Page 26 of The Goalie in Room 1

As easily as I could see the difference between the doctor and the man, I had no fucking clue how to separate the two in my mind.

Worse, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

6

THAD

November

The highlight reels I scrounged up of Cash played silently from the tablet I propped on the outdoor dining table on the balcony overlooking the rocky shore line below my house. All his medical records and imaging sat cued on my laptop, waiting for me to riffle through them. Again.

Instead of focusing on either device, I watched the waves roll in. The Pacific—the sounds, the smell, the rhythmic cadence—calmed my raging thoughts. That calmness allowed me to sift through the information I’d spent the day pouring through.

The same information I’d spent yesterday and the day before looking at as well. I spent three days trying to find something. Anything. Because there had to be something.

Something I missed.

Something one of the other doctors missed.

Only I couldn’t find anything.

Turning back to the tablet, I tapped replay and turned up the volume. The compilation video of Cash Money’s—the nickname tickled me—saves was edited to flow along with the song “Holding Out for a Hero.” The kid was an absolute menace in the net. Big, bold, brazen. Along with a whole fucking slew of adjectives that didn’t begin with B. He stopped pucks like he had a mind meld with them. Or like he could read the skater’s mind.

Lightning struck, and I sighed before picking up my devices, shutting the glass wall panels, and climbing the stairs to my office. I needed a bigger screen to dissect the images anyway. The small screens weren’t cutting it. As I made my way up, the written reports played over and over through my head.

Benjamin, Caspian

Professional hockey goaltender for the Headland Cove Breakers. Breakers’ medical team reports the player has no prior major injuries.

Catastrophic right knee injury following an on-ice collision during an AHL hockey game.

In the office, I pulled up the hit. I’d watched it half a dozen times already. It looked brutal. And having played…I knew it was. I’d been taken down close to the net a few times myself. If you played, you got your shit fucked up. It was part of the game. The question was never if. It was always when.

After another replay, I turned off the hit. I ignored the written reports. Instead, I pulled up Cash’s radiological images and cast them to the touchscreen on the wall. I’d already read the report. Twice. I didn’t need someone else telling me what they saw.

I needed to see what they missed. If they missed anything. Even though I knew they hadn’t. The surgeon who did the repair did a spectacular job. I was proud of him. I could say that. I trained the doctor.

The MRI filled the screen, and I leaned forward, one hand covering my mouth as the other scrolled through the images slice by slice. The damage was significant. The original injury had healed well after surgery. It was all the issues during rehab that worried me.

A beautiful surgical repair didn’t mean a fully rehabbed injury. Sometimes what looked perfect in the operating room and on the imaging didn’t equate to the same outcome in physical therapy.

And this was the issue Cash Benjamin faced—a beautiful repair and a shitty rehabilitation response. Every time he advanced, every progression, resulted in the same thing: swelling. The inflammation was so bad they’d taken him back down, let him rest, then tried again.

I searched and found nothing to indicate Cash self-sabotaged his recovery. As much as I didn’t want to consider it, the man I’d met at the charity event had been sarcastic, a bit combative, and determined to ignore his pain and limitations so much that he turned working a charity event into an endurance event for masochists.

But there was nothing. Not one damn thing in the file suggested he’d shown any disregard for his rehabilitation. Just the opposite.

Cash had done everything by the book.

No missed appointments.

No ignored restrictions.

He listened to the treatment team.

He attacked physical therapy and each progression with the same determination I witnessed from his highlight videos.

His range of motion returned, and so did the strength in his leg. The graft held. Remained completely stable.