sacrifice
summary HSS PT 01. between recovery and rehab, joe finds himself tangled in a mess alongside his new doctor.
pairing joe burrow x fem black!reader.
words 9k ish
author’s note to my fellow mariah girlie @pagesandpasses 💝. + enemies to not so lovers yet if u squint
inspired by hearts sold separately (mariah the scientist)
The antiseptic sting of the facility was worse than the pain in his knee.
It smelled like bleach and finality, the kind of place where careers came to die — where men like Joe Burrow were stripped of their helmets and swagger and left with nothing but the hum of fluorescent lights. He limped through the automatic glass doors alone, hoodie up, expression unreadable. The marble floor didn’t echo — it absorbed sound, swallowed the rhythm of his limp like a secret.
The receptionist didn’t need to ask who he was. The eyes said it all — awe, pity, curiosity.
“Dr. Amani will see you now.”
He followed the corridor, sterile and endless, lined with frosted glass that reflected fragments of himself: the limp, the clenched jaw, the weight of a future uncertain.
Dr. Maya Amani was not what he expected.
No white coat. No fake smile. No overcompensation. She stood by the lightbox, analyzing the scan of his shredded knee with one hand in her pocket, the other resting lightly on the edge of the film. Her dark hair was pulled into a low knot, precise, clinical. The light caught on the thin scar along her jaw — old, faint, but sharp enough to betray a story she never told.
When she finally looked at him, it wasn’t admiration or sympathy in her eyes — it was assessment.
“You’re Joe Burrow to the world,” she said, without preamble, her tone smooth but unyielding. “But here, you’re just a body fighting a lost cause.”
His brow furrowed. He’d been through injuries before. He’d been talked to like a brand, an asset, a miracle waiting to happen. But never like this.
“Lost cause?”
“You have a complete ACL rupture, partial MCL tear, and cartilage damage. The kind that doesn’t care about your highlight reels.” She gestured toward the scan, her voice even. “You’re not invincible. Not here.”
He crossed his arms, weight shifting to his good leg. “You’re supposed to fix that.”
“I will—if you give me something worth fixing.”
It wasn’t arrogance. It was precision, sharpened by too many nights in operating rooms where egos bled out faster than patients.
Maya took a step closer. “You will make a sacrifice of your comfort, your privacy, and your ego. If you want a chance at coming back, you’ll live for this room. Fail to commit, and I fail you.”
Joe’s lips parted, a flicker of disbelief mingling with something deeper — the shock of being stripped bare. No cameras. No cheers. No control. “You talk to all your patients like that?”
“Only the ones who think they’re gods.” She answered.
For a moment, silence pressed between them — dense, electric.
Then, she turned back to the lightbox. “Take a seat. We’ll start your intake.”
He watched her work — the surgical efficiency, the steady hand that traced across his chart. She didn’t make small talk. She didn’t fill silence. She commanded it.
When she finally looked at him again, her eyes lingered not on his face, but his leg — the swollen, rigid knee beneath the brace. Her voice softened, almost imperceptibly. “You’re in more pain than you’re admitting.”
He smirked, bitter, an instinctive defense. “You a mind reader now?”
“Observation.” Her gaze met his, steady. “You’re clenching your fist every time you exhale.”
He released his hand without thinking.
It was the smallest surrender, but she saw it — and he knew she did.
The first week blurred into a haze of painkillers, swelling, and restless nights. The world outside still whispered his name — reporters, sponsors, fans — but inside this facility, there was only her.
Maya ran her schedule like a metronome. Sessions at 7 AM sharp. No entourage. No distractions. No phone.
“You need to understand,” she told him one morning as she adjusted his brace, “recovery isn’t punishment. It’s discipline.”
“You sound like my old coach.”
“Then he did something right.”
Her fingers brushed against his skin as she aligned his knee — not gently, but deliberately. The contact was brief, clinical, yet it burned longer than it should have.
He watched her when she wasn’t looking — the way she wrote in her notes, her focus absolute, her movements controlled. There was a quiet authority about her, the kind that came not from power, but precision.
And beneath it all, something in him began to shift.
One evening, the rain came down hard against the facility’s glass walls. Everyone else had gone home. He was still there, grimacing through his exercises, pushing further than he should.
Maya appeared in the doorway, arms crossed. “Rehab’s over. You should’ve stopped an hour ago.”
