“You got him?”
“We got him.” Marchetti is already there, one hand on Berger’s arm. I take the other side. Thompson nods and goes.
The elevator is a specific kind of challenge. Berger’s weight tilts into Marchetti and Marchetti holds him, adjusting his grip when Berger lists. I press the floor number and watch Berger’s reflection in the polished doors. His eyes are barely open. His mouth moves.
“I want mercy.”
Marchetti exhales through his nose. “I know, man. You feel like shit. We’ll get you water and you’ll feel better.”
“I want mercy.” Quieter this time. His head drops against Marchetti’s shoulder and his hand comes up and grips Marchetti’s jacket at the lapel. His skin is flushed and there’s sweat at his temples. The alcohol is doing what alcohol does, but the vitals are not telling me to call anyone.
The word, though. The repetition. Under acute intoxication, people fixate. A word, a phrase, a name they can’t stop saying. His room key is in his back pocket. Marchetti finds it without jostling him. The hallway is quiet, the thick carpet absorbing our uneven footsteps. Inside, the room is standard, but Berger’s suitcase is open on the luggage rack and even barely vertical, I can see the packing. Shirts folded. Toiletry bag upright, zipped. Everything organized with the same precision he brings to his stall, his spreadsheets, every visible surface of his life. People who control the outside that tightly are usually negotiating with what they can’t control underneath.
We lower him onto the bed. I angle him on his side, pull his top knee forward to stabilize. We get his shirt off, leaving him in an undershirt, and I check that his airway is clear.
“Berger. Where are we?”
His eyes open to slits, dragging across my face.
“Who am I?”
“Brooks.” A long pause. “The one who won’t rank the restaurants.”
I check his pupils with my phone light, cupping the beam. Reactive. Sluggish but symmetrical. His skin is clammy but he’s responding to verbal prompts. I don’t need to call anyone. Yet.
Marchetti fills a glass from the bathroom and brings it without being asked. I tilt the rim against Berger’s mouth. He drinks. Some runs down his chin and I catch it with my hand and wipe it on my pants.
“Please.” His voice is stripped. Whatever broadcasts and ranks and fills rooms with declarative certainty is gone. What’s left is rough and small and I don’t recognize it. “I need mercy.”
Marchetti sits on the edge of the bed. He’s worried, not hiding any of it. “Is he okay?”
“I think so. Just needs to sleep it off.”
I take the chair by the window. Berger’s eyes close and his breathing slows into the rhythm of a body giving up its fight with the alcohol, settling, going under. His jaw unclenches for the first time in over an hour and the face underneath is one I’ve never seen. Not the comedy. Not the performance. Just a face, slack and tired and carrying weight I didn’t know was there.
Marchetti rubs a hand across his face. “I haven’t seen him like this before. He’s been quieter lately. I asked him to hang out last week and he just never responded. Then you came over and I kind of forgot about it.” He rubs his hand across his face and then looks at Berger. “Do you think we should do something? Tell someone?”
The protocol is clear on paper. Substance use that impairs function, you flag it to the medical director and coaching staff. One incident doesn’t establish a pattern, but it goes in a file and someone starts watching. If I report this, Berger gets added scrutiny he might not need for what could be a one off. If I don’t report it and this is the start of something, I’ve missed a window.
“If it’s not a pattern, then maybe you could talk with him. See if anything is going on.” One bad night is not a substance concern. One bad night is a person having a bad night. But I’ll be watching now. “I’ll keep an eye on how he’s presenting in sessions. If anything changes, we deal with it then.”
Marchetti nods, then tips his head back against the headboard. His eyes close but he doesn’t sleep and neither do I.
Chapter 13 — TEO
The team fills the hotel restaurant the way road teams always fill hotel restaurants: loud, half-awake, reaching for coffee before conversation.
Last night keeps replaying. Not the whole night. Just the pieces that won’t flatten into normal. His posture changing, the square shoulders settling into a slope like someone had cut the strings holding them up. His hand gripping my jacket in the elevator while he pleaded for mercy.
Zay is two tables over. Staff eats separately on the road, always have. I catch his eye when I sit down and the look holds for half a second longer than professional. Not warm. Not cold. The look of someone who was in that hotel room at three in the morning and is now eating a banana and pretending the day is normal. He tips his chin, barely, and I know what the tip means.Any news?And I look at the empty chair and back at him and the answer is in the look. He nods once and goes back to his breakfast.
At eight twenty-six, Berger walks in.
He’s showered. Dressed. His shirt is pressed and tucked, his belt buckled with the precision of a man whose morning routinedoes not accommodate deviation. His face doesn’t look like the slack, stripped thing I saw on that hotel bed five hours ago. Just Berger’s face, set and forward, carrying the jaw that’s always carrying his jaw.
He sits down. Pours coffee. Drinks it without rating it.
That’s the first tell. Berger has rated every coffee on this road trip. He’s rated coffees that weren’t worth rating and then explained why they deserved to be rated anyway, because the absence of quality is itself data. This morning he drinks it like a man who needs this in his veins. No commentary on the roast. No assessment of the hotel chain’s ongoing failure to understand extraction. He’s chewing sausage and looking at his plate and the man who filled every silence from bartender rankings to burger predictions to wing sauce viscosity last night is sitting in a room full of his teammates and saying nothing.
