I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak. My throat burned like I’d swallowed a stone.
She stood first, brushing the dust off her pants. “We’ll take it one day at a time. You’ll meet with William today, and we’ll go from there.”
I stood slower, my whole body aching with something heavier than exhaustion. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
“And us?” I asked, voice hoarse. “What does this mean for us?”
She hesitated long enough that I felt it in my ribs. “I’m always there for you, Oliver. But right now, I’m your medical lead. I have to do my job. We both need to keep that line clear.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t want any line. I wanted to lean on her and go home with her, not giving a shit if everyone knew. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that to her.
She stood and offered me a hand. I took it, rubbing my fingers over her palm. She stilled, staring at our hands with a soft smile on her face. Then, she intertwined our fingers and jutted her chin toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go before Booth looks for us. You can do this, Oliver. Get through the day, and tonight we can talk, okay?”
27
SLOANE
Iwashed my hands three times before I looked in the mirror.
The soap burned a raw spot on my knuckle from scrubbing too hard. I didn’t stop. I pressed into the motion like it could scrub away the feeling of him collapsing in front of me. I kept hearing the way he said my name. Not just scared—shaken in a way I hadn’t seen from him before. He’d looked at me like I was the only thing anchoring him to the floor. Like I was the last thing he could trust.
I turned off the water and braced both palms on the counter. My breath didn’t come easily. It wasn’t panic. It was control. Tight, measured, clinical control. I forced each inhale through my nose, each exhale steady, until my jaw unclenched. I couldn’t go back out there looking shaken. If Ivy saw me like this, she’d pull me into a side room and demand answers I didn’t want to give. If Mac saw it, he’d start watching me too closely again. He’d question if I was still objective. If I could still separate my personal ties from the job.
I was separating them. I had to. That was why I documented everything the second Oliver sat up.
I logged his vitals with full clinical accuracy. I flagged the episode, categorized the symptoms, and coded the entire event within internal mental health protocol. I followed policy. I did what I was trained to do. Every line in that report was medically sound. But it was also the cleanest, most sterile version of what actually happened.
Because I didn’t document how hard he gripped my hand. I didn’t note how long I stayed with him on the floor or how fast my own pulse was climbing when I thought he might lose consciousness. I didn’t say how it felt to see someone I care about completely unravel and know the system I worked for would eat him alive if I wrote the wrong thing.
I dried my hands and didn’t look back at the mirror.
I shut the file. I closed the report. I reset my office like nothing had happened. The tablet went back to standby. The schedule for the day stayed on screen. I had four appointments on my calendar and two more performance meetings before walk-through review. That meant I didn’t get to process any of it. Not the fear, not the guilt, not the relief that he calmed down with my voice in his ear.
I stepped into the hallway and walked like I always did. Spine straight. Eyes alert. Neutral expression. I said hello to three players, waved at a staff assistant, and answered a scheduling question from the strength coach. No one looked at me twice. No one asked if I was okay.
It meant the mask worked.
But underneath it, I was spiraling. Not because Oliver scared me. Not because I didn’t believe in his ability to recover. I was spiraling because I knew what came next. The second this escalated—if he crashed again or pushed too hard in Denver—the League would start asking questions. If he went on the record with a second episode, they’d flag him. They’d startcharting him as a cardiac risk, a psychological liability, someone with an inconsistent performance profile.
I’d seen it happen to other players. I’d written those reports myself.
And that scared me more than anything.
Because I cared about him. Too much. More than I should. More than was safe. And no matter how carefully I filed my notes or how professionally I maintained the boundaries, there was still the fact that it was my hands on his face, my voice in his ear, my body on the floor next to him when he couldn’t breathe.
He didn’t ask for anyone else. He didn’t want anyone else.
And I hadn’t left him.
Now I had to act like none of that mattered. Because if I slipped, even once, they’d take the case from me. They’d pull him. They’d bench him under another department, another doctor, someone who wouldn’t know how to read between the lines of what he wasn’t saying.
I couldn’t let that happen. So I put my mask on and went back to work.
Quinn was already waiting outside my door when I returned from the bathroom.
He was pacing with his hands in his hoodie pocket, eyes locked on the floor like he was reviewing a play he couldn’t get right. When I approached, he looked up, but his shoulders didn’t loosen.
“You good?” he asked, voice low.
