“I’m not calling you either of those things.” I pick up his chart. “Marchetti.” I say it with enough weight that it should land. It should tell him everything he needs to know about what is and isn’t happening in this room.
He tilts his head. The grin doesn’t move. “Marchetti works. For now.”
His shoulder is in front of me. I have read his MRI. I have mapped the protocol in my head. My hands know exactly where to go and what to feel for and none of that preparation accounted for the fact that the other night those same hands were on the back of his neck.
I press two fingers into the posterior capsule and talk through the palpation because the words keep the hands and the brain on the same page. “Tell me when you feel restriction.”
“Right there,” he says a minute later.
I note the point and shift lower. “Here?”
“Little bit.” He’s watching my hands. Not the nervous tracking of someone checking whether you’re about to cause pain. He’s watching like he wants more of them.
I move to the rotator cuff insertion, pressing and noting. The muscle holds when I push, releases when I ease off. His body is responsive. He’s been stretching on his own.
“You’ve got good hands,” he says. Casual. Like it’s a professional observation about my technique. We both know it isn’t.
“I went to school for them.”
“I bet you did.” He watches me note something in the chart. “That’s a professional observation, by the way. Completely clinical.”
His skin is warm under my fingers. He breathes out slow during the stretch and the exhale lands on the inside of my wrist and I note the tissue quality in my head because that is my job. Dense, responsive, warming under manual pressure.
I move to range of motion. His arm in my hands through flexion, abduction, external rotation. I talk through each measurement as I take it because the numbers are concrete and remind me of where my focus should be.
Flexion, one sixty-two. Abduction, one-sixty, limited. External rotation, thirty-eight degrees. I note each one in the chart. “End feel is capsular, not bony. That gives us room.”
“Room? Meaning you can fix it?”
“Room meaning the tissue can change. I’ll have the full protocol by end of week. Manual therapy and targetedstretching, three sessions a week when the team is home. I’ll coordinate with strength and conditioning on your load.”
“Three times a week. In here with you.” The corner of his mouth moves. “I’ve been prescribed worse.”
“In this room with the door open.” I put my tablet down and look at him. “We’re done for today.”
He pulls his shirt back on but doesn’t leave. Sits on the edge of the table with his hands on his knees, watching me with an expression that is patient, direct, and entirely too settled for a man who should be heading to the locker room. He catches my eye and doesn’t look away.
“So…” he says. “We’re going to just pretend?”
I close the door. I cannot have anyone overhear this. “What happened the other night doesn’t exist here. Whatever that was, it stays outside this building.”
“Okay. I hear you. Can I ask why?”
“Because this is where I work. Where we work.” I pause because I really need him to hear this. “Where we work together.”
“So it’s the working-together part?”
“Yes.”
“The player-staff part?”
“Yes.”
“Was I terrible?”
“The hookup is not the issue.”
“So I was great!” He’s grinning and I am sure it is going to be the death of me.
