Chapter 30 Evan
Evan
New York, NY
"Ow!" I whine to my father, who isn’t at all sympathetic. In fact, he's laughing at me, the bastard.
"What, did you think this would be easy?" He sounds exactly like always; the Colombian accent I grew up with slightly less pronounced after a few decades of living in the US, but still Papa's voice.
I'm tempted to revert—to stick my tongue out at him, but I manage to hold it in. "No, but..." I do not manage to hold in my whining, "I didn't think it would hurt this bad."
It's the first time I'm moving out of my bed, and coincidentally, or not, because my doctors are sadists, my pain meds were lowered this morning. I'm not going far, just to the wheelchair. Then Dad can wheel me to the bathroom, where I can, finally, use an actual toilet.
I’m excited about the prospect. I’m less excited about the getting there. My right leg is immobilized, so movement is hard. Rather excruciating too, in fact. The immobilization appears to be lacking in some key areas.
There's a chance that insisting I wanted to use the toilet was a mistake. Bed pans exist for a reason, Evan. Or, hell, I could have let them leave the catheter in.
According to my rehab plan, though, I’m supposed to move today. Might as well give myself an incentive. I’m committed to following the plan to the letter, even if I’m regretting that I thought it was a good idea right now. This afternoon would have been better. Maybe this evening.
However, if I make it to the wheelchair, I get to use the toilet. Plus, I can go for a walk, all the way down the hall and back.
Ok, Papa gets to go for a walk. I get to go for a ride.
I only have to make it into this terrible, wonderful contraption.
Surely that’s the hard part, and after that, it will all be easy.
I grit my teeth, ignoring the screaming coming from my leg, my knee, my hip, which never knew they could hurt so much.
Compared to everything else, my head feels fine. So there, concussion. You lose.
After an eternity of agony, I’ve settled into the chair, and everything calms down a bit. It's a little more upright than I'm used to, which adds to the pressure on my hip, but it’s back to bearable levels. I’m used to pain, learned to block it out when necessary a long time ago.
Most of the time, anyway.
Papa's hand comes down to pat me on the shoulder. Despite his words, he's gentle about it. This isn't the first injury he's nursed me through, and he knows what works, how to push me through the self-pity and into doing what I need to do.
It’d be easier if I knew what my next step was.
Sure, I have the physical therapy routine, the mountains of paperwork the doctors have been putting together for when I transfer to Calgary.
Beyond that, though? After I heal? The external motivation I could always rely on is gone.
No competitions to train for, no Olympics to fight my way toward.
All I have left is my injury and a broken heart.
And Papa, doing his best to fill in the gaps and push me forward. Will it be enough?
Maybe, maybe not. But I do know using the actual toilet is worth every bit of the pain getting to it, on it, and back off it when I’m finished. I feel like an adult again, as if I have a chance of making it through this, going back to my life.
The walk down the corridor, despite my rapidly fading energy, is almost as good. It’s not much, a boring, beige hospital corridor, but there are people. Activity. Something to look at beyond the four walls of my hospital room. God, I want to go home. A few more days. I can do this.
Papa chatters about something, I tune him out, and back in the room, Mama and a couple nurses ease me back onto the bed like I’m made of glass. Since I feel like I am made of glass, I don’t protest.
Everything hurts. Why do my arms hurt? I didn't do anything with my arms, and they’re not injured.
Everyone leaves to let me rest, and I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
My head is pounding, but I don't want to call anybody back in to complain to them. They’d just coo and tell me to drink more water.
I’d love to sleep, but pain and a whirling mind are keeping me awake.
I’m not supposed to watch TV. Reading a book takes too much focus.
So not only does everything hurt, I'm bored. The worst of both worlds.
The room, so welcome when I first moved into it because it has a window, has long since ceased to interest me.
Even the balloons and flowers the hospital keeps bringing up aren’t anything new anymore.
I don’t bother to read the cards, since they’re all some repetition of Get well!
As much as I appreciate the gestures, I’m not going to get well in time.
So does it matter?
If my leg takes six months to heal, a year, if it never heals.
