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“Hey,” Gibsie acknowledged as he stood in the doorway wrapped in a coat and beany cap. “Thought you’d be up.”
“What’s happening?” Claire quickly asked him. “Have you heard anything?”
“Is Johnny okay?” I demanded. “Is he out of surgery yet?”
“Were you talking to his parents?” Claire asked. “Is his mam with him?”
“Is he okay?” I repeated, voice rising.
“One at a time, girls. Christ,” Gibsie muttered as he stepped back into the hallway and gestured for us to follow him.
We both went without hesitation.
“I just got off the phone from his dad,” Gibsie stated as he leaned against the wall, looking pale and exhausted. “This goes no further than the three of us,” he added, casting us both warning glances. “Is that clear?”
We both nodded.
Gibsie, in turn, nodded wearily. “He’s out of surgery. Everything went fine,” he quickly added, looking at me. “Your boy’s alright, little Shannon. Take a breath.”
“Thank god,” I breathed, pressing my hand to my chest.
The relief that flooded my body was so strong that I had to take a couple of steps back and lean against the opposite wall.
“When they opened him up, they found a huge-ass adhesion from where they operated on his adductor at Christmas,” he explained. “Apparently, it was pretty bad.”
“How bad?” I whispered, panicking again.
Gibsie grimaced. “According to his dad, it was blocking Johnny’s sperm cord or some horrific fucking catastrophe like that.” Shuddering, he added, “Could have seriously damaged his chances of having a family further down the line.”
“That’s what was causing him all that pain?” I croaked out, devastated to think that he was in so much agony. “Oh god.”
“Not just that,” Gibsie said with a sigh. “He has a bad infection in the leg and John Sr. said they had to perform something called concomitant surgery because Johnny had something called an athletic pubalgia they didn’t spot in his last tests and scans.”
“What the hell is that?” Claire gasped.
“Fuck knows, babe,” Gibsie told her. “I’m no doctor, and I have not one iota of what the fuck any of that means, but whatever it is, it was crippling him.”
“It’s a sports hernia,” I whispered, remembering reading about it once in an article at school.
“That’s pretty bad, right?” Claire asked.
“It’s excruciating,” I choked out, paling at the thought of how much pain Johnny had to have been enduring these past few months. “He must have been in so much pain playing with that kind of injury.”
Gibsie nodded grimly. “The doctors told his father that they don’t know how he walked around with the pain, let alone continued to play rugby.”
“Is he awake?” Claire asked with a hopeful expression.
Gibsie shook his head. “Nah, he’s still in recovery. They have him dosed to the high heavens, so he’ll be out for the count for another bit.”
“Are you going to see him?” I asked.
“Hell fucking yes, I’m going to see him,” Gibsie grumbled. “And you’re coming with me.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you, little Shannon,” Gibsie replied. “He’ll want to see you.”
“He will?”
