Chapter 7
Ali woke up in a complete daze. It took her a few seconds to focus on what was going on around her. She could hear beeping from the many monitors she was connected to and whispers from the people filling her room.
“Hey guys. She’s awake.” Ashlyn said quietly.
Suddenly all the voices were talking straight to her all at once. It completely overwhelmed her and she had to take a sharp breath and close her eyes.
“Everyone be quiet!” Christie yelled. “She just had brain surgery for god’s sake. Let’s take it down a notch.”
The room immediately fell silent. Even when they weren’t playing, Christie was still the captain.
“So how are you feeling?” Abby asked. She was still just as caring for everybody as she had always been.
“Okay. Tired and groggy, but I mean, I just had brain surgery and I’m on a lot of drugs.” Ali said slowly and with a laugh.
A few giggles came from her teammates.
“How is your pain?” Ashlyn asked nervously.
“It’s fine right now. More of just a fullness and pressure in my head.”
Dr. Fletcher opened the door a little, but stopped right away once he saw the large amount of people filling the room. Kelley was the first one to notice.
“Okay girls. I think it’s time to give Ali her space and let her doctor check in with her.”
Everyone started filing out of the room slowly, while Dr. Fletcher walked in behind them. Kelley and Ashlyn stayed behind, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“The surgery went well. We were able to remove almost all of the tumor, so we want you to undergo a round or two of radiation to get the last part.”
Ali felt her heart sink. She thought that she was going to be okay with just the surgery, but she was sadly mistaken. Ashlyn gripped her hand a little tighter sensing that the brunette was disappointed.
“Alex. You’re strong. You will be okay. I know you will.”
“We would like to start as soon as possible, but will for sure give you time to recover and gain a little strength back from the surgery. At the moment the earliest we would start is in about 2 weeks, but if you are feeling stronger sooner, we could start earlier.”
“Would I have to stay here while I was doing radiation?”
“No, it would be on an outpatient basis. You would come in a few times a week for multiple weeks until we were sure that there was no tumor left. Depending on how well it works, it could be a very short amount of time, very long, or somewhere in the middle.”
Everyone was silent. Ali couldn’t help but overthink the next choice. She had already made one big decision for her treatment and she didn’t know if she was ready to make another so quickly, especially when she had only just woken up from her surgery about 10 minutes before. Ashlyn was just worried about Ali. She hated seeing her go through all of this. Ali was strong, but she had already had one breakdown and she didn’t know how much longer the brunette would last before she had an even worse breakdown. All of this treatment breaks down your body, even worse than the constant beating they both get as soccer players.
“Thank you Dr. Fletcher. I think Ali is going to need some time. She still needs to wake up a little more and have some time to think clearly about all this.”
“Of course. Just let me know whenever you’re ready to talk.”
Both of them just sat in the room for a few minutes processing all of their thoughts. There was no doubt that this was just as big of a decision as the surgery was. Ali knew that this was going to be putting her out of soccer for a while, but she desperately wanted to get back to her team, her friends. This was just the start though.
///
“Are you feeling any better?” Crystal asked.
“Yeah. I’m not as tired as I was earlier so that helps. So, how are the other gals doing?”
“I think some of them are still taking it all in, I mean it’s a lot, but they seem good.”
“Thanks for being here Crys. I really needed a change in scenery. No offense to my parents, Kyle, Ashlyn, or Kelley, but I needed to talk to someone other than the five of them.”
“Well I’m glad I’m here too. Believe me, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
“Oh come on. I know you want to be with Jo and the rest of the spirit gals. So do I! It feels like we haven’t seen them in months.”
“Fine. You caught me. But you know I love you."
“Well of course you do, but that doesn’t mean you need to lie. Just be yourself. I’m not any different just because I’m sick.”
Crystal just sighed. She didn’t really know what to say. Seeing such a good friend struggling so much and so weak was something that was just so hard, it was not easy to treat her normally.
“Crys. Come on. Please talk to me. Get out whatever you need to say.”
Ali looked over at Crystal sitting on the chair in the corner of the room. She was looking away from her. The defender leaned forward and saw a small tear falling down Crystal’s face.
“Crystal. Oh my god. Get your butt over here.”
Crystal jumped out of her seat and whipped the tears off of her face. She quickly walked over to the side of the bed.
“I… I’m sorry. I just hate seeing you like this. I want you to be okay so badly, but I know that’s not always the case and I just don’t know –”
“Crystal!” Ali said with a laugh. “Calm down a little bit. You start rambling when you get nervous.” Crystal just glared at her. “I’m going to be okay. There is no reason to worry about me. You’ve seen me push through everything before, this isn’t going to hold me back any more than any of those things. This isn’t my first experience of being stuck in a hospital bed just waiting to rush out. I am going to fight this, no question. You just get to be by my side to support me and keep scoring some goals with the gals for me.”
