The Man Who Can't Be Moved

The visiting team’s trainers’ room at the General Motors Place is nothing more than a glorified supply closet; extremely cramped quarters with nothing more than a couple of shelves mounted on the puke green walls that hold messily arranged -and ancient looking- medical supplies and a couple of rusted and creaky exams tales covered in faded and cracked orange vinyl. Fortunately for me, it’s also blissfully quiet; a welcome relief from the boisterous atmosphere of the post-practice locker room and nothing short of paradise for my throbbing shoulder and the headache and nausea that have been brought on by the incessant pain. Normally I’d be in the midst of the chaos across the hall; I’d be the one cracking the most perverted jokes and tossing out sarcastic one liners and indulging in a little bit of self deprecation or dancing around the room and singing to whatever song happened to be playing on Tanger’s well stocked iPod. I’d always been the ‘class clown’; the dude that pulled out all the stops when it came to cracking everyone else up and who never took things too seriously. Lately I’ve been a miserable ass fuck; my injury and the now constant pain is grating on my nerves and threatening to shatter whatever shred of sanity I have left.

I want to be the old Max again; I don’t want to plaster fake smiles on my face because I’m too afraid to let everyone around me know how badly the suffering actually is and I don’t want to use humour as thinly veiled attempts to keep people from finding out that things are worse than I’ve been letting on. I want to join in the light hearted festivities; the team’s on a natural high courtesy of the successful first half of our western road swing. We’re currently undefeated and blowouts against the Kings and the Sharks have done wonders for our confidence and have given us hopes of being considered a legitimate threat for a playoff spot. Yesterday afternoon’s ass kicking of San Jose has the guys bouncing off the walls; both the bus ride to the airport and the flight into Vancouver had been exceptionally loud, uproarious events and we’d been so stoked that the majority of us had hung out in the hotel bar until the wee hours of the morning celebrating our recent successes. We feel like winners; we’re playing like a serious, driven and committed group instead of busting our butts as individuals game in and game out.

Unfortunately for me, winning is coming at a steep price; I’ve been hauling ass shift after shit with near reckless -yet not totally out of control- abandon despite the medical staff’s orders to ‘take it easy’ and my body is suffering because of it. My shoulder’s never hurt this bad; the agony is consistent and unrelenting and a far cry from the occasional sharp, stabbing pains that attack out of the blue and that occasional burning and tingling that begins at the nape of my neck and travels all the way to the tips of my fingers. I’d gotten used to those episodes in the same way I’ve grown accustomed to the normally bile inducing smell of the pain relief cream that I slather across my shoulder and along my arm nearly a dozen times a day. I’ve even gotten used to the once painful administering of cortisone shots and the pre-game and intermission injections of freezing into the injured muscle and my body has grown too comfortable with pain meds and anti-inflammatory I’ve been prescribed; both do very little to ease the agony and the worry of taking too many at once in a quest for relief is a legitimate one. I’m treading a very thin line with the team docs; I’m a step away from being scratched from the line up and forced to undergo surgery far sooner than originally planned. I’ve always been warned that one wrong hit could destroy my shoulder completely.

And end my career permanently.

I’m trying not to dwell too much on the threats and the warnings; I’ve been concentrating on my play and my only hockey related concern has been trying to fulfill my desire to be ‘part of the bigger picture’. I just want to go out and play; I want to feel like I’m contributing. I may not be a goal scorer or a natural born playmaker, but I like to think that I bring something at least remotely special to the ice each and every night. That I’m at least playing even the smallest role in the team’s quest for hockey supremacy. It’s just too bad that my day and my contributions had been cut short when halfway through practice I’d taken a tame, insignificant hit from Staalsy and had immediately crumpled to the ice in excruciating pain. To make matters worse, my entire arm had gone completely numb from the base of my neck to the tips of my fingers and had stayed that way for damn near half an hour despite the therapists’ best efforts to treat it with deep tissue massage and acupuncture. I’ve spent the last hour and a half flat on my stomach in the trainers’ room, an ice pack tapped to my shoulder and my brain in a rather pleasant haze brought on by a hefty dose of league approved pain killing medications.

