Work Text:
Troy supposes it could be worse. He could miss out on the next few games, but he won't. As timing wants it, the Guardians fly out of the Play-Offs the same day Troy does. Though, objectively, they have it better. The rest of the team isn't lying in a stuffed hospital all the way in Edmunton, by now they must be back in Toronto. Home. Or the closest thing Troy has to a home, though it... Perhaps... Troy tries to shake the thoughts away as he feels the loneliness creep up on him. He doesn't like thinking about it.
It doesn't work.
Still, Troy supposes it could be worse. Dallas won't fly up to Edmunton to berate himfor being a wimp, so he'll get to sleep of his surgery in peace.
Or, he would get to, if he could finally fall asleep.
Despite the pain medication making him loopy, Troy's tired eyes refuse to stay shut. He can hear snoring from the room next door even through the wall, he can hear cars driving outside and rushed steps in the hall, he can hear his own heart in the form of a beating monitor, his own strained breathing filling the room. Everyone else is so far away, only Troy is here, but even he feels dsiconnected from it all. It must be the meds, he thinks, the way his body doesn't feel his own.
Despite that, Troy feels unbearably present in this place. Perhaps it is the fact he can't leave. That he is trapped here, in Edmunton. Where it is cold ,where it is lonely, in this unfamiliar hospital in this unfamiliar city. Where he knows nobody and knows nobody will come to sit by his side and fuss over him and sing him to sleep. Where Troy shivers underneith his scratchy blanket and can't fall asleep and even if he could would be woken for even more tests, for yet another X-Ray of his stupid chest.
Troy's luck had been even worse than usual today. Or is it yesterday by now? The darkness outside the window teels him nothing, the darkness inside prevents him from reading the clock.
He is in unhappy possession of not only a collapsed lung, but one that collapsed badly enough it needed a surgery that will keep him from training for at least a month and leaves him stranded without a car for even longer.
He sighs and immediately errupts into a coughing fit again. He's been short of breath since this all started. Apperently, it will go away on its own. A lot of things will go away on their own with enough time, according to the doctor who explained Troy's recovery-timeline.
Time, time, time. Time that refuses to pass. Time that Troy will spend wasting away in a lonely hospital room. Unmoving. How much time has passed? Have they forgotten about him? Troy wonders if he will freeze to death in this place. All alone. He pathetically wishes someone was here to hold his hand. To make him all those empty promises. To keep him company. To just be here.
A loose thread has formed on one of the corners of his thin blanket. Troy fiddles with it. It wraps around his finger, the fabric bunches up as he pulls at it. His phone lies dead on the table. If only he knew the time.
Playing with the string gets boring quickly and Troy returns to staring at the ceiling. Apart from a collapsed lung, the hard check has left him with two rips bruised and one cracked as well as an abstract painting in blue slowly forming over his entire torso. He feels sore all over, and not in the good way of a satisfying work-out. The bad way of a beating, of a hard check. So it's all right and true that Troy feels bad. A bad cehck is the reason he's here.
Perhaps he deserves it veing stranded all alone in Edmunton, freezing as every one forgets him.
His heart monitor beeps, Troy breathes, the guy in the next room continues snowing, people walk and laugh and rush through their lifes a wall away, impossibly far.
He doesn't want to deserve this. But he probably does, for how mean he has been. He'll deserve the week of forcing himself to eat miserable hospital food and the disgusting bus ride to Toronto beacuse his lung won't allow him to fly. He'll deserve the month of boredom wher ehe can't train and Dallas' anger when he returns out of shape. He doens't get to be miserable when he deserves it. Or perhaps him being miserable is what make sit a punishment in the first place. Perhaps it is a good thing, that Troy is miserable.
Troy wishes he could call Adrian. But his phone lies dead on the table. He can't even have that distant comfort. Perhaps Troy deserves that, too.
The door opens. Troy looks from the stained ceiling to the nurse stepping in, illuminated by the cold hallway lights.
"How's it going, Mr. Barrett?", the nurse asks. His name is Michael, he has three sons and two daughters, his wife works in upper management, he has had five dogs and two cats and one goldfish over the span of his life, but that last one was a bad idea with the cat he had at the time. Michael, called Mike by his friends, would be annoyingly chipper even if Troy wasn't grumpy and tired and miserable. The only way he can manage not snapping at Mike is saying a little as possible, though better still would be nothing at all. Part of it, Troy confesses if only to himself, is that he wishes his own father would pay as much attention to him as Mike does.
"Been better", Troy answers, "Can't sleep."
Mike looks like the father's in movies. The good ones, like Uncle Ben. Troy wishes his father would come in at night to checks if Troy's heart still beat, if everything was alright. Troy wishes he had a father who didn't leave him a voice message scremaing at him for playing so badly it lande dhim in the hospital.
Troy wishes he didn't deserve this.
Mike calls his goodbyes. Troy's reply stays stuck in his throat. The door closes and robs Troy's world of light, leaving him alone in the darkness again. Lonely and cold.
Troy wishes he didn't deserve this.
But Troy knows he does.