Chapter 9: The Brace

The play-in media day was in a meeting room under the arena in Ontario, with folding chairs and a blue curtain.

Four teams sat at one long table, two players and a coach each.

The streamer sat at the Austin end in his new brown and orange cap.

He'd already done twenty minutes on his own stream from the parking lot.

"Joel played scrims with me in December," he told the reporters. "His hand was fine in December."

"He hurt it in January," Mac said into her mic before I could.

"That's what Crown said." He grinned at her. "Crown also said he retired."

A reporter in the second row turned to me.

"Joel, is the wrist real?"

The room got quiet.

Bodie was sitting next to me, and he'd stopped breathing.

"Can somebody give me a mouse?" I asked.

A league runner found one on the tech table and plugged it into a laptop.

I undid the straps on the brace and took it off.

My right wrist was thin and pale from eight months under the black plastic.

I put my hand on the mouse and started moving the cursor in circles on the laptop screen.

The cameras came in close.

For the first minute it was easy.

The second minute, the pain came up from the wrist into the back of my hand.

My little finger went numb, and then the next one.

I kept the circles going.

"Okay," Mac said quietly. "Okay, Joel."

At two minutes and a little, my fingers opened by themselves.

The mouse slid off the table and swung on its cord against the leg of my chair.

I couldn't pick it up with that hand.

I picked it up with my left and set it back on the table, and I put the brace back on.