Chapter 27 Brad
The x-ray hung on Dr. Rose's monitor like evidence at a murder trial.
As Wrightwood's top knee specialist, she'd seen her share of career-ending injuries, but even her expression looked grim as she studied my joint—abstract art rendered in all wrong angles and spider web fractures where solid bone should be.
"See these lines?" She traced the fractures with her cursor, each one a lightning bolt through bone. "Two new stress fractures since last month. Your patella looks like a broken dinner plate held together with chewing gum and prayer."
"But it's holding."
"Brad." She spun her chair to face me, abandoning all pretense of professional distance. "Your knee isn't just damaged—it's disintegrating. You need surgery yesterday."
"Recovery time?" I kept my voice steady while my knee screamed its own diagnosis.
"Three months if we're lucky. Six before you could even think about skating. Maybe never for professional hockey."
The word 'never' hit like a crosscheck to the throat.
"Playoffs end in three weeks."
"Three more weeks could mean a wheelchair at forty. Could mean never teaching Finn to skate properly. Could mean—"
"Three. Weeks." I stood, swallowing the knife of pain that shot from ankle to hip. "I've played through worse."
"No, you haven't. This isn't a pain tolerance issue." She pulled up another image—my knee from three years ago versus now. "See this deterioration? You're grinding bone on bone. The cartilage is gone. Gone, Brad. It doesn't grow back."
"I have a son with medical bills that look like phone numbers."
"You have a son who needs a father who can walk him down the aisle someday."
The words landed like a slap shot to the chest. But she didn't understand the math I did every night—Finn's specialist visits at $500 each, medications that insurance deemed "experimental," the emergency fund that evaporated with each hospital stay.
The Avalanche's playoff bonuses would buy us years of breathing room.
Each round we advanced meant another zero on the check.
"My contract's up after this season." The admission tasted like copper. "A player with a bad knee like this? Nobody's re-signing that. This playoff run is my last chance at real money."
"Brad—"
"Six hundred thousand if we make the finals." I gripped the exam table, knuckles white. "Do you know how many breathing treatments that buys? How many emergency room visits? How many chances for my kid to just be a kid without his dad checking bank balances?"
Dr. Rose pulled off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. "What does Serena say?"
"She doesn't know."
"You haven't told her about the new fractures?"
"She's got enough to worry about with Finn."
"That's bullshit and you know it."
I did know it. But I also knew the look in her eyes when Finn's prescriptions got denied, the way she'd started cutting coupons, the quiet math she did when his breathing got bad. We were a family built on managing crisis. I couldn't add another one.
"Three weeks," I said again, limping toward the door. "Tape it, inject it, whatever you need to do. Three weeks and then I'll let you rebuild me from scratch."
"Brad." Her voice stopped me at the door. "Your son doesn't need money. He needs you. Vertical. Mobile. Present."
"He needs both," I corrected, and left before she could see how much my hands were shaking.
In the parking lot, I sat in my car and tried to straighten my leg.
The joint locked at forty-five degrees, frozen in its own rebellion.
Tomorrow we would play Dallas. Dallas players would dance circles around me while I dragged this dying piece of machinery up and down the ice, pretending I was still the player who'd won championships instead of what I'd become—a liability in skates, held together by cortisone and delusion.
My phone buzzed. Finn had sent a video from practice, his tiny form weaving between cones with surprising grace. "Dad, look! I did the move you taught me!"
Below it, a text from Serena: He's been practicing all day. Says he wants to score a goal like you.
Like me. Like the player I used to be, not the broken-down imposter I'd become.
I started the car, swallowing three Advil dry. Three more weeks of pretending my body wasn't falling apart, my career wasn't ending, my worth as a provider wasn't evaporating with each grinding step.
Three weeks to secure my family's future before I became just another washed-up athlete with a bad knee and good memories.
At home, Serena took one look at me and diagnosed everything.
Three months together had turned her into a human MRI machine—she could read the gradient of my limp, the specific angle I held my shoulders when the pain went past seven, the way I breathed through my teeth when I thought no one was watching.
"Kitchen," she said quietly, glancing at Finn bent over math homework, tongue poking out in concentration. "Now."
I followed her, trying to minimize the drag of my right leg. She already had the freezer open, pulling out the expensive gel packs we bought in bulk, the ones that stayed flexible at negative twenty.
