Break Myself

Marty Havlat jumped on the ice as his linemate, Andrew Ladd, snatched the puck away from the Washington Capitals. He knew there was only two minutes left in the game, and the score was currently tied at two apiece. Andrew looked over, seeing that Marty was on his right. He passed the puck to him, and Marty was about to skate towards the net before he felt himself being thrown into the boards by Alex Ovechkin.

He felt his shoulder hit the glass, and he immediately knew that something was wrong. It didn’t feel like it had the other times he had injured it, but he knew that whatever had happened was not good. As pain shot through his entire body, stemming from his right shoulder, he crumpled to the ice.

He heard the whistle being blown, and he was immediately surrounded by people, including the Blackhawks’ athletic trainer. “Is it your shoulder?” the trainer asked, squatting down next to him, and Marty wanted to hit the man. It was obviously his shoulder. Why had he even asked that? Instead of yelling at him, Marty simply nodded his head.

“Okay, let’s get you off the ice and evaluate you in the locker room,” the trainer said, trying to help him, as Marty let his arm hang limply at his side. With the trainer on one side, and Andrew on the other side of him, he slowly made it off the ice and towards the locker room.

Once inside the training room, one of the team physicians came in to evaluate his arm. “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, beginning to inspect Marty’s shoulder and arm. Not even a minute later, the doctor looked up at Marty, saying, “Well, it looks like you dislocated your shoulder again. Let’s put it back into place, and then we’ll take you over to the hospital to make sure you didn’t do any more damage to your shoulder.”

The way he said it frustrated Marty to no end. He made it seem like no big deal, so casual. This was a huge deal to Marty. He knew what a dislocated shoulder meant. It meant he was going to be out of the lineup for a good period of time. It meant he wasn’t going to be able to go out there every night and do the one thing he loved to do.

Marty lied back on the table and winced as the doctor and the athletic trainer helped to reduce the dislocation by putting it back in place. He screamed out in pain, yelling every obscenity he could think of in both English and Czech.

They took him over to the hospital, and he immediately went in for an MRI, trying to determine how much damage he had done to his shoulder. Marty sat in the small room, waiting for the results to come back. His shoulder still hurt, but not as much as before, especially since they had given him some high-strength pain killers.

Fifteen minutes later, the team physician came in, carrying a bunch of papers, most likely his MRI results. “So, I have some good news and bad news,” he began. “Which would you like me to begin with?”

Marty rolled his eyes. He didn’t care for this right now. He just wanted to know how badly his shoulder was injured and how long he’d be out for. “I don’t care,” he told him, his accent thick.

“Okay, well, the good news is that you might be able to go back to playing before the season is over,” the doctor began. Might be able to go back to playing? Marty thought. But that wasn’t a guarantee. “The bad news is you’re going to have to have surgery again.”

Marty breathed out heavily, as the words kept repeating in his head. Another surgery? This was going to be his third one on his shoulder! “You tore a lot of what we had fixed,” the doctor continued, but Marty pretty much tuned him out the rest of the time. All he heard was that he needed surgery. Again.

The doctors had suggested waiting a couple of weeks for the surgery so he could do some physical therapy beforehand and try to strengthen it as much as they could. He went back home, hoping to just forget about everything and get some rest. He walked into his bedroom, looking at his clock and noticed it was already two-thirty in the morning. He quickly stripped off his shirt and pants, standing in his boxers, and promptly collapsed onto his bed.

He woke up the next morning to the sound of his phone indicating he had a text message. He opened one eye and glanced at the clock. He grabbed his phone, thinking that someone had better have a good reason for texting him at seven in the morning. He whipped it open and saw it was from Patrick Sharp, asking him how he was feeling.

Marty quickly texted back that it was his shoulder again and that he would talk to him later, once he had had more sleep and was actually awake to comprehend anything.

He woke up two and a half hours later, debating whether he wanted to go to practice today, which started in two hours. It wasn’t like it was necessary since he wasn’t going to be able to get on the ice and participate anyways. But, at the same time, that would be the easiest way to inform all of his teammates of what was happening with his shoulder, instead of having to respond to twenty different texts and phone calls.

Finally deciding, Marty went into the bathroom, taking a shower, and then grabbed a pair of Blackhawks sweats with a random t-shirt. He threw them on and drove over to the practice rink.

He walked into the locker room, and everyone was wondering what was going on with his shoulder. “So, how bad is it?” Andrew asked him.

“I dislocated it again,” he told him, as all of the other guys listened in to their conversation. “Doctors are saying that I need to have surgery again in a couple of weeks to fix it.”

“When are you going to be back?” Duncan Keith asked.

“They say I might be back before the end of the season,” Marty replied, saying what the doctors had told him.

“Might be?” Dave Bolland asked.

“That’s what they say,” Marty replied. “Anyways, don’t you guys need to go out there? You do need to practice before that Columbus game tomorrow,” he reminded them.

“Hey, are you planning on coming to the game tomorrow night?” Matt Walker asked him.

“I don’t know. I guess so. Why?” Marty asked.

“Just wondering. I mean, we need you there. If we can’t have you out on the ice, at least you’ll be in the box watching us,” Matt replied.

Marty nodded his head. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” he told him.

The guys all nodded as they walked out onto the rink, getting ready for their practice. Marty stared longingly at the ice, wishing he would be able to get back on it soon.