Chapter 414: Joey XXIV—Joe Who?

Clearly an accident, albeit a strange one, the police were quick to agree to that statement. Both Mike and Chris looked pale and worried as they gave their statements and even then they wouldn’t even talk to the police until they were sure Robbie was alive and well being helped out of the dumpster by Pat Karns and medical workers. Even Joe couldn’t describe how happy it made him just to see Robbie smile and give them thumbs up as they loaded him into the ambulance. His gosling down blond hair poked from white gauze that had been wrapped around his forehead to cover a bloody lump.

“I’ll never harm the Brandi Ball again,” Chris said mournfully, holding onto the amazingly undamaged bowling ball. It had landed in the dumpster as well and with the blood smeared on it, Joe could only assume that Rob had the unfortunate luck to strike his head on it.

“Okay what were you doing?” Joe snapped after the cops left, and the crowd had dispersed allowing them to get back into their hotel.

“Just teasing Robbie, it was an accident,” Chris moaned.

“I’m going to the hospital,” Pierre Lacroix said, his eyes were red and watery and his lips loose and sad. “Rob he cannot be alone. All of you should come too.” He walked away briskly with Coach Hartley both talking to each other in French and with a lot of hand gestures.

“Were you teasing him about his bowling ball?” Katrina asked, her eyes were snake like and narrowed, her mouth pulled back in disgusted sneer. “Is that what you guys were doing?”

“Yeah but I didn’t mean…” Chris began and Katrina held up her hand and walked away. “Just like a man to get insecure over a bowling ball.”

Joe shook his head. “Chris,” he said looking at him. “From now on…”

“I got it!” Chris said quickly and he nodded. “For the rest of my natural life I am Rob’s slave. I even prayed to God that if he’d just let Robbie be okay I’d do anything for him anything!” His eyes watered again and his lips trembled. “He’s gonna be okay?”

Joe sighed and put his hands in his pockets. Most of the team if not all were milling around the hotel lobby. They all talked with Keaner who gave them over and over the story of what happened. “Hey no one calls home, no wives or friends until someone calls Brandi first,” Mike Keane barked when Patty grabbed his cell phone.

“I’ll do it,” Joe said, “When we know what to tell her. I’m getting to the hospital.”

As soon as the bright lights and medical carts registered in Joe’s brain, the sight of nurses and doctors and scrubs and clip boards, he got a headache. Hospitals equaled so much worry to him; they meant loved ones, bleeding, in pain, teammates broken in body and in heart. It meant waiting to hear test results, and meeting the solemn gazes of doctors.

Invariably, the hospital environment brought to his mind the suffering of his wife, long months of tests and observations, of the doctors and their inability to alleviate Debbie’s pain as she rolled up into a ball they had to unfold on their tables. He wondered if Debbie ever knew exactly how much that had affected him, if she knew how his gut tore with the possibility of having to accept her sharp and painful disappearance from this Earth, and how he resented every single one of the medical personnel in the building for not having the magic cure for her.

Teammates with injuries, now that was more common but just as frustrating. He imagined that if Rob had the presence of mind to still flash that goofy grin, then he couldn’t be that bad. Optimism didn’t come easily to Joe’s persona but it seemed so impossible that anything that bad could happen to Blake in such a strange fashion.

“Stupid,” Coach Hartley said at intervals. “Stupid.”

Lacroix didn’t say a thing, he stood staring at the hallway, his chin in fingers, his eyes seeping the occasional tear. Joe didn’t feel inclined to speak to either one of them unless they spoke first. After all, he didn’t have the facts of the matter to begin with.

If you let her die, if you take her from me, I will find a way to smite you, I’ll bring you crashing down to this Earth! Joe remembered thinking that in those days before and during Debbie’s surgery, remembered feeling silly as the words crossed his brains. But what else could he have felt, but anger. How dare anything, God or fate or chance, lay pain upon the only cool, clear, relief in his life, the mainstay of his youth, the angel to his peace of being and then threaten to steal her from him as reward for soothing his soul.

At this moment, he knew he should call Rob’s wife, he knew Brandi had a right to know what had just happened to her husband. She had a right to wait and worry, and to plead with higher forces about Rob’s condition. But Joe couldn’t do it just yet. He didn’t have the heart for her to suffer like that; she didn’t deserve that sort of pain.

Within the half hour, Drury and Keane, then Tanguay and Hinote, still dutifully joined at the hip, and Patty appeared at the hospital. Everyone else, they heard was being turned away. The rest of the team would just have to be informed by phone. Chris didn’t seem as distraught as earlier, he had composed himself. Now he seemed pale, he seemed tense but calm, working with his demons inwardly, his guilt.

No, Joe couldn’t be that angry with or at Chris, he knew how teammates teased and needled. Things could always go wrong. Today they had. But he wouldn’t tell Chris that, not yet. He would have to embrace his own guilt.

Joe stood up and so did everyone else when the doctor came into the room. A young, sharp featured Indian woman, she held a clipboard in her hands and stood with impeccable posture. “Ah, yes, all of you are here for Mr. Blake? I’m Doctor DeSai.” She said, a polite smile, and the softness of her lips, and her eyes lifted Joe’s soul.

