THE BOY WHO COULD FLY

13 | domestic life

"But you're not a typical player, and I'm not a typical surgeon." He began to get cocky. Olivier couldn't help but smile a bit at his ego; anyone with that big of an ego had to be good. Speaking from experience of course.

"Because you have me, that should be reduced to about four months. But your club also has dealt with a lot of this injury, so I'm told. And they've got you a Russian PT crew on top of your club crew. With that, it could be reduced even more to about three months." John said, Olivier thought it couldn't get any better from there.

"But hold up a minute. You are THE best player in the world. And someone of that caliber is going to have a lot of motivation to recover, I assume-" he said and Olivier laughed dryly.

"You have no idea." He thought back to his goal of his sister seeing him play again.

"And, kids always recover faster than adults. And you are only fifteen so there's another bit of a head start that you found there." John loved giving Olivier all the good news.

"Really?" Olivier grew excited.

"See? Well yes, and with that, I think that you could set a world record recovery here." John smiled at the kid.

"How long are you talking?" Olivier asked. Now John looked like an evil genius.

"Me, I'd say between eight to twelve weeks." He said. That was less than three months, it was unheard of for an ACL to be recovered that shortly. But with this world class doctor telling him it was possible, for the first time since he fell, he believed.

"Thank you, sir." Olivier said and John loved how happy he was making the kid.

"Please, call me John." He said. They went over the final surgery details and the nurse came in to prep Olivier for surgery.

He was just going to be administered with about a million painkillers, that's why he had to stay in the hospital after. It wasn't a very long surgery. With the experienced doctor, it only took a bit over an hour.

"Alors, qu'est-ce que nous faisons maintenant?" [So, what do we do now?] Olivier asked while they were still working. There were three doctors and six nurses, most of them had begged to be in this room right now. All the medical staff knew that he was here and wanted to get in.

It was common for patients to revert back to their first language when they were under numerous painkillers. Olivier was no exception, despite his great memory. The doctors found it funny, and one of them figured out what that phrase meant.

"Same thing as earlier." A nurse told him and sat at his side for a minute. They just finished and were wrapping his leg back up.

"Olivier Milan! Hello, as you speak English, we know you can understand us, but we brought in Dr. Fontaine, who speaks French, so we can understand you." John explained and Olivier smiled while laughing.

"Bonjour Dr. Fontaine, Êtes-vous une fontaine?" [Are you a fountain?] He asked, and Dr. Fontaine chuckled.

"You did great in surgery, but we'll leave the charts in your room so you can check." John told him and took two of the twenty papers on his clipboard at his bedside desk.

"Merci, Tu ferais mieux d'avoir raison sur la date limite!" [Thank you, You better be right about the deadline!] Olivier told both John and Dr. Fontaine told him what he said.

"I hope I am." John responded. The doctors filed out of the room and Olivier was alone for a couple minutes. All he wanted to do was sleep though, so that's what he did.

When the teen woke, there was a nurse and his friend in the room. Olivier forgot where he was though until he abruptly sat up and looked around.

"Je suis à l'hôpital?"[I'm at the hospital?] He asked before realizing it was in French. Most of the painkillers had worn off by now.