Our first matchup was between Sandy and Alfred, two people I barely knew. While I missed the ball nearly every time it was served to me, Daniel made up for my mistakes and we beat them easily.
Our next match, against Fiona and her pretend-boyfriend Sam, was a lot more difficult, but we won out in the end.
“You’re not as bad at tennis as I thought you’d be,” Daniel told me as we high fived.
“I’m not sure if I should be insulted by that,” I replied. I couldn’t help but notice the light sheen of sweat covering his body, giving him a slightly dishevelled look. His eyes sparkled as he thrived on the competition.
“No, it’s a compliment,” Daniel replied.
“Good, because you shouldn’t be playing tennis at all with you knee.”
“Don’t worry about my knee. It’s fine. I’m wearing the brace like you told me to.”
“Ok, good. If we need to forfeit to stop you from breaking yourself for good though, just let me know.”
“I don’t know the meaning of the word forfeit. Anyway, we’re in the final, so let’s get ready to go. I want to win the chocolate bars I saw Andy bringing in earlier.”
“Really? That quickly? I didn’t realize there’d be prized, maybe I should start trying! Who are we playing?”
“Nathan and Sara.”
Another two people I didn’t really know. I knew they were both in their late 40s. Nathan was an executive for one of the major companies in Seattle, and I didn’t know if Sara had a job or stayed at home with her kids, or what. Either way, they both looked pretty fit. I was a bit nervous. Despite my comment earlier about trying, I didn’t really care about whether we won or lost, but I knew Daniel did, and I wanted to win this for him.
We won the first game, but only just. We were playing best-of-three, and as we took the early lead in the second game, I was feeling optimistic. Unfortunately, thanks to a major error from me, Nathan and Sara were able to come back and win. I felt guilty about it and apologized to Daniel during the break, but he waved me off.
“It’s fine, these things happen. It’s not your fault.”
It was all coming down to this last game. We fell behind quickly, and for a little while I thought we were going to lose. Nathan and Sara had match point, but luckily, while it was their serve, they were serving to Daniel. He had no problems whatsoever returning serves, and I knew there was a chance we would come back and win it.
Nathan served the ball, and Daniel sprung over on his bad knee to get at it. I could tell straight away that he had hurt himself. He froze, then almost like he was in slow motion, he fell to the court, missing the ball, which landed in bounds. We had lost. I immediately went over to see if Daniel was ok, but he pushed me away. He threw his racket to the floor, breaking the cheap aluminum frame, and stormed back into the building, half limping because of his knee. He was angry, I could tell.
I immediately chased after him. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew where Daniel was going to be, and sure enough, he was in the basement gym. He was sitting on a bench, his back to me, swearing.
“FUCK. FUCKING HELL.”
“Daniel?” I asked gingerly, not wanting to scare him.
“Go away Kylie. FUCK. I can’t FUCKING believe I lost the game. I FUCKING LOST IT. FUCK.”
“Hey, it’s ok Daniel. It was just a friendly tournament,” I told him, ignoring his demand that I leave and sitting next to him on the bench. When I looked into his eyes, however, I knew there was more than that. There was so much pain, it looked like he wanted to cry.
“Is your knee ok?”
“It’s not the knee. My knee’s fine. It hurts a bit, but it’s fine.”
I rested my hand on his thigh. “Ok. It’s not your knee. Listen, if you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
Daniel’s breathing was heavy. His fists clenched over and over. I could tell he was struggling with something inside his head. I knew the feeling all too well. Finally, he jumped up with a limberness that I couldn’t have imagined coming from someone experiencing an injury like his. He paced around the room.
“You know, I want you to know, Kylie. Maybe telling you will help. I think you’ll understand.”
I waited as he continued to pace, staring at the ground, trying to decide what to tell me.
“You know I hurt my knee, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s not the whole story. I mean, it is, but it’s not.”
“I know what you mean Daniel, go on.”
“It was the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This was something I had worked for my entire life. My entire fucking life was dedicated to this moment. To winning this trophy. Do you understand what that’s like?”
“I do. I spent every waking moment since I was fifteen working towards being a doctor.”
“Yes. Exactly. You volunteered at a clinic when you were an undergrad for experience, I spent hours at the gym. Same thing. You know the hours, what it takes from you. It consumes you. It’s your life. You want nothing more than that. Nothing at all.”
He paused, as though trying to figure out how to continue.
“We were two minutes into game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. I was so ready for that game. I was prepared. It was funny, it should never have happened that way. Seattle and Vancouver should never have met in the Stanley Cup Finals, they were going to move us into the same division in the following year, so we’d be in one of the Western divisions. Either way, I was ready. I had worked my entire life for this moment. All those hours of blood, sweat and tears. All that time in the gym, all that time on the ice. All those days when I woke up at five in the morning to get ready for practice, they were all going to be worth it when I led the Seattle Sea Lions to victory.”
He paused for a while, figuring out how to phrase what happened next.
