18. Jake
Chapter eighteen
Jake
“ S top frowning at me,” I gripe at Jones. I feel very much recovered even though I only arrived at the ER an hour ago. They put an IV in me that somehow reduced my lightheadedness and my nausea.
Once we arrived in an ambulance, I was taken in right away for a brain scan and then an MRI of my shoulder. “It’s not like I asked to be hit tonight. You saw the replay footage. That guy came at me like I had a target on my back.” I gesture to the TV in the corner of the private room where I’m laying on a narrow bed.
Jones looks at the TV. It’s tuned to a sports channel and they keep replaying my big hit on the ice. I had no idea how dazed and confused I looked after that hit. It’s terrible to watch, but I can’t pull my eyes away. In my desire to keep the pain off my face, I ended up looking like a zombie.
The commentators are going on and on about how my shoulder seems healed, since my face doesn’t look like I’m in pain, but that I have rotten luck since I now have a concussion.
I shake my head at the talking heads on the TV, then stop when it triggers some discomfort.
“They have no idea what is what, do they?” I mumble.
“Coach is going to get up there in front of the media any minute. I’m not frowning at you,” Jones says after glowering at the TV. “I just want answers so he can know what we’re dealing with before he faces the media.”
I slam a fist against the bed. I feel impatient, too. It’s my body and my brain we’re talking about, after all. I hate not knowing what is going on.
Jones barely registers a glance in my direction as I slam my fist again. “This is all just bullshit.” I close my eyes, my outburst making my head pound all over again.
“It’s part of it,” Jones says, his voice carrying a tinge of sympathy. “You’ll be fine, though. Remember what your PT said. You didn’t tear anything new.” He gives me one of those manly “stiff upper lip” looks and then rings the bell—again—for a nurse. “We need an update. And we need it now.”
I chuckle, eyes half open. “She’s not going to know anything until the tests come back.”
We hear a female voice in the hallway, shrill and loud. I groan. I know that whine anywhere. It’s Kenzie. I jolt a little in bed. If she told our parents about this… then I remember, even though I’ve been playing for a decade, Mom and her friends still watch. Our parents will find out sooner than later, even if I try to spare them the worry they’ll feel about me. I just hope they don’t get on a plane and come here.
I look at Jones. “That’s my sister. Can you go get her?”
He seems to pull himself from a daze, deep in thought. He looks at his phone and then says, “Oh, that’s who has been calling and texting me. I didn’t register the name as your sister.”
“Hey, man, you okay?” I ask.
He looks at me. “Our assistant captain is too old to take your place. And guys like Gator are still a bit too young and inexperienced. I was just thinking…”
My jaw drops and my will to overcome this setback skyrockets. “You were just thinking what? That I’m done for? You were doing what—future planning?” I huff out a scoff. “I’m not out of this yet, doc. Don’t you dare write me off like that.”
“You being out changes the entire team dynamics. I was just thinking it through,” he says, not unkindly.
It reminds me that this is a business for them. I’m one small part of a larger wheel. They’ll rush to replace me as fast as they can so that the Eagles franchise doesn’t lose money. I’ll just have to do my damn best to recover fast so that I prove them all wrong—I’m not a has been.
Jones steps out to get Kenzie. My phone is back at the arena in my locker, so I’m completely stranded without it. We left in such a rush, the last thing on my mind was remembering to get it. Once Jones and I were in an ambulance, my only concern was trying to feel okay. Now I wish I’d grabbed it. I want to text Allie.
Kenzie walks in, her oversized cut off jersey with my name on it swallowing her frame. Her eyes are blazing, but they also hold fear. She shakes off Jones’s grip on her arm and studies me.
“You are in one piece, so that’s good,” she announces, letting out a big sigh. “When you went down on the ice…” Her voice trails off and then a security guard steps in. She glares at him. “I told you I’m his sister and that makes me family. I’m not some rabid fan of his. Geez!” She looks back at me. “This guy literally did not believe me even when I pulled out my driver’s license. He thought I faked my ID to pretend to be your sister!”
I can’t stop the laugh that eases from my lips. Kenzie is a basket case sometimes, but she has a spunkiness to her that life never seems to be able to put out.
“That would be a little excessive,” Jones agrees with her, focused on his phone, but glancing up at her long enough to earn himself a little look of admiration from Kenzie. I don’t often agree with her so she’ll take it where she can get it, apparently.
She looks back at me. “What do the docs say?”
“Nothing yet. Concussion is a definite. I don’t know anything else.” I try out my shoulder, but whatever pain meds they put in my IV make it impossible to tell how it really feels.
“Allie didn’t say anything to me. Just told me where you were and that I should come see you. That you probably needed someone with you,” she glances at Jones, “I mean, family with you.”
He looks at me. “Coach is asking for updates.”
I throw my good hand up. “I don’t know any more than you do, buddy.”
Then, a nurse comes in followed by a doctor in a white coat. It’s the same doctor who greeted us when we arrived in the ambulance. I know hockey players for the Eagles get white glove treatment here. That’s why we send all our players here, no matter what part of Charlotte they live in.
