“Your anterior flexion is at ninety-five percent,” I say.
“You mentioned that.”
“I’m reiterating for the chart.”
The not-laughing settles. And underneath it, the part that isn’t funny: Thompson was in the doorway. Thompson saw me standing a step too close, holding a chart I wasn’t reading.
He puts his shirt back on. The room returns to professional dimensions. He leaves the way he always leaves, with a “Thanks, Brooks” that sounds identical to every other player’s but I know isn’t.
Gary finds me after the morning rotation. He leans in the doorframe with his coffee, which is how every conversation with Gary starts “Marchetti shoulder. How’s it tracking?”
“Ahead of schedule. Ninety-five percent anterior flexion, less guarding through the posterior chain. I’m increasing resistance next week.”
Gary nods. The nod means he trusts the assessment without needing to verify. “Good work. Clean case, Brooks.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Coaching staff’s happy with your communication. Keep it up.”
“I will. Thanks.”
He pushes off the frame and heads toward his office. Clean case. Every time Gary calls the work clean it helps steady my security with this team.
Tyler passes in the corridor while I’m resetting my station. Navy polo, badge at his belt, file in his hand. He nods and I nod back. He moves toward the weight room at the unhurried pace of a man who has never had to calculate whether he belongs in this setting.
The afternoon has its own rhythm. Two more treatments, standard work. Through the wall I can hear Marchetti in the weight room, something about his nonna’s bolognese, his voice carrying the way it carries into rooms he isn’t even trying to reach. I chart. I reset. I run my hands under warm water between patients.
I’m heading to the staff kitchen when Marchetti rounds the corner with Berger. They’re mid-argument. Marchetti’s hands are involved, which is how Marchetti argues about everything.
“It’s not about the pasta.” His hands carve the air. “You’re adding to the sauce. You’re enhancing the sauce. It’s an improvement.”
“You’re committing a crime against the entire Italian population,” Berger says.
They stop when they see me. Berger pivots immediately.
“Brooks. Hot sauce on pasta. Verdict.”
“I’m not rating food for you.”
“Please,” Marchetti says. “You’d love my pasta. I make a bolognese that would change your entire professional opinion about nutrition.”
“My professional opinion about nutrition is evidence-based.”
“My nonna’s bolognese is evidence.”
“That’s not how the scientific method works, Marchetti.”
“It’s exactly how it works. You taste it, you form a conclusion, you revise your position. That’s the scientific method, Brooks.”
“That is not how it works.”
“It is if the bolognese is good enough.”
His grin is wide open and I haven’t stopped smiling. I don’t catch it until Berger tilts his head. His eyes move between us, cataloguing everything he sees.
The smile pulls back. Not fast enough. I feel the half-second where it was still on my face after it should have been gone, and that half-second is the tell.
“Having both of you is a terror,” I say, and my voice finds the flat register it keeps for this building.
Berger looks at me for one second longer than Berger usually holds anything without commentary, and then he’s off into a theory about hot sauce preferences correlating with on-iceaggression. The corridor fills with his voice, and Marchetti is contributing, nodding, being Marchetti.
I walk to the staff kitchen and pour coffee and think back to the pictures Teo was showing me earlier. Thompson walked in on a man looking at his patient’s phone to see a photo of a cat, and the fact that I’m replaying the scramble like it was a bank robbery is its own kind of ridiculous.
