Chapter Text
Ilya Rozanov loved the Ottawa Centaurs. It was certainly not something he would ever have been accused off before, and his move startled any and all of the hockey experts, but he learnt to love them. They might have been a sad, bottom tier team, but with his help and the help of Coach Wiebe, things had changed. He loved how scrappy the team was and how eager to win despite being the underdogs. It was very different from Boston. He’d had to adjust to captain a team not expecting anything but appreciative of any win. Ilya has loved to help along the younger guys and to learn how to motivate the troops, loss after loss. And now they were finally winning.
This game was going to be hard. Troy Barrett had just come out and now they were facing Toronto. Troy might never have been Ilya’s favourite player but he had become a bit of an expert in recognizing the mean macho men hiding their sexualities and only a few weeks of close contact with Troy had pinged his radar. He didn’t mind the guy now that he’d worked on himself and listened to Harris’ sage advice. Dallas Kent was not playing, but his team seemed to have rallied around him after his recent struggles with the justice system, rather than denouncing him as a rapist like Troy had.
It was not any random game either. It was late in the season and for the first time in franchise history the Centaurs could make the playoffs. A win in regulation time against their division rivals would assure them of a spot. Ilya motivated everyone by emphasizing how important it was for Troy as well as for the playoffs. If they lost, well, they had time to work for a wildcard yet, but Troy needed it to be against Toronto.
That seemed to do the trick, because the team was working well. Troy was struggling, clearly taking the brunt of chirps and full on insults from his previous team. They had apparently decided to hold him responsible for Kent’s arrest and didn’t back down on the homophobia either. But Ilya wasn’t leaving Troy to face it all alone. He’d learnt in Boston to play the sort of hockey where you finished checks and chirped like hell, but you backed up your talk and you dropped gloved for your teammates. He’d been more protected than protector at first, a rookie with a loud mouth, but he’d grown up into a leader who wouldn’t let his line mates take all the hits.
He wouldn’t even have needed that much motivation to mock Toronto as much as he could, but he definitely had it and he was using his full chirping potential. The ref had had to whistle to keep Toronto players from crossing the red lines a few times during warm-ups with how badly Ilya was antagonizing them.
It happened in the middle of the second. Ilya had put up two goals for Ottawa and he was not giving Toronto one inch to get back up on the score board. He was battling for the puck by the boards, saying the most vile stuff he’d kept for such close quarters — keeping contact with the strip clubs in Boston, and most importantly their managers, had its benefits. It was easy to accuse the man of the cheating he had definitely been doing and suddenly Ilya managed to wrestle the puck back. Both him and his opponent shot off at full speed down the ice. One moment, Ilya was focused on the defensemen skating towards him and the second everything went upside down.
He didn’t feel himself falling : one moment he was up, the next he was on the ice.
His wrist was below his body and a sharp pain, unlike anything else he had ever felt, suddenly assaulted him. Ilya’s breath was driven out of his lungs, his head hit the ice with a sickening crash and for a short moment he thought that was it. He was down, he wouldn’t fall further, he wasn’t out yet, he would survive this. But the players around him hadn’t settled, their momentum was still going. Not everyone had dumped their energy into making Ilya meet the ground with as much concussive force as possible.
Something pushed at him, moving his arm forcefully, then a feeling he had never known before. Like he was splitting open, like he was dying.
Everything went black.
————————————————————————————————————
Everyone would remember it later in detail. Where they had been, when they’d realized, what they’d done.
For now, Bood was skating hard on Ilya’s wing, watching the battle on the boards and hoping to catch a pass. He saw Ilya get away and raced with him to the blue line, eyes on the puck to pass the blue line after it. His peripheral vision caught it a second before it happened : Aucoin, racing towards Rozanov in what was was about to be a crazy hard, not to mention illegal, hit. Bood couldn’t even cry out, watching the collision like a car crash on the highway.
Aucoin ran into Ilya from behind, throwing the Russian up in the air with an ugly manoeuvre. Rozanov fell badly. He hadn’t been able to brace for the check and Aucoin had gone in full speed, making his hit as hard as possible. Ilya hit the ice with his left wrist under him and Bood knew instantly it had broken under the weight of two full grown hockey players. Then Ilya’s head hit the ice with an audible crack. Before Bood could wince, or look around for the EMTs, or thank God that they were at home and Dr Terry was there, something even worse happened.
