I need you. No one else.
Another buzz shakes the phone before I can decide what to feel. A photo populates—his wrist, close and unforgiving in the bright light of the trainers’ room next door. The skin is angry where tape cuts into bruising, the edges frayed from a rush job. Whoever wrapped him was fast, not careful. It’ll hold. It will also chew him alive by the third period.
My first instinct is purely professional. Cut, re-wrap with less tension, space the anchors, float the pad over the ulnar styloid, check grip strength after… The checklist rockets through me, precise and familiar. My second instinct drags hard in the opposite direction—toward the elevator, the red light, the badge that chirped NO in my face. Stay away.
I type:On my way. 2 mins.
My finger hovers over Send. The words look like an admission and a promise and a dare. I delete them.
New message:Find Adams. Tell him to loosen the distal anchor by two lines. Add foam over the styloid and check capillary refill after.
It’s perfect—impersonal, exact, safe. I delete that, too, because even clinical feels like contact, and everything about today is designed to punish me for touching.
Another buzz. He doesn’t add words this time, just sends a short video. It’s his hand flexing slowly into a fist, the tape biting, knuckles blanching, then opening again. The sound is a breath, his, held and released. He keeps the camera steady like he knows the angle I’ll want to see. He knows me too well. Or I’ve taught him too well. Both are a problem.
I set the phone facedown like it’s hot. The trainers’ room shrinks to the radius of my breath. I count it—four in, six out—until my heart stops trying to walk out of my chest.
I’m not his trainer right now. I’m not his anything. I repeat it until the words feel true. They don’t.
The phone buzzes again, an insistent, miserable heartbeat. A second text blinks onto the screen when I flip it over, as if he could hear the argument in my head and cut to the part that matters.
Please.
I close my eyes, press my thumb hard into the tendon at my own wrist until it hurts, until sensation beats want. I picture Danvers’ thin smile. Jessie’s careful hands pushing a folder across glass. Miles with his color-coded protocols. The badge light flashing red-red-red.
I type and backspace twice. Finally I write:Ask Adams. He’ll do it right.
The three dots appear almost instantly. They pause. They vanish. They return.
He’s busy. You know my wrist.
Damn him for being right and for choosing the one string that vibrates through all my armor. I think of the old fracture he skated on at nineteen, the scar tissue that makes his wrap a puzzle most trainers fumble the first time. The first time I tapedhim, he looked at me like I’d handed him a new hand. The memory is a blade and a balm.
I force my thumbs to move.
Can’t. Policies. Compliance interview tomorrow.
I add a period because any more would be softness.
A long bubble of silence. I stare at the door, half expecting him to fill the frame, stubborn and unasked for. He doesn’t. The phone lights one more time.
Okay. Be safe.
I put the phone in the bottom drawer under the stock of pre-wrap and close it like I’m locking a vault. My hands shake anyway. I turn back to the tidy rows I made earlier, the tape and scissors and swabs that never ask me for more than exactly what I can give. I rest both palms on the counter until they stop shaking.
Then I start moving again because stillness is where feelings grow teeth.
I make it to my locker without remembering the walk. Muscle memory does the turning, the weaving, the nodding. The metal door squeaks like always when I pop it open—mint gum, extra shoelaces, spare hoodie, a stack of laminated protocols I could recite in my sleep.
And an envelope.
Plain manila. No name. No team letterhead. Just tucked on top of my hoodie like a casual threat.
For a second I consider closing the door and pretending I didn’t see it. Then I peel the flap back with my thumbnail, slow so I don’t rip whatever’s inside. A single glossy photo slides into my palm and tilts the room.
We’re young in it. Not kids, but close enough that the sheen of invincible is still on our faces. It’s the training room at the old arena—white walls, bad lighting, a blue towel draped on the edge of the table. Jason’s on the bench in a T-shirt, grin lopsided, hairdamp, wrist taped by me. My hands are caught mid-wrap, eyes up at him, laughing at something I can’t hear now. His mouth is a secret I used to know. My ponytail is messy, my cheeks are pink, and we look like the part of a storm that hasn’t hit yet.
I don’t remember anyone taking this.
