78

Marianna POV

Two weeks pass.

Belgium, then the Netherlands. The F1 calendar moves through Europe at its relentless pace and I follow it from a distance—timing screens on my phone during lunch breaks, Oliver's texts that arrive at random hours full of emoji and paddock gossip, the ten PM calls from hotel rooms in Spa and Zandvoort that have become the architecture of my evenings.

The shoulder improves. I run Duane through remote assessment protocols over video call, which is imprecise and slightly absurd—"rotate your arm, no, that direction, can you—yes, hold it there"—but tells me enough to adjust the home exercise program I've sent him, which he actually does, a fact he confirms not by saying so but by sending me progress notes in the same format the team physio uses, the specific data-over-emotion communication style that I've learned to read as its own kind of intimacy.

Sixty-one percent external rotation. Then sixty-seven. Then, ten days after Silverstone, a message at seven AM Miami time: Seventy-three. Up to the race benchmark.

I read it standing in the kitchen with my first coffee and feel something so disproportionately happy about a shoulder rotation measurement that I have to put the mug down and stand there for a moment.

Marco walks in, sees my face, pours his own coffee with the deliberate neutrality of someone who has decided not to ask questions before nine AM.

"Good news?" he says.

"Patient progress," I say.

"Great," he says, and goes to read something on his phone with the studied interest of a man who is absolutely not monitoring my reactions.

At Kinetic, my life has taken on the shape of something sustainable, which still surprises me intermittently. Oliver's sessions three times a week. Luca's sessions twice weekly. A growing roster of other athletes—a Heat point guard with persistent Achilles issues, two Dolphins players doing pre-season conditioning work, a professional tennis player whose rotator cuff has been trying to separate itself from her shoulder for most of the year.

I'm good at this. I keep having to re-learn this fact, not because it isn't true but because competence is something I find easier to accept in other people than in myself. But Dr. Lindholm has started assigning me cases that aren't entry-level, and Oliver told me last week that three Alpine team members have asked if I do remote consultations, and the Dolphins' head trainer flagged my work with the Achilles case in a meeting that Dr. Lindholm summarized as we have a talent on staff—

I didn't cry in the break room afterward. I came close, but I didn't.

The Luca situation, though. That's harder to feel good about.

He's been coming to his sessions with a specific agenda every time, and the agenda has nothing to do with his hip flexors. It's subtle—Luca does everything subtly, it's practically his defining characteristic—but it's consistent. Questions about Duane's race preparation. Comments about the championship standings that are framed as casual but land precisely. The occasional remark about the variables affecting Duane's performance that trails off at exactly the moment it would have to become specific.

He never says anything I can take to Dr. Lindholm. Everything is just slightly too vague, just deniable enough, the words choosing themselves with the care of someone who understands liability.

After his session on Wednesday I close the treatment notes and sit at my desk and think about what Duane said on the phone months ago: He's decided the fastest route to where he wants to be is through the people currently standing there.

Currently standing there.

I text Duane: Luca's sessions. Something to discuss tonight.

He responds immediately, which means he's between commitments: Tell me now.

Me: Nothing specific. General pattern of information-gathering. Always deniable.

A pause.

Duane: How deniable.

Me: If I went to Lindholm today she'd tell me I was reading into normal conversation.

Me: I want to know what you're going to do.

Duane: Nothing dramatic. Talk to someone. Close the information leak.

Me: Someone meaning who.

Duane: My team principal. There's only one person on the medical staff who would share treatment data with a reserve driver.

I think about this. About the clinical records that have my name attached to them. About the professional implications of being adjacent to whatever Luca has been doing.

Me: Are you sure you want to do this. If it comes back to me as the source—

Duane: It won't.

Me: You can't promise that.

Duane: I can promise I'll handle it in a way that doesn't touch you.

Me: That's not actually reassuring. That's you being protective in a way that removes my agency.

A longer pause than any of the others.

Duane: You're right.

Just that. Two words, and from him they cost something.

Me: What if I talk to Lindholm first. Frame it as a client conduct concern, which it is. Let her make the call about escalation.

Duane: Okay.

Me: Okay?

Duane: It's your call. You're right.