Bood had seen big pileups before, but this wasn’t it : it was only Rozanov, Ken, and the Toronto winger Ilya has been battling by the boards, who had stopped before the check, perhaps noticing his teammate early enough. But there was one other man who had been going for a check on Rozanov : a Toronto defence man. Focused on the puck and his own legal check, he didn’t seem to notice Aucoin’s hard hit before it was too late. He was on an unstoppable course to hit Rozanov, who was now down. Rozanov was basically thrown onto him by Aucoin. His trajectory had been aimed at Rozanov’s shoulders for a check and suddenly he was barrelling at full speed towards that same shoulder, sprawled on the ice.
The defence man’s skates caught onto Roz’s glove and his tibia hit his upper arm. His weight transferred as he barrelled at full speed into the other player. The whole energy of the contact was channeled through the contact into Roz’s shoulder.
The crack was sickening.
Bood had never heard a sound like that, had never seen something so clearly wrong happen to a teammate. He was skating towards the collision before he made the conscious decision. He grabbed Aucoin bodily and moved him away from Ilya.
“Fucking get away !” He shouted at everyone around. “Back the fuck off ! Troy !” He shouted, panicked, at their third line mate. “No fucking brawl !” He shouted when the other Toronto defence man came up to his D pair. Thankfully the defence man who had fallen on Roz looked green in the face and was more trying to get the fuck away from this mess as quickly as possible. The rest of the teams soon followed suit. Troy quickly grabbed a hold of Aucoin, who wasn’t protesting much.
“Roz, Roz man, are you good ?” Bood fell to his knees next to his captain.
“Help !” Bood shouted when Roz didn’t move. Blood was seeping onto the ice.
“Fucking HELP !” He shouted again, and this time his voice carried over the ice. When he’d watch the footage back, he’d hear panic and pure fear in his own voice. Cassie, who’d been watching, said she’d never heard him like that.
The whole stadium reacted. Chouinard and Dykstra, the main D pair who’d been on the ice, had started skating towards the gaggle of players menacingly, but reacted immediately at Bood’s voice. The moved towards the EMTs instead as they were already rushing on the ice.
“This looks very bad, folks,” the announcer said. “What an insane accident. Let’s hope Rozanov is all right.”
The first EMT to arrive took one look at Rozanov and paled.
“Mother fucking hell,” she took half a second to swear as she started opening her kit on the ice. “Move the fuck back ! Give me a perimeter !” She shouted at the hockey players, before speaking more calmly on her radio. Her voice was steady but fast.
“Call 911, level 1 trauma !” Bood and Luca moved all of the hockey players back as all of the medical professionals in the building poured onto the ice.
“Not moveable for a spinal board yet, with the arm,” the first EMT, who seemed to take point, said. “Theo, Mat, Richard, spine alignment. Do we have airway ?”
Terry finally came in, running like Bood had never seen him. The usually perfectly calm doctor looked wild, but he somehow kept his voice steady. “I’m taking his head.” At the nod of the EMT he started looking at Ilya. The hockey player was face down, which was definitely impractical, but everyone seemed too scared to move him for now.
“Pulse is stable but elevated,” an EMT said from where he’d contorted himself to reach his jugular artery. “Good breathing.”
“I have consciousness !” Terry said. He sounded strangely calm, like someone who’d learned how to manage his adrenaline a long time ago.
Bood finally let out a breath when Terry confirmed that Roz was conscious. He couldn’t notice anything from Roz, but if Terry saw consciousness, he must have been opening his eyes or something like that. Bood was half expecting him to start screaming any time, but some kind of shock must be protecting his brain from the abject pain.
He needed to look away for a moment as he felt the adrenaline comedown and suddenly noticed all of the blood on the ice. It was a fucking lot of it.
He turned towards the Centaur’s bench. Coach Wiebe hadn’t come up to the accident, but he was on the ice, moving closer to the assembled players.
“Cut broadcast !” He shouted to someone, perhaps his assistant. Bood only now noticed the cameras trained on them and playing on the jumbotron.
“Toronto, off the ice ! Right now ! The rest, make a circle and obey the EMTs. I’ll get everyone else away and calmed down.”
Wiebe then moved to the media capsule between both team’s benches. He said a few quick words to the commentator there. The control room must have caught some of the situation by now because they zoomed the cameras out.