"Scale of ten?"
"Six."
"Liar." She pointed to the kitchen chair. "Real number."
"Eight point five."
"New fractures?"
I stopped mid-sit. "How did you—"
"You're doing that thing with your jaw. The grinding thing you think I don't notice." She knelt, her hands impossibly gentle as she positioned my leg on the cushion she'd already grabbed. "How many?"
"Two."
"Surgery?"
"After playoffs."
She paused, ice pack hovering. I waited for the lecture—about toxic masculinity, about being a martyr, about what kind of example I was setting. Instead, she stood, walked to the cabinet above the refrigerator, and pulled down the prescription bottle I'd hidden there.
"New protocol. You take the real painkillers, not the over-the-counter bullshit you pretend works."
"I hate how foggy—"
"You hate not being in control." She pulled out her phone, already texting. "I'm coordinating with the wives for Finn coverage during road games. Maria's on backup for emergencies. PT exercises every morning, no exceptions."
"Serena—"
"And when playoffs end, you get the surgery. Day after. No delays, no excuses, no 'just let me see how it feels.'"
She was magnificent in her fury, this woman who'd learned to love us with the fierce efficiency of someone who understood that love meant war sometimes.
"Promise me, Brad."
"I promise."
She kissed me then, fierce and desperate, tasting like fear and determination. When she pulled back, her eyes were wet.
"Three weeks," she said. "We can survive anything for three weeks."
From the living room, Finn called out, "Dad! Can you help with this fraction?"
"I've got it," Serena said quickly, knowing I couldn't get up. "Daddy's reviewing game footage."
"Is his knee being stupid again?" Finn asked with the casual acceptance of a child who'd normalized his father's deterioration.
"Little bit," Serena admitted.
"I'll get his ice pack!"
"Already handled, baby. Focus on your homework."
She looked back at me, and we shared a moment of perfect understanding—three weeks of performance, of pretending Daddy was fine, of managing crisis like we managed everything else: together, terrified, but too stubborn to quit.
The first round against Dallas turned my knee into a science experiment in pain management.
Game two, Sampson caught me flat-footed in the neutral zone—my knee had locked mid-stride, turning a routine pivot into a statue impression.
His shoulder drove through my chest, boards rattling my skull, but worse was the grinding sensation as my patella tried to relocate itself.
"Wilder's slow tonight," the commentator observed, unaware I'd pre-gamed with enough painkillers to tranquilize a horse.
Theo started shadowing me without being asked, always mysteriously appearing wherever the puck was headed my way.
Second period of game three, Benny lined me up for a career-ending hit.
Theo materialized like a guardian angel, intercepting him with a cross-check that earned two minutes but saved my knee from becoming modern art.
"You owe me," he gasped through the penalty box glass.
"Beers for life," I promised, trying not to show how my leg trembled just standing still.
Between periods, Dr. Patricia wrapped my knee in so much tape I looked like a mummy from the waist down.
"You know you're a complete fool, don't you?
" she muttered, injecting cortisone directly into the joint—my fourth shot in six days.
"A stubborn, reckless fool who's going to destroy what's left of this knee. "
"Noted," I said, then limped back out for twenty more minutes of pretending I wasn't dying.
We survived Dallas in five games, mostly because Yamamoto went supernova, scoring hat tricks in games four and five while I played defensive chess, using positioning to compensate for the fact I couldn't accelerate without screaming.
Vegas came next, and Pablo—that calculating bastard—figured out my weakness by game two.
Every shift, he'd force me left, making me pivot on the bad knee.
During a power play, he caught me trying to protect Theo's pass.
The hit was clean but devastating—my knee hyperextended backward, ligaments making sounds like bubble wrap.
I stayed vertical through pure spite, using my stick as a crutch the refs somehow missed.
"Daddy looks hurt," Finn observed from the family suite, his voice crackling through Serena's phone during our Video call between periods.
"Daddy's tough," Serena deflected, but her eyes told me she saw everything—the way I couldn't put weight on it, the tremor in my hands, the glassy disconnect in my eyes from too many painkillers.
Game six. Everything. Win and reach the conference finals. Lose and it's over—season, career, the last payday that would secure Finn's future.