On Thin Ice 1 (4 page)

“Alright then, it’s a
definite date. Now, let me show you how to bench press. You know,
getting to the romantic part of this date,” he continued, and I
laughed.

Daniel had me lie down
on the bench after he showed me the proper form. He moved his hands
to mine, and again my heart pounded in my chest. I wanted him to
touch so much more than just my hands. I wanted him to touch my
waist, my hips, my chest, my ass, my thighs. I wanted his hands all
over me, I wanted him to discover my body slowly, taking his time
as he explored me.

My mind was suddenly
brought back from my reverie, my fantasy as Daniel moved the bar
from the hooks holding it in place and above me. It was so
heavy!

“Remember, drive with
your feet and arch your back,” Daniel encouraged as he helped me
move the bar down towards my chest. Up and down, the bar went,
again and again, his hands just grazing mine as he was ready to
catch the bar if the weight was too much for me.

“Awesome, good job!” he
exclaimed when I was finished the three sets he got me to do. “Are
you enjoying it, or is it just my amazing company keeping you
here?” he asked as we took another break.

“As amazing as your
company is, I actually am enjoying this by itself” I replied, and
it was the truth. I had never expected that I would be the type of
person to lift weights. After all, I’d never been athletic growing
up, and while I had seen a lot of amateur athletes at the
physiotherapy clinic I volunteered at when I was a undergrad, it
had never seemed to be the sort of thing that would interest me.
And yet, I was finding that I actually really liked it. The burn at
the end of the sets, the determination it took to get the weight
back to where it should be, the feeling of satisfaction when I was
finished were all huge adrenaline boosts.

As soon as I realized
how much I loved this I began to feel guilty once more. I wasn’t
allowed to enjoy things. It was bad enough my panties were soaked
without having anything to do with the sweat pouring from my body,
it was bad enough that I spent half the morning fantasizing about
Daniel, about wanting his hands all over so much more of me, but
that I was also enjoying the actual workout was just the icing on
the cake. I wasn’t allowed to enjoy things, and I wanted to refuse
to enjoy this. I just couldn’t help it.

“Why are you doing this
for me?” I asked suddenly after getting a drink of water. “There’s
a lot of other girls in here, why me?”

Daniel looked amused at
my question. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know,
honestly.”

“There’s something
about you, Kylie. You just seemed to be the type of girl that I
wanted to know more about, and when I saw you sitting alone at
dinner, you looked like you needed a friend. So I figured I could
get to know you, and you accepted. Now I get to solve the enigma of
Kylie.”

“Enigma. That’s a nice
way to put it. I don’t think I can be solved though, I’m a puzzle
that’s been broken a million ways to Sunday.”

“What about me? If
you’re so broken, why did you agree to come here?”

“I don’t know. I guess
there’s something about you too. For one thing, you’ve been here
three days, you should be detoxing from your drugs right now. I
know everyone reacts differently, but when I was at the stage you
are I was curled up in a ball in my bed wishing for death.”

Daniel’s face hardened
somewhat. I noticed his eyes darkening, the pools becoming
deeper.

“It’s hard. Yes, it’s
hard. I’m trying to keep my life as close to what it was before,
although it’s not the same. I feel what you feel. I just want to
scream. I want to cry out, I want to hit anything I can get my
hands on.”

“I guess you just have
better self control than I do,” I replied.

“I wouldn’t say that.
But you’re right, it’s very, very difficult. Now, why don’t we try
lunges?”

“I’d like that,” I
replied, smiling as Daniel helped me up from the bench I was
sitting on.

“First I’ll show you
how it’s done,” Daniel told me. He stood up straight, then
explained what he was going to do. “I’m going to step forward,
bringing my front leg down to a 90 degree angle, until my back knee
just about but doesn’t quite hit the ground. Then I get back up and
repeat the same thing with the other leg.”

I watched from my bench
as Daniel began the movement. As soon as his front knee bent to 90
degrees however, I saw the pain in his face. He was brave, he
pretended it wasn’t there, but I had seen it.

“God, Daniel, your
knee!” I exclaimed, jumping up from my seat.

