Won’t you listen please

Baby, don’t walk out that door

I’m on my knees

And you’re all I’m living for

-Hanson, “Save Me”

            I sat in the semi-comfortable black chair, staring at the empty, cherry-stained wood desk in front of me, waiting for Doctor Corsella to arrive. At that moment, I wished I hadn’t told Lisa to stay home. I wished I had someone by my side. I wished that Jiri were there, holding my hand.

            I’d spent the past week avoiding him; I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, I couldn’t think of a way to explain what had happened that night. So I was steering clear of Jiri. I’d betrayed Lisa, so I still felt guilty every time she smiled at me, creating a barrier that was going to be hard to overcome. Even Brendan was pissed at me because I wasn’t able to bring myself to talk to Jiri.

            And so I sat, alone, in the doctor’s office, waiting to hear what fate had in store for my hockey career.

            “Good morning, Steve,” Dr. Corsella greeted me, “how is your knee feeling today?”

            Surprisingly, it felt pretty good. Of course, I hadn’t done anything but drive to the arena, then drive home and lay around feeling sorry for myself in several days, and I’d taken a pain pill before I left the house, so there wasn’t anything to cause discomfort. “It feels okay,” I told him, leaving it at that.

            He dropped a manila folder on his desk, then pulled out a few sheets of paper, stapled in the upper left hand corner. I glanced through them, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. It was medical terminology and numbers, but I was too confused to even begin to put them into some form of logic. I looked up at him, and he noticed the look of bewilderment on my face. He turned to the third page of the packet, then pointed to a point on a graph at the bottom of the paper. “That,” he explained, “is the evidence of a bone spur. It is a knot, or growth, of new bone. After years of using your knee, while the degeneration of the cartilage was occurring, it started growing to fight the grinding of the other bones. It is pressing into the nerves at the curve of the joint, causing the discomfort you’ve been feeling. It didn’t bother you as much before because of the misalignment of your knee, but now, with that problem solved, this one has arisen.”

            “What can you do to fix it?”

            “The only option to remove the bone spur would be surgery. It would be a small incision just below the knot, and one above it for a camera—arthroscopic surgery. Your recovery time would be increased by at least one, and at the most, three months. After that, chances are, you’ll be able to use your knee as easily and as pain-free as any other 37 year-old.”

            “Just in time for the playoffs,” I mused quietly as I counted the dates.

            He looked down at his hands, then back at me, “Not necessarily. I said that you would be able to use it normally. Ice-hockey isn’t exactly normal usage.”

            I felt my heart stop in my chest, and my mouth went dry, “I won’t be able to play anymore?”

            “It’s not completely out of the question,” he explained slowly, “but it’s not a probability either. I can’t guarantee that you will or will not be able to play again.”

            “What if I just forgo the surgery? I can deal with the pain; I dealt with it for all of last season. If need be, I can get cortisone shots to help me through.”

            “First and foremost, putting that much medication into your body is not healthy. Secondly, if you ignore the problem, and allow the pressure on those nerves to continue, it could cause permanent damage. You could lose all feeling from your knee down.”

            “What if I work really hard to get the muscles of my thigh and calf strengthened. It would take much of the pressure off of that joint, right?”

            He looked like he wanted to tell me a comforting lie, but his eyes told me that he couldn’t.  “Look, Steve, this is not a simple cut or a sprain. Its entirely possible that you could build up the surrounding muscles, and that you could return to the ice as soon as next April. But its also possible that it wouldn’t make a difference—that your knee had damage too bad to allow you to return to the ice. I can only suggest a good surgeon and a reputable physical therapist. If I knew a miracle worker, I would give him your number, but I don’t.”

            I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, forcing my stomach to calm and my heart to remain beating.

            And suddenly, I absolutely couldn’t be alone anymore.

            For the third time that day, I left a desperate message on Brendan’s voicemail. He was apparently screening his calls, and not taking mine. When I got to the gym at the arena, I tried again from that number, and he finally answered.

            “Hello?”

            “It was nice of you to ignore my calls all day, I appreciated it when I got out of the doctor’s office and you were refusing to talk to me.”

            He cursed under his breath, “That was today?”

            “Yeah. I could’ve used someone to talk to.”

            “I’m sorry, Steve. I really did forget,” he said, then paused, “What did he say?”

            “It’s a bone spur. It’s putting pressure on the nerves in my knee, which is what has been causing the pain. I have to have surgery to get it removed.”

            “How long will it take to heal?”

            “Another one to three months.”

            “Just in time for the playoffs,” he answered softly, and I grinned for a moment—we spent entirely too much time with each other.

            “Actually…that might not be the case…” I started, but couldn’t finish, because I was too busy fighting back tears.

            “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said, then hung up the phone.

            I coughed a few times, then used all of my concentration to fight off the urge to cry and to make myself work. I had to make my legs stronger if I was going to play again. I started with a heavier weight than normal, pushing myself to go further, work harder. My muscles were already burning, and I could feel tears trickling down my cheeks, but I had to keep fighting. I needed to play hockey, it was all that I had left.

            “Stevie?” a tentative voice interrupted.

            I looked at him, “Jiri,” I said breathlessly, partially from the exertion, mostly from my surprise at seeing him.

Damn you, Shanahan, you were supposed to come, not send him.

Then again…I’d only gotten off of the phone with Brendan minutes earlier, Jiri could have never gotten here that fast. Besides, he was wearing nothing but gym shorts and training shoes.

Damn you, Fischer, you aren’t supposed to be enticing me when my life is falling apart.

“What are you doing? You can’t be working out yet. You’re going to ruin your knee, Steve. Stop.”

“I know what I’m doing, Jiri. I’m fine,” my voice caught, and I looked away from him, my vision blurry.

“Stevie, don’t do this. What happened? Did you talk to the doctor?”

I stayed quiet, knowing that if I tried to speak, I would just end up sobbing and cradled in those perfect, powerful…empowering arms. I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t, because then I would be tempted to kiss him again, and in my current state, I wasn’t entirely sure I would be able to stop.

“Fine,” he said indignantly, “You’ve been ignoring me for a week, and now you won’t even tell me why your sitting at a weight machine with tears streaming down your face. I’ve been through hell this week, and you don’t give a damn,” he wanted to say something else, but apparently couldn’t think of how to translate it, and muttered a few sentences in Czech, then spun on his heel and walked towards the door.

My heart leapt, “Jiri, don’t. Don’t go, please.”

He stopped, but didn’t look at me.

“I, um…Jiri, I need you.”