering your bedside manner, I think that might be safer.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see it. “Anyway, Tate. You aware of his current situation?”
“You mean the part where he’s still benched and the team’s been bleeding goals for what it feels like fucking forever?” Leif mutters. “Thought he said you were helping already. Why are you negotiating now?”
I provide him just enough to skate around HIPAA without falling through the legal ice. Enough for him to understand: Jason’s circling the drain and calling it progress.
“He’s sabotaging himself,” Leif says, a voice suddenly too serious for jokes.
“I know,” I admit. “But why?”
There’s a long pause. And then?—
“Fear.”
Okay, we’re off to a good start. If anyone knows Jason Tate, that’d be my brother. I have to ask, though, “Of?”
“Becoming his parents.”
“You have to be more specific, Leify.”
“There was a time—junior year—when things got really bad. House was in foreclosure. Utilities almost shut off. His mom had a seizure from stress. Dad disappeared for two weeks. They were inches from being homeless. Jason held it all together. Didn’t sleep, barely ate.
He trained harder than any of us. Got a second job at some warehouse that didn’t care he was underage.
Started calling scouts himself. Begged for a spot.
By eighteen, he got drafted, but even then, he was already wired for survival. ”
I had no idea that any of that had happened to him. He’s always been so . . . detached and sarcastic that he made me believe he didn’t have any problems in his life.
“He’s never trusted the good things to stay,” Leif adds. “Always thought it’d all disappear if he let his guard down. If he wasn’t sacrificing something, he wasn’t working hard enough.”
I close my eyes. Try to swallow the lump forming at the base of my throat.
“This isn’t compliance,” I whisper. “This is survival.”
“Exactly,” he says. “He’s been in survival mode for so long, he doesn’t know how to exist outside of it. He doesn’t trust joy. He doesn’t believe in ease. He thinks if he lets go of the pain, the whole damn structure falls.”
I bite my thumbnail, feeling that twist in my gut—the one that says, Fuck, you know this pain too well.
“He’ll fight you,” Leif adds. “He’ll resist. But if you get through . . . Scottie, he needs someone who won’t flinch when he pushes back. He needs someone who knows how to carry that kind of fire without getting burned.”
I laugh under my breath. “Did you just call me fireproof?”
“No,” Leif says. “I’m saying you’re too damn stubborn to burn.”
I scoff. “So, what you’re really saying is: ‘Please, little sister, fix my broken friend because you’re the only one who won’t cry if he bites’?”
“More like: do your job because he deserves someone who won’t give up on him the second it gets uncomfortable.”
Ouch. Okay, that one lands.
I lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling like it might beam down divine guidance or maybe just drop a coffee IV.
“You know I’m not a miracle worker, right?” I say. “I can’t pull rainbows out of trauma.”
“You pulled a national team comeback out of a torn hamstring and a fractured ego.”
“Don’t forget the reputation damage and mild identity crisis.”
“Exactly. You’re perfect for this job,” he states. “So . . . you’ll do it?”
I groan. Loudly. Like I’m being asked to crawl through emotional burning coal barefoot and smiling. Which, to be fair, I am.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Ella.” And that shakes me up a little because Leif never calls me by my name. Never.
“Fine. I’ll help him.” I sigh. “But if he throws one tantrum, I’m drop-kicking him into the pool.”
Leif snorts. “Just ensure it’s the shallow end, or he’s wearing floaties.”
We hang up, and I’m left staring at my laptop screen again. Jason’s file is open like a challenge I didn’t mean to accept, but I already feel too responsible to walk away from it.
I don’t know what the hell I’m walking into with him.
But I know what it feels like to lose everything you built—what it means to claw your way back when no one’s sure you’re worth the trouble.
Whether Jason Tate wanted it or not, he just became my problem.