Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 64238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 321(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
“Elmwood?”
“Yeah, I don’t think they want you to fly for a few days, so there’s no hurry to get back to Seattle. Unless you want to. Just…think about it. We—”
“Oh, my God. Riley!” My sister flew to my side, tears streaming down her face.
Whoa.
I shot a panicky look between her and Vinnie as pain sliced through my cerebellum like a blade. The throbbing sensation escalated to a merciless twenty out of ten on the pain-o-meter. The lights were too bright, my skin was too tight, and I couldn’t see for shit. Oh, fuck. I was going to be sick.
Tara must have sensed it. She fumbled for the plastic container on the table beside me and held my forehead as I promptly puked my guts out.
So…what the fuck happened?
Apparently, I’d gotten leveled from behind by Buffalo’s giant as I’d neared scoring position. His perfectly legal, albeit extremely hard hit had sent me careening into the boards, where I’d fallen backward on the ice and cracked my helmet…and my head. Gory shit. I’d been carted out and whisked to the hospital when I lost consciousness and couldn’t be revived.
Good news: I was fully cognizant and expected to make a full recovery.
Bad news: No one knew how long that recovery would take. I’d suffered a serious concussion and some internal bleeding. My severe migraine headaches, queasiness, vomiting, and general fogginess were a big concern. Oh, yeah…and I had three bruised ribs and one with a hairline fracture.
I’d been playing hockey my whole life. Concussions, scrapes, and bruises were part of the game. A couple of days of rest was all the coddling I needed. But the team doctor and the doc in Buffalo didn’t agree. And of course, specialists, analysts, and reporters from all over the world were weighing in on my injury since the whole damn thing had happened on national television.
I watched ESPN with a tight jaw and clenched fists, listening to the sports analysts in six-thousand-dollar Armani suits give their two cents on my career.
“Riley Thoreau needs to retire. This is it for him. He’s thirty-five, and his body’s been through the wringer. Let’s be honest, even before this injury, he wasn’t doing so great.”
“Oh, c’mon. He’s a powerhouse. The co-captain of the Slammers,” his cohost argued with a smarmy grin that indicated he was egging his partner on rather than defending my sorry ass.
“With Ben Childress, who’s a younger, more dynamic player. Is the writing on the wall or what? Hey, I have nothing but respect for Thoreau, but he isn’t the player he used to be. That’s all.”
The host smiled for the camera, tapping a sheaf of papers on the glass table in front of him. “We wish Riley Thoreau a speedy recovery. We’ll be back with baseball playoff highlights and scores from—”
I turned off the TV in my sister’s spare bedroom, unsurprised that my headache had spiked. I wasn’t supposed to be watching television or reading. I was under strict orders to literally lie still and do nothing. Fun.
I could hear Tara and her husband, Martin upstairs. It was bath time and bedtime for my seven- and nine-year-old niece and nephew. Their two-year-old brother had gotten early tub time after he’d dumped a can of tomato sauce in his hair in a misguided attempt to help with dinner. Shane was now clean as a whistle and currently glued to my side, sucking on a bottle in his footy jay-jays and twirling his blond curls around his finger.
And me? Well, I was moping.
I wasn’t sure what to think of this interesting twist in my life. One minute I was a valued member of a respected NHL team and the next I was holed up in my sister’s house, hanging out with a drooling toddler, a snoring dog, and a parrot who hummed the Star Wars theme on repeat.
Sure, I was recovering from an injury, but I had a sick feeling I’d been pushed off the merry-go-round and was in the initial phase of a death spiral. Dramatic? Maybe. But I hadn’t felt confident about my position on the team before my concussion, and now…Christ, even ESPN was laying bets against me.
I couldn’t do anything to prove myself either. My coach and the Slammers medical staff were demanding a clean bill of health. I’d been ordered to rest and get this…steer clear of bright lights. My CT scans showed swelling near my occipital lobe, which supposedly explained my migraine-like headaches. Dim lighting helped. Unfortunately, that meant that not only was I unable to play hockey, I couldn’t attend games or practices. I was basically banned from the arena.
The neuro specialist wasn’t willing to guesstimate my return to hockey. Maybe a month, maybe two? Based on the severity of my symptoms, my age, my sport, and the fact that this wasn’t my first concussion, he was inclined to advise that I take the rest of the season off and better yet, consider retiring.