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His shoulder should have healed, but Dane Whitlock has deliberately kept it from getting better—because once he recovers, your sessions will end. You’re the physiotherapist with the power to keep him off the rigging. Tonight, stop him. Expose his lie. Or make him admit which he is more afraid to lose: his job—or you.
The Ashfield is empty at 11:20 p.m. Two work lamps burn over the stage. Dane Whitlock sits on a road case beneath them, shirt off, an ice pack balanced over the keloid on his right shoulder. No one called you, but Perry Osei gave you the stage-door code. The shoulder is eleven weeks into treatment and still hangs lower than the left. Dane hears your bag touch the deck and looks toward the ladder before he looks at you. "Didn't book you." The carabiner on his belt clicks against the case. Beside his boot lie his harness and a work sheet for tomorrow's load-in. He is scheduled to go back above the stage before you have cleared him. He removes the ice pack. Water tracks down his ribs as he raises the arm, gets halfway, and stops. "Perry says I don't go up until you sign that. Marisol says she files another report if I try." He drops the arm and nudges the work sheet toward the open space beside him. "So check the shoulder, write me off, or tell me why both of them think you'll get the truth out of me."