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Thierry

P resent Day...

“I don’t care what the doctors say. The Murfreesboro Mountaineers desperately need a coach like Thierry, but they deserved a player like him, more so.

If starting his coaching career as a Mountaineer —the Thunderbirds AHL counterpart—means he’ll come back stronger than ever to the Thunderbirds , so be it,” Pat Rodgers said as I flicked the radio off and got out of my truck.

Home Sweet Home.

I stared at my parents’ house and a wave of nostalgia hit me square in the chest. It’d been a long while since I’d spent any significant time at home.

The Nashville Thunderbirds called me the second I had my diploma in hand from UT, all those years ago, and my official draft was number six in the first round.

I hadn’t looked back since.

Today, I was home.

Damn, I couldn’t believe how much I missed this place.

About the only instances I had time to see my folks were during the holidays.

A few hours Christmas morning, then by noon I’d been on a plane to play outside in a winter classic game.

My springs and summers were spent with my physio trainers or gearing up for the Men’s National Team.

I wasn’t a young buck anymore and if I wanted to keep my name in the starting lineup, before the accident, well, I had to compete.

Competing meant getting up before sunrise to train. I ran five miles a day. Workout for another two then hit the ice with the team. No one could ever say I wasn’t ice ready.

“Sucks about your knee, old man...” Jeremy Riser’s words cut through my thoughts like a hot knife through butter.

For the last few years, I knew he’d be the one to replace me.

Seeing him take over as he had after my knee replacement surgery.

.. Devastated didn’t really fit. The prospect of getting older or forced to medically retire hadn’t even been a thought in my mind until that night.

These days, with this stupid knee, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mortality in a sport I loved more than anything.

Being a coach wasn’t the same, either. I still had that dog in me. I desperately wanted to be on the ice with my team. My body, nonetheless, said otherwise.

Over the years, I’d learned a thing or two about the league and the players.

Those who the league considered the chosen ones.

Those who fit the gold standard for the NHL had higher pedestals to fall from.

I was one of them. Between the relationship scandal from last year, (I’d caught my partner of three years cheating with some D-list celebrity while on location for a movie), and the injury to my knee during a freak accident on the ice, well, people, mostly sport analysts and podcasters, were betting on my fall from golden-boy grace.

Too bad I was too old for that shit.

I’d much rather launch myself from the dais they placed me on, than allow them to push me off.

Still, the fallout from my breakup with Derrick Whitlock, romantic lead, had lasted a few months longer than I thought it would.

Coupled with my injury those pundits had fodder for my career and private life to last what seemed like a lifetime.

There was speculation, by the gossip hounds, about me being unfaithful, too.

Which left me speechless.

Obviously, it was a bunch of he said/he said bullshit because Derrick couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

Tied in with the timing of my injury and retirement, and those fucking influencers he clung to like plastic wrap, they thought they knew everything about me.

One TikToker’s videos speculated I’d either had a drug addiction from my injury or was a controlling narcissist. Some called me a washed-up old man at thirty-five.

Derrick’s fans clearly.

I never understood how some of these people could interchange a healthy competitive ego and yearning, with me being a controlling, abusive dickhead to Derrick.

I didn’t have a mean streak in me. Nor did I think I was some pretty boy hockey player who could get all the dick wanted with a snap of my finger.

The comparisons always made me sick to my stomach.

Wasn’t as bad as the shit Wennberg and Dunn went through two years ago with that obsessed fan, though.

That sickening situation made me shiver in revolt.

Still, attacking my relationships was a below the belt blow.

Not that they cared. I tried to never bring my private life into the public venue.

Not because I was ashamed, I wasn’t. Certain parts of my life hadn’t been for public consumption.

Including who I did and didn’t date or fuck.

Derrick, when we’d been together, made me forget my all-important rules.

Now, I paid the price as I recovered and began my new career as a coach.

While he vacations on St. Lucia Island with his new boyfriend—but I’m the one that cheated .

I exhaled. I wasn’t going there today.

The happy bark of my parents’ dog greeted me before I even stepped up onto my parents’ wraparound porch, tugging me out of my morose thoughts.

I raised my hand to knock, knowing it was the polite thing to do.

Although, I could have walked through that door, and my parents wouldn’t have cared.

However, I also realized it’d been a while since I’d seen them.

Announcing my arrival, though I was sure more people knew I was back for an indefinite amount of time, than not, seemed like the right, polite, thing to do.

“If you knock on that door,” my mom yelled. “I’ll whip you with my apron strings.”

A smirk tugged at my mouth. I had half a mind to try her as I stepped inside. The smell of fresh baked peach cobbler, roast beef, and collard greens smacked me in the face, and my stomach rumbled in delight. “Are you threatening your favorite child?”

“Yes.” She came around the corner into the foyer of the house.

Her green checker-print apron was tied around her waist and her glass hung around her neck.

After my first stint with the US Men’s National team, I came out to my parents.

I was more afraid of their reaction than the guys I faced on the ice.

What I expected and how things went, were two totally different things.

My parents chuckled softly before my mother said, we knew .

Damn near passed out on them. Years of worry melted away and our relationship was better for it.

“But if your Daddy finds out, you better lie to him and tell him I made no such threats.”

She narrowed those pretty cornflower blue eyes of hers at me while waggling her arthritic finger in my face before engulfing me in a tight hug. Something I hadn’t realized I needed until her warmth seeped into me. “I won’t tell. I swear.”

“That’s my good boy,” she murmured, holding on an extra second. She took a step back and assessed me with a critical eye, just like she had after every important game. “Don’t look hurt.”

That was because she couldn’t see my knee.

I’d been in rehab for six weeks already.

Since my ACL hadn’t been a complete tear, the surgery went smoothly, however it was everything after surgery that led up to this moment.

Joining the Mountaineers as their defensive coach was a barometer of sorts for me and the Thunderbirds .

However, that was a conversation for another day.

“I’m feeling better already.” The lie slipped effortlessly off my tongue.

What should have been a textbook repair and rehab had turned into a mess.

Though the repair had stabilized my knee, a secondary infection set in.

I’d been hours away from them opening me again to clean out the mess if the IV antibiotics wouldn’t have kicked in when they did.

Then there was the scope surgery a few days later to remove debris from the original procedure and what pus was left over from the dead bacterial infection.

Afterward, during a follow up appointment, my orthopedic surgeon couldn’t say with certainty what caused all the issues.

Since the scope and infection though, I’d had a limp and horrible joint stiffness that led to a quick deterioration of bone and cartilage.

The only thing ortho could come up with other than needing more time was arthritis.

Doc said physical therapy coupled with my geriatric age in respect to the game, would make this particular injury a long-road to recovery.

That’s when I went to see Dr. Jay at Vanderbilt Hospital. He looked at the CAT scans and MRIs I had on my knee, along with the infection, and added scoping. His suggestion—total knee replacement.

In his opinion, the infection would come back, and this time spread deeper into the bone, if I didn’t agree to the surgery.

Another infection, in his opinion, meant the risks of amputation.

He’d only seen the outcome a few times as the head orthopedic surgeon for Vanderbilt.

However, he was eighty-five percent convinced the limp I had and the lingering pain within the joint itself had more to do with the initial injury, and I’d been skirting the path to replacement for a while.

So, I had two options. Medically retire and go into coaching or keep playing and understand at some point, I’d lose my leg above the knee.

Neither appealed to me. Knee replacement at least gave me the opportunity to continue to do what I loved, even if I couldn’t play.

Didn’t mean I hated either prospect any less.

Both sucked.