“I have great news for you, Jake,” he says in a happy tone.
I don’t trust it, though. It was the same tone he greeted me with even before he ran any tests. What about my condition could possibly make him happy is a mystery.
“Great,” Jones says, clearly excited to hear this.
“I’m all ears,” I say. “Did the test results come back?” I feel every muscle in my body tense up. I want to know the results, but at the same time, I don’t want to if it’s not something I would consider being “good news.”
The doctor chuckles in a cocky way that makes my skin crawl. Kenzie, in a rare moment of kindness, comes and plops on the foot of my bed, distracting me long enough to stop glaring at the guy in the white doctor’s coat.
She glances at me. “I think we’re all a little on edge.” She looks back at the doctor in that appraising way she has when she’s sizing up a man to see if he’s someone she’d be into or not. When she sits back and folds her arms, I know she’s not into the doctor. It’s crazy how well we know each other as siblings, even though we do not hang out.
“Your shoulder is not torn. In fact, despite the beating you took on the ice, it looks to be fundamentally in the same shape. It won’t prevent you from playing, should your team doctor and your coach agree to do that.” He flips through a tablet. “I see that Jones here has told us you are off all the pain meds that your last PT… Juan, oh, I see here he had a medical degree as well. That explains how he was able to prescribe you such strong meds.”
The doctor’s eyes look at me. “You’re not finding a source for these meds now without Jones’s knowledge, are you?”
I know why he’s asking. Many pain meds are addictive. I look him straight in the eye. “No. I do not take any prescribed pain meds.”
The doctor moves on as he senses Jones getting impatient. “Now for the other thing, your concussion.”
“Look, doc,” Jones says. “I’ve got a very anxious coach waiting for my call. He’s about to go into a big press conference and be asked a lot of questions about Jake.”
“Get him on the line,” the doctor says. “Let’s have the news out among us all at once.”
Jones rings Coach, putting the phone on speaker as we wait for the man to pick up. Meanwhile, it’s like I don’t even exist, and that irritates me.
“Where is Allie?” I mouth to my sister. She gives me one of her hairbrained looks and shrugs. I try again, louder, “Where is Allie?”
Then, in true Kenzie fashion, she replies at full volume, subtlety not her strength. “Allie? She’s at the arena doing her job on the other players. She’s coming to my house tonight after. You can come over too. Or we can come to you.”
I cringe. Kenzie sits there, patting my knee like I’m her grandpa who is hard of hearing, totally oblivious that she just announced to the whole world that I plan to see the one woman tonight who is off limits to me.
But Coach isn’t here. It’s just Jones, and he looks too distracted and anxious to notice anything Kenz and I are saying. I shoot my sister a look of “quiet” which she takes as a mean look and gives me one right back. I have to laugh. We never got along. Ever. How we are today is as good as it gets with us.
“Talk to me,” Coach’s rough voice fills the room. Jones introduces the doctor in the white coat and finally I get some answers.
“Concussion is mild. We look for fluid patterns around the point of impact where the skull met the ice, in Jake’s case. The fluid patterns indicate that his helmet did a good job of absorbing most of it. There is no swelling or inflammation. There is nothing to worry about.” He goes on to talk about my shoulder and then the three men next to me strategize a full PR messaging blitz for the interviews tonight, all while I lay there completely ignored.
I’m used to it, but it feels strange, like I’m a commodity and not a human.
Doc in the white coat then looks at me. “Well, we’re all set here. We’re keeping you here for twelve hours minimum to observe you. We’ll run as many tests as we need to before we discharge you to make sure your entire leadership team is satisfied.” Then, he nods and leaves me to my fate of sitting here without my phone in this hospital room.
Jones excuses himself while the nurse tells me she’s going to bring me water and a snack. Then it’s just Kenzie and I.
I look at her as she’s turning up the volume on the TV. “Mom and Dad are going to be so mad at you for this,” she says, sitting cross-legged at the foot of my bed, her back to me. She’s watching the footage of my hit and then she waves her arm to get my attention, as if I have anything to distract me from the TV right then. “Look, they’re about to talk about your hit.”
“Hey Kenz,” I say, knowing the answer already. “Any chance you can go back to the arena and grab my phone for me?”
She snorts, not bothering to look at me. “Fat chance, big brother. But I can text Gator to bring it to you.” She turns to look at me and waggles her eyebrows. “I mean, if you give me his number.”
I stare at her in that condescending big brother way. Then she huffs and looks back to the TV.
“I know, I know. I don’t like hockey guys. Oh, Allie was asking all about your past the other day,” she says flippantly, proving yet again that she’s too much of an open book to ever keep a secret. “Pretty sure she won’t like hockey guys anymore either, once she finds out your dirty little secrets!”
I throw a pillow at my sister, who shrieks and throws it right back.
But I’m zoned out all during Coach’s press conference. I wonder what Allie found out about my past on her own from digging around online? The idea of it leaves a ball of worry in the pit of my stomach.