“It was two minutes into the game. I was chasing down a puck in the corner in the offensive zone. The icing had been waived off. I went in for the puck a bit too aggressively, and was slightly off balance. One of their players came in and tried to get the puck off me, and it knocked me sideways. I went feet first into the boards and my knee exploded completely. It was a fluke, a complete fluke. I’ve done the same thing hundreds of times, hell probably even thousands of times before, and I’d never been injured. And yet this time, it happened. There’s video of it on the internet. I was on the ground, clutching my knee. And it was funny, despite the ridiculous amount of pain I was in, pain like nothing I had ever felt before in my life, what absolutely killed me was the fact that I knew my game was over. I wasn’t going to get to play in game 7. I wasn’t going to have the chance to win the Stanley Cup for my team. I had worked my whole life for this moment, and two minutes in that moment was taken away.”
Daniel was calmer now, noticeably calmer. He came and sat back down on the bench next to me, and I said nothing, but took his hand in mine.
“I tried to get back up. The trainers, they were there. They had come out right away. I remembered trying to get back up, and everyone telling me to stay down. ‘I need to play. I need to fucking play,’ I remember saying. I wanted to play, more than anything. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t put any weight on my knee at all. It was the worst feeling on the planet, knowing that it was gone. My opportunity was gone. That game was going to be played, and I wasn’t going to be involved in it.”
My heart absolutely ached for Daniel as he told me his story. I could only imagine the heartbreak he must have felt.
“I watched the game from the dressing room. I cried. For the first time in my adult life, I cried as the trainer helped me take off my equipment. They wanted me to go to the hospital straight away, but I refused. I had to watch the game. They scored with two minutes to go to take the lead. We lost. We lost the Stanley Cup. I let my team down.”
“You can’t have let them down, you couldn’t have expected to get injured.”
“I know. I kept telling myself that, everyone kept telling me that, but I still felt guilty. It was a freak acc
ident, it wasn’t the other player’s fault, but I blamed myself nonetheless. I still do.”
“I understand. I completely understand,” I replied, my own feelings mirroring his own. I knew exactly how he felt, blaming himself. I knew absolutely exactly how he felt.
“I watched Henrik Sedin hoist the Stanley Cup on the TV in the locker room, and I cried. He passed it to his brother, he passed it to Corey Schneider, then the whole team got the Cup. I watched as they skated around the rink with it. They had home ice advantage. Their fans were cheering like nothing else. It absolutely destroyed me to see. That was supposed to be me, and while the Vancouver Canucks were skating around, hoisting the Stanley Cup above them, I was in so much pain I couldn’t even stand up. I never even got the chance to help my team win it. I let them down. I let them down when it counted the most. I was the captain, and there I was, watching the captain of the other team kiss the cup.”
He was close to tears just telling me about it, I could tell.
“I eventually went to the hospital. That’s when they gave me the painkillers. Oh boy, did that kill the pain. It made me stop feeling anything, and that was way better than what I’d been feeling before. So, I kept taking them. And I took them more and more. I just wanted to forget. I needed to forget. When my best friend, our goalie, Ben, figured out what was going on, he encouraged me to get help, but I refused. So, he went to the team doctors. They told me I had to come here. I was going to refuse, but then the team held an intervention. I realized how much those guys meant to me, and I came. But I’m still not going to play hockey again. I can’t go through that again. I just... I just can’t.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I rested my head on Daniel’s shoulder as he dealt with his inner demons. Eventually, I spoke.
“Thanks for telling me your story. I know you feel like you’re the only one who’s ever gone through this, but believe me, I know exactly what you were feeling. I know what you went through. I know the despair you felt at losing something more important to you than anything, and your complete lack of desire to continue on afterwards.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can tell you do. It’s tough, you know? It’s fucking tough. When I lost us the match out there, that’s what it reminded me of. My knee gave out and I didn’t have a chance to get at the ball. I freaked out completely. It just reminded me of everything I felt, every single ounce of pain that ran through me as I watched my team lose the Stanley Cup. I just wanted pills. I wanted to down as many as I had to in order to forget again. I wanted them more than anything in that moment.”
“I know. I know exactly how you feel. Alcohol made me numb. It made me forget, and I didn’t want to remember. It will get better. You will learn to live with the emotion. I promise you that, but it’s never easy.”
Suddenly, I let out a small cry as I looked down at Daniel’s leg. I hadn’t realized that there was blood pouring down it. He must have hurt it when he fell to the ground. It wasn’t like one of his major arteries had been hit, but there was definitely a good amount of blood. I couldn’t believe I didn’t notice it before, I must have been so wrapped up in his story.
“I didn’t realize you were bleeding,” I exclaimed, jumping up to find a first aid kit. I knew there had to be one around here somewhere, we were in a gym, after all. I found it on a shelf near the exit and quickly came back with it to Daniel.
“Don’t worry, it’s fine. It doesn’t hurt on the outside nearly as much as on the inside.”
“No, but you’re still losing way too much blood to just leave it there bleeding.”
I opened the box and grabbed a large bandage, which I pressed to the wound.
“Keep that there until the bleeding stops, I’ll be right back,” I ordered, grabbing a small cloth from the kit and going into the change room.
