Chapter 48

“Grade three tear of the hamstring…”

“Three to four months of recovery…”

“Cannot train until July…”

I’m staring at the ceiling of the hospital room I’m lying in whilst everyone is talking about me as if I’m not lying in bed with a pair of working ears. Everything is bleak. The walls are bleak, the worried faces of those looking at me are bleak. Hell, even the dumb hospital gown I’m wearing is a bleak, off-white with no character. It doesn’t even have a pattern on it for Christ’s sake.

I feel numb. Inexplicably numb. There is so much I should be feeling, so much sorrow. So much pain. I should be drowning, but I can’t feel anything. I can’t feel the pain in my leg, but I also don’t feel upset, angry, destroyed. In this moment, I don’t seem to be capable of feeling anything.

I’ve been in this hospital room for nearly 24 hours now since I was raced here from the game. Coach didn’t want me sticking around for handshakes and the post-game team talk. She had Coach Walker drive me straight to the hospital my dad works at, even if it was an hour away.

Turns out my dad had the unfortunate job of telling me that the tear in my hamstring was too high to heal on its own, and they had to take me in for surgery. I didn’t even cry. I haven’t cried in 24 hours.

I woke up with my leg bandaged and a brace anchoring my knee. I’m not allowed to bend it in case I damage the tendon and ruin my leg. I woke up with everyone I love around me—and felt nothing when I saw them.

I’m seeing concerned faces, faces of people that I love and know who care about me, yet the only feeling—the only emotion I can muster from my desolate soul, is spite.

My mom is sitting on one side of the bed, alternating between stroking the hair from my face and kissing my hand. My dad is obviously my doctor, coming in and out of the room to check my charts and juggle other patients. April and Freya are both sitting on the large sofa at the end of my room, a sight in itself quite bizarre.

I never expected Freya to be here, and under normal circumstances, I’d be grateful for the company, especially since I’d rather chop my whole leg off than have Faye and Clay in here with me. Her chestnut hair is thrown in a haphazard bun atop her head, her pale skin hidden underneath a green hoodie and the black team tracksuit bottoms. Her eyes hold concern, and she’s the only one in the last ten minutes to ask me how I am.

I didn’t answer her with more than three words, but I’m glad someone spared the time to actually speak to me and not about me.

They can’t possibly understand what I’m going through. All of them are still fit, healthy, able to carry on doing what they love. My dad has never damaged his hand and had to stop performing surgery. Mackenzie is sitting next to me, idly holding my hand with two fully working hamstrings.

She gets to play in the final in two days time, while I’ll be sitting on the sidelines with crutches and my leg in a fancy, expensive brace to stabilise my knee during recovery.

Is it bad that I feel so bitter towards a girl that I love with my entire being? A girl who wants nothing but the best for me. A girl who has stayed with me since the game finished and Coach let her leave, who showered at the hospital so she saved time. Who hasn’t let my hand go since I woke up.

It wasn’t her fault this happened to me. I made the decision to make that tackle. Nobody forced me. I wanted what was best for the team in that moment, and I knew there was a chance I would injure myself. But in that moment, I didn’t care.

I care now. And that care is poisoning me.

“She’ll need plenty of bed rest.” My dad sighs, running a large paw through his hair after removing his scrub cap. I remember picking that cap out for him when I was little. It’s blue, with small soccer balls on it. He laughed and told me it was better suited for a peds surgeon, but my seven-year-old self stomped her feet and didn’t have any of it.

He’s worn the same patterned cap ever since.

“Can she go to the game on Saturday?” Mackenzie asks, her thumb stroking across my knuckles.

I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. I feel my annoyance building, listening to people discuss things without even directing the questions my way. I’m lying in this room, I’m clearly awake. I don’t want to be mad at Mackenzie, but when my dad answers the question and directs his response to her, I finally crack.

“Can we stop talking about me like I’m not here?!” I snap, all the eyes in the room finally acknowledging me. “I tore my fvcking hamstring, I didn’t go deaf!”

I’ve never sworn in the presence of my parents. Even though I have the vocabulary of a sailor, and my inner monologue really needs to wash her mouth out with soap, I have never sworn when my parents can hear. Call it a respect thing, but I won’t even swear on the soccer pitch in case they can lip-read and work out what I’ve said.

A small part of my being feels guilty, but the rest of me is so tired of being treated like a kid incapable of understanding.

“I can assure you I understand perfectly well how badly this injury is going to mess up my future. I don’t need to be coddled, I don’t need to be hidden away from the truth. I’m a grown adult who knows exactly what this could cost me, Dad.”

