Page 82 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

But tonight, for the first time since the injury, Jamie Walker doesn't feel alone.

Chapter ten

Annette

A New Routine

The following Monday I walk into the rehab section of Frostholm Medical Center. It’s the first day of my postgraduate sports rehabilitation fellowship that I'd accepted months ago.

I'd known this day was coming. What I don't know is whether Jamie Walker has been assigned here. Statistically he probably has.

Walker Rehabilitation manages nearly every major professional sports injury in the region.

Still...there are no guarantees. I tell myself it doesn't matter. I'll treat whoever walks through the door. That's the job.

Even so, when I log into the patient schedule my eyes immediately search for one name.

I don't mean them to. They do anyway.

Walker, Jamie. 10:00 a.m. Periodic rehabilitation evaluation.

I stare at the screen and smile.

Today... he continues taking his life back.

Frostholm Medical Center looks exciting, like it’s going to be another important step in my education.

I walk in with a badge clipped to my jacket, a travel mug in one hand, and a folder of rotation paperwork tucked beneath my arm. I belong here. At least for the next several months.

The lobby rises around me in glass and pale stone, sunlight spilling across polished floors as staff move in familiar morning patterns.

Medicine always begins before most people finish their first cup of coffee.

I pause just long enough to take it in. Not because I’m nervous, but because I want to remember this.

Postgraduate rotations are competitive enough without choosing one of the most respected rehabilitation programs in the region. Frostholm’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation rotation had been the one I circled in my application packet before I allowed myself to want it.

Sports rehabilitation.

Orthopedic recovery.

Neurological restoration.

Complex trauma.

Patients learning how to return to lives that might never look completely the same but could still become whole again. That’s what drew me here. Rehabilitation gives people their lives back. I remember the conversation I had with Jamie, telling him why I chose it and how quietly and intensely he listened to my explanation. The thought slips in before I can stop it.

I tighten my grip around the coffee cup.

Today is my first morning at Frostholm Medical Center’s outpatient sports rehabilitation clinic, and I am not going to start it thinking about a certain stubborn hockey captain who refuses to press call buttons, loves mushrooms, and somehow remembers every person he meets.

I have work to do. I take the elevator to the rehabilitation wing.

The doors open to a different kind of medicine. No overhead codes. No rolling stretchers. No antiseptic panic.

Instead, sunlight fills a therapy gym through a wall of windows.

I smile. Yes. This. This is exactly where I want to be.