Plié and Clout

Chapter 61: Regina General Hospital and Gregor Paikkala

THIS HAS BEEN EDITED, sorry it took forever lmao

-rabid

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STEPHAN

I sit down on the table in the med room and prop my knee up, laying it out. From the shorts I'm wearing, I can see that it's gotten a little messy and that I've got a faint bruise or two around the top.

I'm fucked.

Genuinely fucked.

"What are you in for?" Mechanic says, leaning against the doorframe, a pocky stick between his teeth like usual. He's the head of the medical department here, which consists of three people. Dr. T, who does all the physical therapy, Mechanic, who does diagnostics and injury control, and Jorgen, who does blood. 

"Knee." I grumble, propping myself up on my elbows.

"I thought we decided it was fine after last night? It was just an exhaustion thing? There was no bruising and no swelling so we thought you were good?"

I shake my head. "It was fine, that's not the problem. It's been funky since I got up this morning."

Mechanic narrows his eyes at me, taking five strides across the room and leaning over to look at my knee, poking it in one spot and lifting my leg so he can look at the other side of it. "Yeah, it's bruised and swollen, way worse than yesterday."

I rub the side of my neck, nervous.

"Alright, so, the knee is acting up?" Jorgen pushes the door back open, walking in. I swear the guy is the biggest person in the franchise. Players and staff.

"Yeah, acting up is a good word for it." I sigh.

Mechanic pipes up. "We cleared him last night, the in-game collapse was just a funky moment with an extra strain on it. It happens to the best of us. It had no sign of re-injury, though he was instructed to go lightly on the weight training last night. However, now it's showing faint bruising and the area around his kneecap is swollen slightly." Mechanic shows Jorgen the little differences in my joint. "My thought is that he either re-ruptured the bursae or did a little damage to the tendon underneath due to lack of cushion."

Fuck.

Jorgen scratches the side of his face like he normally does when he's thinking about what the hell you could've done to injure yourself.

Then he turns to me.

Jorgen and Nico have a lot in common. Almost too much. They feel like siblings. The most terrifying thing they have in common is the scan. The pick-you-limb-from-limb scan. Jorgen's stems from years of EMT training with a high intensity sports focus with a slight undertone of 'I, a single amputee, could still beat you in a fight and I'm trying to figure out how I could do it with the most efficiency.' He's got a slight frown while he scans me, taking in my current appearance top to bottom, looking for anything that might be different, a single wrinkle in my shirt could tip him off to something that I wouldn't have a chance at even noticing.

Nico's scan is the same thing. She notices everything from muscle tone to posture and does it a thousand times in a minute, critiquing little impossible things to make your game better. Yeah, she's probably the best coach in the hockey world right now, but sometimes it's absolutely terrifying to stand there and feel like you're completely naked while she's taking in the tiniest details.

"You look like you had a log night." Jorgen breaks the silence. "Unfortunately, because I know these are probably private and potentially embarrassing things to tell us, we need to know what, er, activities, that knee did."