Chapter 25 #2
My phone buzzes in my pocket—a short, ugly vibration that feels like a mosquito bite on a sunburn.
I don’t look. I move. Clipboard. Tape drawer.
I check the ultrasound gel even though we aren’t doing scans here today; I check everything I can control because the list of things I can’t is tap-dancing in steel-toed boots.
“Riley.” Dr. Adams appears in the doorway like a lifeline wearing reading glasses. His tone is casual enough to pass for small talk; his eyes are not. “You have a minute?”
“Two,” I say, stepping into the med office. Sophie hovers in the hall like a benevolent gargoyle and then pointedly turns her back to play bouncer.
Adams closes the door most of the way, leaves it open enough to be compliant and kind. “You good?” he asks, which in doctor-language means: do I need to start throwing elbows in rooms you aren’t in.
“I’m vertical,” I answer. “We’re getting counsel. We’re…handling it.” I swallow the part where my hands shook over the sink this morning. “I’ll need a referral. Independent OB.”
He nods once. “Text me names you’re considering. I’ll add three I trust. Off the record stays off the record.”
“Thank you.” The words come out steadier than the relief they’re covering. I step back into the hall before gratitude makes me do something rash like cry at work.
Buzz. Another text. My pocket is a hornet’s nest now; if I don’t look, I’ll crawl out of my skin. I angle the clipboard as a shield and slide the phone up under it.
Unknown number: Trainer sleeping with star? Nice ethics.
A second text before I can breathe: Hope the baby has a morals clause.
For a split second the world narrows to the width of the screen and the whiteness of my knuckles. I feel the floor tilt under the stupid, small weight of two sentences typed by a stranger who will forget me by lunch. My stomach flips. Air goes weird in my lungs.
I lock the screen. Slide the phone face down on the counter like it can’t find me if it can’t see me. Shoulders back. Chin level. Not because they deserve my spine but because I do.
Sophie clocks the move and materializes at my elbow with a casual ferocity I want to put in a bottle.
She nudges the phone farther from the edge with one finger.
“Block the number,” she says, light on the surface, iron underneath.
“Then eat a granola bar or I’m going to start making threats about blood sugar. ”
“I’m fine,” I say, which is only half a lie. “Board in two.”
She leans in, voice pitched for my ear only. “I know what anonymous looks like. Let me carry some of it.”
“I am,” I say, and that is true. “By letting you stand here while I do my job.”
We share a look that says everything else. Her mouth softens. “Atta girl,” she murmurs, then peels off toward the rookies like a heat-seeking missile looking for anyone who needs a reminder that I built this room brick by brick.
I breathe. Tape. Charts. Names. Calm. The daily miracle of turning bodies back into machines that can do impossible things. I center on it until my hands stop wanting to shake.
“Board’s up,” I call, pinning the day’s schedule. “If your name is starred, you’re mine first. Questions about rumors go to PR, questions about pain go to me.”
A few laughs crack the tension. The hum of work begins. For a minute, the only thing in the world is treatment plans and the rasp of athletic tape.
Then my email pings. Subject line: ADMIN NOTICE: STATUS UPDATE.
I already know the shape of the words inside. I open the email in the space between breaths.
SUBJECT: ADMIN NOTICE: STATUS UPDATE
FROM: HR-Admin@
BODY: Effective immediately, Riley Lane is placed on paid administrative leave pending review. Access will be limited to essential communications. Further instruction to follow.
The words are neat little knives. Paid sounds like a kindness if you don’t know how suspension tastes on the tongue. Limited access is a trap door with a smiley face sticker.
I feel the hit low, a body check I didn’t see coming even though I absolutely did. My fingers go cold. I keep moving because the only way out is through.
“Lane?” one of the vets calls, oblivious. “You got time to look at my hip?”
“I will,” I say, and somehow my voice passes for normal. “Give me five.” I pin the email behind my ribs like a splinter and head for the training room door.
The hallway seems longer than it did yesterday. Fluorescents buzz. The framed photo of a charity skate tilts a degree to the left; I fix it with two fingers as I pass because I can still fix this. Something. Anything.
At the badge reader, I square my shoulders and swipe. Green, then red, like a heartbeat that can’t decide. The speaker emits a polite denial beep designed by someone who has never been shut out of their own life.
I try again. Slower. The reader flashes its tiny judgment and beeps that soft little no.
Behind me, conversations falter. The sound finds quiet the way water finds low places. Sophie appears at my side so fast I don’t see where she came from. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t need to. She is a presence, solid as the door.
“Try mine,” she says, offering her badge. I shake my head once. This is my door to open or not.
I swipe a third time. The beep is the same. So is the red.
“Okay,” I say, out loud, to the door, to myself, to the email bleeding through my ribs. “Okay.” I take a step back, not because I’m retreating, but because I refuse to rattle a handle like a scene. If they’re going to lock me out, they can own the optics of it.
