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The almost-smile cracked wider before she caught herself. “Sit down.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shot me a look. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a hundred years old.”

“What should I call you?”

She paused, her fingers stilling on the tablet. “Dr. Lundrig when we’re working.”

“And when we’re not working?”

Another pause, longer this time. “We’re always working.”

“Are we?”

Her gaze held mine before she turned back to her computer. Subject changed.

I sat in the chair beside her desk, my hip aching in the dull, constant way that told me I’d pushed it too far yesterday.

She pulled up the MRI images on her screen and turned the monitor so I could see.

“This is what you did to yourself,” she said. “We talked about this yesterday, but I wanted to note a few more things.”

She walked me through the images.

I watched her face instead of the screen.

The little furrow between her eyebrows I’d noted before when she was concerned appeared. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, which told me she was concentrating. The faint shadows under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept well.

“Are you listening?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then what did I say?”

“That I’m a fool who turned a grade one into a grade two because I don’t know how to follow directions.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

She finally looked at me. “You’re not a fool. You’re scared. There’s a difference.”

The words hit like a crosscheck to the sternum. She didn’t see me only as the weapon in the net or the brutal goalie everyone talked about. She saw the part of me I’d spent years trying to hide.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

She pulled a printed schedule from the drawer and slid it across the desk.

“We’re going to spend the next week or so doing deeper manual work, progressive strengthening, and monitored return-to-skate drills. If you follow the plan exactly, you’ll be ready for game three in seven days. If you don’t follow the plan, then…”

“You’ll fire me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t give up.”

I felt so relieved, I wanted to sag in the chair. “I won’t give up either.”

“See that you don’t.”