“Well Max…”

I lift my chin from its resting place on the forearm I have stretched across the exam table and glance in the direction of physical therapist Mark Morland’s voice as he stands in the doorway.

“….it’s official,” he continues. “You are one big fucked up mess.”

“Mentally or physically?” I mumble, as I bury my face in the crook of my elbow and drum my fingertips against my BlackBerry as it lays on top the old, weathered vinyl.

I’d been attempting to get a hold of Em for the past hour; I’ve left umpteen messages on both her cell and the home phone and tracking her down is proving to be impossible. I’d tried my best to keep my voice as upbeat, calm and -hopefully- void of any pain as I asked repeatedly for her to call me as soon as she could. I don’t want her hearing it through the grapevine -knowing Tanger or Flower they’ve already blabbed to Peyton or Vero- about what had happened at practice; I’d rather her hear it straight for me that I’d been involved in an ‘incident’ instead of having her go bat shit insane over information that will no doubt be blown way out of proportion. I have no clue where she could possibly be and I can’t help but be a little worried over the fact that she’s not answering her cell or the landline. Most guys would assume the worst relationship wise; their woman running around with some other dude behind their back. All I can think about is that something’s physically happened to her; a bad reaction to the cocktail of meds she swallows day in or day out, a manic episode brought out by something entirely out of her control, a car accident while she’s been out and about attending to errands despite the fact I’d told her not to worry about anything until the weather cleared up.

“I thought mentally had been proven a long time ago,” Mark chides, repeatedly tapping a manila folder against his thigh as he wanders into the room. “The verdict is in,” he announces, and smacks my ass with file. “And it’s not good. Get a hold of the wife?”

“What’s one got to do with the other?” I ask, as he snags a rickety metal chair from the far corner of the room, pulls it alongside of the exam table and plops down into it. “Is the news that bad? Life or death? Does she need to fly into town? Sit with me and hold my hand to cushion the blow?”

“You’re an ornery bastard,” he declares, and lays the folder in his lap and flips it open. “I miss the old Max.”

“You and me both,” I mutter, and then hiss in pain as the simple act of rolling over onto my back sends a brutal, breath taking pain -akin to what I assume it would feel like to have a million scalding hot daggers plunged straight into my shoulder- course through my body. “And no…” I lay a forearm over my eyes in order to hide the threatening flood of agony induced tears and speak through gritted teeth. “…I didn’t get a hold of her. I have no idea where she is. And there’s a thousand and one horrific thoughts going through my mind right now.”

“Don’t go all fatalistic on me now. I’m sure everything’s okay; women have a bad habit of getting all caught up in their soap operas and talk shows and they seem to tune everything else out. She’ll get back to you. Eventually. So…” he thumbs through the thin stack of papers in his possession. “…good news…”

“If it’s good news, at least sound like you’re not about to tell me that I have only a couple of days to live,” I interject.

“Good news is that you didn’t complete tear the labrum,” he continues, and lays a grainy black and white ultrasound image on my stomach. “…there’s a lot of swelling and inflammation and some more damage has been done, but it’s not season ending.”
“So what do I do? Take lots of pain meds and anti-inflammatory? Freeze it constantly? Get more cortisone shots…”

“The bad news…or at least part of the bad news is that there’s only about ten percent of the muscle still intact,” he explains, and producing a ball point pen from the chest pocket of his black Pens golf shirt, uses the tip to trace a small slice of the photo. “See that? That’s all that’s left of the labrum, Max. Less than two inches. And that…well that isn’t good.”

“But it’s not completely torn,” I say, feeling somewhat relieved that my season hasn’t come to a screeching halt. “There’s still ten percent of it there. Which means I can still play.”

“You can,” Mark reluctantly agrees. “And the doctor has given you the green light to keep going, but…”

“All that matters to me is that I can still play. That I don’t have to come out of the line up. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep going. I don’t care how many pills I have to pop or how many times a day you have to shoot me full of cortisone or freezing. Just do it. Just keep me going so I can get to the end of the season.”

