"Is someone hurt? Is it Maya?"
"No. Maya's fine. It's... it's Ryder."
The name hit her like a drop in cabin pressure. The air left the room.
Elena gripped the edge of the desk. Her knuckles turned white.
"Ryder is in Las Vegas," she said automatically. "The Finals."
"Hewasin Vegas," Cole said. His voice cracked, just a fracture, but she heard it. "He wrecked out, Elena. Bad. Femur. Shoulder. Concussion. They're med-evacing him to Billings trauma right now."
Elena closed her eyes. Her medical brain tried to engage—Femur fracture. High blood loss risk. Fat embolism risk.—but her lizard brain was screaming.
"Why are you calling me?" she whispered.
"Because he can't stay in Billings," Cole said. "He's broke, Elena. He doesn't have insurance. The rodeo association covers the acute care, but the rehab? He has nothing. If he stays in the system, they'll patch him up and kick him out in three days."
"So?"
"So I'm bringing him home," Cole said. "To the ranch. But I can't... I can't fix him. I can build a cabin, but I can't teach a man to walk again."
He paused. The silence on the line was heavy with six years of unsaid things.
"You're the only Physical Therapist in fifty miles," Cole said. "I'm asking you to take the case."
Elena opened her eyes. She looked at the sterile white walls of her waiting room. She looked at the photo of Leo she kept taped to her monitor—a smiling boy with dark hair and eyes that were a mirror image of the man who had just been scraped off an arena floor in Nevada.
"No," she said. "Cole, you know I can't. That’s a conflict of interest. That’s... impossible."
"He doesn't know," Cole said quickly. "He doesn't know about Leo. He won't know. He'll be in the guest room. You come in, you do the PT, you leave. Strictly professional."
"Ryder Stone doesn't do 'strictly professional,'" Elena said bitterely. "He does chaos. He'll destroy everything, Cole. He always does."
"He's not the 'Wild One' anymore, Elena," Cole said softly. "I talked to the medic on the transport. They said his leg is shattered. He might not walk again. He’s not a threat. He’s just... broken."
Broken.
The word hooked her. It bypassed her anger and snagged the one part of her that she couldn't turn off: the Healer. The Enneagram 2. The part of her that saw a wounded thing and couldn't help but reach for the bandages.
"Femur and shoulder?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"Yeah. And ribs."
"He'll need a hospital bed," she said, her mind already racing through the logistics against her will. "He'll need high-dose pain management. He'll need daily mobility work starting immediately post-op to prevent atrophy."
"I'll get the bed," Cole said. "I'll pay your rate. Whatever you want."
"I don't want your money, Cole."
"Then do it for the family," he said.
Elena looked at Leo’s picture again.
For the family.
If she said no, Ryder would rot in a state facility or limp around the ranch house until he fell into a bottle of whiskey. He was Leo’s father. Did she have the moral right to let him suffer just to protect her own peace?
She took a breath. The air in the clinic tasted like bleach. It tasted safe.
