Page 49 of Man Advantage

EIGHTEEN

The scan filled the monitor, and Ford stopped breathing. He had seen enough of these over twelve years to know the white from the gray, bone from everything holding it together. Friedman moved through the images one click at a time. Ford tried to follow. All he could see was the far post open and his skate scraping at the ice while ten thousand people waited for him to get up.

The paper crackled under him. He had edged forward on the table without noticing.

Cole sat against the wall with his coat folded over his lap. He had been quiet since they left Port Haven, touching Ford’s thigh for most of the drive and keeping his distance once the nurse called them back.

Ford could have left him in the waiting room. That would have been the safe choice. Teammates drove teammates to appointments all the time. They did not follow each other into exam rooms, and they did not tell the woman at the desk they were family. Ford had said it before he could lose his nerve. The woman had looked at Cole, then back at Ford, and waved them both through.

There was no taking the words back now. Somebody could have recognized them in the lobby or seen Cole follow him through the clinic door. Ford had pictured hearing the verdict alone, then walking out and finding Cole among the vinyl chairs with no idea what Ford’s face would give away. He couldn’t do it.

Now Cole had twisted the coat tight across his lap. Ford wanted him close again. He stayed where he was.

Friedman stopped clicking.

“No fracture,” he said. “You didn’t tear anything new last night.”

Ford let out the breath he had been holding. “Good.”

Friedman turned his stool away from the monitor.

“Then why couldn’t I get up?”

“The joint locked. It released before Theo got you off the ice.”

Ford saw Riggs’s skates in front of his mask. Carter’s glove reaching down. Cole standing one stride back with Ford’s stick in his hand.

“Why did it lock?”

Friedman picked up his pen and touched the capped end to the scan. “The inflammation is worse. So are the tear and the impingement. You’ve been forcing that joint through movements it can’t make cleanly anymore. Last night it stopped moving.”

Cole shifted in the chair. The nylon of his coat rasped in the quiet.

“Can I play on Saturday?” Ford asked.

Cole went still.

“No.” Friedman turned back to the monitor and closed the image.

Ford had known it before he asked. The answer still knocked the air out of him. He looked at Cole and found him already watching.

He reached across the space between them.

Cole stood and took his hand. No hesitation. No glance at Friedman. He stepped in close enough that his knee touched Ford’s and held on.

Friedman’s eyes dropped to their hands.

Ford nearly pulled away. Friedman had treated him for years, but hockey was small, and this was bigger than letting somebody see him hurt. Ford was trusting him with Cole, with Charlotte, with the locker room they both had to walk back into.

Friedman looked at Ford. “Nothing that happens in this room leaves it.”

Ford made himself keep holding on.

“How long?” Ford asked.

Friedman rolled back from the desk. “No skating for two weeks. Then we reassess. If the joint settles and you meet the strength markers, we start working you back.”

Ford ran the schedule before Friedman finished. Iron Bay tomorrow. Three on the road after that. Springfield when they got home.