When I came back with my cloth, which was now wet, Daniel was still obediently holding the bandage to his leg.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” I asked.
“I think so, mostly,” he replied, moving the bandage aside so I could have a look. Sure enough, the bleeding had basically ebbed, only a tiny amount of red still leaked from the wound. I took my cloth and very carefully cleaned the wound, making sure there were no little bits of rock or anything still inside of Daniel.
I grabbed some antibiotic cream from the kit and gently spread a thin layer of it across the wound. I was all too aware of Daniel’s eyes watching me as I stroked his skin, and I could feel my own body reacting in a way I didn’t want it to.
When I was finished, I took a fresh bandage from the kit and wrapped it around the wound.
“Good. You should be fine. Take these extra bandages and change it every day, then in a few days take the bandage off completely and let the wound air heal.”
“Thank you doctor,” Daniel replied with a grin, and I realized just how close we were to one another. The tension between us was palpable. I could feel the electricity between us, I could feel my lips moistening, and other parts of me moistening as well. I could feel the heat radiating off him, and as he moved his head closer to mine, I moved in as well.
He was intoxicating, there was no way to resist him. I didn’t want to resist him. Fuck the consequences. I wanted Daniel, and I wanted him now.
When he was only inches away from me, he suddenly pulled away.
“I’m sorry, Kylie. We shouldn’t do this. We can’t do this.”
“I know,” I sighed, pulling away.
“You’re so god damned good at what you do,” Daniel told me. “I know you bit my head off last time, but I honestly think you should think about becoming a doctor again.”
A shadow passed through my eyes. Memories flashed before me, the pain of them hitting me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t become a doctor anymore. I just couldn’t. Not after what happened.
I shook my head slowly.
“No. No, I can’t.”
“But why not? You’ve told me I should go back to playing hockey, isn’t this the same thing for you?”
“Yes, but you don’t get it. I watch you play sports. I see the fire of competition inside of you. I see that need you have to win, to have it all.”
Daniel smiled and shook his head. “You don’t get it either, then. I see you help me. I see you do whatever you can to help me with my knee. I saw you with Amanda the other day. You’re different when you’re healing people, Kylie. I can tell you were meant to do it. I know you don’t want to anymore, that whatever happened to you made you want to quit, but I can also see that you’ve still got just as much fire in you as before. I guess maybe we both do.”
I thought about what Daniel was saying. It made sense in a way. But still, I knew what I had gone through. I didn’t want to become a doctor anymore. After all, how could I? After what had happened, I wasn’t able to heal people. I knew that. I couldn’t become a doctor.
I shook my head slowly.
“No, I know what you’re saying Daniel, but it won’t happen. I won’t become a doctor. I can’t. I just can’t face it.”
“Maybe not now. But please keep it in mind, Kylie. Thanks for the first aid,” he added with a wink, getting up. “I guess I should go apologize to Sara and Nathan for storming off the court like that. I’ll see you later, ok?”
“Yeah.”
When Daniel left, I sat around for a while, thinking. He was wrong. He was absolutely wrong. There was a major difference between us: Daniel was incredible at sports. I, on the other hand, the person who had dedicated her life to healing people, had done the opposite. No, Daniel didn’t know the whole story. If he did, he would change his mind. I knew he would.
Still, the fact that he made me think of these things worried me. What had happened to the Kylie that spent her days in a depressed funk, not thinking about anything except the guilt that ravaged her constantly?
I realized as I sat there that it had been days, maybe even weeks since I’d just sat on my bed, staring at the ceiling and punishing myself for that
night. It was all because of Daniel. Ever since he’d shown up, I was, well, I was happy. I couldn’t believe that one person could do that to me, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I had accepted my fate. I was going to be lonely, depressed and guilt-ridden for the rest of my life. And yet here came Daniel, and in an instant I changed. I actually felt happy when I was around him. I had relegated happiness to being one of those things I would never feel again. And yet, I couldn’t help it. I enjoyed every second I spent with him.
I wondered what was happening to me. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just keep living the depressed life I had accustomed myself to?
* * *
I didn’t see Daniel for a few days after that time in the gym. I wanted to give my body some time to cool off, my mind some time to refresh itself. I wouldn’t be lying if I said I was avoiding him. Daniel was shattering the reality I had created for myself, forcing me to rethink things I had long ago decided weren’t in my future.
Finally, we saw each other at group therapy, and after the session with Doctor Emma, Daniel called out to me in the hallway. I stopped.
“Hey, Kylie. Listen, can I talk to you?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Cool. I have some pretty big news. Can we go somewhere private?”
I nodded. We ended up outside in the courtyard, sitting under a big tree providing us some shade on the hot summer’s day. The light breeze ran through my hair as I looked at Daniel. His eyes seemed to shine, I could tell the news he had was important.
“I’ve decided to go through with the surgery. I’m going to get me knee fixed.”
“Really? That’s fantastic.”
“Yeah. I spent the night I saw you thinking about it, and I think you’re right. I want to give it another shot. I will win that Stanley Cup. Next year it’s going to be mine.”
On Thin Ice 2 Page 2