“Alex.” My dad sighs, his eyes finally looking at me for the first time since he came into my hospital room. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be telling me all this.” I grind out, pulling my hand from my girlfriend’s soft grip. I try to push the anger away, to collect my tone of voice. But I can’t. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes as I finally start to feel all of the emotions I have been blanching since I woke up.

All of the pain, the misery, the anger. It bubbles up underneath my skin until I can’t contain it any longer. I go from feeling absolutely nothing—to everything.

I let it out and direct harsh words at everyone who is sitting in this room, caring about me.

“You shouldn’t be telling everyone else in this room, you should just be telling me.” I spit, not even feeling guilty at the way he flinches. “You should be acting like my doctor and keeping this between me and you, not answering my friends’ questions!”

“Sweetheart.” My mom mumbles, running her hand over my forehead, wiping my tears away with her thumbs. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying.” I grind out, cutting my mom a harsh glare, my head pulling away from her soft touch. “I’m angry. Stop acting like you care about me! You haven’t bothered to be around for the last six weeks. I’m surprised you didn’t have something come up to stop you from being here.”

My mom looks like I’ve slapped her, and she recoils in her seat, hands dropping into her lap like they’re made of lead. My dad casts me a furious look but chooses not to say anything, as he smartly works out that it probably isn’t the best time to have this discussion.

At least he has the decency to keep that conversation within the family.

“Alex, that’s not fair.” April chimes in on their behalf, and my hardened gaze falls on her next.

“Don’t you have my brother to go and cry to?” I bite out, watching as her face drops, her mouth pulling shut sharply.

My anger is bubbling over into something I am going to regret, but I just feel so lost. I know I said I had a backup plan to go into sports therapy. But I never thought the decision could be made for me before I got to college.

I’m causing everyone pain, to make them feel how I feel, and it’s not fair. It’s not their fault. But the red that is falling over my eyes is making it very difficult to feel anything else but bitterness and resentment right now. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.

“Please,” I mutter angrily, turning away from everyone and closing my eyes. I don’t want to say anything else I may regret and dig my hole any deeper. “I’m tired, can everyone please leave.”

Freya and Mackenzie are the only ones who have not yet spoken up. The redhead’s eyes fall on me with a silent understanding hidden in those emerald depths, and she nods before getting to her feet, sending a glance to April. “We need to be back at the hotel with the team soon anyway.”

She drags her out of the room, my mom following shortly after. Even after everything I said, she still drops a kiss on my hairline, fingers deftly running across my scalp before following behind my friends, my dad following behind her with a gentle hand on her back.

Until it was just Mack left.

“I said everyone,” I mumble quietly, not bringing myself to look in her direction. I don’t want to look, I don’t want to see the pain one sentence has no doubt caused her.

I hear a sharp intake of breath from her, but I don’t hear anything else. I don’t hear the scrape of a chair, I don’t feel her weight lift from the edge of my hospital bed.

I finally turn to look at her, those tired grey eyes of hers set in a steel determination. Her shoulders are squared, those bee-stung lips I love so much set in a grim line, her body unmoving.

“I. Want. You. To. Go.” I snap out every word laced with spite, but still, she doesn’t move.

“No.” She grinds out. “Alex, I am not going anywhere.”

“Mackenzie, I want you to leave.” I hiss angrily. “I want you to go back to the hotel, with the team, and prepare for the final that I won’t be playing in. I want you to go.”

“No.”

“Get out!” I bark, finally losing that string of composure that was shielding her from my harsh words and hurt feelings. I take no pleasure in watching as I break that determination. I see her eyes change as she looks at me, sorrow filling those silver depths. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you here. I want to be alone, and that means that you need to go. If you love me, you’d respect that and leave me the fvck alone for a minute!”

A heartbeat passes. Then two. The silence is deafening, watching those beautiful, warm eyes freeze into a cold, icy steel. She swallows and flattens out the creases on her shirt.

“Fine.”

She stands from her seat beside me and grabs her bag, walking to the door of my room. As she steps out of the room, she glances back at me, her face still hard and upset. “I do love you, Alex, and whilst I can’t relate to how you’re feeling, I completely understand it. I don’t, however, deserve to be spoken to like that, regardless of how angry you are, and neither did anyone else you decided to spit poison at.”

I cross my arms and roll away from her, opting to look out the window to the dark and dreary view of various buildings and street lamps.

“I won’t visit you again, as you clearly need to deal with this on your own. When you feel like apologising, you know where we are.”