“It’s nothing. Don’t
worry about it, it’s nothing,” he replied, sitting on the ground
clutching at his right leg.

“Don’t lie to me, I
know that’s not nothing.”

“The pain will go in a
minute.”

I was shocked by the
amount I cared about this injury.

“Was it an injury to
your knee, the hockey one?”

“Yeah.”

Immediately I went into
doctor mode. Well, wannabe doctor mode I should say, seeing as I
never managed to finish medical school, and never would now.

“Come here, I want you
to sit down on the bench. Let me help you.”

“I swear, Kylie, it’s
fine.”

“You’ve been showing me
your skills all day, now it’s time for me to take charge. Get up
and I’m going to help you move over to the bench.”

I guess my voice must
have held all of the authority I wished it always had, since Daniel
stopped protesting. I sat down next to him and wrapped my arm
around him. I still felt that spark passing between us, but I
forced it away. I had to be serious here, Daniel was dealing with
an injury, a bad one.

He hobbled over to the
bench and sat down, still wincing. I handed him my bottle of
water.

“Drink. It won’t do
much, but seeing as I’m not going to give you so much as a 200mg
pill of ibuprofen, you get to consider this water as your
painkillers for a while.”

Daniel chugged my
water. “Thanks,” he muttered, throwing the empty plastic aside. I
looked at his knee. “Lie down on the bench,” I ordered.

“What are you going to
do?” Daniel asked.

“A few tests.”

Daniel obediently lay
down on the bench. It wasn’t as long as I liked, so I dragged
another one over and had him lie flat along the two benches.

The first thing I did
was a Lachman test to test Daniel’s ACL. I bent his knee slightly,
stabilized his thigh with my left hand and pulled his shin forward
with my right. I was only too aware of the fact that my left hand
holding his thigh was only inches away from his shaft, I was so
close to his most intimate areas I could feel my breath catching in
my throat. I forced the thoughts away, ordering my body to forget
its desires and focus on the task at hand.

I instantly knew from
the movement in his leg that his ACL was torn. I was far from an
expert on the topic, but I was also fairly confident it was a bad
one.

Next I performed a
Valgus test, which was pretty similar to the Lachman test.

“Tell me if this
hurts,” I ordered, keeping Daniel’s knee bent slightly and applying
outward pressure on his leg.

“Yeah, fuck” Daniel
replied almost instantly, wincing.

“Sorry, I just had to
check. Do you know your ACL and MCL are both torn?”

Daniel grinned at me as
he sat up. “Yeah. Believe it or not, the Sea Lions’ payroll
involves more than seven figures a year being spent on doctors. At
that price, I would hope to hell they can diagnose that sort of
thing. But how come you know the Lachman and Valgus?”

“I used to be in
medical school. I finished pre-med, did a couple years of med
school, and while I was studying as an undergrad I volunteered at a
physiotherapy clinic. I didn’t really do more than organize charts
and get coffee, but once the doctor showed me how to perform the
tests.”

“You were in med
school? Wow, pretty
and
smart,” Daniel complimented, winking
at me as he said it. The blush crawled up my face again as I
remembered just how close my hands had been to his most sensitive
areas.

“Yeah, well, I never
finished. I’m not going to be a doctor, but I can tell a knee
injury when I see one.”

“Can I ask you a
sensitive question? You don’t need to answer if you’re not
comfortable with it, but I’d like to know why you’re here.”

“I’m an alcoholic,” I
answered. I had no problem telling him that. If he wanted to know
all he had to do was ask around, everybody knew alcohol was my
personal demon.

“What triggered it for
you? Again, don’t answer if you’re not comfortable with it, but I’d
really like to know if you’re willing to tell me.”

I looked into Daniel’s
eyes. They were so earnest, so genuinely interested in my life.
Suddenly, my brain flew backwards. Memories flooded my brain.
Crying, sitting in the ambulance, someone wrapping a blanket around
me. That feeling of absolute despair. The desire to kill myself.
Being unable to look my parents in the eye. The knowledge that my
life would never be the same.

