Rude. I only tried to get back on the ice with a dislocated shoulder once.
Sienna laughed out loud. Alone, in her apartment, well past midnight, she laughed at a text message from a patient. The sound startled her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed when no one else was in the room.
The conversation continued. They texted back and forth, quick messages that pinged between them with barely a pause.
So what does rehab actually look like? Am I lifting weights day one?
No. We start with gentle range-of-motion exercises. Nothing aggressive. Your labrum needs time to heal before we stress it.
That sounds incredibly boring.
It is incredibly boring. But it works.
Can I at least do lower body stuff? Squats? The bike?
Yes. I've already spoken to Kylie in the gym about a lower body programme for you.
You've already spoken to the gym coach? It's been like four hours since my scan.
Sienna stared at the message. She had, in fact, texted Kylie on the drive home from Elise's apartment, before she'd even changed out of her clothes. That was thorough. It was also, possibly, a bit much.
I like to be prepared.
That doesn't surprise me at all, Dr. Park.
The formality of the name was teasing. Sienna could hear it in the words, the slight arch of humour behind "Dr. Park," as if Elise was poking at the professional distance from the other side, seeing how far it would give.
They moved on. Elise asked about the rehab timeline in more detail and Sienna explained each phase: the initial two weeks of rest and gentle mobilisation, then progressive strengthening, then sport-specific training, then return to play. Elise made dry jokes about trying to cook one-handed. Sienna suggested food delivery apps. Elise said she'd ordered pizza three times in the last week and was becoming a regular.
It was easy. Natural. A back-and-forth that flowed without effort, as if neither of them wanted to be the one to stop. Sienna kept things clinical when she could, but Elise's responses kept pulling the conversation sideways into personal territory, the territory where doctor-patient lines grew thin.
I should probably try to sleep,Elise finally sent.Thanks for keeping me company, Doc. Tonight would have been a lot worse without you.
Anytime. Rest well.
You too. Goodnight, Sienna.
Sienna. Not Doc. Not Dr. Park. Her first name, typed by Elise's fingers, sent through the air to glow on Sienna's screen in the dark.
She read it three times.
She put the phone face-down on the arm of her chair and pressed her fingers against her eyelids. The apartment was quiet. Peppermint from Helen's abandoned tea mug, the faint trace of her own perfume on her wrists.
She needed a shower. She needed to wash this day off her skin and go to bed and wake up tomorrow and be the professional she'd been for twenty years. Tomorrow there would be treatment plans and progress notes and the clean, orderly framework of sports medicine. Tomorrow she could be Dr. Park again.
The bathroom was small, the tiles white, and the water took a minute to heat up. She undressed, folding her clothes out of habit, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink. Forty-one. Dark eyes behind the glasses she'd taken off. Slim, fit, but not athletic. Not a body that turned heads. Not a body Elise Moreno would look at twice.
She turned away from the mirror and stepped into the shower. She stood under the spray with her eyes closed and her hands braced against the tile and let the heat soak into her shoulders and down her spine. The day peeled away in layers: the strapping tape and the game and the ice and the medicalroom and Elise's shoulder under her hands and Elise's eyes looking up at her and the moment when she'd put her palm flat on Elise's chest and the world had gone quiet.
Elise in her sports bra. The heat of her skin through the fabric. The rapid beat of her heart against Sienna's fingers.
The water ran down Sienna's back. Her pulse was climbing.
Elise on the sofa in her apartment, eating scrambled eggs one-handed, smiling at Sienna with that tired, genuine smile that went straight through her. Elise sayinggoodnight, Siennain a text, and how her name looked in Elise's words.
Elise's body on the treatment bed, the lean muscle and the strong shoulders and the flushed skin and those eyes watching her with a directness that made it hard to think.
Her body was responding. Tension built low in her stomach, the flush spreading across her chest, and her breathing was shallow and quick. She pressed her forehead against the cool tile and tried to stop the images. She was good at this. She had decades of practice, shutting down every thought and feeling that didn't serve her career, filing them away, locking the drawer. Her mother's voice in her head: discipline, focus, don't be distracted. Her father's: what matters is your work, Sienna. Everything else is secondary.
