Five minutes in a corridor

The shoulder clicked. Actually clicked, in front of the two clerks at the tribunal desk. Lacey heard it or didn't hear it — I don't know which is worse. "Broke himself again." That's what he said. Not boxer broke. Not training injury. Broke. Like he's seen the whole film already and knows how it ends.

I stood in that corridor for five minutes. I counted. I wasn't frozen, I wasn't having a moment, I just — didn't press the button. The lift sat there on level one and I let it. Two clerks pretending to file things. I could feel the click still vibrating somewhere under the deltoid, that particular grit of something not sitting right, and I thought about how I was going to explain it to the tribunal panel if anyone asked why I kept rotating my right arm. I didn't have to explain. Nobody asked. Nobody cared.

Lacey knew. That's the part I can't put down. The half-beat hold on my shoulder — the one from yesterday's diary, the one I couldn't stop thinking about — it wasn't a handshake. It was a diagnosis. Twenty-two years old and I couldn't get out of the pool without something tearing, and now I'm thirty-one and can't shrug off a blazer without something grinding, and he looked at me like of course, mate, same story, different sport.

I coached beginners tonight. Showed them the jab, watched them overcommit on the bag, corrected their guard. Kept it light — my excuse was the shoulder. Really I just needed to move without thinking. Lou's text is still sitting there. Shorter rounds, same weights. I don't know what to say so I say nothing. That's the whole system.