“I’ve got time.”
“No, you’ve got swelling,” she said flatly, walking toward him. “And if you tear the graft, we start from zero.”
He threw the resistance band aside, frustration boiling over. “You don’t get it. If I don’t push—”
“I do get it,” she cut in, eyes sharp. “You think pain is proof you still matter.”
The words hit too close.
For a moment, neither moved. The air felt charged, as if the storm outside had found its way in.
She stepped closer, taking the band from him. Close enough that he caught the faint scent of vanilla and rose from her perfume. “You are not your injury,” she said, quieter now. “But if you let it define you, you’ll never leave this room.”
He stared at her — at the composure, the certainty, the quiet challenge that lived in her eyes. And for the first time, he didn’t have an answer.
Later that night, after she’d gone, he found himself sitting in the darkened room, the hum of the MRI machine still faint in the background. His phone buzzed with messages — teammates, sponsors, reporters. He ignored them all.
He thought about her — not the surgeon, but the person who had looked at him like he was human first, myth second. He didn’t know her story, but he could tell she carried one — something buried beneath her precision, something that made her so unwilling to break her own rules.
And for reasons he couldn’t name, that made her all the more dangerous.
The following morning, he was back before sunrise. Not because he had to be, but because he couldn’t sleep.
The world outside was already dissecting his timeline—sports shows looping the same grainy clip of his collapse, headlines counting the days, the odds, the doubts. Inside, though, the only clock that mattered was the rhythmic click of Maya’s pen as she adjusted his plan.
“Early start,” she said without looking up.
“Couldn’t stay still.”
Her eyes flicked to him then, quick, unreadable. “You will have to. Recovery is patience disguised as punishment.”
He gave a small, humorless laugh. “You write that one down somewhere?”
“I lived it.”
That was the first personal thing she had ever said. It was out before she could stop it.
Joe caught the shift—the brief tightening of her mouth, as if she regretted letting the words slip.
He didn’t press. But something in him filed it away.
By the end of week two, their routine had become ritual. Same schedule. Same sterile playlist of instrumental focus tracks. Same tension that lived between their silences.
She worked with mechanical precision. Her touch was firm, never indulgent, always measured. But sometimes, when she adjusted his leg or aligned his knee brace, her fingers lingered a fraction too long—just long enough for both of them to feel it, neither acknowledging it.
“Flex,” she instructed.
He did.
“Hold.”
His breath trembled; pain shot through his thigh like wire tightening.
“Again.”
He met her eyes, sweat rolling down his temple. “You enjoy this?”
“If you’re asking whether I like seeing you in pain—no.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She leaned closer, her expression unwavering. “You mistake necessity for cruelty.”
He wanted to answer, but she pressed her palm to his knee to stabilize it, and the thought vanished into the static between them.
By the third week, he’d begun noticing details about her that had nothing to do with medicine. The faint streak of graphite on her wrist from jotting notes. The small gold watch she always wore, turned inward, as if she didn’t want to see time moving.
The way she stared at his scar not with disgust, but focus—like it was a code she was determined to crack.
Once, during a rest interval, he asked, “Why ortho?”
She hesitated. “Because bones are honest.”
“Honest?”
“They don’t lie to make you feel better.”
He smiled faintly. “You could say that about yourself.”
Her glance was sharp, almost defensive. “That’s not a compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
But he was smiling when he said it.
And she looked away first.
He started leaving his phone in the locker during sessions. Not because she told him to—because he wanted to. The outside noise felt irrelevant in her space. The cameras, the speculation, the social media chaos—it all died in the antiseptic quiet of the facility. Here, it was only breath and pain and discipline.
And her.
Maya never asked about his life, never pried. But she listened. When he cursed under his breath, she didn’t flinch. When he failed a rep, she didn’t console. She only said, “Again.” And for reasons he couldn’t articulate, that simple word was steadier than any pep talk he’d ever heard.
He started craving that voice. That steadiness. That absolute control she carried. Even when he hated her for it.
One evening, as the sky bled orange over the glass walls, he lingered long after the session ended. She was still there, disinfecting tools, in a room close by, her hair messier than usual, a loose strand falling across her cheek.
“You don’t go home?” he asked.
“Eventually
“Don’t tell me you live here.”
“I’ve spent more nights here than in my apartment.”
He let out a low whistle. “Sounds healthy.”
