Swollen Pride
The adrenaline was fading away now, and all Mac could focus on was the pain in his thigh as he hoisted himself up onto the steel medical table so Doc could examine him again. He stretched his leg out, because he couldn't bear keeping it bent right now any more than he could tolerate sitting on the bench between shifts. His thigh, swollen worse than ever now, had hurt too much for him to do anything but stand—as far away as possible from Coach Brooks—between shifts, but when his line was on the ice, he could chase away the pain with his fierce pride that he was skating better than he had believed possible on a leg that seemed to be one big bruise.
He had played well tonight, showing Herb that he wasn't a quitter or a spoiled, rich kid, and his team had tied Sweden. They had survived to fight another day, and that was no small triumph given the lukewarm start they had opened with in the first period. Yes, they would have to win the game against Czechoslovakia two nights from now, which was a skyscraper high order, but a thousand mile journey had to begin with a single step, which was just as well, given that Mac did not want to imagine taking much more than one step at a time with his aching thigh.
"Did I make my leg worse by playing on it, Doc?" he asked, staring into Doc's face as the man scowled down at his bruised thigh. Mac had decided to view it as entirely his choice to play against Sweden after his injury, rather than as something Herb had bullied him into doing, since he had discovered that a trick to enduring Brooks' brutal coaching as finding opportunities to perceive yourself as an empowered survivor instead of a hapless victim.
"No." Doc pursed his lips as he placed an ice pack on Mac's throbbing thigh. "You caused yourself a lot of suffering I would have sooner seen you live without, but you didn't aggravate your injury."
"I should have asked you if I could damage my leg more by playing before I went back onto the ice." Mac bit his lip as the idiocy of his impulsive decision to keep playing despite the medical advice he had received washed over him. "I shouldn't have let myself be baited into without knowing that it was safe for me to go back into the game."
"I would never let you play, even in the Olympics, if you were in danger of aggravating an injury," Doc assured him firmly, eyes locking on Mac's. "And you know that Herb would never demand that you make an injury worse by playing on it."
"I know that he'll do whatever it takes to give us the best chance of winning a medal," countered Mac dryly, thinking that his trust in Herb Brooks had died in the locker room after the first period in this game against Sweden. "He'll mess with our minds. He'll call us every name in the book, and invent some that aren't just to make us feel worse. He'll push our bodies to the limit in practice. Really, it was only a matter of time before he realized that he could also goad us into playing injured."
"Mac." Doc sighed as he pulled out a roll of medical tape and removed the ice pack from his patient's leg. "Herb went after you in the locker room tonight because he knew how tough you are, not because he doubted it, and when he accused you of being a quitter, what he really meant was that he knew that you would never give up on anything."
"Everyone keeps saying things like that as though I should be comfortable with someone calling me a quitter and a brat as long as that person doesn't actually think that I'm either of those things." Mac's jaw clenched. "Well, I'm not fine with that. I think it's horrible to call someone a quitter or a brat when that is what you're thinking, but I believe it's even worse to fling those sort of insults when you don't feel they're true."
"I'm not saying that you have to be okay with what happened in the locker room, but I just don't want you beating yourself up, convinced that Herb sees you as a whiny weakling when he doesn't." Doc extended the medical tape toward Mac, asking, "Do you want me to tape your leg, Rob, or would you prefer to do it yourself?"
"I'll do it myself, thanks," answered Mac, because he was meticulous about tape. If the layers weren't perfectly even, he had to rip them off and start again. He saw no reason to inflict his obsessions and compulsions on the innocent team doctor.
"All right. Make sure you wrap your leg tight enough so you have support but loose enough that your circulation isn't cut off," Doc advised, dumping a pair of scissors on the table before Mac. "You can use these to cut off the tape when you're done wrapping your leg. Holler if you need any help."
Doc had barely disappeared around the corner and Mac had just begun spiraling the tape around his bruised thigh when the man whom Mac least wanted to see at the moment, Herb Brooks, entered the locker room and strode brusquely over to the table where Mace was ministering to his leg, announcing in a voice as sharp as new skate blades, "We need to talk, Rob."
Mac, longing to say that they didn't need to talk ever again even if they were the last two people on Earth after a nuclear fallout, bit back the bitter words. With an incredible effort, he reminded himself that his mother had always taught him that every decision represented an opportunity to pick the high road or the low one.
Staring at the tape he was winding around his leg, he reflected with a guilty pang that both she and his father would be disappointed with how many times he had chosen to take the low road today. If his parents had witnessed him about to throw a punch at a coach he had for more than four years, they would have shaken their heads and exclaimed that they surely had taught him better than that. Anything that would make his parents cringe with shame was something he had to apologize for, even if he never got an apology or explanation from Herb for what had transpired in the locker room.
"I'm sorry for attacking you earlier." Mac stopped taping his thigh and forced himself to meet his coach's inscrutable gaze. "No matter what you said, I know it wasn't appropriate for me to try to take a swing at you, and I hope that you can forgive me."
"You're right. What you did was completely out of line, and it was both the first and the last time you'll ever do it to me." Herb's stern glare could have peeled paint, but Mac didn't feel as intimidated as he might have in other circumstances. After all, he would only be playing for Herb until the end of the Olympics, and he could probably restrain himself from throwing any more punches at the man until that timeframe had elapsed. He had that much self-control, at least. "I won't tolerate being assaulted by my own players."
"Got it." Mac gave a short nod of understanding, hoping that Herb would leave now that he had made his point, so that Mac could return to taping his leg in peace. "It won't happen again."
"That being said, I would probably have thrown a punch at a coach who called me a quitter if I felt like he had plenty of proof that I wasn't." Herb's flinty expression melted into a faint smile, and Mac found himself wondering, Now that you're looking down upon me after all these years, are you proud of who I am?
Somehow, even after all the abuse Herb had heaped upon him over the course of four long years, the abrasive man's approval mattered to him even more than it had as a freshman at the U. Still, he had too much pride and common sense to pose such a question to Coach Brooks, but maybe Herb could read the forever unspoken question in his eyes.
"You're a hell of a hockey player, Robbie." Herb squeezed Mac's shoulder in the only sign of affection he ever allowed himself to show toward his players. "Tonight was no exception."
His head spinning at the utterly unexpected compliment, Mac didn't know whether to laugh or cry, which he supposed was further evidence of the adrenaline crash he had experienced once the game with Sweden ended, and compromised by giving a ghost of a smile. He might not bring home a medal, but he had to have attained a certain level of Olympic greatness to earn a rare bit of praise from Herb. Coach Brooks had told him he was a hell of a hockey player, and, with every particle in his being, Mac knew that he would carry those words around in his heart like a battle scar and a badge of honor.
"I've had good coaches," Mac said once he was confident that his tone wouldn't tremble, because, where he was from, nobody liked a person who didn't have the humility necessary to flip a compliment back on its giver. Besides, he told himself, the truth wasn't flattery. "And you're the best coach I've ever had. You can always make me do more than I thought I could."
"A coach can only pull out what already exists in a player." Herb had fallen back into his clinical, impersonal voice, and Mac supposed that all good moments must come to an end, as his coach pointed at the tape around his leg, remarking tersely, "I'll leave you to wrap your leg without any more distractions, so that we can leave the rink some time before tomorrow evening."
"I'm not that finicky about tape," muttered Mac, wrinkling his nose and resuming the task of wrapping his leg. "I'm just conscientious about the little things in life."