I don’t turn until I hear the click of the door closing behind her. I roll onto my back and return to staring at the ceiling, trying to return to the numbness I felt before I spat at everyone who cares about me.

But I can’t because an emotion I’ve been avoiding confronting is rearing its ugly head. Sorrow.

And for the first time since I laid in agony on the soccer pitch—I cry.

I cry until my face is drenched with tears, my shoulders aching as they rack with heartbroken sobs that vibrate through my body. My family, my friends, my girlfriend, they didn’t deserve the way I just spoke to them, but I did it anyway. I start to cry tears fuelled by guilt and horror at the way I’ve just behaved.

I cry until I go back to feeling nothing again.

~•~

First light creeps through a break in the curtains, the soft golden glow casting its light across my face. I blink slowly, then wince when I remember my knee is in a brace and my hamstring just had surgery.

I sigh, leaning my head back against the pillow as the numbness falls back into place.

For a second, a small second, I forgot. I forgot the tackle, the rush to the hospital, the surgery. As I’ve spent the last week in an unfamiliar bed, I’m not surprised at waking up in an unfamiliar bed.

Then I don’t feel Mackenzie next to me, and the events of yesterday creep back into my mind, my chest tightening with every laboured breath I force out of my body. I haven’t forgotten the disgusting way I spoke to my friends and family, and I press my head further into the pillow as if that will take everything back.

I was vile. Yes, I was angry and hurting, but nobody in that room deserved what I said to them. I chose to pick the biggest area of hurt, chose words I knew would cut deepest. The things I said to my mom—I regret the most, but they held the most truth. I have never spoken out about the way I feel left at home by my family. I have always supported their careers, always recognised the fact they’ve tried to be there for me. They don’t have family-friendly occupations, and I accepted that a long time ago. I should have never said what I said to her.

I push myself to a seated position on the bed, trying not to shift too much weight onto my left leg. The brace is itchy and uncomfortable, and I hope I don’t have to wear it for too long.

The answer to that question requires me to speak to my dad properly about recovery and physiotherapy.

I swallow my pride and press the call bell beside my bed before picking up my phone.

I have text messages from the girls on the team, an angry message from my brother, and a text from Mackenzie.

I feel my lip wobble as I read the one sentence she’s sent me.

Mack:- I love you

I brush the tears that escape my eyes away and throw my phone back onto the table beside me.

I was such an asshole. Such an unnecessary asshole.

Now that she’s not here, I miss her terribly. I miss her touch, her smell, her comforting presence. I miss the way her fingernails scrape gently over my skin, the way she holds my hand so softly when she knows I need physical touch.

“Such an asshole,” I mumble to myself as a nurse enters the room.

“Hey! Can I help?” A small man comes in, his creased pink scrubs and the dark bags under his eyes suggesting he’s just finished a night shift. I shift in my bed again, wincing as pain shoots through my leg, and I ignore the small hint of concern hidden behind his bright green eyes.

I don’t deserve his concern.

“Can you get Dr. Neal Doherty for me, please?” I ask quietly, the nurse nodding before quickly looking at my charts and leaving the room.

I sit with the silence he leaves me with, the occasional beep from the room adjacent is the only sound joining me with my thoughts. I don’t know what to say to my dad. Part of me thinks he should probably apologise, for treating me like I wasn’t in the room, talking about my injury to my family and friends like I was too fragile to understand.

Yet I know my family didn’t deserve that.

When my dad enters the room, my lip wobbles again. I feel like the little girl who’s scraped her knee after coming off her bike, desperate for the comfort of her father.

He looks tired, with dark blue scrubs wrinkled, his salt and pepper hair dishevelled and stuck up at odd angles like he’s just woken up. His eyes, those dark eyes that he shares with my brother staring at me with so much care, fragile like weak ice atop a defrosting lake.

“Alex,” my dad says softly, picking up the chart at the end of my bed. “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m sorry.” I sob, opening my arms for a hug. “I’m so so sorry.”

My dad doesn’t hesitate, and for that I’m grateful. He nestles me into his broad chest, the smell of clean washing and his aftershave enveloping me, and I cling to him tightly. His fingers stroke through my hair, his lips kissing the top of my head as I cry into his shirt, liquid soaking until it feels damp against my skin.

“It’s okay.” He mumbles, cupping my cheeks with his hands and pulling away to look at me. “Though I think we need to sit down and have a conversation as a family. One that isn’t fuelled by anger.”

“I think you’re right,” I mumble, fingers twisting together in my lap. My dad smiles softly, brushing away the tears streaking my face with a careful brush of his thumb. “I need to say sorry to mom.”