“Everyone, please be calm and silent,” the announcer said. “I hear that the situation is critical. Please allow the medical staff do their jobs.”
After further urgent whispering between commentator and coach lead to the bone chilling announcement :
“We ask you to refrain from filming as well, to respect the privacy of our injured players.”
By then, the EMTs had confirmation that an ambulance was en route. They’d been calling out a somewhat frightening list of injuries and explaining the whole situation to the call centre.
“Roz ? Roz, stay with me. Do you know where you are ? Consciousness back out,” Terry said when Roz failed to answer him.
“Keep track of the length of the periods of consciousness and if you have any seizures,” The team leader asked.“Do we confirm no lower body injuries ?” A nod from the paramedic at Rozanov’s feet. “Shock blanket please, cover him. We need to warm him up, get him off the ice.”
“With how he fell, broken wrist on the arm under him,” Terry added.
“Possibly broken wrist,” the paramedics relayed in their radio.
“I want the pulse on the arm of his broken shoulder.”
“Not looking good,” the guy on that side replied after a moment of concentration.
“OK, let’s get him out of here. Moving him now. Everyone ready ?”
“Conscious again !” Terry said as Rozanov was moved. He was indeed starting to look agitated, perhaps because of the pain. The paramedics were working together to flip him around without jostling his spine and setup a protecting inflatable cocoon around him.
“Shhh,” Terry said. “Lie down. You’re all right. Let us take care of you.” He had put on his dad voice, all reassuring. Still, Rozanov moved, and Bood had to close his eyes again. One of the players, perhaps Dykstra, took a stumbling step out and vomited on the ice, thankfully turning away from the accident.
“That’s a lot of blood !” One of the paramedics noticed as they transferred their strange inflatable cocoon onto the more standard spinal board.
“Secondary wound ?” Another paramedic asked.
“That shoulder will do it, brachial artery” someone else contradicted.
“No risk of haemorrhage yet, it’s not pulsing, not the artery. It’s deep anyways, blood’ll come up later even if it’s perforated.”
“Can we get a vein ?”
“We’re moving him on fucking ice !” The nurse argued.
“OK, wait for the ambulance, then push coagulant and a sedative !”
“Prepping those,” she replied, rummaging in her large bag as the paramedics prepared to move Rozanov.
“You guys,” the leader addressed the gaggle of hockey players. “Move with us if you want to keep shielding him. Do not jostle anyone. Don’t even touch us !”
“All right, let’s go,” Bood said.
They stayed close to the very strange looking cocoon protecting Roz until the medical team reached the tunnel. The Centaurs’ trainers met them there and took point to guide them to the ambulance. The hockey players stopped there, suddenly feeling useless.
Bood turned back to the bench. The whole Centaurs team was standing there, looking different shades from grey to green. He looked for Coach Wiebe, like a reflex. The announcer said something about an intermission and, although Wiebe looked rattled, he managed to shepherd the team to their locker room.
They each found their seat by muscle memory.
“Fuck,” Bood said. His voice was too loud in the silence of the room. Chouinard stood up silently and made his way quickly to the bathroom. Haas was about to have a panic attack and Hazy gently guided him to put his head down and breathe.
Coach Wiebe had walked into the room with them and closed the door behind him, only for it to open up again.
“Roz had no family here today. I found his file, you’re his emergency contact, boss.” It was one of trainers, addressing Wiebe.
“All right,” the coach said. Bood didn’t know how he was keeping calm. “Give me the medical file, I’ll go see him. Do we know which hospital ?”
Still, Wiebe took a moment to address his team.
“This is a shock to all of us. Take a moment, talk about it, calm down and let the shock leave. We’re taking a long intermission.”
He left as his assistant came back with a file, having located it quickly.
“So, do we know…” the backup goalie asked, shy, as soon as the coach was out.
“Roz was injured by a check from Aucoin and the Toronto D man falling on him,” Bood replied. “Upper body. Probably broke his wrist and um… his shoulder…” he trailed off. Dykstra looked more and more green and Bood dropped the trail of thought before the second defence man had to join his pair in the bathroom.
“It’s bad,” Bood concluded. “But he was conscious and doc is with him.”
Wiebe pushed his head back into the locker room, followed by his assistant coach.
