Chapter 15: Repair

The surgery was three weeks later, on a Friday, at seven in the morning.

The school had parked me at a family clinic on the south side until the committee decided what I was.

I gave flu shots and took blood pressures.

I told a man in a Packers hat that his foot was broken.

He told me I was too young to know.

"I was a paramedic for four years," I said.

"Too young for that too," he said, and let me splint it.

Tate's pay stayed suspended.

The players' union filed a grievance. The team didn't answer it.

The goalie, the captain and the two young guys got outside scans on Tate's money.

The goalie had a torn hip labrum, and the captain a torn meniscus.

The winger's ankle ligament was barely holding.

The young defenseman had a cracked bone in his back that nobody had ever imaged.

Four more mild strains.

The goalie texted me his MRI report with one line under it.

Mild, doc.

I drove Tate down to Chicago the night before, and we slept in the same hotel in the Loop.

One bed this time.

He was up at four, pacing, in a hospital gown under his parka because they'd told him to come ready.

At five-thirty the surgeon met us in pre-op in green scrubs and actual shoes.

"Molloy. Big guy." He drew on Tate's right shoulder with a purple marker. "You eat anything?"

"She wouldn't let me."

"Good. She's in charge till you wake up."

They wheeled him back at six-fifty.

He held my hand with his left until the doors.

"Don't let them put a pin in it," he said.

"There's no pin."

"Don't let them anyway."

The doors closed.

I sat down in the surgical waiting room with a paper cup of coffee and a board that showed patients as numbers and colors.

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