“I think that’s a given.” My dad tries to joke, earning a half laugh from me. “But angry or not, you were right. We haven’t been around enough, either of us, and we’ve just ignored how it would make you and Will feel because you were older.”

“I think it always felt like you forgot you had kids,” I mutter, wiping my eyes with the corner of the hospital sheets. “You never prioritised raising us, and we always felt like we were second best to your careers.”

I have bottled this up for so long it feels weird talking about it. There has been a silent understanding for years between Will and I that we never bring this up. We, like other spoilt teenagers, liked the nice things their money bought us growing up, and I took advantage of the gifts they gave us that were clearly fuelled by their collective guilt. I didn’t decline the car they bought me for my 17th birthday, and Will didn’t turn down their offer to pay for his first six months of rent so he didn’t have to stay in the dorms.

There is only so far money will get you. It can’t buy you asking for relationship advice from your Mom, or it can’t summon your parents when you want them to watch you play sports.

This year has been especially hard for me. I have been completely and utterly alone – so much so that most of my things are at Mackenzie’s and I only come home on days I know my parents aren’t working.

The second Will left me too, that is when the resentment and the abandonment started to creep into my way of thinking. And when I found out Clay betrayed me over the winter break, I lost his home as a respite too.

“I never knew you felt that way,” my dad sighs, dropping onto the bed beside me and being careful not to knock my leg. “Though I suppose we should never have put you in a position as kids to voice something like that.”

“Do you know how crap it feels,” I start, smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets as a way of occupying my hands, “looking into the stands, praying you see your parents standing with everyone else? You know that Mom hasn’t watched me play in nearly two years?”

My dad’s face shows how disappointed he feels, and that isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go. I feel tired talking about something so heavy, especially when I know I have to ask about my leg and how far my soccer career will be set back.

“Can you walk me through my injury and recovery now, please?” I mumble my question quietly as my father continues to perch at the end of my bed. I feel it best to leave the conversation there for now, and I only think it’s fair that Will and my Mom have a chance to contribute to this conversation. It wasn’t just me that felt left behind, and it isn’t fair to hate on my Mom when she isn’t here to hear it or defend herself.

Though all I think I’d want from her is an apology—after I give her one of my own.

“Of course.” He smiles, picking up my chart again and showing it to me. He runs through the surgery, the damage, the recovery. He talks through how long I’ll be in physiotherapy for and how long I’ll be using crutches before I can walk without them. I listened, but the back of my mind was itching, desperate to ask the question my dad hadn’t answered yet.

He sees the look on my face and frowns slightly, the crease between his browns deepening as his hand grips my shaking knee. “Alex, I know what you want to hear. But you need to listen to me when I say that we cannot rush this. I know you want to get on the field again, I know you want to know how quickly you can do it, but I need you to listen to the recovery and take it seriously.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe, feeling the bouncing in my good leg slowly stop.

“I know, Dad, but I need to know to keep myself sane,” I mutter. “I need to know so that I have a time frame to focus on.”

“Six to nine months, Alex,” my dad says. “Six to nine months of intensive recovery and physio. Physio will start at month three if walking without crutches is not causing too much pain.”

Three months?! The thought of being on crutches for three months makes me feel sick, a deep pain starting in my stomach and working its way up into my throat until I feel tears burning in my eyes again.

“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but if we take this seriously, you can be back on the field before the start of your first semester at college.”

“I haven’t had any offers yet.” My lip trembles as I try my hardest not to cry. “I was expecting the offers to come after States.”

My dad’s face drops and that’s all it takes for me to crumble. I know that I have good grades, and my parents could pay for my college if I asked them to. But I have been hell-bent on paving my own way through life. I wanted a scholarship to prove to myself and everyone else that I could do it. I didn’t want the first impression people make of me to be that mommy and daddy’s money got me to college, not my talent.

I have spent the last three years focusing on a sports scholarship. I don’t have the 4.0 GPA that academic scholarships look for, nor do I have the volunteering or bulking that most college applications have other than my sports commendations.

Performing at the State Championships meant everything to my future.

Right now, I don’t know if that future is going to be possible unless someone takes a long shot on me.

~•~

The second I was allowed out of the hospital, I was gone.

My dad kept me for one more night for observation and then let me leave an hour ago, well into the afternoon of the final day of States. I had the embarrassing trip to the front door in a wheelchair, where Freya was waiting to pick me up. Thank god we’re at a point in our friendship now where we’re not at liberty of picking faults in each other’s insecurities because I think one nasty word would have had me blubbering like a baby.