“Toronto offered to forfeit the game. Do you need to ?” He asked Bood.
“No,” Troy Barrett replied first, then a couple of other across the room joined him. They tapped their sticks.
“We’ll play for Roz,” Bood concluded when the majority sentiment was clear. Wiebe looked around, meeting everyone’s eyes. Haas might have to sit the rest of the game out, with how he looked, but the majority of players seemed ready to go back and avenge their captain. He looked for a longer time at his goalie, whose mental status was always more important, but Hazy met his gaze with determination and focus.
“Clinton will be in charge, then. You can do this. Rozanov led you here today, you built this team, all together. I believe in you, he believes in you. Don’t let his two goals go to waste. For the first time, Ottawa will go to the playoffs ! Win this for Roz !” The whole team cheered, sticks tapping, hands clapping. They were still looking off, but channeling their anger into drive.
“Don’t get into any fucking brawl,” Bood said as Wiebe left. “No one else is going to the hospital. No one is getting suspended when we lost Roz. Hear me ?”
“Yes, Cap,” the room replied.
He didn’t let himself believe that the defensemen wouldn’t do their best to grind down Toronto with heavy checks but trusted himself to keep the bench in check and limit the penalties. He started his round around the room with the pair of goalies, trying to coax everyone into following their rituals and settle into their mindsets.
————————————————————————————————————
Terry followed the team into the ambulance and suddenly realized his days emergency medecine were far behind him. He stuck by Rozanov’s head as long as he wasn’t in the way of anyone else and tried to keep him conscious. It proved to be a hard task but he note of when Ilya wasn’t conscious and be reassuring presence when he was.
They rolled into the ER with haste and seemed to fly through the room in a way that anyone with any sense would know heralded trouble. Terry, of course, had a medical education on top of common sense and he didn’t need anything to tell him that Rozanov was in deep trouble.
The paramedics handed their patient over to a team of nurses who quickly found Rozanov a secluded room and started working on him right away. He was out unconscious again but thankfully the monitors he was quicly hooked onto read out a decent heart and breathing rate. Terry helf out a breath at seeing the vitals. The blood pressure wasn’t great and neither was basically anything else. Besides, Rozanov was still loosing blood.
While the nursing team worked on stabilizing their patient, another small group of medical professionals walked in.
“Hi, I’m Doctor Swartz,” the older man said as he scanned the room. “Are you with the patient ?”
“Yes,” Terry replied. “I’m Dr Taylor, I’m his doctor, sports medecine.”
“Right,” Swartz said, “Tell me about him.”
“Ilya Rozanov, 29 years old, healthy professional athlete. Fell during a game because of a collision with two other players. From what we could see he fell on his left wrist, hit his head and then his left shoulder was wrenched back behing his back.”
Swartz was writing, nodding when the information matched the dispatcher’s.”
“I have his baselines for everything you might need on file,” Terry added. “And a note of his periods of consciousness since the accident.”
“Good, I’ll give that to neuro,” the doctor said. He finally looked up at his patient and Terry followed his gaze. Rozanov was being stripped down by the small army of nurses and Swartz took notes about the injuries as they were revealed.
“Any known antecedents ?”
“Some small concussions, typical for the sport, nothing concerning. His shoulders and wrists were fine…”
“Nothing else ? Medications ? ” Swartz looked up at Terry, meeting his eyes.
“Oh,” Terry suddenly said. “There is one medication. He’s on Fluoxetine. Typical dose for his body mass, that’ll be on his chart.”
“Nothing else, you’re sure ? No painkillers, nothing like that ?”
“He wasn’t injured, no,” Terry shook his head.
“Look, if there are some other medecines, steroiods, stimulants, whatever, we need to know.”
Terry suddenly realized he was talking about doping.
“No, there was definitely not. At least none that I prescribed, and I have no reason to believe that he got some from anywhere else.” Terry knew he was being defensive but really ? Why was this random doctor thinking so lowly of Rozanov ? Not to mention Terry himself.
Swartz nodded, not looking so convinced but willing to move on.
“All right,” he said. “I don’t think of any issues wiht the Prozac but it’s noted, pharmacy will raise an alarm if needed. We’ll put him on suicide protocol when he wakes up.”
