Would You Rather

32 - WYR: no smoothies or no milkshakes?

the linked yt video is NASCAR at Le Mans for the one-liner I tell like halfway through. I figured it might be niche enough to confuse people and also like... everyone needs to hear that engine ngl. 

(context: le mans is a 24hr european endurance race that allows one 'experimental' car per year and last year NASCAR raced and entered a flat out ridiculous Camaro build. very patriotic of them)

FIDAN

Of course, with my luck, we get the MRI results when the plane hits the ground in Winnipeg. All my gear with me, all the anticipation of kicking off a long trip of games away from home, and the second we hit the ground, Jorgen and I's phones go off and he catches me getting off the plane.

"Herniated disc," he says, walking with me across the tarmac in the bruising wind toward the airport. He's holding out his phone to show me a zoomed-in area of the MRI that was emailed to us, there's a bright red cirlce next to his thumb that clearly indicates that whatever is wrong is wrong right there. "It's not major, which is why I think it hasn't been giving you a crazy amount of symptoms, but the lack of rest for it means that you've had it for a while and that we're going to have to watch it like crazy."

"Fantastic," I mutter, pulling my beanie lower over my ears to avoid the wind as we climb up a set of stairs into the airport. "So how long is this going to take?"

"Two to twelve weeks. I'm thinking that it's going to go long because you've had it for a bit."

"And I can't play?"

He winces, "sorry, buddy."

I step indoors, a relief, "great, just got traded to a new team and now people are going to think that I'm injury prone." Out of a need to, I run my hand over the back of my neck like I'm going to somehow be able to feel the spot that's herniated. Whatever that means.

My mom, who, due to the fact that this is the parents trip, was just on the plane next to me, is pulling off her half-a-kilometer long scarf to try to talk to Jorgen. "What happened? What's wrong with his neck?"

"Not in the airport," Jorgen says, glancing around. "We're going to brief on it later, you should probably come to that."

By brief on it later he means that, in thirty minutes exactly, Bernie, Nico, Jorgen, Jack the trainer, my mother and I are sitting around a little table in a hotel conference room, Bernie and Jack sipping hotel coffee and my mother taking notes.

Notes. My mom is taking real actual notes. Where the fuck she got a legal pad, I'm not sure. I'm not even positive she can write in English.

"Basically," Jorgen starts. "He likely sustained whiplash when Kasper hit him with a stick-"

"I'm sure he didn't mean to."

"Anne."

"Sorry. Continue, sweetie?" Only my mother, who is barely up to my shoulders, could look Jorgen fucking Hadley in the eyes and call him sweetie.

Jorgen gives a tense smile, "Fidan probably didn't complain about the whiplash so we didn't treat it. It likely caused a new break in an older injury from last season that he sustained taking a shoulder to the head. He has a herniated disc in his neck. It's causing some of the muscle fatigue we're working on as well as some jumpy pains and tingling in his legs. Which is a bit strange, but I'm not a doctor, I'm just a paramedic."

"I'm a doctor," Jack offers. "And yeah, he's right."

"Thanks for the input, Jack, super helpful." Jorgen offers Jack a high-five. "Our plan at the moment is to let him tag along for the trip. These injuries can heal rather quickly, and it's beneficial for him, socially, to continue playing and being with the team, especially on a bonding trip like this. However, if the shooting pains or anything gets worse, he's going to be sent home to get some more professional treatment. Jack and I think that we can handle this ourselves, but if anything is even a little off from what we think is going to happen, we're sending him home. It's a spinal injury, so there's no joking around with it."