The Unbreakable Heart – A Fighter & His Therapist’s Story

📖 The Unbreakable Heart
Genre: Psychological Romance Thriller
Author: Park Jian

CHAPTER 2

The First Session

The clinic was quiet after Leo left.

Elena stood by the sink. The water ran over her hands. Warm, then cold. She watched it.

Her phone lay on the counter. Face down. Her brother’s words were underneath it. He wants to see you.

She turned the water off. She dried her hands. Each finger. Slowly.

Her assistant, Maya, peeked in. “All good? He was… intense. But quiet.”

“He was,” Elena said. She folded the towel and put it away. “Please set up for Mrs. Gable at 1 PM. Use the green pillowcase.”

“You got it.” Maya paused. “Was he… I mean, is he going to be okay to work with?”

Elena looked at the door Leo had walked out of. “I do not know.”

She went to her small office and shut the door. She sat at her desk. She opened her laptop. She did not look at her phone.

Instead, she opened Leo’s file again. She read the doctor’s notes.

Patient exhibits classic signs of Bipolar I: periods of grandiosity, increased goal-directed activity, rapid speech, followed by severe depressive episodes with psychomotor retardation.
Non-compliant with medication. Self-medicates with extreme physical exertion. High risk for injury.

She clicked on a link. It was a news article from six months ago. A photo of Leo after a fight. He had won. His face was bleeding. But his eyes… they were not the eyes of a winner. They were empty. Hollow. Like someone had turned off the lights inside.

She knew that look. It was the look of someone very far away. Someone hiding in a closet inside their own mind.

She closed the laptop.

Leo’s Gym. 2:17 PM.

Leo’s trainer, Hector, was wrapping his hands. “So? How was the witch doctor?”

“She is not a witch,” Leo said. He was on the mat, doing the first exercise she gave him. It was simple. He lay on his back, knees bent. He had to breathe deep into his belly and let his shoulders relax onto the floor.

It was hard. His shoulders did not want to relax.

“What did she do?” Hector asked.

“She talked. She pressed on my shoulder. She gave me… homework.” Leo said the last word like it was a joke.

“Homework. For your shoulder?”

“For my head. She says they are connected.”

Hector grunted. “Everything is connected. My knee is connected to my bad back. My bad back is connected to my wife’s bad cooking.” He finished the wrap. “Okay. Let’s see the homework.”

Leo showed him the list. Four exercises. Slow stretches. Breathing. A rubber band to strengthen the small muscles in his shoulder.

“No weights?” Hector said.

“Not for this. Not yet.”

Hector read the paper. His face was serious. “This is good, Leo. This is smart. This is not just for the shoulder. This is for… control.” He tapped his own temple. “You learn to control the small muscles here,” he pointed to Leo’s shoulder, “you learn to control the big noise here.” He pointed to Leo’s head.

Leo looked away. “Maybe.”

“Do it. Every day. Like she said.” Hector’s voice was firm. He was old. He had trained many fighters. He had seen many break. “I do not want to see you break, kid. Not like that.”

Two days later. Thursday. 10:55 AM.

Leo was outside the clinic again. He had done the exercises. Not every day. But three times. He hated them. They were boring. They made him feel still. And when he was still, the thoughts came.

But his shoulder did feel… quieter.

He went inside. Maya smiled at him. “Hello, Leo. Right on time. She will be ready in two minutes. You can go to Room 2.”

He walked down the hall. He went into the room. He did not sit. He stood by the window.

The door opened. Elena came in. She wore gray today. Her hair was in a braid.

“Leo. How was your week?”

“Fine.”

“Did you do the exercises?”

“Some.”

“How many times?”

“Three.”

She nodded. She did not look angry. “Okay. That is a start. Lie on the table, please. On your stomach today.”

He took off his shirt and lay down. His face went into the headrest. He could not see her.

Her hands were on his back. They felt the muscles along his spine.

“You are very tight here. In your upper back. More than last time. Did you train hard?”

“Yes.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not much.”

Her fingers pressed into a knot. He winced.

“Your body is talking to me,” she said. Her voice was calm, like she was reading a book. “It says, ‘I am tired. I am stressed. I am holding on too tight.’ You need to listen to it.”

“It just says it hurts,” Leo muttered into the cushion.

“Pain is the last letter. The body sends many letters first. A tight neck. A sore jaw. A fast heartbeat. You wait until you get the pain letter. By then, the problem is big.”

She worked on his back. The pressure was deep and slow.

“Tell me about your week,” she said. “Not your training. The other parts.”

“There are no other parts.”

“You do not eat? You do not see people? You do not watch TV?”

“I eat at the gym. I see Hector. I see Ben. I do not own a TV.”

“What do you do when you go home?”

“I sleep. Or I do not sleep. I think about fighting.”

“What do you think about?”

“My next move. My last mistake. How to be better. How to be faster. How to not… lose control.”

