Three weeks pass the way November passes in Montréal quickly, and then all at once.
The fake dating settles into something that functions. They have established, without formally discussing it, a rhythm that operates on two tracks simultaneously: the professional track, which runs through the Arena and is governed by appointments and protocols and the clinical distance she has maintained for two years; and the other track, which has no formal name and is governed by text messages sent after ten at night and the particular gravity of two people who have agreed to perform proximity and are discovering that performance has weight.
Isabelle Moreau texts Nolan approximately once every four days. The content varies a recipe she thinks he might like, a question about whether he prefers chicken or fish, a photograph of a Wolves jersey she found at a vintage market that she is apparently considering purchasing. He responds to all of them. Jade knows this because her mother mentions it with the specific satisfaction of someone whose instincts have been confirmed.
She does not tell her mother to stop.
She tells herself she will get around to it.
On a Tuesday in the second week, Jade arrives at the Arena to find a coffee on her desk.
This is not new he has left coffee twice before, always black, always before she arrives, always without a note. The first time she assumed it was accidental, left by someone else and placed on the wrong desk. The second time she accepted it and said nothing. The third time today she stands in the doorway of her own office for a moment, looking at the cup on the corner of her desk with the careful expression she uses when something requires classification.
She puts her bag down. She picks up the cup. She drinks the coffee.
She opens his file.
She has been maintaining his file with the same precision she applies to all of her patients. What she has noticed, in the past two weeks, is that her notations have become slightly longer. Not in the clinical sections those remain exactly what they should be, specific and measurable and focused on tissue response and range of motion and functional outcomes. The longer sections are in the observation notes. The behavioral data. The compliance tracking.
She reads back through three weeks of observation notes and realizes, with the cold clarity of someone who has accidentally performed their own diagnosis, that she has been documenting him.
Not clinically. Him. The way he responds to certain kinds of silence. The slight change in his posture when something costs him more than he's letting on. The fact that he has stopped pretending the sessions run long because of the shoulder work.
She closes the file.
She finishes the coffee.
In the third week, on a Thursday, Nolan passes her in the corridor outside the medical wing and slows.
This has been happening. The slowing. She has noticed it four times now the slight reduction in pace as he passes, not enough to constitute stopping, not purposeful enough to require acknowledgment. Just present. Just a fractional change in the rhythm of a person walking past.
Today he stops entirely.
"Your mother called me," he says.
She turns. He's standing two meters away with his stick bag over one shoulder and the expression he has when he's deciding how to deliver information. "She wants to know if you've told your friends about the next dinner."
"What next dinner?"
"She's organized a dinner. For three weeks from Sunday. She wants Camille and Priya there." He pauses. "She mentioned a specific dish she's planning to make for Camille, which means she called Camille to find out what Camille likes to eat."
Jade stares at him.
"She called Camille," she says.
"She has initiative."
"She got Camille's number from ...."
"Léa, probably."
She turns and faces the wall for a moment. She puts two fingers against the bridge of her nose.
"I'll call her," she says.
"She also asked whether Théo could come."
She turns back. "Why would Théo come?"
"I may have mentioned him in a previous text exchange." He shifts the bag on his shoulder. "She thinks brothers who are close should be integrated into the family circle. Her words."
"'Family circle,'" Jade repeats.
"Her words," he says again.
She breathes.
"This has grown beyond its original parameters," she says, which is the most professional way she can find to state what is happening.
"It has," he agrees.
They look at each other in the corridor. The fluorescent lights hum overhead. Someone passes them at the far end of the hallway one of the junior players, not paying attention.
"We could end it," she says. It comes out more quietly than she intended.
He looks at her carefully. "We could."
"Say it ran its course. My mother would be disappointed but she'd manage."
"She would," he says.
Jade looks at him. She looks at the way he's standing unhurried, the stick bag over his shoulder, not performing ease but actually at ease, the way he is when he isn't watching himself. She thinks about three weeks of coffee on her desk and text messages after ten and the unhurried quality of laughter in a cold car.
"But you're not going to," he says. It's not quite a question.
She picks up her bag from where she set it against the wall. "Tell my mother Théo can come," she says.
She walks back down the corridor toward her office.
She does not look back.
She doesn't need to. She can hear, from the specific quality of the silence behind her, that he is still standing where she left him, and that he is doing that thing he does watching her walk away with an attention she can feel without being able to see.
She gets back to her office. She sits down. She opens her computer.
She opens a new message to Camille.
My mother called you, she types.
She did, Camille replies immediately. She's wonderful.
She's a lot.
She asked if I was seeing anyone. I told her about David. She gave me a recipe.
Jade stares at her screen.
A recipe, she types.
A soup. She said it would help with the breakup. She texted it to me with a voice note explaining the steps.
A pause.
Jade, I love her.
Please don't.
Too late.
She puts her phone down. She looks at the ceiling. From somewhere in the Arena, the sound of skates on ice comes through the walls steady, rhythmic, the sound of the building doing what it's built for.
She picks up her pen. She turns it between her fingers once. Twice.
She sets it down when she realizes she has decided something, though she cannot yet fully articulate what.
She opens Nolan's file.
Under the observation section, she writes: Patient demonstrates consistent improvement in protocol adherence. Behavioral indicators suggest increased investment in treatment outcomes.
She stares at what she's written.
She deletes the last sentence.
She writes it again.
She leaves it.
FIN : Her phone buzzes. Nolan. A single message: Cortex.
She frowns. What about Cortex?
Your mother asked if he could come to the dinner. She wants to meet him.
Jade reads this message twice.
She wants to meet my cat, she types.
She's already named a dish after him apparently. Cortex chicken. It's a thing now.
She sits at her desk in her small blue-doored office and laughs alone, quietly, into her hand for the first time in longer than she can remember.
She puts her phone down. She looks at the ceiling.
She thinks: this is fine. This is manageable. She has been through harder things than an expanding social situation and a man who leaves coffee on her desk and makes her mother happy.
She picks up her pen.
She thinks about the corridor. The way he said but you're not going to not as a challenge, not as pressure. As a recognition. Like he already knew what she was going to decide before she did.
She turns the pen between her fingers.
She sets it down when she's sure of something she can't name yet.