Thin Walls

"I'm not a doctor," you tell him.

"I know." Rhys sits back on the table. "Doc's shorter than physiotherapist. I'm a busy man."

"You're sitting down."

"Resting. Very important for athletes. You'd know that if you were a doctor."

You breathe through your nose. You count to five, the way your clinical supervisor taught you back in school when patients got difficult. You've handled difficult. You've handled a linebacker who cried during dry needling and a marathoner who bit you. You can handle one hockey player with a tailgate grudge.

"Intake exam," you say, holding up your clipboard. "Every player gets one. Range of motion, strength, stability. It takes twenty minutes. You'll survive."

"Do the legs."

"I'll do everything."

"Then you'll do it without me."

He's halfway off the table when the door opens again.

The man who comes in is in his fifties, silver-haired, tanned like he winters somewhere warm, in a navy quarter-zip with the Ironclads anvil on the chest. He has a smile you'd trust if you didn't look at his eyes.

"You must be the new physio." He shakes your hand. Dry palm. Firm. "Leland Strick. Team physician."

"Nice to meet you. I was just about to examine..."

"Rhys's shoulder." Strick's smile doesn't move. "I scanned it in August. It's clean. Some bursitis, wear and tear, nothing a defenseman in his ninth year doesn't have." He claps Rhys on the right shoulder. "We're managing it."

"I'd still like to assess him myself."

"And I'd like to golf at Pebble Beach." Strick laughs. Rhys doesn't. "Look, I know you're eager. First pro job, new city, you want to make a mark. But the medical side is mine, sweetheart. You keep these boys loose. I keep them cleared. Everybody stays in their lane."

Sweetheart. You smile the way you'd smile at a dog you're not sure about.

"Of course," you say. "His legs, then."

"There you go." Strick winks at Rhys and leaves.

When you look back at the table, Rhys is watching you with an expression you can't read.

"Lie down," you say. "Face up. Legs."

He lies down.

Practice is at ten. You stand at the bench door in a team jacket two sizes too big, holding a tackle box of tape and gauze, and watch twenty grown men scream across the ice like it's personal.

It's cold enough in the rink to see your breath. The boards bang. Pucks crack off the glass. A goalie the size of a refrigerator, mask pushed up on his head, skates over and leans on the boards in front of you.

"You are the new one. Ava, yes?" he says, in a thick Quebec accent. "I am Bash. Sebastien Lachance. Goalie. Alternate captain. Your favorite."

"Is that right?"

"Everybody's favorite." He grins. "Well. Second favorite. Look at the glass."

You look. Behind the far boards, a cluster of arena staff and two women from the front office are watching practice with their coffees forgotten. All of them are watching the same player. Number 44, helmet off for a water break, pushing his damp hair back with one glove.

"Every day," Bash sighs. "Like he is a sunset." Two front teeth are a slightly different color than the rest. "You hit Cal's truck."

"Does everyone know?"

"He told the whole room. With his hands." Bash spreads his arms wide. "Like this big."

"It was not that big."

"I believe you. He exaggerates. You know what else he exaggerates?" He tips his head toward the far blue line, where Rhys is skating backward at a speed that shouldn't be possible on a human body. "How fine he is."

Before you can ask what that means, the whistle blows. One-on-one drills. A young winger with white-blond hair and a sunny face swoops in toward Rhys, quick and loose, trying to dangle around him.

Rhys doesn't let him.

The hit is clean and devastating. Shoulder to chest. The kid goes off his skates and slams into the boards in front of you so hard the glass shudders, and the whole bench goes oooh.

"Lindqvist!" the coach yells. "Keep your head up!"

The kid, Mats according to the back of his jersey, laughs from flat on his back, gives a thumbs-up. He's fine.

You're not watching him.

You're watching Rhys, who skates away from the boards with his left arm hanging and his jaw locked so hard you can see the muscle jump from twenty feet away. He makes it to center ice. He bends over his stick. For three long seconds his shoulders don't move at all, like he's not breathing.

Then he straightens and skates back into line like nothing happened.

Bash is quiet beside you.

"Bursitis," you say.

Bash says nothing. He pulls his mask down and pushes off.

You catch Rhys in the tunnel after practice. He's still in his skates, helmet off, sweat in his hair.

"That hit," you say.

"Was textbook."

"You couldn't lift your arm after."

"I didn't want to." He walks past you. Skate guards clack on the rubber floor. "I'm lazy."

"Rhys."

He stops. Not because you said his name, you think. Because of how you said it.

"I'm not your enemy," you say quietly. "I'm the person who's supposed to keep you from getting hurt."

"Then you're too late." He glances back, and the grin is back, bright and fake. "Somebody already dented my truck."

He's gone into the locker room before you can throw your clipboard at him.

That night you unpack the kitchen and stack the empty boxes in the hall and fall into bed at one, too tired to dream.

At 3:07 a.m. something wakes you.

It's a sound through the wall behind your head. Low. Ragged. A man's breath being pushed out through his teeth, over and over, the way people breathe when they're trying not to make noise and failing.

You lie very still.

Then you hear it again, a groan that cuts off sharp, as if a hand went over a mouth. Something hits the floor. Glass, maybe, or plastic. The freezer door opens next door with that sucking hum, and ice cascades into something.

You sit up.

Not your business, you tell yourself. You have an alarm in three hours. He told you to keep your hands off.

The breathing on the other side of the wall goes ragged again.

You're out of bed before you decide to be. You pull a hoodie on over your T-shirt. You cross the dark hallway in bare feet, the floorboards cold, the bulb above the stairs buzzing. You stand in front of the door marked 4B.

You knock. Softly. Then louder.

Silence.

"It's Ava," you say to the door. "From 4A. I heard you."

Nothing. Then the scrape of a lock.

The door opens six inches.

Rhys Calloway stands in the gap, shirtless, in gray sweatpants, his hair wrecked and his face pale under the hall light. He's holding a dripping bag of ice against his left shoulder with his right hand, pressing so hard his knuckles are white. There's sweat on his upper lip. His eyes look like he hasn't slept in a month.

For a second he just stares at you, and you see it, clear as anything: fear.

Then it's gone. His jaw sets.

"Go back to bed, Doc," he says hoarsely. "You didn't see this."