“Brooks,” an athletic trainer calls, eyes flicking over me like I’m a chart.
“Hey,” I reply.
Mara, our head athletic trainer, permanently unimpressed, appears with a clipboard and a roll of tape.
“How’s the knee?” she asks.
I give her the same answer I’ve been giving for months. “It exists.”
“Thrilling,” she says without looking up. “Pain scale?”
“Four.”
She lifts a brow.
“Point five,” I amend.
“Uh-huh.” She crouches, checks the swelling around my patellar tendon, presses in a couple spots that make my jaw lock. “Any buckling?”
“No.”
“Any giving way?”
“No.”
“Any ‘I thought I was fine until I wasn’t’ moments?”
I stare at the ceiling. “Not since last week.”
Mara snorts. “Honesty. Love that for you.”
She wraps a compression sleeve on my knee, not a brace, not bulky—just support. Practical. Like a seatbelt.
“Light field today,” she says. “Footwork, routes at sixty. No overdoing it, or you’ll be back at square one.”
“I’m offended you think I lack self-control,” I mutter.
“You don’t,” she replies. “That’s why I’m comfortable letting you on the turf.”
I should laugh.
I almost do.
But then my phone buzzes in my pocket, and my brain jumps like it’s been living on edge too long.
I don’t pull it out yet. I just breathe.
Handle one minute, I remind myself.
Mara claps my shoulder like she’s closing a file. “Go. And if you come back limping, I’m sending you home with a coloring book instead of cleats.”
“Deal,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I want.
I grab my gloves from my locker and head toward the tunnel.
—
The field is too perfect.