“I don’t think…” Terry started to argue, but then it dawned on him. Rozanov might need it. He had been suddenly grievely injured, he was perhaps not coming back to hockey and he was potentially going to wake up alone in a hospital room without the use of any of his arms. Terry hadn’t done much psychiatry for a while but he could recognize a riksy situation.
He looked back at Rozanov as Swartz moved on to his bedside. Swartz’s resident had already started calling what amounted to every specialist in the trauma unit. Rozanov was bleeding more and more even as Swartz called to push some coagulant. His pulse was slowing. Someone, perhaps an intern, was saying something about blood flow below Rozanov’s mangled shoulder.
Terry suddenly felt himself get light headed. There was a reason he’d chosen sports medecine rather than a hospital role —although he had ended up in one of the more bloody branches of the role. He got out of the room, handing his quick notes on Rozanov’s consciousness episodes to a young doctor who seemed to be coordinating his care. Terry had barely exhaled and slowed himself down that he started feeling even more faint. He slid down the wall and put his legs up, knowing how to avoid passing out. The only thing he needed was to be the one getting a concussion.
He’d barely started his deep breathing that his phone rang.
“Yes ?” He asked, pleased to note that said phone was actually with him.
“I’m coming to meet you.” It was Coach Wiebe, Terry realized immediately. He moved to sit up, still staying close to the ground. “Where are you ?”
“Ottawa hospital,” Terry said. “Still in the ER.”
Some doctor passed his head through the door “Is he good for MRI ?” She asked.
“Yes, no metals,” Terry confirmed. The young doctor didn’t even reply, getting back in immediately.
“Bran, bring his medical file,” Terry continued in the phone.
“Yeah, Jan has just given them to me. That’s where she saw I was his emergency contact. I’ll bring my stuff as well, you never know.”
“Right. Everything OK at the rink ? No one else injured ?”
“All good,” Wiebe confirmed. “Bood and Clinton have it under control.”
It felt strange that they’d cared about the outcome of the game only half an hour ago. Terry couldn’t care less anymore. He just hoped no fights would break out.
“We’re moving him to imagery, removing helmet right now,” Swartz said, coming out of the room.
“I’ll let you go,” Terry said to Wiebe. He stood up, not too quickly.
“You have his emergency contact ?” Swartz asked.
“Yes, he’s coming right now. He was at the rink, it’s his coach.”
“Right. The office knows how to handle that, for VIPs and all,” the doctor said.
“Look,” he continued more slowly. “This is a very serious trauma. We need to check for serious head and spine injuries first, but there’s lots of bleeding. We’re already pushing fluids and coagulants, and the vitals aren’t great.” Terry nodded. He’d realized that but hearing it all confirmed by an actual ER attending was something else.
“We’re prepping the block for him. I want to move fast for the shoulder, it looks like the artery might be nicked. We have a good trauma surgeon, I’ve called our upper body ortho in, but look. I’m not the greatest fan of athletes and I don’t want to give him any special treatment, but I get that it’s a special case. Call your consultants.”
Terry wondered why he hadn’t already thought of it.
“I’ll call our hockey specialist ortho, but I don’t have a shoulder guy.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Swartz said. “There’s an amazing shoulder surgeon in Toronto, I’ll have our chief call her.”
“Thank you,” Terry said. “I know this is not really typical…” He was cut off by motion from inside the room.
“Don’t mention it,” Swartz said as his staff wheeled Rozanov out. His pager rang and he strode out, already needed somewhere else. Terry stayed there for a moment, leaning on the wall, watching the ER buzz around him. He picked up his phone and started dialing.
————————————————————————————————————
Coach Wiebe was not a man who panicked. He was the rock his players and staff needed in stressful situations. He’d let them through a plane’s emergency landing, for God’s sake. He still found himself walking too fast to get into the hospital.
“I’m here for Ilya Rozanov ?” he asked the worker at the front desk. She didn’t seem to recognize the name at first but as soon as she entered it in her computer she must have seen a flag pop up, because she stood up at once.
Wiebe hadn’t thought to be discreet in giving the name out and heads were already turning towards him. “Follow me,” the receptionist said.
They quickly made their way to some sort of secluded waiting area. Wiebe didn’t sit down, pacing back and forth in the small room instead. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before someone else came to collect him. This time, he walked further into the belly of the university hospital. How one made their way through the maze, he could only wonder. All corridors looked white and similar to his untrained eyes.
