Page 2 of Family First
Dr. Mehta folded his arms over his chest, his white coat bright in the morning sun streaming through my hospital room window.
“Are you asking how long until you can walk after the surgery, or are you asking how soon you can play after the surgery?” Dr. Mehta enquired as if he didn’t already know which question I wished to have answered first. I was an athlete.
“How long until I can play again?” I clarified, my husband making a small sound of dislike I ignored for now. I knew how Erik felt about my bad hips. He had mentioned me hanging up my skates more than once. My left shoulder also had arthritis in it, as did my left hand. Mama said I got it from her side of the family. Her toes hurt when the barometer dropped so it could be I did inherit it from her.
“I would not recommend returning to the ice before a full year was up, and that would be after you were cleared by a few physical therapists, the team, and of course, me.”
“A year,” I whispered as a melancholy began to settle in my chest. A year was a long time for a player to be out. Bryan would take over, admirably, as he had last night to get my team the win. I admired Bryan greatly, but I did not want him to take my place. “That is a long time.”
“It will fly by, honey,” Erik said, reaching out to clasp my hand. My doctor nodded. As if I didn’t know they were trying to make me feel better.
“I am sure you are puffing smoke up my rectum,” I muttered, tried to shift off my ass bone, and nearly blacked out from the pain in my hip joint.
My doctor moved to the bed, adjusted something on my IV, and then placed his skilled hand on my shoulder—the one that ached when it was cold or when a rainstorm was coming in. Truly, I was becoming my mother more and more every day. Next I would be seen sweeping the front lawn while wearing a headscarf.
“Stan, it’s time. You’ve put this surgery off for years. We’ve done everything that we could short of replacing the joints, but now with this tear…”
He let it hang. Which was fine, I was in too much pain for him to go on harping about my hips and the damage I was doing to my body. How walking oddly was impacting my spine and lower back. I knew all of this. It was me who had to sleep with a pillow between my thighs to get any rest at night. I was aware of the toll my body was suffering through so I could continue to compete.
“Stan, I’ll be with you through it all,” Erik said, his bright blue eyes damp with concern. “The kids, Mama, your sister, we’ll all help you recover.”
I nodded. “I know this to be true. I just worry that when I leave, I will never go back.” I had seen many a great goalie have to step aside, most around my age, and it scared me to death. The thought of surgery or the pain of the rehab did not frighten me, it was the notion of being cast aside like a suitcase that had seen thousands of miles of travel being placed at the curb because it had lost a wheel.
“Would it be all that bad, Stan, really?” Erik asked softly.
He spoke out of worry. My husband was a hockey player as well, his whole life dedicated to our sport, and he too knew that leaving that sport would be a huge loss of self. If I am not the Railers starting goalie, then who am I?
I didn’t answer my sweet one. Instead, I closed my eyes, the agony in my hip easing, and then I let my head fall back to the pillows piled up behind me.
“I will have the surgery,” I said on a breath out.
I heard Erik exhale, the words “Thank God” rushing out of him, as he held my hand even tighter.
“It will all work out,” Erik whispered then lifted my knuckles to his lips.
I was not so sure how things would work out. My achy shoulder was telling me that stormy times were ahead, times that had little to do with the weather.
ChapterTwo
ERIK
My heart ached as I sat beside Stan’s hospital bed, the faint hum of the hospital equipment a backdrop to my fears, as I stared at the man I loved so much. My vibrant, always-on-the-move husband looked small and fragile against the crisp hospital sheets, and the sterile white of the room seemed to make Stan’s skin appear even paler and showed the flecks of white starting to appear at his temples. He moaned about going gray, that he was only thirty-nine, that Elvis never went gray, but he backed down when I’d explained in no uncertain terms how sexy he was. Stan that was, not Elvis.
“Elvis is sexy,” Stan had argued.
So, I’d shut him up by kissing him and he’d backed down after the second orgasm.
That was the day before we’d met the doctor, only a week ago, and he was here, away from playing, away from his family, and not curled up beside me in our bed.
I couldn’t even stay—the Railers were playing game three against a feisty Washington team tonight—and given it was a home game in our barn, I’d said I could still play.
I didn’t want to.
Stan made me do it.
I legit hated him for it, for about five minutes, and then he told me I had to win the Stanley Cup for him. As if that would make everything better.
“I hate this,” I murmured, echoing the sentiment I’d expressed countless times in the hour I’d been waiting for him to wake. The deep lines of pain that I was the only one to see, that had marked his face for weeks now were absent in his medicated sleep, and while I watched Stan’s steady breathing, I could almost imagine he was okay. I hated that he had been in such pain, that my stubborn husband had put off surgery and hidden the worst of his suffering from the world, but what I hated the most was knowing he had faced the operating theater alone.
