Page 14 of Hat Trick
No more signing jerseys with my name on the back.
No more hockey, and I don’t know who the hell I am without hockey.
I’ve been playing since I could walk. My first word was puck. My earliest memories are of skating on a frozen pond up the road from our house in Illinois. Learning to lace up my skates and how to hold a stick. Growing up and scoring a goal in the World Junior Hockey Championships. Taking my college team to its first ever Frozen Four appearance and winning, then signing with the Stars after my junior year.
Thousands of people dream of making an NHL team. Few actually do it, and I’m a kid from Chicago who got lucky.
Not lucky enough, I guess, and that’s what hurts the fucking most.
Riley Mitchell.
The former NHL star.
Now what am I?
A guy who bets on games?
A guy who sits in the stands and watches his teammates get everything he dreamed of?
The future is bleak as shit.
“Fine,” I grit out, then I wonder if I could make the walls cave in. It wouldn’t make things worse, and I guess there’s some comfort in that. “Just fine.”
“How’s the pain?” he asks.
I’ve been on so many medications, I can see how people get addicted. When the first twinge of an ache starts and I feel the phantom limb syndrome my doctors warned me about, I’m wishing I could pop another pill.
Or four.
It feelsgoodwhen you’re not hurting, and all I do these days is hurt.
“Fine,” I repeat.
Might as well make it my middle name.
“Are you getting used to the crutches?”
I glare at the assistive devices leaning against the arm of the couch. I hate the fucking things. The skin under my arms is raw. I’m still trying to figure out how to balance on one leg as I move around my apartment because I can’t just pop on my temporary prosthetic limb in the middle of the night when I need to pee, but I refuse to be pushed around in a wheelchair.
“What do you think? I got up here, didn’t I? Nice job having an office on the third fucking floor, by the way. Real accessible.”
Dr. Ledlow blinks. He’s unfazed by my outburst and jots down a few words on the notepad resting in his lap. He’s probably mentioning that I’m unstable. I can’t wait for the team to read his notes and think I need serious help.
Maybe I do.
“You know the more it takes for you to talk to me, the longer we have to do these sessions, right?” he tells me.
I grind my teeth together.
I do know that.
The team and the league mandated therapy sessions for me when I got out of the hospital, but I’m not ready to be psychoanalyzed when I’m still so mad at the universe.
I’ll probably always be mad about the deck of cards I’ve been dealt.
Massive blood loss.
Severed tendons.
