Grayson nods. Turns to me. “Marchetti. Anything from your side.”
I look at him. Alex Grayson, thirty-nine, the man who watches games from the press box with both hands flat on the glass when a play connects on the ice. The man who wanted to go to tacos with the group and checked his phone and said he had a call with ownership.
“I’m here because he shouldn’t carry this alone. He told Gary the truth and I’m telling you the same truth. This is real. Itstarted before either of us planned it and it became what it is. The work was clean. We should have told you sooner. That’s on both of us.”
Grayson looks at Gary. “The clinical side.”
Gary sets his coffee down. “I’ve reviewed the full case file. Every session documented. The protocol Brooks designed for Marchetti’s shoulder is the strongest work this department has produced since I assembled the staff.”
The sentence lands in the room and I feel Zay go still beside me. Not the professional stillness he wore through the questions. A different kind. The kind where a thing you built got taken away from you and then got handed back, and you don’t know yet if your hands are steady enough to hold it. Gary withheld that in his office. He needed the audit first. He needed to look at every chart note with new eyes before he put his name back next to the work. And now he’s putting it back. In this room. In front of Grayson and Bodie and both of us.
“I’m not questioning the clinical outcome,” Grayson says. “I’m establishing the record.” He pauses. Looks at both of us. “I want you to know that voluntary disclosure counts for a lot in this building. This isn’t disciplinary. This is procedural. The organization has a responsibility to document and handle this properly.”
The reassurance arrives after the questions. After the hard beat about the timeline. After the external dimension. It lands differently here than it would have at the top. It lands like something that was earned, not offered.
He sets his pen down. “Here’s what happens next. HR drafts a memorandum that formalizes the disclosure, establishes the recusal, and protects everyone. It’s not punitive. It’s documentation.” He looks at Gary. “Tyler handles any future treatment for Marchetti. Formal reassignment.”
“Already in process,” Gary says.
“Good.”
Bodie shifts in the corner chair. He has been quiet for the entire meeting with the patience of a man who considers words a finite resource and meetings a necessary cost of doing business near people who aren’t hockey players.
“Anything from coaching, Coach?”
Bodie looks at me. Then at Zay. His eyes move the way they move when he’s reading the bench during a power play. Three seconds. Everything covered.
“Is there a hockey problem?”
“Full clearance,” Gary says. “Shoulder is clean.”
Bodie nods once. Then: “Game day. Marchetti takes a hit, goes down, needs attention on the ice. Who goes out?”
“Tyler or myself,” Gary says. “Brooks stays off any situation involving Marchetti. Protocol is clear.”
“And the room knows that.”
“The room will know that.”
Bodie looks at me again. Direct. The same eyes that read the bench, now reading the player.
“You ready for April?”
“I’m ready for April.”
He nods once. Recrosses his arms. Done.
Grayson stands. We all stand. He shakes Zay’s hand first, then mine. The grip is firm and brief and when he lets go his eyes pass between us once, and whatever he registers stays behind his face where I can’t reach it. But underneath it, for less than a second, the surface shifts. Not a change in expression. A stillness behind his eyes that deepens before it passes, his gaze resting on both of us, on the two men sitting six inches apart with nothing between them. I can’t name it. For half a second, it looks like recognition. Then it’s gone and the neutral is smooth again.
“HR will have the paperwork by end of week. Gary coordinates.”
He sits back down. Picks up his pen. We’re dismissed.
The corridor opens as we cross back toward the players’ side. Carpet gives way to tile, the lights brighten, the sounds of the facility return. Equipment through the walls, the weight room starting its morning rotation, the ambient hum of a hockey operation pushing toward April.
At the junction where the hallway splits, training rooms left, locker room right, Zay stops. I stop. He looks at me and his face does the thing, the smile that arrives and stays, the one he used to catch and kill before it reached the surface at work. He doesn’t catch it.
“Okay?” I say.