“This is the meeting room we have set up for Rozanov,” he was told as he and his escort emerged from a lift. “The doctors will meet you there.”
Wiebe walked in and suddely breathed out with relief. Terry was there. He knew someone and he was not alone in this huge hospital. The doctor could only make a gesture in greeting, he was on the phone. So Wiebe took out the documents he’d brought and sat down to wait.
“You came quickly,” Terry said.
“How is he ?” Wiebe asked, looking up from his third re reading of the medical file that he didn’t even understand.
“He’s stable for now, he’s in imagery. They want to move him quickly to surgery because the shoulder artery might be hemorrhaging.”
“Right,” Wiebe said with the look of something who could not be less right. “So no…” he didn’t even want to say.
“He’s not dying,” Terry confirmed. “He’s in the hospital, he’s stable, they have him on all sorts of monitoring. He’s getting a scan right now to check for any brain or spine injury. He was consicous, I was talking to him, he’s fine.”
“Thank God,” Wiebe said. He slumped down on his chair. “I… there was so much blood on the ice. Fuck, I didn’t know… I couldn’t see…”
“You’re good, Bran, you’re all right,” Terry said, quite nonesensically. “You were right to stay away at the rink, the paramedics had it under control. Rozanov is going to be fine.”
Wiebe took deep breaths and tried to get himself to think productively.
“What do you need?” He asked. “What can I do ?”
“You brought the medical files, that’s good,” Terry sits down next to Wiebe. “I’ll bring these to someone so the hospital can put them on the system,” he says as he looks at Rozanov’s baseline neurology tests. “Try to sort out the imagery,” he adds, probably only to give Wiebe something to do. “We need wrist, shoulder and any general images we have of the spine or stuff like that.”
Terry is about to walk out when he pauses.
“Do you know any upper body orthopedist surgeon ?”
“Why would I ?” Wiebe asks. “Is there not someone here…”
“Yeah, there’s someone here, and I’ve called our guy, but he does knees and hips, not wrists and shoulders. We’re also calling people in from Toronto. Just think about it, all right ?”
Wiebe thinks about it. He thinks about anyone he knows who got injured. He thinks about all of his past players and his past teammates. He doesn’t get a name, or anyone he could reasonably justify calling at this hour to get a name. He trusts Terry though and he trusts the hospital. If they’re calling someone, they’ll be good.
He sorts through the medical information, knowing he’s messing up the timeline of Rozanov’s scans but managing to get an image from an old X ray of his shoulder after a particularly hard check had worried Terry. He doesn’t have any of a wrist but he gets some intake basic X rays of the whole upper body.
Then he puts on the game, like he always does when any team is playing. It’s strange, seeing his own team play and being far from them. He wants to scream at them, to switch lines, to shake his assistant coach Clinton when he messes up a call. But the Centaurs are doing well. Defense is holding, despite their first line of Chouinard and Dykstra looking very pale and their second line throwing more punches than reasonable. Toronto is not scoring. Bood is talking to everyone, he can see him on the bench patting shoulders and keeping his team together. Clinton followed their procedures and moved people up the lines in proper order, so everyone still knows how to play with each other. They practiced the secondary setups, of course, in case anyone was injured or simply got a penalty —it wasn’t like Rozanov never got those. But playing without him for longer than a 10 minute major was going to be a challenge. The new first line centre was winning faceoffs. Bood and Troy were playing keepaway more effectively than they had any right to, considering the circumstances. On the second line, Haas had chosen offense. He was finishing his checks like he rarely did and his line mates followed suit, letting themselves be taken up by the spirit Haas was putting in his game. He’d make an amazing captain one day, Wiebe thought. Hopefully he wouldn’t need him to take on that mantle too soon.
The score was still 2-0 when Terry came back. This time, he was followed by a gaggle of doctors.
“Everyone, this is Coach Wiebe, Rozanov’s emergency contact.”
Wiebe stood up, unsure if shaking hands was appropriate. It seemed it wasn’t, because all the doctors took seats quickly.
One man turned on a screen at the front of the room and moved through some files.
“I’m Dr Swartz,” another man said. “Emergency medecine and trauma. I’ll be leading Rozanov’s care team for now, until he moves out of the ER.” Wiebe nodded.
“Brown, radiologist,” the man standing by the screen introduced himself. “Here’s the cranial X rays and MRI, we only have a small fracture here,” he pointed to something that was totally invisible to Wiebe.
