It's Not Easy

Chapter 6

I woke up and only Tyler was here now. "Hey you, how you feeling?" "I'm okay. What time is it?" "6:45pm." "Really?" "Yeah your surgery was 5 hours." "Wow, thank you for being here." "Always." He leaned down and we kissed. We both pulled back with a smile. The doctor came in. "How are you feeling Miss. Kane?" "I'm okay." "Any pain?" "Not really no." "Alright we want to try and get you walking with crutches obviously. We understand if you can't right now because of pain and the surgery was just done but we want to get a gauge on what the expect." "Okay. I have one question." "Sure?" "When can I play again?" "A year at the least. Right now it's really too early to give a timetable." He handed me the crutches and Tyler helped me stand up from bed and I got the crutches situated. I did what the doctor told me and there was a little bit of pain when I walked. "That pain is normal but looks good, we are gonna keep you tonight and you go leave in the morning." "Alright thank you sir." "No problem."

The next morning I was able to leave and the Stars doctors said that they were going to help me rehab which I'm very thankful for. Tyler has practice this morning so I am going with him. When we got to the arena, we went to the locker room quite slowly because I'm a cripple and Tyler makes sure I know it. It's quite annoying actually. "Maddie!" "Hey guys." "How's the knee?" "Sore, little bit of pain. Nothing too bad though." "That's good. What did the doctor's say was the time table for you playing again?" "Nothing less than a year." "Damn, that sucks." Demers said. "Thank you captain obvious." "Now that's not very nice." "Boo hoo you're a big kid." "No actually I'm not. I'm an adult." We all just started laughing and he tried to keep a straight face but couldn't and eventually joined in on the laughing. "I have to go see Dave I'll see y'all later." I went to Dave's office and sat on the table thing waiting for him to notice I was there. He turned around and jumped which made me laugh. "How's it feeling?" "It's alright seeing as it was yesterday when they did the surgery." "Alright they sent me all the information so I do know what's wrong and what to do, so I want to do electro stim, not today through. The big issue we have is that we can't work on the knee ligaments until the tibia bone is healed. The rod is in there so it could be up to three months to heal and so the knee ligaments would freeze and then your range of motion is at risk. So we are working on trying to figure out how to go about that so they don't freeze." "The doctor told me at least a year not playing what do you think?" "I honestly do believe that, one year is the minimum to you getting back. The goal is to have you back playing your senior year but we can't rush things, you have about 3 months on the leg but then you'd be starting fresh with the ligaments which could be 7-14 months before you start practicing and you won't be game ready for another month to three months." "Damnit." "I'm sorry Maddie." "No don't be, thank you for being honest. I'm just frustrated with the situation." "I understand completely." "And thank you for doing this because you don't have to." "Yes I do, these guys love you and I want you to have the best care you can get. Just know you might have travel with the team sometimes." "No that's fine, I'm getting all my school work emailed to me so I can do it while I'm here since I can't get around campus and I'm rehabbing here." "Alright and where are you staying?" "With Tyler." "Alright so you are in good hands." "Yes sir." After the conversation we pretty much just worked on my good leg and keeping that muscle since I really can't do anything with the other leg yet. Once we were done I went to the ice and watched the guys practice. "Ty c'mon you're better than that!!" I yelled when he missed a shot. "Shut up loser!" "Meanie!" "Oh we're throwing it back elementary school." "Shut up Tyler!" "That's a naughty word." "You're a naughty word!" "Lindy she's being mean!" "Stop being a tattletale." "I wouldn't have to if you would be nice to me." "I wasn't being mean." "Yes you were." All the guys were hysterically laughing. "Alright you two. Tyler back to work." Tyler skated over and kissed my cheek before going back to work.