Chapter 3

That entire week, Leo suddenly started avoiding me.

He stopped coming to the rehab room.

I started to wonder whether I'd pushed too hard when I stopped him that day and driven him away in the process.

When we crossed paths in the hallway, he turned his face away and walked right past me, like I was a stranger.

I stood there watching him go, and suddenly wanted to laugh.

At the start of the season, this was the guy who showed up at the rehab room every other day.

One day it was a sore shoulder, the next a tight wrist, the day after that he flat-out claimed he'd slept wrong and had a stiff neck.

I knew he was faking it, of course. The man was built like a tank. But every time I told him to lie down on the treatment table, he was perfectly obedient.

I'd once complained offhand that the coffee the team ordered was sickeningly sweet. The next morning, a different cup appeared on my workstation.

Double espresso, no sugar. Exactly the way I liked it.

Whenever I pulled a night shift, a sandwich would show up on my desk, no onions. He was the only one on the team who knew I didn't eat onions.

Later, I gave him a wristband and added, pretending it was no big deal, "This is for injured players, not for you."

He grinned so wide his eyes crinkled. "Deal. Then I'll be injured every single day."

From that day on, he never took it off for a game. Every time he stepped into the batter's box, he'd turn my way and flash that gesture.

He'd tap the wristband with two fingers, then point at me.

He told me it meant this swing was for me.

But as his injury worsened, I created a new version of his gesture.

Every time he pushed too hard in training, I'd press two fingers against my own wrist and push down.

It meant: ease up, don't force it.

He'd laugh every time and call it the team doctor's shutdown switch. One press, and he couldn't move.

But now, Leo wouldn't even look at me.

I deleted the three unanswered messages on my phone, typed them out again one by one, and in the end didn't send a single word.

After work that day, I dove into the records room to dig through every file on him from the end of last season to now.

The records room was in the stadium basement. The lights were broken; only half of them worked.

Boxes were stacked to the ceiling, the air thick with years of dust and ink.

I flipped through page after page until my fingertips turned black. When I reached the personnel section, I stopped.

Martin Reeves, the team doctor who'd been with the club for eleven years, was listed as leaving two weeks after last season ended.

Exactly two weeks after Leo's collision with the outfield wall.

I picked up the page and held it under the light for a long time.

The reason column had a single line: "Disagreement with player regarding injury treatment."

My fingertips grew colder by the second.

Martin didn't resign. He was replaced.

And after replacing him, the team had brought in me, a rookie no one believed in who hadn't even finished probation.

I took a photo of the page and buried it in a folder deep in my phone.

If someone who'd been with the team for eleven years could vanish without a trace, what chance did I have?

The comments flashed across my vision one after another.

[Don't stop. Keep digging.]

[You're very close to the truth.]