Page 12 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

Tonight.

The words should be the loudest things in the room.

They aren't.

All I can think is...Who's taking care of the team tomorrow?

The ceiling tiles blur above me. Somewhere beside the bed, Annette says something to the surgeon.

I don't catch the words, I only hear her voice. Calm. Certain. Close.

Jamie Walker has spent his entire career protecting everyone else.

Tonight...there isn't a single thing he could protect.

Chapter two

Annette

The World's Worst Patient

By the time I start my morning shift, Jamie Walker has already made hospital news.

Not the official kind. The nurse-to-nurse kind.

The orthopedic trauma floor at Riverton Regional Medical Center runs on coffee, controlled chaos, and whispered updates long before anything makes it into a chart note. By seven fifteen, everyone knows the captain of the Frostholm Blizzards came out of surgery sometime after two in the morning.

Displaced left clavicle fracture, repaired with a plate and screws.

Three fractured ribs.

Small pneumothorax, stable and resolving.

A whole lot of stubbornness, still undiagnosed but strongly suspected.

I stand at the workstation outside his room and scroll through the overnight notes for the third time.

The Blizzards had been here in Riverton, hundreds of miles from Frostholm when it happened. They were playing a nationally televised road game in our arena. That is how he ended up here instead of at Frostholm Medical Center. Wrong city. Wrong hospital. Wrong night.

But the right trauma team.

I remind myself of that as I read the operative report.

Successful fixation. No complications. Pain controlled with medication. Oxygen saturation was stable overnight. Repeated chest films show no worsening of the pneumothorax.

Good. Very good.

I’m an ARNP, Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner, on the orthopedic trauma service, but I also cover arena emergency medicine when the hospital contracts medical staff for major events. Most nights, that means sprains, stitches, dehydration, the occasional broken wrist from someone who forgets ice is slippery.

Last night was not most nights.

Last night, Jamie Walker hit the ice like the sound had been sucked out of the entire building.

I still remember his face beneath the arena lights. Pale, with teeth clenched while trying to pretend the pain was smaller than it was.

Trying to look past me toward a rookie who clearly mattered more to him than his own ability to breathe.

I close his chart. Fame can wait. Status can wait. The Frostholm Blizzards can wait.