It all comes to the same outcome: my life, changed forever; my dreams, gone in a moment.
Even if I heal fully, which isn’t a guarantee, according to every surgeon I’ve talked to, I’ve decided I'm done with competitive skating. I’m not putting myself through four more years of intense training to try for the next Olympic cycle, so why bother?
I’ll finish my degree, settle down with a job doing—something.
Sports management sounds a lot less useful now push is coming to shove.
Do I want to manage other skaters? With what?
Their sponsorships? Show opportunities? We don’t have agents the way team sports do; we have coaches and associations. Could I work for Skate Canada?
How many other washed up skaters have tried to do the same? Do jobs exist for us?
In theory, I could coach, but if I can’t jump again, would it be an option? I love coaching; if I lose that too…
I’m back to staring blindly out the window.
It’s raining, drops winding down the glass, the sky a dark gray blob.
From my position, I can see the tops of a few other buildings, but nothing holds my interest for long.
No fascinating architecture or windows into other people’s lives, just squared off roofs and exhaust fans.
Papa turned off the lights when he left, so I’m in a hazy sort of in between world. Not dark, but not light. Gray, like the sky.
My phone sits on the table next to me, where it's been since I was moved to this room. Untouched, gathering dust. I haven't turned it on yet. I’m too scared of what I’ll see when I do.
I don’t think I can handle watching my fall in gif form, seeing the alerts and mentions that have doubtless piled up.
The condolences and concern will scrape, too hard, on the jagged pieces of my heart.
If they’ve announced that I’ll be missing Nationals, the Olympics, I don’t want to see the reactions.
I can’t see the reactions. Not yet. I can’t even read cards from well-wishers.
Everything hurts too much.
Nobody has come to visit me, not even Gabby after the first night. What does that mean? Has she given up on me after all? Of course she has; what good is a skater who can’t skate? She talked to the doctors, learned my prognosis, at least the initial one, and disappeared.
Because that’s how it works. I should know that by now.
I’m suffocating through the failure. How did I survive the soul-crushing defeat of losing what I thought was everything last time? I didn't even have an injury four years ago, just lost out on my dream and the person I loved by a hair’s breadth, and it almost killed me.
This time is so very much worse. Everything I lost last time, and more. If last time was a struggle, is it possible to survive now?
My gaze lands on my phone again, and for some inexplicable reason, I’m tempted to call Caro. We haven't spoken in over three years, and until this moment, I've been more than fine about it. Hell, I've done my best to avoid thinking about her. Talking to her hasn't been an option.
Now history has repeated itself, though, with the bonus of career ending injuries, I want something more from her.
Some kind of actual closure to the last disaster, a better understanding of what happened and why she left.
She told me, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t worth sticking around for.
But was it the scandal, my failure to make the team, or something else?
For some reason, now that I'm lying in a hospital bed with nothing to do but think groggy thoughts, the story seems less complete. Like I've been missing something.
Maybe I’m feeling masochistic, wanting to relive the worst moment of my life. It nags at me, though, wondering. Could I have done anything, anything to convince her to stay? If so, maybe I can apply it to Stefan, find a way, any way, of convincing him to come back to me.
I shy away from the thought almost before it crosses my mind. I can't think about Stefan. Not directly. Back to Caro, because that's easier. Which is a terrifying realization.
Why not call her? What can she say that’s worse than the position I’m in right now?
I pick up the phone and press the button to turn it on, ignoring the red numbers that instantly begin stacking up over half the apps on my home screen. Something is deeply wrong that the only contact I look at is my ex-girlfriend, but a lot is wrong with me these days.
I don't know if I'm more surprised when she answers that she actually does so or that she hasn't changed her phone number. "Evan, is that really you?" Her voice hasn't changed, not at all.
It brings me right back to all the time we spent together. The hours and hours on the rink of her yelling advice at me, trying to adjust something or other. All the nights I sneaked into her house through the backyard, then sneaked back out before dawn.
In hindsight, I should have known it was never going to work, that the scandal would hit sooner or later. Even though I was an adult, the world would never have accepted a relationship between a coach and her much younger student.