"Why not?"
"Because it was my call."
"Nathan—"
"I failed you," he said.
It came out differently than everything else. Not level, not reported. Just—there, in the kitchen, quiet and direct.
"I made a medical decision that wasn't medical, and you got hurt," he said. "Those are the facts." He looked at his hands. "I've spent years keeping it separate. Keeping myself separate. Because that's the only way to do the job correctly. You can't care about the outcome and assess it honestly at the same time." He stopped. "My father used to say that. About surgery. About medicine in general. That the ones who let it in—who let the patient matter beyond the clinical picture—were the ones who eventually got someone killed."
"Nathan," I said.
"He wasn't wrong," Nathan said. "That's the thing. He wasn't wrong, he was just—" He stopped. Started differently. "I've spent my whole life doing it the right way. Being precise. Being detached. Not letting things matter beyond what they were supposed to." A pause. "And then you showed up."
I didn't say anything.
"Portland," he said. "The reason I left there was because I'd let someone matter. Not romantically. You remind me of him, actually. Young, reckless, thought he was invincible. And I let that familiarity make me careful with him in ways that weren't purely medical. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted it to work out. And the wanting didn't change the outcome, he'd have been fine or not fine regardless of whether I wanted it, but I carried it foryears. The idea that wanting something for a patient was its own kind of failure."
He looked straight at me.
"And then you," he said. "I knew from approximately the first game that you were a problem. I tried for two years to keep it where it was supposed to be and I—" He stopped. "In that tunnel I looked at you, and I thought about your parents and your brother on the ice. I made a decision that had nothing to do with medicine. And you got hurt." He stared down at his hands again. "My father would say that's what happens. When you let it in."
"Your father," I said carefully, "just sat in your living room and talked about you like you weren't there."
Nathan was quiet.
"The optics," I said. "He led with the optics, Nathan."
Nathan still said nothing.
"You've been on leave for four days. And your dad came over and asked about the committee and the timeline and the—" I stopped. "He didn't ask if you were okay. Did he?"
When Nathan didn’t respond, I asked again.
"Did he ask if you were okay?”
The pause was its own answer.
"He means well," Nathan said again.
"I know he does," I said. "I'm not—I'm not saying he doesn't." I looked at the counter. "I just think the thing he taught you. The detachment thing. I think it's cost you stuff. Like, a lot of stuff." I looked up. "And I've watched you show up for me in ways that had nothing to do with that. So."
I stopped.
Nathan was looking at me with the expression that had no wall in it.
"So," I said again, slightly less certainly, because I had run out of words and the wordsowas doing a lot of heavy lifting right now. "That's. Yeah. That's what I think."
"My father would disagree," he said.
"Your father," I said, "just left."
Nathan’s gaze didn’t leave my own.
"I would do it again," he said.
“What?”