“Yes, we are,” Lacroix said and he stood forward, “Did they tell you we are waiting then?”

Dr. DeSai smiled. “No, Mr. Blake just told me to look for a room full of, as he put it,” she leaned forward and lifted her eyebrows, “a room full of muscle bound monkeys.”

Joe smiled and Keane laughed, the others grinned and laughed and Drury covered his face with his hands. “Oh thank GOD he’s okay then? He’s gonna be fine.”

She nodded. “Are you Chris?” The grin hadn’t left her face.

“Um… yeah? How did you know?” Chris asked.

DeSai displayed perfectly white, straight teeth. “He also told me to look for the especially hairy monkey who looked rather guilty.”

“AH hahaha!” Keane laughed and he slapped Chris on the butt. “It’s obvious to everyone your ass is hairy, Chris.”

Drury rolled his eyes. “You sure he’s not gonna die soon or something?”

“I’m sorry,” she laughed. “Terrible of me to be lighthearted about this, it’s a serious situation and all of you are so worried, but your friend is such a wonderfully bright, effervescent individual it has rubbed off on all of us.” She hugged the clipboard to her small chest, “Now, Rob has suffered a concussion and some deep bruising around his neck and shoulders, a slight laceration on his forehead but no damage to his limbs or joints and, it could have been so much worse, he is one lucky individual.”

“Oh wow,” Drury said. “Wow.”

“Yes,” she smiled, “He’s awake, with a slight headache, in some pain but I am sure he won’t mind visitors if you want to see him.”

“Rob you fell two stories. TWO!” Dan Hinote exclaimed as they walked into Rob Blake’s hospital room. The big man was sitting upright on his bed, in a neck brace snacking on a pudding cup. “How can you be eating pudding?”

Blake grinned, one of his eyelids drooped lower than the other and he peeked from under the bandage encircling his forehead. “Cause pudding’s good. Hi guys.”

“My God Blake how are you feeling?” Joe asked and he went to the bedside, resisting the urge to grab Rob’s hand and pat it.

“Better,” Rob said and he sucked down another spoonful of pudding. “Now that the drugs are kicking in, my head don’t hurt as much. I’ll probably feel better in the morning, or is it worse in the morning? Hee I don’t know.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Keane asked.

Blake frowned. “I dunno. I remember seeing Chris and you when I came outta the bathroom and then waking up in the dumpster. Heh I’m glad I took a shit before that happened, at least I’m clean.” He grinned.

“Rob it’s all my fault,” Chris nodded, “I’m your slave, forever. I mean it man. I almost killed you.”

Blake’s eyes widened. “Ok. Hey did anyone call my Brandi? How is she doing?”

“Oh yeah!” Joe said and he grabbed his cell phone. “I held off because I didn’t want her waiting for a diagnosis.”
“Aw Joe!” Rob pouted. “But it’s my Brandi!”

“Well do you want to call her yourself?” Joe asked holding the phone out.

“Nah,” Rob grinned. “I wanna finish my pudding first.”

Taking a deep breath, he dialed Blake’s home phone number and prepared to be sympathetic and understanding with her, to be as gentlemanly as possible, to break the news carefully and to inform her swiftly that Rob was okay.

“Hello?”

Joe cleared his throat. “Yes, Brandi?”

“Yes?” She sounded so innocent, so unaware. Poor woman.

“Brandi, this is Joe.”

“Mm? Joe?

Joe took a deep breath. “Yes, Joe.”

Before he could say something else Brandi said with complete innocence. “Joe who?” And she sounded so sincere that Joe’s mind erased completely for a moment.

“Uh, Joe Sakic?”

“Saaakic…” She said breathily, as if rolling the name around in her head. “Saaakic. Well it certainly sounds familiar.”

“From your husband’s team, the captain.” Joe paused to let it sink in. Joe really didn’t know Brandi that well but he knew how Rob talked about her, as if she were a delicate, precious little flower. Well, hell, maybe she was just a little absent minded too.

“Oh of course! Thaat Joe!” Brandi said with an audible grin, she even giggled. “Yes, yes, sorry Joe, of course. You’re the red head right?”

Joe grimaced and turned away from the guys. “Uh, no, that’s Peter.”

“Oh of course!” Brandi said and she sighed. “Aw, I like Peter he’s nice.”

“Ah ha, well I’m not him,” Joe said and he felt horrible for sounding a little snappish on that one. “I’m the captain, you know…. Debbie’s husband.”

“Oh JOE!” Brandi laughed. “Yes, yes, Joe, why didn’t you say you were Debbie’s husband? What can I do for you, Joe?”

Joe blinked rapidly. He knew he had to tell Brandi but curiosity took over. “Do you really not know who the guys on the team are, hon?”

“Ummm….” Brandi said.

“Like Alex, do you know Alex?”

“Of course I know little Alex!” Brandi exclaimed. “He helps me bake, aw can I talk to him, is he around?”

Joe sighed and handed the phone to Tanguay who frowned. “What’s this for?”

“She’s all yours,” Joe said trying to clear his head. “Really, she’s all yours.”