It was three days later
that I walked past the liquor store and went in on a whim. I bought
a bottle of vodka. I had never been a huge drinker. I would get
drunk from time to time at parties, or with friends, but it was
never more than once every two weeks or so. Usually if I went out
for dinner with anyone I’d have a glass of wine or something, but
that was it.

It took three hours for
the entire bottle of vodka to disappear. That was how it started.
The more I drank, the more the memories disappeared. The more I
could pretend everything was like it had been before.

When I said I was
broken, I didn’t mean the alcoholism. That was just a symptom of
what had happened, of that night, the worst night of my life. The
alcohol made the pain go away for a while, and now, now that I no
longer had the alcohol, I begged for more pain. I deserved it
all.

I didn’t realize I was
crying until Daniel’s finger, like velvet against my skin, stroked
the tear away and brought me back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” he
whispered. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry Kylie. I can tell you
don’t want to talk about it, and that’s fine. But hey, if you ever
need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here” he told me, wrapping his arm
around me.

I was sweating and
gross, and so was he, but I couldn’t have cared less right then.
His arm was so strong, so hard, so comforting wrapped around my
shoulders, I felt like I belonged with him, I melded in with him
absolutely perfectly. I buried my face in his chest and cried for a
few minutes, silently sobbing, my tears mingling with his sweat
from earlier.

Daniel stroked my hair
until I finally came back from my complete collapse.

“I’m sorry,” I
apologized, wiping my eyes. “I have no idea why I just did that.
It’s been ages since I’ve just broken down and cried like
that.”

“Don’t worry about it.
Exercise can bring out emotion in people, especially when they
haven’t really done much before, and I shouldn’t have brought up
your past. It was my fault.”

“Thanks, Daniel. Thanks
for... everything.” I looked up at him and smiled. God, not only
was he so hot my body could barely stand it, but he was so
nice
. I had always assumed professional athletes were
douchebags, hell bent on sleeping with as many women as they could
while they made millions of dollars. But Daniel didn’t seem to be
like that at all.

“Listen, I guess with
this knee problem we’re going to have to cancel our next date, or
at least move it into a less physical part of the building,” I
finally told him, trying to change the subject.

“Why would we have to
do that?”

“Well for one thing,
the two most important ligaments in your right knee don’t work. You
need to see a doctor, so that you can get referred for
surgery.”

Daniel shook his head.
“No, I’m not getting surgery.”

“What? Why not? Both of
those are definitely grade 3, if you were a normal person you might
be able to get by for a while by rehabbing and resting, but for an
athlete like you, you have to get the surgery as soon as you can,
or you’ll never play professional hockey again.”

“That’s the thing, I’m
not going to play hockey again.”

This revelation
surprised me. I had always assumed that while he had become
addicted to painkillers, Daniel would be trying to get back on the
ice as soon as possible.

“What? Why not? If
that’s something you’re willing to talk about,” I hastened to add,
not wanting to intrude.

“Yeah. I have a feeling
you might understand. It’s not that my body isn’t in good enough
form. I know guys can come back from complete ACL tears in six
months, and I know from the doctors that mine isn’t that bad, if I
have the surgery soon I’m looking at maybe four months. It’s August
now, I could be back playing a month into the regular season next
year. But it’s just... the fire is gone. Do you know what I
mean?”

Daniel looked me in the
eye, and I took his hands in mine. I felt a connection with Daniel,
unlike anything I had ever felt with anyone before.

“I know exactly what
you mean,” I replied. “You think it’s hopeless. The desire to
continue, to go on is gone. You think you’ll never get back what
you lost, you think that no matter what you’re going to fail. You
wonder what the point is, and eventually you realize there is no
point.”

“Yes. That’s how I
feel, precisely. You know Kylie, you’re the only person I’ve met
since my injury who really truly understands that.”

I nodded. “I know it
all too well. I was going to become a doctor. Now, I’m not. The
fire is gone in me too. I ask myself, what’s the point? After
everything that’s happened, after what I’ve gone through, I don’t
believe I should be a doctor. What’s the point? People die every
day. I know exactly how you feel.”