Baseline

You don't remember falling asleep with the phone in your hand, but you wake up with it pressed against your cheek and the screen still open on his last message.

fine. no coffee after 3. but i'm telling everyone you're a monster.

You read the whole thread again over Nkem's terrible kitchen coffee. Two in the morning, a cold plunge, a man who can't let an argument go. It shouldn't make you smile. You put the phone face down on the counter like it did something wrong.

"Who are you smiling at?" Nkem says from the doorway.

"A patient."

"That's a felony face, Ava. That's not a patient face."

"He was arguing about caffeine."

"Oh no," Nkem says, with deep pity. "You like the caffeine guy."

Thursday at eight sharp, Reeve is already in the gym. Not stretching. Not warming up. Just sitting on the edge of the cage with a coffee cup in his hand and his eyes on the door.

He lifts the cup when you walk in. "Decaf. It's seven fifty-eight. Write that down."

"You're early."

"I'm always early. You'd know that if you'd watched any of my fights instead of just stopping one."

Primo snorts from the bags. Elio isn't here yet. The swamp cooler is still losing.

You set up in Primo's office. A laptop for the computerized test, a stopwatch, a foam pad for balance. Most fighters who've been in the sport long enough have a baseline on file: a test they took when healthy, so doctors can compare. Titan requires one every January. You have Reeve's from this year.

"Every fighter hates this part," you tell him. "It's boring. You'll want to rush. Don't."

"I don't rush."

"You rushed a title fight with blood in your eye."

"That was enthusiasm."

He sits in front of the laptop. You start the test. Shapes flash on the screen; he clicks when they match. Words appear; he has to remember them twenty minutes later. A dot jumps; he follows it. Easy stuff, if your brain is working right.

He's fast. He's sharp. He's also, about six minutes in, rubbing his left temple with two fingers like he doesn't know he's doing it.

You don't say anything. You watch.

Twenty minutes later you read him the word list and ask what he remembers.

"Elbow," he says. "Apple. Carpet. Saddle." He stops. Frowns. "Bubble."

There were five more words. In January, he got all ten.

"Again?" he says. "I can do it again."

"That's not how it works."

"I wasn't trying."

"You were trying very hard," you say quietly. "I watched you."

His jaw goes tight. He doesn't argue. That scares you more than if he had.

Then the balance test. Feet together, eyes closed, hands on hips. Twenty seconds. Then one foot. Then heel to toe on the foam pad.

On the foam pad, eyes closed, he sways like a boat. Two errors. Four. He opens his eyes and catches himself on the desk.

"This pad's garbage," he says.

"It's the same pad everyone uses."

"Then everyone's garbage."

You compare the numbers on the laptop. You do it twice, because you want to be wrong. Reaction time, slower. Visual memory, worse. Verbal memory, way worse. Balance errors, doubled since January.

None of these things alone mean anything for sure. People have bad days. People sleep badly. People take tests hungover and stressed and anxious about a doctor they can't stand.

But all of them together, in a man who took a head clash six weeks ago and squints at every light in the building?

You close the laptop.

"What," Reeve says.

"Your scores are down from January."

"How down."

"Enough that I'm not clearing you for head contact."

He stares at you. For one second he looks younger than twenty-nine. Then the door bangs open and Elio sweeps in on a cloud of cologne, both phones lit up, the green-faced watch flashing.

"Sorry, sorry, traffic on the 215. How's our boy?" He reads the room in half a second. "Uh oh. What happened?"

"His neuro scores are lower than his baseline," you say.

"Jet lag," Elio says instantly. "He just got back from that sponsor thing in Miami."

"That was three weeks ago," Reeve says.

"Jet lag's cumulative, bro."

Primo leans in the doorway, arms crossed over his cardigan. "It's nerves. Kid's got a rematch hanging over him and a doctor in his face who already ended one fight. Course he's off."

Everyone has a reason. Reeve doesn't offer one.

"Maybe," you say. "Which is why I'm requesting his full imaging. Titan sent the commission a report from Cabot Diagnostics saying his post-fight MRI was clean. I want the actual images. Not the summary. The scans themselves."

Elio's smile doesn't move, but something behind it does. "The report's signed by a radiologist. That's standard."

"And I'm the commission physician. Requesting the images is standard too."

"Sure. Absolutely, Ava. I'll call Cabot." He's already typing. "Might take a few days. Their system's a nightmare."

"Then I'll call them myself."

"No, no. I've got a guy. I'll handle it." He claps Reeve on the shoulder. "Relax. You're fine. You're a machine."

Reeve doesn't look like a machine. He looks like a man who just failed a test he's been dreading for six weeks.

Elio doesn't handle it on Thursday. Or Friday.

Saturday you call Cabot Diagnostics directly. A receptionist with a lovely voice tells you all imaging releases for Titan athletes have to go through the athlete's management. You say you're the commission. She says she'll pass that along.

Reeve's morning texts arrive every day at six on the dot. Short. Defiant.

headache 2/10. slept 6 hrs. mood: annoyed at doctors.

headache 3/10. slept 5. mood: see above.

Saturday night at eleven, he adds one more line under his report.

did they send it yet

You stare at that for a long time. He's not asking about paperwork. He's scared.

Not yet, you write. I'm on it.

ok, he writes back. And then: thanks doc.

Sunday evening, at last, an email from Elio. No message. Just a secure link and a password.

You're curled on Nkem's couch with your laptop on your knees. You download the files. Proper MRI images, slices of Reeve's brain in black, white and gray, the kind of thing you've read a thousand times in the ER.

At first glance they're clean. Perfectly, beautifully clean.

Then you click on the file information to check the details, the way you always do, because you're the kind of person who reads the fine print.

Patient: HENDRY, REEVE A.

Facility: Cabot Diagnostics, West Sahara.

Study date: March 3.

The fight was March 14.

You read it three times. Your mouth goes dry.

The scan Titan filed as his post-fight MRI was taken eleven days before he ever stepped into the cage.