She merely opened the door to her car and helped me into the passenger seat without so much as a word. It’s at times like these when it dawns on me how well Freya understands me within so little time. She knows when I want to talk and when I quite clearly don’t.

It makes me wish that we’d never fallen out in freshman year, that we’d not wasted three years with our bickering and animosity. Freya and I, in a lot of ways, are the same. Like two peas in a very dysfunctional pod. And whilst everything around me has fallen apart since Christmas, she’s helped me rebuild without me even realising it.

I’m lucky to call her a friend now, though I doubt either of us would want to be the first to admit it. So, we just simply coexist and provide platonic comfort or company whenever the other asks.

Sometimes that’s all you need from a person.

I rest my head against the window and peer over to look at her.

She’s dressed for the pre-match, which makes sense considering I rang her an hour before the team was meeting. Her fiery auburn hair is plaited in her signature French braids, freckles burning spots against her tanned skin. Her black tracksuit jacket has been thrown in the backseat, the growl of our panther on full display amidst her kit bag and a few discarded hoodies.

“I think we have enough time to get back to the hotel so you can change,” Freya says, turning the ignition and pulling out of the hospital parking. “I took all of your kit left in the changing rooms back to your suite.”

I look down at what I’m wearing and grimace. Whilst Mackenzie brought me a change of clothes when she was here, I feel grubby and haven’t been able to shower since I got here. Playing a full game of soccer along with spending two nights in a hospital means that I feel disgusting and in desperate need of a shower.

“Just drop me off outside, I need to shower,” I say, and Freya merely nods her head before handing me her phone to pick the music. I’m not really in the mood, so I just press play on what she had on before, and Clairo starts playing quietly through the speakers of her car. My knee brace itches and I shift uncomfortably in my seat, trying to work out how I’m going to shower without getting my leg wet.

My dad told me not to take it off at all for the next week, and that I can’t get my leg wet at least until Friday. Whilst I think Freya and I are getting to a point in rebuilding our relationship whereby we could classify ourselves as friends, I still don’t think we’re at a point where I’d be totally comfortable with the idea of her seeing me naked and vulnerable whilst she helps me shower.

I’d rather stick my entire leg in a trash bag than risk injuring myself further.

“Do you want me to wait for you?” Freya asks quietly as she pulls into the parking lot of the hotel. “Coach has told me I can skip the first half of pre-game, but I have to be back at least for the stretching and warm-up.”

I unclip my belt as she rolls to a stop, flashing her a weak, tired smile. “Thanks, Freya, but it’s going to take me a while to work out how to shower with this stupid brace on, and if you stick around, you’ll definitely be late for warm-up.”

Freya gently grabs my bicep as I start to get out of the car, her eyes showing a cocktail of emotions her face is not. Gratitude, sympathy, and admiration. Not an ounce of pity in her eyes. She’s the first person since my injury that hasn’t made me recoil at the way they’ve looked at me like I’m made of brittle glass.

“I know you’ve probably heard it enough already, but I am really sorry about your injury. I know you haven’t heard from Penn and that you were holding out for an offer after the final. I know that we’re all really hoping that you’ll come and be with the team, but I know what it feels like when you feel so low that you want to hide in your room and never leave again.”

I smile weakly as she lets go of my arm, a quiet breeze of understanding passing between the two of us. Freya shifts in her seat, almost as if she realises we’ve both gotten very soppy with one another in this moment. “All I’m saying is, put yourself first. If you crawl into bed, don’t force yourself to get out if you don’t want to.”

I smile at her, and for the first time in a few days, I don’t want to crawl under the covers and hide away from the monsters hiding in the dark cloud hovering ominously over my future.

~•~

Hello all! It’s your favourite neighbourhood dream crusher!

Thank you very much for reading this chapter, a little bit of a heavy one I know, but it can’t always be smooth sailing, as much as I know y’all want it to be.

Not long to go now before the joy that is this trauma dumping, relationship rooting, roman empire shipping book comes to an end. As much as I would love for this book to go on forever, all stories need to end; even if only for new ones to begin…

Take that as you wish.

As always, I have to give my forever thanks to the one and only @Pinksterr12because without her, this book would be a lot more poorly written and full of commas that really didn’t need to be there.

If you haven’t already gone and read her book “Comfy Closets“, which is my roman empire, why are you still here? This is the most recent chapter I’ve updated.

Go and read that book whilst you wait for me to get my act into gear.

GO AND DO IT NOW.

Love always,

Lauryn