Kenny (Shifter Football League Book 2)

by Becca Fanning

  Kenny stared across the room again. This time, he kept his gaze focused on the edge of the window. The black border made it seem like the window wasn’t part of the room. Like it didn’t belong there and should be taken out. What if he pushed the window out? What if the glass shattered below and then he jumped and landed on it?

  “I know this is a difficult time,” the doctor said softly. “But a lot can change with therapy. Focus on doing what the therapist says. Keep up with your exercises, let it heal, and we’ll see where you are this time next year.”

  Kenny didn’t respond and eventually the doctor left. After several minutes, Audrey came back in. He’d forgotten that he’d asked her to. Now he wished she would just go away.

  “You saw the doctor?” she asked in her irritatingly cheerful tone.

  He nodded, but didn’t tear his gaze from the window.

  “What did he say?”

  How could he answer that question? My career is over. My life is over. Those were the truest statements he could make.

  “That bad, huh?” She sat in the empty seat. She’d been the person to sit in it the most since he got there. How sad was that? No one wanted to check on him or see him. No one wanted to be with him. Yet, Audrey was here. But it was also part of her job to be.

  She reached out and put her hand on his. “You’ll get through it. Looks like you’re scheduled to start physical therapy in a few days. Then you can see what they say and how long it’ll take to get back.”

  “So they say.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. People under estimate the effectiveness of physical therapy, but—”

  “If I work hard, I might regain full use of my leg.” He said it mockingly, but she choose to ignore that.

  “Exactly. See, just stay focused on that and following the exercises they prescribe. Before you know it, you’ll be throwing touchdowns again.”

  He looked at her in slight horror. Was she that stupid? “You don’t throw touchdowns.”

  “Oh. Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Do you know anything about football?”

  “Not really.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course not.”

  “Well, maybe you can teach me. Now I know that you don’t throw touchdowns. See, I’m learning already. How do you get a touchdown?”

  “You either run the ball into the end zone, or pass it to someone who’s already there.”

  “Is that where the big pole things are?”

  He put his hand to his face. “The goal posts? Yes. The end zones are at the ends of the field.”

  “Ahh. That makes sense.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty basic stuff.”

  “Well, I don’t have a brother or anything and my dad was never around. I could tell you all want to know about drawing blood and taking vitals.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay.” She patted his hand and got up to leave. “Call if you need anything okay?”

  Kenny nodded.

  “I mean it,” she said.

  He looked at her and her expression was full of sympathy.

  “Anything. I’d be glad to come in just to talk. You seem very sad. Understandably so, but you don’t have to go through this alone. I’m here if you need me.”

  He watched her leave the room. Of all the people in his life, she was the one who he actually believed when she said she was there for him. She’d been more than anyone else.

  Chapter 6

  When it was decided that he had healed enough to start physical therapy, a nurse came into his room with a wheelchair.

  “Morning Mr. Boyer. You ready to go to physical therapy?”

  No, he wasn’t. He’d decided it wasn’t worth it when they’d tried yesterday to get him up and walking a bit. The pain was too much. Was much easier to just give up.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you into the chair.”

  She came over and pulled back his blankets. He no longer had an IV, which was nice because he wasn’t tethered to anything, but also sucked because now he had to take pills for the pain and they took longer to work than the injections.

  She brought the chair right next to his bed and reached down to turn his body so that his legs hung off the side. She was strong for her size. Stronger than he’d imagined she would be. With his legs over the edge, she put her arm around his back.

  “On three.” She counted and helped support him as he shakily pushed against the floor to stand. He fell into the seat ungracefully, and she adjusted his feet onto the little footrests. “Here we go.”

  She wheeled him off and took him to another floor, then into the therapy room. A man looked up when they entered and checked his clipboard. “Kenny Boyer?”

  Kenny nodded and the nurse who had brought him down patted his shoulder before walking away.

