He wasn't quite sure which tactics to use on Dr. Santino. She didn't scare easily - he'd seen as much when she stood up to Coach when she'd first started working with TK. He could tell that going straight for the throat by threatening her job wasn't going to be a long-term success. That was fine with him, because using the tactic on this pocket-sized little suburban mother with the big brown eyes made him feel a tiny bit ridiculous, like he was bullying her. He gave up the approach entirely after he suggested to her that her mother was using inside secrets about the Hawks for betting purposes. Her concern and relief when her mother was cleared were so genuine, and she had been so straightforward, that he decided that she could be trusted to be honest and helpful if there were problems in the future. In other words, Dr. Santino was what she appeared to be.
He could expect her to work in good faith. He was relieved to be able to draw that conclusion about someone in the Hawks operation, because most days he didn't know. Admittedly, they all had their own priorities, but he'd seen Coach Purnell put winning over his players' health, and of course the Pittmans were entirely self-serving. Donnelly was kind of a professional Nice Guy, but he seemed pretty self-absorbed and Nico suspected that if push came to shove, Donnelly would look out for his own interests and everyone else would come in a distant second. Dr. Dani, on the other hand, put the best interests of her patients first, always. She'd go after anyone who didn't, including him.
She really was unlike anyone else he worked with, or from most of the people he knew. It was like visiting a different world to go to her house. There were signs of life there. There was always food in the fridge. (One time she offered him some, then seemed to realize it was unprofessional and apologized, saying she was used to feeding people who came to her house. He understood - she was a mom of two teenagers, and they were probably hungry all the time, if he remembered teenagers correctly.) There was a flower garden that was pretty but clearly not professionally done, so he imagined it was her work. It had a little bench out there where he imagined she drank coffee. One time he found a book out there in one of the flower beds - he thought maybe she'd dropped it, but she said she'd thrown it out the window. He was used to keeping his curiosity under control, but he would have enjoyed understanding why she'd done that. It was funny - he would have thought these visits to the suburbs would have been quite tedious, but they were normally quite amusing.