Chapter 4: Cortisone

I carried a vial out to him in my fist.

He was pulling a shirt over his head in the living room, and when he saw what I held, the color left his face.

"How many this season?" I said.

"Thirty-one."

"Do you know what that does to a torn labrum?"

"I know."

"Harold says if I want to play, I take the shot."

"Harold isn't the one with the shoulder."

"Tomorrow is a home game," I said. "Nobody gives you a needle."

He looked at me for a long time.

"Okay," he said.

At five the next afternoon, the team doctor came into my training room with a syringe on a steel tray.

He was a smooth, pink man with a gold watch, and he called me "Ms. Contini" as though I were a student teacher.

The coach stood by the whiteboard.

Six players sat taping their sticks.

Aili was folding towels in the corner and pretending not to listen.

"Captain," the doctor said. "Shoulder out, please."

"No shot tonight," I said.

The tape guns stopped.

"His labrum is torn. That's thirty-one injections. Another one takes him closer to a repair that ends his season."

"The general manager has authorized this treatment."

"Then the general manager can come hold his arm."

I turned to Hugo.

"It's your shoulder. It's your career. Do you want it?"

Everyone looked at him.

He slid off the table.

"No shot," Hugo said. "I'll play without it."

"Doc, you heard the captain," the coach said, and the doctor took his tray and left.

Aili snapped a towel flat and said, to the room in general, "About time."

He played the first period with a knife in his shoulder.

In the third he stripped the puck off a winger at his own blue line.

He carried it the length of the ice and put it past the goalie with his bad arm hanging at his side.

The arena shook.

He turned to the bench with his stick raised and looked straight at me, and I forgot to breathe.

We won three to one.

By nine the dressing room was dark and silent except for the one light over his stall.

I found him sitting on the bench in a towel with his head back against the wall.

"You were right," he said. "It hurt so much I could see. And I didn't care, because you were standing there."

I crossed the room and stopped in front of him, close enough that my knees touched his.

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