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“The heart is a powerful muscle. You had significant bruising and other injuries besides. It’s barely been two months. One moment.” Dr. Reynolds picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Can you have Ms. Fantana come back to exam room five?”

Great. Now Nadia was going to get scolded too.

“Tyler, your sister needs to be aware. Team effort, right? Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

With a smiling nod, Reynolds left him sitting there feeling like a jerk. The door closed behind her with a hiss and clunk. The memory of his primetime collapse still swirled around him, almost visible, tangible around him, the exam room like a double exposure he could touch and taste. He stared at the speckled linoleum floor.

A tap on the door. “Hey, big bro. Everything okay?”

He turned to look and raised his voice so she’d hear. “Panic attack. Stupid.”

Nadia poked her head in. “Okay if I come in?”

“Doctor’s orders.” Tyler shrugged. “I think she wants to do more scolding than one dummy can handle, so you get some too.”

“Stop worrying, Ty,” she said, reaching out to place a hand on his knee, stilling the judder. “It’s just a checkup.”

“I guess.” Tyler sighed, running a hand through his shaggy hair. He couldn’t help but feel vulnerable, stripped of his armor. He’d been an MVP his whole life, and now… this. “I think she went to pull the labs.”

Tyler sat hunched, foot tapping an anxious beat. With each passing second, his eyes darted between the ticking clock and the closed door to the hall. The sterile peach walls and vague watercolor prints did nothing to soothe his nerves. Beside him, Nadia fidgeted with the strap of her purse, watching him less like a little sister and more like an anxious mom.

As they waited, Nadia tried to distract him with a silly story about Mr. Poops, a lazy marmalade cat that had wandered into her garage last year and decided her home was his, but Tyler’s mind was back on a stadium field a thousand miles away with his teammates.

Grass. Mud. Tackle. Agony. A stadium full of strangers and millions of screens across the country, all roaring for blood.

“Thank you,” Dr. Reynolds said to someone, then stepped back inside, flicking through a sheaf of pages. “Mr. Fantana?”

“Guilty.” Tyler straightened, shooting his sister a tense smile.

“Sorry about that. I asked your sister to join us because we all want the same thing.”

“Absolutely.” Nadia squinted, brave-facing it.

“You aren’t getting better.” Reynolds crossed her arms over her white coat and squinted at him kindly. “Trouble is, you know everything that I’m going to say to you. They punched you in the heart. You’re still a world-class athlete inside there, but your body and your mind need to heal.”

“I understand, ma’am.” He nodded, but the thought of doing anything more than what he was already managing seemed impossible. Hell, he had a worthless degree in sports medicine, and he still couldn’t get his ass in gear.

She wasn’t done. “I’ve told you before: you need to eat healthier, exercise more, and for heaven’s sake, do something about your stress levels. The memories will prey upon you if you don’t process them.”

Tyler swallowed hard, feeling the weight of her words press down on him. How could he make her understand the nightmares and the panic attacks? It sounded stupid and melodramatic to him, and he saw them up close and personal every day of his life since the accident.

Nadia watched him take the scolding, her eyes full of awful pity.

“I’ve been trying, Dr. Reynolds,” he protested weakly. “But it’s not easy. Not when I’m… like this.” He looked down at his boxer briefs, his grayish skin, his infamous muscle mass now tasked with hauling him from the bed to the couch and back. He felt like a wrecked car on cinder blocks.

“Mr. Fantana, this isn’t the end, just a change. Six months ago, you were one of the fittest athletes in the world, but you are not twenty anymore. Or even thirty,” she admitted. Her fierce scrutiny made him feel raw and scalded. “Your heart may have taken a hit, but it’s not irreparable. You need to take responsibility for your own well-being.”

“Responsibility? You think I don’t—” Tyler began, anger bubbling up inside him before he caught himself, clamping down. He couldn’t afford to let his rage get the best of him. Not now, when everything was so precarious.

“We can get you whatever you need, Mr. Fantana.” Dr. Reynolds didn’t look away. “Give yourself time.”

“Time.” He gave an ugly laugh as her words sent him spiraling back into that mud and pain and the game that had stopped his entire career stone-cold.

“I say the same thing, Doc.” Nadia squeezed his hand, reminding him where he was. “But he’s so much better than he was. Every day, he’s better.”

“Tyler,” Dr. Reynolds said, her tone cautious, “we both want the same thing: for you to heal. But I can only do so much. The rest is up to you.” She tapped his chart and raised her brows. “Your muscle tone, your blood pressure, even your oxygen levels are still way beyond normal levels for an average man your age, and the whole country knows that you are much more than average.”

He bobbed his head but couldn’t look her in the eye. “Yes, ma’am.” He did know better.