Chapter 4: Connolly

Connolly Sports Rehab sat in a strip mall between a vape shop and a tae kwon do school.

I got there at 7:50 the next morning, in clean scrubs, with my braid so tight it hurt.

The front desk was empty.

Behind the half wall I could see six treatment tables, a turf strip, and a man in a gray polo kneeling by a runner's ankle.

He didn't look up.

"You're early," he said. "I didn't invite you yet."

"You said come in. You didn't say a time."

"I said maybe come in. There's a difference."

He stood, slowly, with one hand on the table.

Donal Connolly was tall and rangy, with short dark hair and gray eyes that took inventory.

He favored his right leg.

I looked at it for a moment too long.

"It's cold out," he said flatly. "It does that. Don't write a case study."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were doing the thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you already know the protocol."

I shut my mouth.

He wiped his hands on a towel and studied me.

"I hired you in February," he said. "Before anybody phoned me, and before I knew who you went to school with."

"I know."

"A man like Seidel doesn't call a clinic this small unless he's scared of something. So I want to know what."

"I don't know," I said, honestly. "I've never done anything to him."

"Not yet."

The word sat in the air between us.

"All right," Donal said. "Here's your interview. You get one patient, no chart, ten minutes."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Best Friend Used Me, Now She Pays from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.