“…but there’s a huge risk,” he ignores me completely. “…there’s a risk that even the slightest jolt could tear the labrum completely. Someone could cough or sneeze on you the wrong way and it could end your year right there and then. This isn’t something to be taken lightly, Max. There’s a significant risk and you need to be aware of what can go wrong. If you destroy it, there might not be a chance of repairing it completely with surgery. So you need to realize that the ball is completely in your court. We’re leaving this decision up to you. If you feel that you can still play and that it’s worth risking total obliteration of your shoulder…”

“I’ll sign whatever paper you want me to,” I conclude, as I struggle to get myself into a sitting position with only one good arm. “I’ll sign my life away so that you guys are completely covered if something goes wrong. That’s what everyone wants right? The doc and the big brass? They want me to make the decision and sign on it? So that if the shit hits the fan no heads will roll because of it; so the league will know that it was my choice and I took my career and my health into my own hands.”

Mark sighs heavily, frowns and gives a reluctant nod. “If you want my honest opinion…” he begins.

“I don’t,” I interject, and snatch the pen out of his hand and the folder from his lap. “I appreciate your opinion and it means a lot that you’re concerned about me, but I don’t want to hear what you have to say. It’s not your choice to make.”

“Don’t be such a stubborn bastard,” he grumbles. “There’ll be other seasons, Max. You’re not going anywhere and it’s better if you get the operation ASAP instead of risking anything career ending. No one wants to see things get worse; no one wants to lose you from the line up permanently.”

“I’m staying in the line up,” I refuse to buckle; I’m not going to roll over and die. “I’m going to grin and fucking bear it and I’m going to keep playing. Enough said.”

“Don’t you think you should talk to your wife about this?” Mark asks, as I locate the form regarding ‘player’s decision to ignore medical advice’ and briefly scan through the list of list of warnings that I’m required to scrawl my initials beside. “Don’t you think you should run this by her and…?”

“This has nothing to do with her,” I reply, and hurriedly print my initials alongside of each highlighted section before printing the date at the bottom of the page and scribbling my signature. “I make the decisions about stuff like this.”

“I think she’d like to have some kind say when it comes to you making a decision that could affect your entire career,” he points out. “I’m sure she’s worried about you; I’m sure she’d like to know that things have gotten to this point and that…”

“It’s my goddamn shoulder,” I growl, and drop the form into his lap and then pen on top of it. “It’s my shoulder and my career and if I want to take the chance that’s my business. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Alright…” he gives an exasperated sigh and holds his hands up surrender. “I’m not paid to argue with you.”

“No…you’re not,” I agree, and slowly lower myself onto my back.

“I can let you have a bit of a think on all of this,” he suggests, the legs of the chair scraping along the tiles as he stands up. “I don’t have to hand this over right away. I can give you a few minutes to think about it or we can wait until your wife calls or…”

“What’s done is done,” I interject “I signed it. Hand it to whoever you have to. I made my decision.”

He sighs once more and I can hear the shuffling of papers and the squeaking of the soles of his sneakers on the floor as he heads for the door. “Want the last part of the bad news?” he inquires.

“How many parts is there?” I mutter.

“We’re sending you home,” he says. “First thing tomorrow morning. You’re going to sit out the rest of the road trip so you can rest your shoulder for a bit and so you can go and get another consultation with the surgeon in Pittsburgh. If he says that you’re good to go and the inflammation has gone down by the team gets back into town…”

“Fine…” I wave my hand dismissively in his direction. “…whatever…whatever you people think is best…whatever you…” my sentence trails off as my cell phone springs to life and I reach above my head to snag it, relief surging through me at the sight of my home phone number appearing on the call display.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes to freeze you up a bit,” Mark says. “Give you prescription from the doc and get you into a sling and…”

I irritably wave him away once more; thumb hovering over the talk button as I wait for him to haul ass out of the room. I’m torn on how to handle the situation; I’m pissed off that I’m being sent home when I feel as if a couple of days of watching games from the press box will be enough rest and enough time for the inflammation to subside. I know that there’s no escaping admitting the seriousness of the situation to my wife; I won’t be able to lie or sugar coat anything and she’s liable to make things seem a million times worse than what they are. And taking a deep breath, I release it slowly and then launch into my usual macho bravado as I finally answer the call.