A few of the guys linger at the corner, uncertainty all over their faces. The vet with the hip problem takes a step my way, then thinks better of it and looks at Sophie like she might fix the universe. She glares him into remembering his manners.
“Riley.” Dr. Adams again, lower voice now, the kind meant for injuries and bad news. “Come into my office. We’ll…sort next steps.”
“I know the steps,” I say, not unkind. “I’m on leave pending review. I’m to await instruction.” The cadence is bureaucratic; the translation is exile. I keep my chin level. I won’t give the hallway the show.
My phone buzzes with another email. ACCESS CHANGE CONFIRMATION. I don’t open it. I already heard it beep.
Sophie shifts closer, angling herself so my body blocks the badge reader from the hallway’s direct line of sight. Privacy, even now. “You want me to start dialing counsel?”
“Yes,” I say. The word clicks into place like a splint. “And take the board. You’ve got the morning caseload. Tell the rookies if they ask me anything I will make them plank until they cry.”
“Gladly.” She squeezes the air near my arm—touch without pressure. “You did everything right.”
Maybe. Maybe not. The only thing I know for certain is that the door is still shut and the beep is still in my ears.
Down the hall, the elevator dings. The sound primes the air like static before a storm. I don’t have to turn to know it’s not a player.
Two security officers step out of the elevator in matching navy jackets and matching careful faces. They walk like they’ve practiced being soft walls—hands visible, pace unhurried, voices kept in a lower register so no one mistakes courtesy for weakness.
“Ms. Lane?” the taller one says, stopping at what HR would call a respectful distance and what my nervous system calls too close. He glances at the badge reader, then back to me. “You’ll need to come with us.”
The line is practiced. The tone isn’t unkind. That almost makes it worse. “Where?” I ask, because questions are leverage, even if it’s only enough to keep me standing upright.
“Upstairs,” he says. “HR would like to review access and next steps.” He delivers HR would like like a weather report. There’s weather. It is happening. Bring a coat.
Sophie steps half a pace in front of me like she’s an extra inch of spine I can borrow. “Her counsel is en route,” she says. “Or on the phone. Your choice.”
“We can accommodate a phone call,” the second officer says. He’s younger; his eyes skitter to mine and away, apology in the bounce. “We’re just here to escort.”
Escort. Not remove. Not detain. The nice words they picked out for days like this. I find my breath and square my shoulders. “Fine,” I say. “Give me one minute.”
The minute lasts three seconds.
“Riley!” The shout snaps down the corridor from the far end where a service door opens to the loading dock. A reporter has slipped past the front desk and is already raising her phone like a blessing or a weapon. “Riley, is it true?”
Heads swivel. Phones rise in a ripple, players and staff morphing into an accidental press pool. Someone whispers, “Don’t look,” which of course makes everyone do it. I feel the shift in the room, the way silence gets teeth.
Security pivots, interposing themselves between the reporter and me with the practiced choreography of people who know how fast a hallway can turn into a headline. “Ma’am, you need to step back,” the tall one says, palm out.
She leans, toes in the tape line like she’s earned the right to toe it. “Conflict of interest? Abuse of power? Are you pregnant?” Each question is a little knife tossed underhand, hoping I’ll reach out and grab one.
I do not flinch. Trainer voice. “Questions go through PR,” I say, calm enough to sound bored to my own ears. I look at Sophie. “Start the call.”
She’s already tapping. “Speaker,” she says, eyebrows up at the security officer. He nods. We’re all pretending this is civilized. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. My heart hasn’t decided.
The reporter lifts her phone higher for a better angle. I shift my body so all she gets is my shoulder and the profile of a woman who refuses to be interesting on command. “Riley,” she tries again, sweeter now, poison wrapped in honey, “you owe the fans honesty.”
I owe a lot of things. The fans aren’t on that list. “I owe my patients care,” I say, but the door behind me is locked and the word echoes strange in my head. Care. Who gets it. Who withholds it. Who weaponizes it when a woman stops saying please.
The tall officer clears his throat, gentle cattle prod back to the script. “Ms. Lane.” He indicates the elevator with an open hand, the way you might guide someone across a slick patch of ice.
Sophie squeezes my elbow—touch this time, small and hot and necessary. Her phone screen flashes with a connection and a name I want in the room. She thumbs speaker on. “Counsel’s live,” she says.
“Ms. Lane,” a calm voice comes through the tiny speaker, steady as a metronome. “Don’t answer questions. Don’t sign anything. I’m five minutes out.”
Five minutes might as well be a year. I nod anyway, even though the voice can’t see it. “Copy,” I say, and taste the absurdity of answering like I’m on comms. “We’ll…hold.”
We start walking. Security to the sides, Sophie at my shoulder, the corridor narrowing to a vanishing point none of us can see around yet. Behind us, the reporter calls my name one more time and the hallway lights glare off a dozen phones held at chest height, recording.
The elevator doors slide open with a bright, far-too-cheerful ding.
I step in.
The doors begin to close on a chorus of whispers and the last question I don’t answer.