Chapter 6

Brianna

After Jess and Kate left, Cole looked down at me with a warm smile.

"Let's go, team doc."

"I think it's time you met the rest of your players."

I nodded and followed him toward the football team's meeting room. Heads turned as we walked past. After all, I was the first girl anyone had seen get that close to Cole.

We'd barely reached the door when Cole stopped me. From inside came the sound of overlapping voices:

"Manager says the new team doc is highly experienced. Look alive, people."

"Show some enthusiasm!"

"Highly experienced? What if it's some old guy?"

"What if it's a girl? A hot one?"

"No chance. You're forgetting how insane the hiring requirements were."

"Exactly — top of her class at med school, a hundred-plus hours of hands-on field experience, and she has to be able to carry fifty kilos one-handed. Which girl clears all that?"

I almost laughed. They were kind of adorable.

The moment Cole pushed open the door, I looked out at the still-bickering room and smiled.

"Hey everyone. I'm your new team physician — Brianna Hill."

The room went dead silent. You could have heard the wind outside.

The two players in the front row stared at me like I'd said something in a foreign language. They weren't hiding how they felt about it. Neither was Peter, who had just been named vice-captain. He got to his feet, pointed past me at Cole, and didn't bother being polite about it.

"Her?"

"She's so... small."

"You sure about this?"

Cole nodded without hesitation.

"Absolutely. She's the best team physician I've come across in my entire career. She'll be on the sideline this afternoon — give everyone a chance to get a feel for working together."

Peter opened his mouth, closed it, then walked out without another word. On his way past, he shot me a look that could have curdled milk.

I finally understood why Jess had wanted out.

The rest of the team was a different story. That included the six players who'd been planning to follow Jess out the door. They were standing off to one side, and when they caught my eye, they gave me a quiet thumbs-up from the corner. I smiled back.

---

The afternoon game came around fast — Ronaldde University versus USC. It was the first match since the team's restructure, and the whole campus had something riding on it. Ronaldde's football program carried real weight across the state, even nationally, and the administration wasn't about to let that reputation slip.

So before I even set foot on the sideline, I got a personal call from the Dean — a man I'd never actually met — reminding me to be careful. That alone told me how much pressure was in the room.

The players felt it too, but that was easy to understand. Most of them had professional ambitions waiting on the other side of graduation, and a game like this was a showcase. Nobody knew when they'd get another shot at a stage this big, so everyone was playing like it might be their last chance to be seen.

But the more someone cares, the more mistakes they make.

That's exactly what happened to Peter. So focused on directing Number 9 into a blocking play, he lost track of the opposing team's captain right in front of him. The hit sent him to the ground — and when I sprinted over, it was clear: a fracture.

The whistle blew. I got to him fast, loaded him onto the stretcher with clean, practiced movements.

Peter, however, wasn't exactly a cooperative patient.

He grabbed my sleeve with both hands and kept repeating himself.

"I'm fractured. You hear me? I'm fractured. Don't touch me."

Then he grabbed Cole's arm.

"The team's counting on you. Win this."

After that, he let his eyes fall closed like a man who'd accepted a terminal diagnosis.

He'd already written himself out of the game. In his mind, there was no version of this where he came back onto the field — not with me in charge. Even a veteran team physician couldn't get a fractured player back in action mid-game, let alone someone he saw as a rookie who hadn't even finished college. His only expectation of me was a ride to the hospital.

Holden, the manager, was already moving to call in a substitute.

But I knew what this moment meant. If I wanted to earn any respect on this team, it had to start here. This debut mattered as much to me as the game mattered to the players — maybe more. It wasn't just about proving myself. It was about showing the world that Cole's choice had been the right one.

I turned to Holden.

"Give me thirty seconds. That's all I need."

He spread his hands, staring at me like he wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

"Brianna, what exactly are you planning to do? Don't do anything reckless. This is Peter's future we're talking about."

While he was still talking, my fingers had already found the displaced bone.

I looked at Peter, keeping my voice level.

"Can you handle some pain?"

He hadn't quite registered what was happening.

I didn't wait for an answer.

I gripped the joint firmly and pushed.

The bone reset with a sharp crack. Peter's scream went up with it.

Every eye in the stadium turned toward us.

Up in the stands, Kate was already smiling — the kind of smile that's really a sneer.

"I told you! Don't go making a spectacle of yourself!"

"You're going to ruin him!"

"That's not how you prove your worth!"

The Dean of the medical school was on his feet in the bleachers, waving both arms wildly, signaling me to stop. The last thing he needed was his school's name dragged through the mud over something like this.

Other players were getting up from their seats, moving in my direction, clearly intending to pull me back.

I ignored all of it and kept working.

I brought out the spray, applied it to the fracture site, and worked it in firmly. Every press pulled another sound out of Peter. By the last pass, his face was drenched in sweat. His hands were clenched into fists, knuckles white, sweat running freely down his jaw.

He was at his limit — and he let everyone know it.

"I told you to stop touching me, you idiot!"

"Look what you've done!"

I kept going. Ignored the shouting. Finished the stabilization and wrapped the binding tight.

Honestly, it never stopped impressing me — the physical conditioning on these athletes. Looking at the bone structure, two days with a support splint and he'd be running again. I was still thinking about that when Cole stepped into my space, his presence hitting like a pressure change in the air.

I couldn't quite read why he looked so tense. He moved past me and pressed a hand to Peter's shoulder, stopping him from trying to sit up.

"What exactly are you yelling at my team physician for?"

Then he turned to me, and his expression shifted — somewhere between exasperated and amused.

"He calls you an idiot and you're just going to let that go?"

I scratched the back of my head.

"Arguing would've slowed down the treatment."

Peter's volume went up another notch.

"Treatment? You call that treatment?"

"You almost crippled me!"

The Dean, who had apparently abandoned all dignity, vaulted down from the bleachers. He pushed through to me and got in my face.

"Brianna! What in God's name were you thinking?"

"If Peter has any lasting complications from what you just did, I trust you understand what that means for you."

Then he crouched down and started examining Peter himself.

Kate watched from a distance, looking very pleased with herself. Peter looked like he was mentally rehearsing a very physical conversation with me.

Then the Dean stood up.

The disbelief on his face was real — but it wasn't the kind that came from disaster.

He looked me over slowly, top to bottom.

"Brilliant."

Then he turned and punched Peter in the arm.

"What were you screaming about? You nearly gave my department a heart attack."

Peter clutched his arm, genuinely confused.

"What?"

The Dean pressed two fingers to his temple and shook his head.

"Stand up and take a few steps. Go on."