***********

“I turned the ringer off last night so I could get some sleep,” Em explains, as I pepper her with questions regarding my inability to get a hold of her. “I mean, you kept me up until four in the morning my time…and I don’t leave my cell phone on twenty four seven when I’m home so…”

“I was worried something happened to you,” I admit. “I couldn’t get a hold of you and I was thinking the worst, you know?”

She’s always been my ultimate weakness; since the moment I’d saved her from falling on her ass at the dive bar in Scranton. I’d felt something for her right there and then; a spark of chemistry that I’d never experienced with a woman before. Sure, I’ve felt that immediate pang of lust hundreds of times and there were very few times that I’d ignored it and backed away. But there’d been something different between us; an undeniable and completely unexplainable attraction that had extended far beyond wanting to sleep with her.

“What’s to be paranoid about?” she laughs. “Did you think I had my boyfriend over or something? I barely have the energy to keep up with you; how would I ever manage satisfying you and someone else?”

“Oh you satisfy me just fine…” I assure her.

“I slept in and then I took a bubble bath,” she proceeds with her explanation regarding her absence. “Then I did a few loads of laundry and now I‘m watching Jerry Springer and doing some baking. Not that my muffin tops really need to be any bigger. Or my ass for that matter.”

“Your muffins tops are a figment of your imagination,” I inform her. “And as far as your J. Lo as goes…well you know what I’ve always said about that….more cushion for the pushin’.”

Em’s never been the smallest girl; she’s short in stature but rather willowy and curvy in all the right places. After filling my bed for years with women that were skinny enough to hula hoop through Cheerios and either had no boobs at all or ones that were massive and filled with silicone, I’d gone ahead and married the complete opposite. I’ve elected to spend the rest of my life with a woman that is…well all woman. I don’t give a shit if her dress size hovers close to double digits; she has curves in all of the right places and she’s soft and voluptuous and her body feels incredible against mine.

“Then I took the babies out into the backyard for a little bit,” she continues, ignoring my perverted comment completely. “Did I tell you I bought the boys some clothes? These really adorable knit sweaters and little boots for their feet and…”

“They’re dogs, Em. Animals. Not humans. Why do they need clothes? And boots? Next thing you’ll know they’ll have a bigger wardrobe and more shoes than you.”

“I can’t have them freezing to death and they can’t shit and piss in the house,” she reasons. “They have to go out, right? Well I might as well keep them warm and stylish. And I’m warning you know; you may have a hard time when you get home breaking them out of sleeping on your side of the bed. I needed something warm and fuzzy to curl up to, so…”

“You’re hopeless,” I sigh. “Utterly hopeless.”

“They’re my babies,” she insists, and I can picture her sticking her tongue out at me through the phone. “My little babies,” she corrects herself. “And you’re my big baby. My big and furry and cuddly baby. No one is more fuzzy than you, Maxime. You’re like the human equivalent of a heating blanket. What are you doing? Is everything okay? Why did you call so much? I just about had a stroke when I noticed all the messages and mixed calls. What’s going on? Why….?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I assure her. “I’ve just…I had a little…incident…at practice today.”

“You still have all your teeth, right? Your nose hasn’t been relocated to another part of your face? You haven’t broken an arm or a leg or worse?”

“My shoulder’s acting up,” I explain. “I guess I’ve got a lot of inflammation and it’s hurting like a bitch and the doctor thinks the best thing is to rest it for a bit.”

“So a couple of games off?” she asks. “You’ll sit out for a couple and…”

“They’re sending me home,” I tell her. “I’ll be on the first plane out of Vancouver tomorrow morning. They want me to go and talk to the surgeon at UPMC; see if he thinks it’s a good idea to keep playing or if I should have the surgery earlier.”