  “Ready to get started?” the man asked. “I’m Jeff. I’ll be your therapist while you’re here.”

  Kenny nodded again.

  “Okay then. Looks like they had you try to walk a bit yesterday. How’d that go?”

  “Well, I didn’t walk down here, so you can probably guess.”

  “Then we’ll do some seated stretches first and see where we get with that.”

  Jeff walked to a wall full of bands and foam blocks and stools. He came back with a red stretchy band.

  “You’ve already got compression socks on, so that’s good,” Jeff said. “You’ll wear those for a while. Maybe even a few years anytime you do anything to work the muscle. First, we’re going to do some calf stretching.”

  Jeff demonstrated how Kenny was to stick out his leg and put the band at the bottom of his feet toward his toes, then pull on the band to stretch the muscle. Right. Like that was going to happen.

  “Let’s get you on the table,” he said.

  Kenny pushed up on his good leg and hopped over to the table, then swung his legs up. Jeff handed him the band.

  “Okay, let’s get started.”

  Kenny put the band to his toes and almost immediately, the pain shot up his leg. He didn’t pull on it, and after a second, he let it go.

  “Need to hold it for at least a ten count to be effective.”

  Kenny shook his head. “Hurts too much.”

  “It’s going to hurt a bit. That muscle has faced a lot of damage. You have to work through the pain. If it’s severe or sharp pain, let me know. But you’re an athlete. You can tell the difference.”

  “It hurts like a sharp pain.” He dropped the band and looked at Jeff with a blank face. This was stupid. He wasn’t going to torture himself like this.

  “Okay, then let’s ice it for a bit.”

  Jeff disappeared and came back with an ice pack. He positioned it under Kenny’s calf, but even the cold hurt. After a second, he had to move his leg off it.

  “I can’t. It hurts too much.”

  Jeff looked at him. “Kenny. I know you’re used to putting yourself through pain to play. And being a shifter, you’ve faced the pain of your early shifts. You can do this. You have to set your mind to get past the pain.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then there’s not much we can do here.” Jeff crossed his arms and waited, like Kenny was going to change his mind.

  But instead, he slid off the table and back into the wheelchair. “I’ll just wheel myself up.”

  “Kenny. You can’t just give up. I know it’s hard, but it’s worth it. You’ll be able to play again. Don’t you want that?”

  Kenny shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter at this point.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I’ve already given up.”

  “Would it be better if you did your therapy in bear form? We can accommodate that. Have you shifted since the injury?”

  He shook his head. And no way was he going to. Shifting caused a lot of trauma to the bones and muscles. It was painful on a good day. But with this leg being how it was? No way. The pain would be too much.

  “Shifting will help. We nee
d to get you started on that,” Jeff said. “You have a huge advantage, you know. Shifting changes your muscles completely. You’ll heal faster, too. But that also means we have to work hard now. If it heals badly, it could affect you for years. Let’s go ahead and get you into the shifter room.”

  Jeff walked over to a set of large doors and held one open. Kenny looked at him, looked through the open doorway into a large empty room, and wheeled himself in the opposite direction.

  “Kenny!” Jeff caught up with him. “Why are you leaving?”

  “It hurts too much and it’s hopeless. There’s no point. Move.”

  Jeff stood in front of him, his arms crossed, unmoving. “I can’t let you go like this. It’s my job to make you better, to push you to be better.”

  “Then I guess you should get a new job because I’m not doing it.” Kenny pushed down hard on the wheels and shot the chair forward, crashing into Jeff’s shins with the metal footrests. He jumped back, out of the way.

  “Okay,” Jeff said as Kenny wheeled toward the door to leave. “You get a pass today. Tomorrow you will come down here ready to work. Understand?”

  Kenny held up his middle finger, then pushed the button to open the doors. He wheeled himself out, got into the elevator, and froze. He didn’t know what floor he was on. He hadn’t needed to know because he hadn’t been off the floor alone. He was on floor two right now. He hit the button for three.