This moment was really good for not only Crystal and helping her with her comfort and knowing that she was still talking to her friend and not just a sick girl, but also for Ali and her confidence in what was next to come.
///
“So, how does it feel?” Ashlyn asked as the two of them walked down the hallway together.
“So good. These moments are the times that I miss playing soccer the most.”
“Well, you are in no state to play soccer at the moment and won’t be for a while.”
“I know. The recovery processes are always the hardest. I think I will go insane if I don’t get to keep moving around and staying healthy.”
“Just make sure you’re not pushing yourself. I know you don’t want to go backwards too much, but if you overwork yourself it could just be even worse.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
Ali felt a twinge in her head and immediately gripped Ashlyn’s hand a little tighter. The blonde quickly looked over at Ali with a nervous looked.
“Do you need to sit down?”
“No. I’m fine. I just got a small headache.”
“Alex. What did I just tell you? I really don’t want you pushing yourself. You just had your surgery two days ago.”
Ashlyn gripped Ali’s hand firmly in hers and pulled her over to a bench in the hallway. Ali felt a rush of tears about to come on. She hated this.
“This isn’t a joke. I know this is hard since you’re usually so active, but you have to take it easy. Your body needs time to repair all of what is going on inside that beautiful body of yours.”
Ali looked over at Ashlyn for a second and smiled, but quickly went back to staring at her feet. She needed to process everything. Form her words and make all of her thoughts actually make sense.
“I just don’t know how I’m going to do this. With my broken leg and my embolisms, it was hard for me to get around so it made it easy to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to do a lot of what I usually could. Same thing with my ACL. There was a noticeable difference in my ability to move around and lots of pain too. With this though, I don’t really notice it. I don’t feel any different than how I usually feel besides the occasional headache. That’s what makes this all so hard. I haven’t fully accepted the fact that I can’t live life like I used to because I am sick. I do, or did have a tumor in my brain. That’s not just a small thing that is going to heal quickly. I know I need to rest, but I need to take some time to really wrap my head around this whole situation.”
Ashlyn sat there with her hand on Ali’s leg. She didn’t really know how to respond. She had never had to go through something like this. She’d been injured often sure, but like Ali had just said, it’s much easier to deal with it when you physically feel what’s happening. The blonde leaned over and hugged her girlfriend. That was the only thing she knew how to do to comfort her.
///
Ali took a deep breath of fresh air. It was the first time she had been outside in over a week. Her body was finally working itself back up to strength after the surgery, but the only thing the doctors seemed to have on their mind was the radiation treatments that Ali was going to start soon. As the brunette sat there taking in her surroundings, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey Ali!” Pinoe practically yelled.
Ali flinched at the noise. “Hey Pinoe. Nice to see you too.” She said sarcastically.
“Oh uh sorry. Did I scare you?”
“No, not at all. You just put your hand on my shoulder where I can’t see you then proceed to yell in my ear. You didn’t scare me one bit.”
Pinoe laughed lightly. “Whoops.”
“So. How are you feeling?”
The defender had heard that question so many times in the last few weeks that it became part of her daily, more like hourly routine.
“Fine. But I’m sick of talking about me. That is literally all I’ve done for the past 2 weeks. How have you been?”
“Really good. It’s been nice to have a little bit of a break, but after missing so much soccer already this year, I’m ready to get back.”
“Those tournaments really take a lot of you. How much sleep do you think we got through the whole week after we got back from Rio?”
“It depends. Do you mean actual sleep in your bed at night or just all together?”
“In your bed.”
“Okay well that takes out about 90% of the sleep I got that week. I’d say maybe 9 hours.”
Both of them sat there laughing together. She was glad that they were still able to have good conversation. Everything had been centered in on her and only her for a while. She wanted to really talk to her friends like she normally did, not listen to herself answer questions about what was all happening.
“How are you and Sera doing?”
“Never better. We’re really getting down to odds and ends of wedding planning. It has been quite the experience. Neither of us want it to be super extravagant, but there is still sooo much to plan. I am ready to just get it over with and finally be able to call her my wife.”
“How long until the wedding?”
“There’s still a few months, but it’s starting to seem like Sera thinks it’s tomorrow.”
“Well of course she is. You don’t want to be working out all the details up until the days before. That time is going to go by a lot faster than you think it will.”
“Ugh. I’m done planning all of the small little details. Can you do it all for us?”
“To be honest, I’d love to help. I’ve got plenty of time on my hands.”
As Ali said this she couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed that she had this much empty time. She had always been on the move for so many years and it was a little weird to be staying in one place for such a long time.
“You would actually be our lifesaver if you did that!”
“I’d be glad to.”
Ali couldn’t help but imagine her and Ashlyn standing together with their friends and family watching. She could imagine her father walking her down the aisle. Kyle standing up next to Ashlyn with tears flowing down his face. The whole thing, down to every last detail, she could see perfectly in her head. Little did she know that all of it might become a reality much sooner than she thought.