Over me.
The paramedics arrived, got me loaded onto a stretcher, and started an IV for pain management. The drugs hit fast, taking the edge off the agony but leaving me floaty, disconnected.
“I’ll be right behind you,” Étienne said as they wheeled me toward the loading dock. “Twenty minutes, tops. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”
I wanted to tell him this was stupid, that he should stay for the game, but the drugs were making me loose, making it hard to remember why I should push him away instead of being pathetically grateful that he was coming.
“Okay,” I said instead. He disappeared as the ambulance doors closed.
The ER at the hospital was a chaos of coughing patients, crying kids, and the general mayhem of people demanding to be seen. But apparently, being a professional athlete got you triaged faster than the guy with the bandaged finger arguing with the nurse.
They got me into a room, took more X-rays, and called in the team’s orthopedist. Dr. Chen—young, efficient, and with a calm competence that made me feel slightly less like my life was ending—confirmed what I already knew.
“Three metatarsal fractures,” Dr. Chen said, pulling up the new X-rays on the computer screen. “Clean breaks across the second, third, and fourth metatarsals. But there’s no displacement—the bones are still properly aligned. See here?” She pointed at the screen. “That means you won’t need surgery.”
The relief was immediate. “What’s the treatment, then?”
“Immobilization. We’ll put you in a boot today—your foot’s too swollen from the puck impact to cast it. Ice and elevation for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours to get that swelling down.” She turned back to me. “The boot will protect the fractures while they heal. You’ll be non-weight-bearing for the first few weeks, then we’ll gradually increase weight as the bones knit back together.”
“When can I get back on the ice?” The question came out more desperate than I’d intended.
Dr. Chen looked up from her computer. “Eight to ten weeks, depending on how well you heal. Some athletes heal faster, some slower. We’ll know more as we track your progress.”
Eight to ten weeks. Two months, maybe more.
I nodded, nothing I could do to speed it up.
“All right.” Dr. Chen picked up her tablet. “I’ll see youback here in two weeks. We’ll do follow-up X-rays, check the healing progress, make sure everything’s on track.” She moved toward the door. “The nurse will be in shortly with your boot, discharge instructions, and prescriptions for pain management. Follow the protocol, ice and elevate, and you’ll be back on the ice before you know it.”
“Thanks, Dr. Chen.”
She nodded and left, pulling the curtain closed behind her.
I looked down at my foot—swollen, already purple where the puck had hit. Three broken bones from a single shot.
Such a stupid injury. A blocked shot. Something I’d done a thousand times before. And this time, it had cost me two months of my career.
I closed my eyes and tried to figure out how I was going to get through this.
The nurse came in and adjusted my IV, gave me another dose of something that made the room go soft around the edges. “You have a visitor. Should I allow him in?”
I think I mumbled a “Yes.”
I was drifting when I heard his voice.
“Hey. You awake?”
I opened my eyes. Étienne stood in the doorway of my ER bay, still in his skewed sweater and chinos. He looked rumpled and worried and?—
I was too high on pain meds to stop the smile that spread across my face.
“You came,” I said, and my voice was definitely doing something weird. Sounded too happy, too unguarded.
“Of course I came.” He moved to the chair beside my bed, dropping into it like his legs had given out. “How are you feeling?”
“Floaty. They gave me good drugs.” I tried to focus on his face, but it kept blurring at the edges. “You left the game.”
“Yeah.”