“We’ll call neuro once he’s conscious, there’s probably a concussion,” Swartz added. A few other people, Terry included, nodded.
“Spine is looking good,” the radiologist continued, opening another image.
“Now, for the wrist. We indeed have a complex fracture.” Everyone, even Wiebe, winced. It looked like there were multiple bones broken and many of them thrown out of alignment. Multiple people started writing in their notes and muttering amongst each other.
“We’ll address this later, please,” Swartz said. “The shoulder is more urgent.”
Brown nodded and pulled up a series of X rays.
The room fell silent.
“Well, fuck,” someone said.
Wiebe, who hadn’t seen Rozanov’s shoulder after his accident, was stunned. It looked aboslutely horrible, not even recognizeable as a shoulder. Not that Wiebe would have recognized much on an X ray anyway, but he could see some breaks in the clavicle and upper bones and then a mess of the articulation itself. The upper arm wasn’t where it was supposed to be, at all.
One of the doctors stood up and walked up to the screen.
“Do you have other angles ?”
“No, we didn’t move him,” Brown replied.
“Yeah, I guess. Shit. Sorry,” he added, remebering that Wiebe was in the room and that he wasn’t only among medical professionals. “I’m Lee, ortho.”
Wiebe nodded.
“I have some older X rays if you need them ?” Wiebe asked. “Of his shoulder normally.”
“Sure,” someone said. They passed the printed image around. The contrast was stark even to untrained eyes.
The ortho surgeon who was stil standing by the screen at the head of the table kept the file. He looked up from it to the recent set of X ray.
“All right,” Swartz said, “We’ll go into surgery to fix the leaks on the shoulder, and check how bad things are. We’re not planning any actual reparation for now, just stabilizing the situation. Everyone else, comments ?”
“We’ll need to prep more for any actual reparations, for sure,” Lee, the ortho surgeon says. “We’ll need multiple surgeries anyways. I agree with basic work for now to keep everything stable. Let’s try to bring his arm in a neutral position as well.”
Swartz nodded.
“Did you call for a vascular consult ?”
“They’re warned and on call just in case,”
“Right,” Lee said, sighing. “I’m going to need help on that one. Who’s on call for upper body ?”
“Richard is coming in, but I’ve asked for Singh from Toronto. She’s the shoulder specialist we want.”
“Right,” Lee nodded. “Great, we’ll need them.”
“Anyone else ?” Swartz continued, turning his gaze around the room.
A few people asked questions, especially the anesthesiologist. Terry or the ER team answered when they could. The different specialties debated among themselves, finding the best compromise for Rozanov’s helath.
“All right then,” Swartz said once everyone agreed. He looked at Wiebe.
“You are his emergency contact, right ?”
Wiebe nodded.
“Who’s his power of attorney ?”
“I don’t… He doesn’t have any family that we know of.”
“Well then,” Swartz said. “We’ll have to talk to legal if anything more happens, but for now we’ll take your word. You’re good with the plan for surgery ?”
Wiebe took a look at Terry, who nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Do what you need to stabilize things. We’ll wait until we have the opinion of the shoulder specialists for more. Please keep Terry in the loop as much as possible.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Swartz nodded. The whole thing had taken 15 minutes maximum, and apparently a spot in the operating room wasn’t even ready yet.
Everyone filed out of the meeting room and Wiebe found himself alone once again. He hoped Rozanov wasn’t in too much pain. He hated not knowing where he was, how he was, how his vitals had held up while they all talked. He hoped Rozanov wasn’t conscious and alone in the depressing hospital with its bips, its confusing mouvements in the edge of one’s vision, its harsh lights. At the same time, he hoped he was conscious, alive, his brain functioning properly.
Wiebe paced around the room only once, then forced himself to sit down. He opened the medical files again, then realized he’d also brought his personal files on Rozanov. They shouldn’t be useful, his notes about play style, nutrition and best recovery methods, but he opened them all the same.
He liked to take notes by hand and he filed them preciously in manilla folders. It might look old school, but his system hadn’t failed him yet. Something caught his eye as he spread out his files.
“Wait,” he said aloud. He remebered putting this post-it note on the back of the folder. It was a phone number, with the mention “Only contact for SERIOUS emergency.”