LEO’S POV
The email notification chimed on my laptop at 9:47 AM, cutting through the silence of my cramped office. I'd been staring at sheet music for Chopin's Ballade No. 1, my left hand moving through the fingering patterns on the desk surface while my right hand remained motionless in my lap.
The same passage I'd been working on for three weeks. The same passage that used to flow like water.
I clicked on the email with my left hand, my right still tucked against my side like a broken wing.
"Professor Mercer, you've been assigned Zoe Washington as your intensive mentorship student."
The words burned into my retinas. I read them again. Then a third time, each reading making my stomach twist tighter.
Jazz. Of course it had to be jazz.
My chair scraped against the linoleum as I pushed back from the desk. The sound echoed off the bare walls of my shoebox office—a far cry from the practice rooms I used to inhabit for hours on end. Now those rooms mocked me with their pristine Steinways, their perfect acoustics that I could no longer fully utilize.
The walk to Sullivan's office felt like a death march. Each step down the narrow hallway amplified the dull ache in my left shoulder, the reminder of twisted metal and shattered glass that had changed everything.
Students passed me with barely concealed whispers.
Sullivan's door stood open, revealing the familiar chaos of sheet music, coffee-stained papers, and academic journals stacked like crooked towers. I could see him hunched over his desk, silver hair catching the fluorescent light, completely absorbed in whatever bureaucratic nightmare occupied his attention.
I knocked. Three sharp raps that made the door frame vibrate.
"Leo." He didn't even glance up. "I was expecting you."
My phone felt slick in my sweaty palm as I held it up like evidence in a courtroom.
"What the hell is this?" The words came out rougher than I intended, scraping against my throat.
Sullivan finally raised his eyes. Deep lines creased his forehead, and his mouth was set in that particular expression of weary patience that every department chair perfected after years of faculty complaints. "Sit down, Leo."
"I'd rather stand." My right hand was trembling slightly. I pressed it against my side.
"Then stand. But listen." He leaned back in his worn leather chair, the springs creaking under his weight. "The Washington girl needs intensive work. Her technique is all over the place—brilliant one moment, sloppy the next. Her approach to practice is completely undisciplined. She treats every piece like it's something she can just feel her way through instead of properly studying."
Heat crawled up my neck. "So you assign her to me?" My voice was climbing toward the register I'd used during arguments with concert promoters, back when I still had concerts to promote. "You know exactly how I feel about jazz."
"I know exactly how you feel about jazz." Sullivan folded his hands over his stomach, completely unruffled by my agitation. "That's precisely why you're perfect for this."
The urge to sweep everything off his desk hit me like a physical blow. Coffee mug, papers, that stupid little cactus he'd kept alive for twenty years—I wanted to send it all crashing to the floor. Instead, I dug my fingernails into my palm until they left marks.
"Richard, I'm a performer. Or was, anyway." The admission tasted bitter. "I don't have time to babysit some jazz brat who thinks rules don't apply to her."
"You were a performer." Each word landed like a hammer blow. "Now you're faculty. And faculty teach."
My right hand spasmed involuntarily. I caught it with my left, massaging the wrist where the nerve damage still played tricks on me. The physical therapy exercises weren't working fast enough. Nothing was working fast enough.
"I'm still recovering. My focus needs to be on getting back to performance level." Even as I said it, I could hear the hollow ring of desperate hope.
Sullivan's expression shifted, and for a moment I saw genuine sympathy flicker across his features. It was almost worse than his bureaucratic indifference.
"Leo, it's been three years since the accident. Two years since you began physiotherapy. Maybe it's time to accept that your priorities have shifted."
"My priorities haven't shifted." The words exploded out of me. "They've been derailed."
"This girl could be good for you," he said quietly. "Teaching forces you to think differently about music. To approach it from angles you've never considered. Maybe that's exactly what you need right now."
I turned toward the door, my legs feeling unsteady. "Find someone else."
"There is no one else." His voice took on the clipped efficiency of administrative reality. "Fernando is on sabbatical, Collins is already overloaded with six mentorship students, and Williams specifically requested not to work with her after hearing she's Marcus Washington's niece."
My hand froze on the doorknob. The metal was cold against my palm, grounding me for a moment. "Marcus Washington? The conductor?"
"The very same." Sullivan's tone carried the weight of departmental politics and donor considerations. "Apparently he's been making phone calls, pulling strings to get her into our program. The dean is very interested in maintaining good relationships with prominent alumni."
A bitter laugh escaped my throat. "So you want me to be the bad guy."
"I want you to be the teacher. There's a difference, Leo. Take it or leave it, Washington is now in your care."