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The coach turned toward me. “Football is his life. If that hand isn’t better than it was before, you might as well kill him.” His eyes blazed right through me, and I felt a chill go down my spine.
“Like I said, I’ll let you know when he’s out.” I hurried out of the waiting room and headed to prep for surgery.
The nurses stopped whispering when I walked in the door. They were looking through the glass at the huge figure lying on the operating table. This entire scenario was absurd. It was a broken hand, for God’s sake. This wasn’t a triple-valve replacement. I sighed and started scrubbing in for the most important hand repair of my life.
3
Wes
I could hear a beeping sound next to my right ear that was driving me fucking nuts. My eyes opened to a dim hospital room. I tried to sit forward, but nausea slammed into me and I sunk into the pillow. Fuck.
I looked at my right arm, which was propped up by some sort of contraption. There was a tube running into my veins and a blood pressure cuff on my left arm that kept turning on every fifteen minutes.
My mouth felt dry and I licked my lips, looking for water.
It all came back to me. The Dean. The nurse. The bottle of scotch I drank. I closed my eyes.
I never should have stepped on the practice field still drunk, but it wasn’t like it was the first time I had done it. Half the team was still blitzed after last night.
I knew the snap was bad the instant I took it. I turned to try to recover it, lost my balance, and landed on my back. We were all so shit-faced no one had any balance. Canon came roaring over the line, and before he could stop, his cleats ran right over my hand. The instant I heard it, I knew what it was. A break.
The practice field was as quiet as a church. The trainers rushed me into the facility and splayed my hand on a table to x-ray it. As soon as they saw it, I was slung into a car and dropped off in the operating room at San Antonio Mission Hospital, being prepped for emergency surgery. Coa
ch was with me the whole time.
Of all the fucking accidents to happen, why did it have to be my right hand?
There was a knock on the door and Coach walked in. He scratched the back of his head with his visor. “How you feelin’, Wes?”
“Could you hand me that water?”
The pitcher was on a cart too far for me to reach. He poured a cup full and placed it in my left hand.
“Thanks.” I took a sip, feeling the nausea subside.
“Surgery went well.” He rocked back on his heels. “The doc’s coming in to talk to you about the prognosis, and then our trainers will be in to come up with a plan. We’ll figure this out. We’re all behind you.”
“Good.” I nodded. “I want to get back on the field as soon as I can. I can throw with my left if I need to.” I tried to laugh, but my head was fuzzy, and moving my right shoulder shot pain all the way down to my fingertips.
“We know you do.” He tapped the footboard on the hospital bed. “Get some rest and we’ll talk strategy tomorrow.”
I finished off the water and reached for the remote. A broken hand wouldn’t take that long to heal. I knew the drill. I’d take some extra meds. The trainers could pump me up with whatever I needed to make it through the games, we could make it to the Super Bowl, and I’d heal in the off-season. This was a standard injury. Nothing more.
The immediate gut-wrenching feeling I had when I woke up started to evaporate as I convinced myself this wouldn’t be a setback. I might miss one game. Only one. And then the Wranglers would have me back after the bye week. That gave me two weeks to recover enough to play.
I flipped through the channels, landing on Sports Now. I read the ticker, expecting to see my name on the scroll as one of the headlines. Maybe since the injury had occurred at practice, the Wranglers had managed to keep it away from the press. None of us wanted this getting out.
I listened to the talking heads discuss the playoff possibilities. We were one of the teams on the cusp of breaking in. I rolled my eyes at the discussion. The Wranglers were going. I didn’t need to hear these idiots debate how good my team was.
“Knock, knock. Mr. Blakefield, how are you feeling?”
I looked over from the TV. Suddenly, I felt a whole let better. There was a gorgeous woman circling the bed, walking toward my injured hand. She had long blond hair pulled back, but tiny wisps floated around her face. Her blue eyes were striking.
“I’m Dr. Ashworth.” She smiled, showing off luscious pink lips.
I knew what this was. This was the guys’ way of trying to cheer me up. They knew how much I liked the nurse getup last night. They probably heard it through the suite door. It wasn’t like I held anything back when I fucked a woman. They had sent me an upgraded version to cheer me up after my surgery.
“Doc, is it?” I teased.