  When the doors opened, he looked through them and tried to decide if it was his floor or not. He didn’t really know what his floor looked like. He hit the button to go to four. Same thing. Five, six. They all looked the same. Well, he’d given up on everything else. He sat back and did nothing.

  The doors closed and the elevator moved down. Someone got on, pressed the button for three, and got back off. He rode the elevator up and down for a while. Then a nurse got on.

  She gave him a look and asked, “What floor are you going to?”

  He shrugged.

  She bent over to look at the security bracelet on his wrist, then hit the button for four. He looked down, too. Had it said where he belonged this whole time?

  “Where are you coming from?” the nurse asked.

  “Physical therapy.”

  “No one escorted you?”

  “Obviously not.”

  She shook her head and wheeled him out of the elevator when the doors opened. She took him to the nurse’s station and Kenny saw Audrey get up and meet the nurse. They talked quietly, then Audrey nodded and the other nurse walked off. Audrey came over to him and put her hands on her hips.

  “What are you doing to yourself?” she asked.

  He let his gaze turn stoney and looked anywhere but at her. She pushed him into his room. Number 408 he saw. He needed to remember that. She positioned the chair beside the bed.

  “Do you need help or can you do it yourself?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He didn’t make a move.

  Audrey stood in front of him again and this time, leaned forward to wrap her arms around him. This was going to be good. She thought she could pick him up?

  She had locked his footrests and when she pulled on him, his feet caught, and it sent him upward so that he was standing. He blinked in surprise, then scooted himself onto the bed.

  “Have I managed to impress you?” she asked.

  “Always,” he muttered flatly.

  She moved the wheelchair out of the way and took her seat at his side. “Now. Tell me what in the world just happened.”

  “You got me out of the chair.”

  “Before that. At physical therapy. You were scheduled for an hour and left after fifteen minutes.”

  “Couldn’t do it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Are nurses supposed to curse like that?”

  “Does it look like I care? You’re giving up,” she accused.

  “No.”

  “Oh, you’re not?’

  “I’m not giving up. I’ve already given up. It’s done. Over.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  He looked into her eyes and said, “My life is over.”

  “You seem pretty alive to me.”

  “Maybe on the outside.”

  “Do you want to talk to someone? Get some help? Please? I hate to see you like this.”

  “I’ll leave here and you’ll forget all about me.”

  She shook her head. “No, I won’t. You’re not like my other patients.”

  “Yeah. They’re nice. Compliant.”

  She leaned forward and whispered, “And boring,” then winked at him. “So, come on. Tell me what I can do to help.”

  “Make my leg better.”

  “Perfect! You have physical therapy again tomorrow. You’ll go down there and do what Jeff says and you’ll make it all better. That was easy. What else?”

  “You know, I don’t appreciate your patronizing tone. It’s not easy. Don’t act like you can just fix it by being cheerful. You’re so fake, I can’t stand it. When do you get mad? Don’t you ever just hate life and and want to die?”

  She nodded. “There’s the Kenny I remember.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I know it’s not easy. But I am trying to be cheerful and encouraging for your sake. You need that. It’s not fake. It’s practiced and there’s a difference. I get mad. I get sad. Just like anybody else. But I go on with my life, and it gets better. No matter how good or bad things are in life, they never stay that way for long. We all go from one thing to the next, hoping it’ll be better as we go.”

  “You didn’t answer the last question.”

  She let out a long sigh. “Yes, I’ve hated life and wanted to die. But I moved on and it got better. Now I enjoy my life and it’s not bad at all.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When did you hate your life and want to die?”

  She looked down at her hands for a long moment. Watching her expression change to one of somberness made him eager for her response. This was something serious, and she was about to tell him. His heart ached at the thought of her hurting like he was now. But whatever she went through couldn’t have been as bad as what was happening to him now. Even as hard as losing his dad was, it was nothing compared to this.