Her lips curved, the faintest ghost of a smile. “I’m not the one who tried to run routes three weeks post-op.”
He smirked, caught. “Touché.”
Then silence again—heavy, but not empty. He watched her finish cleaning up, her movements methodical, calm. When she finally looked up, she found him still standing there.
“Something else?”
He hesitated. Then: “You’re not what I expected.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And what did you expect?”
He thought for a moment. “Someone who’d treat me like I was made of glass. Or someone who wanted something from me.”
“And what do you think I want?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Her gaze held his for a beat too long. “You shouldn’t try to find out.”
He almost smiled. “Why not?”
“Curiosity slows recovery.”
Then she turned off the lights, leaving him standing in the dim hallway, pulse pounding harder than it had during any drill.
That night, in his apartment, sleep refused to come. He laid awake, replaying her voice, her precision, that almost-smile. He’d faced linebackers, coaches, reporters—everyone who tried to break him. But nothing unnerved him quite like her calm.
She didn’t need to raise her voice to command him. She didn’t need to flatter him to make him obey. And in that quiet, exacting authority, he found something dangerous—something magnetic. Because beneath all the order and rules, he could sense it: she was fighting something too.
The next morning, the facility was silent when he arrived early again. He expected to find her in the therapy room, but she was in her office instead, standing by the window, phone to her ear. Her voice was softer than he’d ever heard it. Not gentle—just human.
“Yes,” she murmured, “I understand. No, I can’t come tonight. I have a late case.”
A pause.
“Please tell him I’m sorry.”
The tone carried a weight he didn’t recognize.
She hung up quickly when she noticed him in the doorway, her professional mask snapping back into place.
“You’re early again,” she said, brisk.
“Couldn’t stay still.”
He waited, curious if she’d explain. She didn’t. Instead, she picked up the clipboard, her tone cool. “Then let’s make use of the restlessness.”
Her hand trembled when she adjusted his brace that morning. Barely—but enough for him to notice. And for the first time, he wondered what it would take to make her lose control.
By the end of the session, the air between them felt stretched thin. Every instruction carried an echo. Every silence had an aftertaste.
When he left that day, she watched him go through the glass door, her reflection merging with his in the pane—a surgeon and an athlete, both stitched together by things that refused to heal clean.
She told herself she was just doing her job.
He told himself it was just recovery.
Both knew they were lying. Joe’s house felt emptier than it had ever been, though the streets outside hummed with noise, with life that seemed both impossibly close and impossibly distant. He lay on the sofa, brace removed, and stared at the ceiling. Pain had become a kind of companion, nagging, persistent, reminding him he was mortal. But that wasn’t the only weight pressing on him. Her presence lingered in the room as though she had left a piece of herself behind, a shadow that whispered discipline, quiet authority, and something dangerous, something fragile.
He found himself replaying every small interaction: the brief tremor in her hand adjusting his brace, the way her voice softened when she thought no one was listening, the look in her eyes when she stared at his scar—not pity, not fear, just a measuring, calculating attention that made him feel both exposed and alive. He realized he was trying to read her in a way that was reckless, something more than professional curiosity. The thought unsettled him because it was entirely uncharted. He had read teammates, coaches, journalists, even opponents. But not her.
And then, in a fragment of memory he hadn’t expected, he remembered the way she had stiffened once on the phone, the flicker of human fatigue behind her perfect composure. He had caught it the same morning as the rainstorm, when she spoke softly to someone on the other end, then returned to him without a hint that she’d been momentarily human. He didn’t know why it had struck him—why it had mattered—but a quiet, insistent feeling lodged itself in his chest, the feeling that she carried a story she would never tell, and that story somehow shadowed her with him, here, now.
He tried not to think about it, tried to focus on pain and recovery, on measured steps and repetitions, but it was difficult. Everything about her pulled his attention, from the faint scent she carried—the sterility of antiseptic tempered with something colder, more private—to the cadence of her movements when she walked down the hallway. His own mind betrayed him, mapping her routines, anticipating her adjustments, feeling satisfaction in small victories when he followed her instructions perfectly. And with that satisfaction came a gnawing awareness that he was responding to her beyond the demands of rehabilitation.
By week four, he had begun arriving even earlier, forcing himself into the therapy room before she even unlocked the main doors. Sometimes she would already be there, moving silently between equipment and charts, and when she noticed him, her gaze sharpened into a scalpel-like focus. He started timing his arrival to see the subtle ways she read his posture before speaking. He didn’t know why. He only knew that the way she assessed him, so methodically, so unerringly, made him aware of himself in ways no locker room pep talk ever had.
“You’re early,” she said one morning, her tone clipped but not unkind. Her eyes, normally so impenetrable, had a flicker in them he couldn’t name. “You should’ve slept.”
“I wanted to make use of the quiet. Don’t give me another one of that Yoda quotes,” he said, trying to sound casual.
Her mouth twitched briefly, almost like she was holding a smile back. “Quiet is wasted on impatience,” she replied.
It became a game neither acknowledged. He watched her every morning, waiting for the smallest human crack. He wanted to catch it, to see her vulnerability. But she gave nothing, or at least nothing overt. Every twitch of her wrist, every faint crease at the edge of her eye, every subtle hesitation became a secret language he attempted to decode. He knew better than to name it; he knew it was dangerous to try, but the magnetic pull of her controlled presence was nearly irresistible.
Pain was no longer just a physical thing. It was tied to her. When she adjusted his knee, when she pressed on a sore tendon or guided him through an excruciating step, the brush of her fingers became layered, ambiguous, and for the first time, he began to feel a strange warmth under the sting. That heat was fleeting, always restrained by her professionalism, but it lingered long after she left the room, twisting in his chest like a secret he couldn’t admit aloud.
One night, after an especially grueling session, Joe lingered in the empty facility, leaning against a wall while she wiped down equipment. He had been pushing himself further than usual, testing the limits she had set. His breath came in short bursts, sweat rolling down his temples, and his knee throbbed, screaming at him for hubris. She came to him without a word, bracing his leg, guiding him to a seated position. Her hands were steady, but her proximity made him painfully aware of the space between control and surrender.
“You pushed too far,” she said, but the low timbre carried weight.
“I needed to,” he admitted, grit in his teeth. “I needed to know I can.”
“You don’t need to prove anything here,” she said, and for a moment, the air between them shifted. There was no professional barrier, no clinical distance—just something heavier, unspoken. She looked at him then, and he felt the faintest trace of something in her eyes: a shadow of pain, or fear, or memory. It lasted a heartbeat, then vanished. But it had been there, undeniable.
He swallowed hard. He didn’t speak, didn’t dare. He had felt athletes falter under pressure, seen coaches crumble, but he had never seen a professional carry so much authority while simultaneously hiding something that raw and intimate. The awareness that she had endured something he couldn’t imagine made her presence both terrifying and compelling. He wanted to ask her, wanted to reach across that distance, but he knew better. And yet, he also wanted it more than he had wanted anything in a long time.
By the fifth week, routine became ritual. He began to notice little patterns: the way she tapped her pen before giving instructions, the faint flick of her eyelid when she detected fatigue, the almost imperceptible tightening of her jaw when she forced herself to remain composed. These were cracks, yes—but she was fastidious in masking them, so fastidious that the rare glimpses of vulnerability burned into his memory. Each one was a secret he hoarded, savoring the tension it created, the impossible intimacy it suggested without ever being spoken.
One afternoon, he lingered longer than usual after she left the room. The empty space smelled faintly of her presence, the antiseptic tempered by a subtle undertone that was hers alone. He pressed his hand to his knee, rubbing the soreness, imagining her there, imagining that small, almost imperceptible tremor of a wrist that suggested she had once cared, once hurt, once been caught in something she had never named. He didn’t know what it was, but he wanted to.
He began to notice that his thoughts about her were no longer strictly professional. He caught himself imagining her at home, alone, maybe reading charts, maybe replaying conversations from years ago with someone he would never know—someone who had left a scar she carried like a secret code. A story she would never tell him, never anyone. He could feel it in the way she moved, the way she spoke, the precise, controlled lines she drew between herself and the world. And though he had no right to, though he understood the professional boundaries, he wanted to cross them.
It was addictive. The tension between them thickened with each session, with each controlled interaction. He became aware of the subtle ways she influenced him without speaking: the pacing of his steps, the force he put into every movement, the restraint he exercised simply because she expected it. He began arriving earlier, staying later, not to rebel but to be near her, to exist in the space she had claimed so thoroughly, and to feel the pull she exerted without even trying.
