The Rookie's Comeback

March mornings in Cascadia Falls taste like wet cedar and the particular failure of having thrown two hundred pitches the day before. Dylan Harlow shoves the training room door open with his forearm, left hand pressed to the joint that has been barking since February. She is already there, back to him, lab coat pressed sharp enough to cut glass. *"Ellie Vance. Team physician."* She does not offer her hand. *"I've reviewed your file."* He tells her the splitter was sharp and the changeup had movement and he is fine. She tells him his average velocity is down from February and further down from last September's call-up, and that he is losing a mile and a half a month, and that is not fine, that is a trend. Then she asks to see his fastball grip, watches his hand instead of the ball, and tells him he is straining his flexor mass. She makes him throw into the net. His arm slot has dropped six inches. His release point has shifted. He is short-arming the ball because he is afraid to extend. *"Then you're in pain."* She says it like a diagnosis, not a question. Dylan has reasons for hiding it. His sister Lena is in her early twenties and has spent years fighting a kidney condition, and the bills on his nightstand run into thousands, and a specialist consult her insurance will not cover costs more than he has. He promised their mother he would take care of her. Ellie has reasons of her own. She came here carrying one lost case, and Cole Renfrew, the starting catcher, knows it and says so to her face in her own office while packing a pinch of tobacco against his thumb. *"I don't trust a doctor who's already lost one case."* There is a memo about cutting dead weight before roster day. A conservative rehab plan is the same thing as writing Dylan's release. Whatever she puts in that file, she is choosing for both of them. A closed-door contemporary baseball romance about a pitcher hiding an injury, a doctor with a record she is trying to outrun, and a signed statement that arrives at exactly the wrong moment.