The treatment room in Mannheim smells the same as every treatment room in the league: liniment, tape, cold rubber. I am Nico, thirty, new captain of the Adler, and I have a shoulder that clicks when I raise my arm and a medical clearance form that says pending. The door opens and the team physician walks in reading my file, and I know her handwriting before I know her face.
Sarah. Dr. Lindqvist now, on the badge. Five years since I left this city on a night bus with a contract in my bag and her key on the kitchen table.
She looks up. Nothing moves in her expression. She is very good at it, or she has practised.
“Shirt off,” she says. “Sit.”
I do. Her hands are cool and clinical on the joint. She rotates the arm, asks where it hurts, presses on the exact spot without needing me to tell her. She was always good at knowing where it hurt. That was the problem.
“You've been playing on this,” she says. Not a question.
“It's a contract year.”
“It's a labrum.” She writes something. Her pen is steady. “Two weeks of rehab, then I reassess. You don't skate until I say.” Then, quieter, still writing: “You didn't have to sign here, Nico. There were other teams.” I open my mouth to tell her the truth, which is that there weren't, not for me, not really, and I close it again. She caps the pen. She has not once looked at my face, and I realise she is waiting, with the file half open, to see if I'm going to make her.