By week six, Joe understood he was no longer the one in control. His body was hers to shape, his mind to push, his attention to command. And he liked it. He liked it more than he would ever admit, even to himself.
The facility was quiet after dark. The hum of fluorescent lights and the faint whir of machinery filled the air, a sterile lull that seemed almost intimate in its insistence. Joe had stayed late, insisting on one more set of exercises, his knee screaming against every movement, his muscles trembling with exhaustion. Maya moved beside him, guiding his leg with that same measured authority, her hands firm yet just shy of overstepping boundaries, brushing against him in ways that left echoes long after they pulled away.
“Hold,” she said, her voice low and steady, almost too calm.
He did. He felt the strain rip through him, felt the pull of every tendon and ligament, and yet what lingered most was the heat of her hand, the subtle pressure on his knee, the exacting angle she held his renewed bone, tendons and ligaments at. He wanted to tell himself it was just rehab, but he could not.
“You’re pushing too hard,” she said, adjusting the resistance band. Her fingers lingered a fraction longer than necessary. He could feel it: the deliberate control, the silent warning not to take liberties, and yet the contact burned.
“I need to,” he admitted, exactly like he already had, voice tight, low. “I need to know I can.”
Her eyes flicked up briefly, sharp, assessing, and then she looked away. The faintest twitch in her jaw betrayed a flicker of something—memory, restraint, a ghost of a past she kept buried. He didn’t dare name it, but he felt it. It hummed in the spaces between her instructions, in the pause before she spoke, in the way her hand adjusted his brace with almost imperceptible care.
“Focus,” she said finally, her hand leaving his thigh, the cool air filling the space where it had been.
He nodded, swallowed hard, trying to chase away the heat that lingered under his skin. The room was silent for a moment, each of them breathing in tandem, aware of proximity, aware of tension, aware of the unsaid.
The minutes stretched. He moved, she guided, and a rhythm developed that had nothing to do with recovery and everything to do with this strange, magnetic hold she had over him. Every glance, every brush of skin against fabric, every precise instruction carried weight he hadn’t anticipated. The kind of weight that made his pulse stubbornly fast, made his body feel taut in ways unrelated to his knee.
She stepped back after the final set, removing her gloves and straightening her posture. He took a few tentative steps, his knee steady enough, but his mind caught on the way she watched him. Her gaze was clinical, yes, but it was also deliberate, lingering in ways that left him exposed, aware of himself beyond the physical. He caught a faint catch in her breath as he straightened fully, as though he had challenged her in ways he didn’t yet understand.
“I… think that’s enough for tonight,” she said, voice even but a touch rougher than usual.
“Yeah?” His words were soft, carrying an edge that belied curiosity and something deeper. “You sure you don’t want me to do one more?”
Her hand paused on the edge of the counter, tension coiled like a spring. Her eyes flicked to him, then to the floor, then back. There was a heartbeat where the air thickened, a single second of unspoken understanding.
“Go home,” she said finally. Her hand fell away, leaving him both relieved and wanting.
He lingered, catching the faint glow of a laptop on the desk. She hadn’t noticed him glance. On the screen, the pre-game show of the Chargers played quietly, almost hidden, the statistics and highlights flickering across the screen. He recognized the familiar number, the quarterback’s stance.
“You watch them often?” he asked, voice low, testing, barely audible.
Her eyes snapped to his. She froze for a heartbeat, lips pressed thin, then turned away sharply, returning to straightening the desk with exacting precision. “Not relevant,” she said, flat, clipped, a barrier rebuilt in milliseconds.
Joe felt the pull of her restraint, the heat of her denial, the weight of the things she would never tell him. The room was quiet again, machinery humming, the faint glow of the Chargers game in her laptop painting her silhouette, her body poised, controlled, untouchable yet burning with a tension he could almost taste.
He exhaled slowly, letting the unsaid sink into him. She had left the room now, sliding into the hall with measured steps, leaving behind the faint echo of movement and a trace of something he could not name. His pulse was racing, muscles still trembling—not just from exertion, but from the silent charge that lingered where her touch had been. He knew she had not invited it, and yet, it hung there, heavy in the air like a promise that neither of them could name.
He stayed a moment longer, eyes catching the flicker of the screen again. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. The tension had not broken, and he had no idea when or if it ever would.
And that was enough, for now.
🙂↕️🙂↕️
been reading this on repeat since it dropped waiting for the next part
