Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Four weeks in the hospital, three surgeries, his left leg mending and his right still a twisted mockery of what it once was. Physical therapy every other day, pain so intense he doesn’t even feel the tears anymore, they burn his eyes and course down his cheeks and he just blinks them away, keeps at it. At nineteen, Ryan is nothing if not tenacious. He willskate again, he’ll show them. He’ll come back better than ever, just wait and see.
But he missed too many classes, missed too many games. He has to withdraw from his courses—just for this semester, his mother assures him, but he sees the haunted look in her eyes and he knows she thinks he’s confined to this wheelchair for life. When he’s released from the hospital, it’s back home again, not the dorm for him, he’s not ready for that yet. His parents have converted the den into a makeshift bedroom, it’s in the back of the house and has its own entrance, private enough but level, that’s the main thing. It’s on the first floor, no steps to navigate, and the bathroom’s right there, perfect. His dad puts in a steel ramp off the porch, Ryan sees it from the van as they pull into the drive, his first time home from the hospital after the accident. No one mentions it, but he can tell by his mother’s tight smile that she’s waiting for his reaction. He’s supposed to love it.
He doesn’t. He hates the way his wheelchair sounds over the steel, he hates the slope, he hates the brace on his right leg that keeps it immobile and he hates the fact that he can’t walk into his own damn house anymore. He hates that he has to sleep in the den with the hospital bed his parents purchased for him, spared no expense, anything to help him heal faster. He hates that he can’t go upstairs to his old room. He hates the bars that have appeared in the bathroom as if by magic, they look like towel racks but he knows better. He hates having to sit all the time, everywhere, he’s always sitting anymore. He hates that.
The team sends him flowers. He expected as much. The things from his dorm room are stacked neatly in one corner of the den, waiting to be unpacked. When his mother moves towards them, though, Ryan tells her, “Leave that. I’ll get it.”
“But honey—”
He hates that tone of voice. “I’m not a baby,” he says, angry. “I said I’ll get it.”
Before she can reply, his dad is there, smoothing over the situation. “Sure you will, sport.” Sport,as if he’s eight again. “You let us know if you need anything, you hear?”
Ryan glances at the flowers that are on his desk, a large vase of chrysanthemums and carnations. A card peeks out from between the bushy petals—he can read the words Get Well Soonon it from here. As if it’s that easy. There’s a balloon, too, but it’s turned away from him so all he can see is the silvery finish, and he doesn’t really care what’s written on the other side.
Ashlin got off with a bruised kneecap and a knot on his ass that made it uncomfortable to sit for long periods of time. And Ryan? Well, they tell him he’ll walk again one day. Until then, he has physical therapy three times a week, and a few of his professors have agreed to let him audit classes via the web, but it’s the middle of January and from the window above his desk he can see ice frozen in his mother’s birdbath, a tiny skating rink. He wheels over to the window, stares out at that ice, imagines himself whole again and skating across the surface.
It’s his dream. He can play it out however he wants.
* * * *
The coach stops by the first week he’s home from the hospital. Jacoby’s with him, the guy was Ryan’s roommate the past three semesters and his best friend on campus, more or less. Ryan wheels into the living room to meet them, his mother already smiling—she’s always smiling anymore. No one looks at his wheelchair or the brace on his leg, and when the coach talks, it’s to a spot just above Ryan’s left shoulder. He has to resist the urge to turn around and see who’s standing there behind him.
“Very sorry,” the coach says, as if the accident were somehow his fault. “Whole team misses you. Greatest player we ever had.”
“We’re hurting this season,” Jacoby tells him. “Could really use some of your magic out there on the ice.”
“There is no more magic,” Ryan mutters. They’re talking as if he decided to quit but this isn’t a decision he made, it’s not like he can be convinced to come back. He wantsback, and the doctors say he’ll be out there one day, but Ryan’s seen the scarred skin on his legs, he’s seen the twisted bone. He’s not holding his breath.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone