Full Strength

One-Logan 🏒

        I couldn't move.

        I couldn't move a single muscle in my body, except maybe my face.

        Lying in the hospital bed, staring at the ghoulish blue lights, I can barely breathe. Not just because it hurt-because oh, did it hurt-but because I couldn't stop my mind from going a million miles an hour.

        The end of an era-that's a what they'd call it. It'd be plastered all over the news for a week. Then, once my condition was set in stone, it'd be announced: Logan Kingston is retiring. The masses will mourn the loss, then move on. There'll be tributes at some games, which I may or may not attend. For now, I was too devastated to think about attending.

        The beeping from my heart monitor was getting to my head, permanently engraved in my skull. It didn't help that my head was already pounding from the collision with the boards. Beeping...that was a whole added torture. But the little machine prattled on, insisting on my pain.

        It had been fifteen minutes since anyone had checked on me. The longest period of solitude since the penalty. Or at least, what should've been a penalty. If it hadn't, all of this would've been for nothing. Right before I'd been hauled onto the cart, there had been cheering, perhaps remnants of a fight. Knowing my teammates, it had I probably been Adam, who always stood up for my honor. Really, anyone's honor. But a fight meant the possibility of no penalty being called on the original play, which was just atrocious.

        No one would tell me anything about the game. Had we won? Had Lars gone to the box? Had there been a fight? I knew nothing. I would've checked, except my phone was safely back in my duffel on the shelf above my name, hidden in the locker room below the arena.

        I dearly wished that my phone wasn't more comfortable than I was, but that's just how the night was going.

        The peace and solitude was broken by the door opening and my sister slipping in. Eve was three years younger than me and a professional pain in the butt.  She's better at being a pain in the butt than I was at hockey, which was really saying something.

        Eve got slightly less pain-in-the-butty when I noticed she had my duffel bag dainty hanging over one arm. She also looked genuinely worried, which got her extra bonus points.

"Oh, my gosh, you're in a cot. And you look terrible," she fretted. "When they said you got hurt, I wasn't all that worried, but now..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked indignantly.

"Last time, you just twisted your ankle. I thought you were going to be in a cast for weeks, but you skated three days later," she said, rolling her eyes.

I flushed in embarrassment. Maybe the ankle hadn't been that bad, but at the time it'd felt like I'd had my entire foot ripped off. Of course, looking back, that seemed insignificant in comparison to my current state.

"So what's the tea?" Eve asked, as if I wasn't completely (although temporarily) paralyzed in one leg.

"Nine broken bones," I said stuffy. "My toes, my leg, and my pelvis. Shockingly my knee is okay. Oh, and I've got a mild concussion."

"All in a day's work," she agreed. "So how long are you going to sit?"

I cleared my throat. "That's undetermined."

"Ugh, does that mean you're going to make me come over and watch your games with you and be mopey like last time you got injured?" she groaned.

I forced out a laugh, not wanting to damper her mood by telling the truth. "Maybe. I do enjoy torturing you." Eve hated hockey, claiming it was too violent, too slow, and I played it. Secretly, I suspected that she hated it for other reasons, but I couldn't dwell on that now.