Her hands paused for a second. Then they kept moving. “Losing control in the cage… what does that look like?”

“It looks like getting knocked out,” Leo said, and he almost laughed. “But you mean the other thing. The anger. It is like… a red curtain falls. I cannot see. I can only feel. I want to break what is in front of me. And then… it is gone. And I am just tired. And people are looking at me.”

“And after? How do you feel after?”

“Empty. Ashamed. Like a monster.”

The word hung in the quiet room. Monster.

Elena’s hands were gentler now. They were not pressing. They were just resting on his shoulder blades. “You are not a monster, Leo. You are a man with an illness. A man who is in pain.”

Leo closed his eyes. His throat felt thick. No one had ever said it like that. Not a doctor. Not his sister. Not Ben. They said disorder. Condition. Problem. They did not say pain.

“My turn,” he said, his voice rough. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You ask many questions. You listen to my body. But you are a person, too. Why do you do this? Fix broken fighters?”

Elena was quiet for a long time. He thought she would not answer.

“I am good at reading pain,” she said finally. Her voice was very clear, and very far away. “I learned how to read it when I was very young. In other people’s faces. In the way they held a glass. In the silence between shouts. If you can read the signs of pain early, sometimes you can avoid the worst of it. You can… get small. You can be quiet. You can hide.”

Leo held his breath. He understood every word.

“Who was shouting?” he asked.

“My father.” The words were flat. A simple fact. “He had a pain inside him, too. A different kind. He did not know how to hold it. So he threw it. At the walls. At us. He was not a monster either. Just a sick, sad man.”

“Are you… afraid of me?” Leo asked. “Because I get angry?”

Her hands left his back. “No,” she said. And he believed her. “I am not afraid of anger. I am afraid of what people do to never feel their anger again. Or their sadness. They break things. They break people. They break themselves.”

She walked to the sink. He heard her wash her hands.

“You can sit up.”

He sat up. He looked at her. She was looking out the window. Her profile was calm. But her hands, drying on a towel, were very white at the knuckles.

“My father wants to see me,” she said, still not looking at him. “My brother told me. He says he is sorry.”

“Do you want to see him?”

“No.”

“Then do not go.”

She turned then. Her green eyes met his. “It is not that simple.”

“It is. You do not want to go. So you do not go. You control your life.”

A sad, small smile touched her lips. “You say that to me. But you cannot control your own mind.”

Leo got off the table. He stood facing her. “That is different.”

“Is it?” She tilted her head. “We both have things inside us we did not choose. We both try to control them every day. Your fight is loud. My fight is quiet. But it is the same fight.”

Leo had no answer. He just looked at her. He saw it now. The steel in her. The quiet strength. She was not fragile. She was like a deep river. Calm on top, but with a powerful current underneath.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I do not know.” She folded the towel. “But I have your next exercises. They are harder. They will take twenty minutes. I want you to do them every day. No ‘some.’ Every day.”

“Okay.”

“And I want you to keep a log. One sentence. Just how you felt before you did them. ‘Tired.’ ‘Angry.’ ‘Fast.’ ‘Slow.’ Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She handed him a new paper. “See you on Monday, Leo.”

He took the paper. He put on his shirt. At the door, he stopped. “Elena.”

She looked up.

“Thank you. For… not being afraid.”

She nodded once. “Be safe.”

He left.

Elena stood in the middle of the room. The ghost of her father was in the air. And now, the ghost of Leo was there too. Two men with storms inside them.

She had built her life to be a sanctuary from storms.

Now, she had invited one inside.

Later that night. Leo’s Apartment.

Leo sat on the floor. He did the new exercises. They were harder. They made his small shoulder muscles burn.

After, he took the notebook Elena had given him. A small, black book.

He wrote the date.
Then he wrote: Felt fast. Thoughts loud. But shoulder felt steady.

He looked at the words. It felt stupid. But it also felt… real. Like he was putting the chaos outside of himself, onto the paper.

His phone rang. It was Ben.

“Leo. Good news. The commission will let you fight. On one condition. You get a letter from your physio. In four weeks. She has to say you are stable. Your shoulder is safe. Your… mind is managed. Can she do that?”

Leo looked at the black notebook. “I do not know.”

“You have to make it happen, kid. This is it. The last chance.”

“I know.”

He hung up. The pressure was back. A weight on his chest. He needed to run. To hit. To move.

But he remembered Elena’s words. Your body sends letters first.

He felt the tightness in his jaw. The fast beat of his heart. These were the letters.

He did not go to the gym. He did not go out.

He sat on the floor. He breathed. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.

Just like she showed him.

He did it again.
And again.
Until his heart slowed down.

---

End of Chapter 2.

One Question For You:
Do you think Elena will decide to see her father? How will that choice affect her ability to help Leo?

Share Your Theories Below!
Will Leo’s new control last? What will happen when the pressure for the fight builds? And what really happened in Elena’s past? Let me know what you think!