“Well better to be safe than sorry, right?” she sounds more optimistic and cheerful than I’d expected her to be. “It’s better to sit out for a bit than risk screwing things up even more. I know that you want to keep playing and that you think that this makes you a wimp in some way…”

“Couple days is all I need,” I mutter. “Just a couple of days to let thing calm down…”

“…but you’ve been going through this for a long time already and I hate seeing you like this,” she continues. “And I don’t want things to get worse; I don’t want something happening where the doctor can’t fix it. So it’s just better this way; it’s better that you come home and completely relax and let the surgeon poke and prod a little bit. You come home and there’s no pressure on you to go back out onto the ice before you’re ready. You come home and I can baby you and wait on you hand and foot and…”

“I like the sound of the whole waiting on me hand and foot,” I grin. “So what kind of services does that entail? Fluffing my pillows? Tucking me into bed? Cooking me meals? Simple shit like that? Or do I get sponge baths and a little physical therapy too? Will you go to that adult store in downtown Pitt and buy one of those really sexy and naughty nurse costumes? ‘Cause now that makes coming home worthwhile.”

“I thought you were more than happy with the French Maid outfit I agreed to?” she teases. “And that whole little naughty school girl one with the plaid skirt and the knee high socks. I thought that was your favourite?”

“It is,” I confirm, and despite the pain throbbing throughout my body, my cock twitches at the mental image of her in that tiny skirt barely covering her ass and a two sized too small white blouse tied at her waist and unbuttoned to just shy of her breasts and her hair in flirty pigtails. “You know what I really need, Em?” I inquire. “What I’m dying for?”

“I am so not having phone sex with you in the middle of the afternoon,” she says. “You didn’t get enough of that last night?”

“I was going to say that I’m dying for a massage. For someone to work out all the kinks. Someone that can…”

“I know what kind of massage you’re used to,” she grumbles. “You want to go someplace where you can get a rub down my some skanky little Thai girl. Oh Mister Hockey Player…” she adopts a faux Asian accent. “…you so big and strong and so sexy! I do extra for you! I make you feel so good! Sucky-sucky five dollar!”

“You are seriously disturbed,” I chuckle.

“Your wife never find out…” she continues. “Our little secret. Shhhhh…and then…” she returns to her normal voice. “…and then a week from now some ‘junk’ will show up on your junk and it will be all over the news that there’s some outbreak of trench mouth all over Pittsburgh.”

“I don’t know what kind of guy you think I am. Or think I was…”

“A dirty one,” Em laughs. “A very, very, very dirty one.”

“…but I was talking about a legit massage from a legit massage therapist,” I inform her. “But you’ve got some magic hands yourself, baby. So how about when I get home, you indulge me and you give me a massage and throw in some sucky-sucky. On the house.” It’s not her most favourite thing in the world to do; she has an aversion to giving oral sex because of her traumatic childhood experiences, but there are rare moments where she actually indulges me without needing any kind of encouragement or begging on my part.

“If you’re a really, really good boy,” she says. “If you promise me that you’re not going to do anything stupid when you’re out with the guys tonight…”

“Em, we talked about this last night. It’s just some half assed bachelor party for Tanger. I already know the rules; no touching, no sticking money down any g-strings, no going into private rooms with any strippers…”

Not that I’d actually do anything like that in the first place. I love her too much to ever fuck up on such a grand scale. And while some of the other guys rode my ass about telling her about the planned trip to one of Vancouver’s exclusive ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ and teased me about ‘needing her permission’, I’d attempted to explain that it’s not about asking if it’s okay, it’s about respecting her enough to be honest and upfront. Em is extremely open-minded and liberal; she doesn’t hold my past against me and when it comes to strip clubs, she’s the type of woman that would gladly escort her man there.

“Just be good,” she requests.

“I will,” I promise. “In fact, as soon as I get back to the hotel, I’ll call you and you can…”

My words trail off as the door to the trainers’ room clicks open and Sid wanders in, giving me a slightly sheepish smile and a nod in greeting as he hobbles towards the empty exam table alongside of me.

“I gotta go,” I say into the phone. “The trainers have some stuff they need to do with my shoulder.”

“I have some stuff I need to do too,” she giggles. “Like feed my face. I’m going to be huge pretty soon…”

“Tell the calories to go straight to your boobs,” I tease. “Those can never be too big. Je vous aime, bouton. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Okay…” she agrees. “Je t’aime aussi. A bientot.”

There’s a soft click as she disconnects the call, and pressing the END button on my cell, I sigh heavily, place my phone on my stomach and lay a forearm over my eyes.

Maybe going home a bit early isn’t such a bad thing after all.