“Do you… uh… want to watch SportsCenter?” Jennifer reached for the remote control.

“No!” Lex’s hand snapped out to grab at her. A knife chopped into her knee. She winced and gingerly touched her kneecap.

She couldn’t watch people doing athletic things. Not now. Not when her own body had failed her like this.

She’d seen several people tear their ACL – the ligament connecting the tibia bone to the femur. She’d watched them on crutches both before and after the surgery, the long recovery. Some of them never played volleyball again…

No, don’t think that way! Lots of people came back just as strong from ACL surgery.

However, lots of people didn’t tear their ACL right after nailing Wassamattayu tryouts. Right after finding a room on the second floor of a town house.

Lex crumpled her face, trying not to cry again. She sniffled. Jenn handed her the box of Kleenex from the end table.

Venus took a tissue too. “One good thing has come out of this.”

“What?” Lex blew her nose.

“Mariko is going to be fuming.”

Lex wasn’t supposed to do this alone. Trish had let her down again, right after her apologies and protests that she wanted to help her injured cousin.

Lex took a shaky breath at the entrance to the MRI center. You can do this, even alone. She had to do a sideways hop to both pull open the glass door and manage her crutches, but in the past week, she’d gotten pretty savvy on her crutches from navigating the cubicles at work. Behind her, the taxi sped away to a duet of honks from the two cars it cut off.

She hobbled up to the receptionist’s counter. “Lex Sakai. I have an MRI scheduled for two.”

The sour-faced woman checked her computer. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry. My ride never showed up – ”

“You’re lucky. We don’t have anyone after you, so we can still work you in.”

“Gee, thank you.” Her voice didn’t quite have a meek, grateful tone. The woman glanced up at her. Lex gave a weak smile.

“Have a seat until the tech calls you.”

As if it weren’t bad enough her heart pounded in her chest, she had to deal with snippy people. Lex hobbled around the arrangement of chairs in the waiting area. She finally managed to get into position to sink into one when a door opened at the far end of the room.

“Lex Sakai?”

Anakin Skywalker stood in the doorway. After he turned bad, and sans cape. Glorious golden curls contrasted with his bloodshot eyes and fanatical “world domination” expression. His head looked like it floated in midair until he gestured with his black-clad arm. Then she saw that his all-black ensemble had blended into the background.

“You’re late.” His voice rumbled deep and menacing.

“I’m sorry, I – ”

“Just follow me.” He turned down the hallway behind the door.

Gee, that’s not creepy at all. She had a surreal sensation of following Luke into the cave.

She maneuvered back around the chairs, but just before she reached the doorway, it closed in her face. Brilliant technician hadn’t even stayed to hold it open for her.

She turned the knob. Locked.

Frustration overtook the nervous twitching in her limbs. She pounded on the door and almost lost her balance on the crutches. As she righted herself, the door swung open to Mr. Dark Side’s dour face.

He gave her a set of scrubs and showed her a closet-sized changing room. The room didn’t even have a chair for her to sit on. She had to balance on one leg while she unstrapped herself from the Velcro-and-metal brace her sports doctor had given to her at her appointment a few days ago. It made her feel like a cyborg. The brace crashed to the ground.

She shed her warm-up pants and hopped into the flimsy paper shorts Anakin had given to her. The cotton top followed.

She left her brace and her clothes on the floor. Getting out of the changing room reminded her of her office at work. She backed up, pulled open the door, and then stepped out. Anakin sat in a hallway chair waiting for her, foot jiggling. Another frown when she appeared.

He led her into a small, sterile room crammed with the biggest toilet paper roll she’d ever seen. Except it was made of hard plastic instead of toilet paper. A table was attached to the roll, and he stabbed a black-painted fingernail at it. “Hop up.”

The cold temperature and complex machinery made her shiver. Too much like a hospital. She took small steps to turn around -quite difficult with two extra “legs” – and sat down. “What about my shoes?”

He loosed a frustrated grunt as he turned around and exited. He returned with a plastic bag. “Dump your stuff in here.”

She shed her shoes. “I left my clothes back in the changing room.”

He looked like she’d asked him to give her his firstborn child.

“Fine, I’ll get them.” He pointed at her leg. “Put that in the holster.”

Like a gun about to go off? Sounded like her temper. She lifted her knee gently to drop it into the plastic thingy that looked like a big stalk of celery.

Anakin came around the other side and grabbed her leg.

“Ow! What are you doing?”

“Just positioning it correctly.”

He pulled and pushed. Lex gritted her teeth, wincing with each rough movement. Her knee started to feel warm again, like a fever in the joint. “Watch it! You’re going to injure it more.”

He gave a last tug. “Okay, lie back.”

He left the room – thankfully – but then the table started to move her toward the toilet paper roll.

“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” His voice shot out over the ceiling speaker as loud as a rock concert.

“Turn it down. Are you trying to give me hearing problems too?”

“How’s this.”

It was a statement, not a question, but she answered anyway. “It’s fi – ”

“Okay, now keep perfectly still or else the MRI won’t work.”

Bam! Bam! Bam! At first Lex thought they were gunshots. Then she realized the sound came from the machine.

Wait a minute. How long was this going to take? She didn’t know how long she could stand the firecrackers from the toilet paper roll…

It seemed like forever. Luckily, the machine didn’t snap, crackle, and pop the entire time. Finally, his voice blasted over the loudspeaker, making it vibrate. “Okay, you’re done.”

Praise God.

She got her clothes back on, although pulling up the warm-up pants was like threading a wet noodle into a keyhole.

As she left, the tech handed her the MRI photos.

“Th – ” Thanks for what? The second worst day of her life?

He didn’t notice her hesitation. He just shook his head.

“What is it?”

“You’ll need to verify with your doctor, but it looks like you tore your ACL. You’ll need surgery.”

Even before her dad handed her the plain white envelope, Lex’s heart cracked – a deafening sharp sound like a glacier splitting in two and sliding into the cold Sea of Japan.

You have been accepted into the Wassamattayu sports club for the coed and women’s volleyball teams…

She folded the letter up precisely, sharpening the folds, sliding it back into the envelope. She laid it on the coffee table next to the couch where she lay with her knee propped up.

Darren had called earlier that day to tell her of her acceptance.

“Darren… I tore my ACL last week.” Her voice cracked. Her nails dug into the phone, making her cuticles ache.

“Are you sure?”

“I had an MRI and saw my doctor today. I have surgery scheduled for a couple weeks from now.”

“Lex…” A heavy whoosh over the phone as he sighed. “We have an Injured Reserve list, but it’s usually as long a wait as the wait list.”

Tears stung her eyes. She snapped her jaw shut and bit her tongue.

“I’m sorry, Lex. I’ll put you on the IR list. Maybe in a few years.”

Click.