Chapter Text
He receives the news on a Thursday morning as he’s getting ready for practice. He gets a call from his mom, which is typical, but the early hour is uncommon and so he answers with a level of alertness he doesn’t usually possess when talking to her.
“Mom?”
“Hey, Shane.”
“What’s up?” He asks, setting down the spinach he'd been adding to his smoothie.
“I just got a call from Doctor Tremblay’s office,” Yuna starts.
Doctor Tremblay has always been Shane’s doctor, from his first hockey injury at five years old to his professional injuries at twenty-six. He’s one of her favourite patients, always greeting him with a ‘Hello, Shane’ and offering him lollipops after an appointment, continuing even after he’d begun always turning them down. She’s just another constant in his life since he started in the NHL, another tether to Ottawa when he moved to Montreal.
“Oh?” Maybe she wants to schedule an appointment; perhaps it’s a past injury flaring up on a scan or an annual checkup for his knee that he injured in his first year on the team and has never been fully right since. She usually just sends that information to his team doctor.
“She passed away yesterday morning, Shane,” Yuna tells him.
He suddenly feels a shock of rather disproportionate grief. She wasn’t family, and he hadn’t seen her in months, not since his follow-up appointment after the concussion. He knew she was old, he’d sent her an 85th birthday card just last month, but it hurts all the same. “Oh,” He says.
“We’re invited to the funeral, but it’ll be closed-casket since she wanted her body donated to the hospital,” Yuna tells him. Shane huffs out a soft laugh, of course. She’d dedicated her entire life to medicine; of course her last act would be to help it progress.
“I know,” Yuna replies, sounding very fond. The entire family loved her too, even if she was technically a pediatrician and hadn’t ever treated his parents.
“When’s the funeral?”
“We don’t know yet. Probably in a few weeks.”
“Okay. I’ll come, of course.”
“Of course. Now, I’ve been looking for new doctors a little closer to Montreal,” Yuna says, already slipping into manager mode. Knowing her, she probably already has a spreadsheet of doctors with a link to all of their research papers.
“Mom, jeez, let me process this first,” He says, half-jokingly because he was already conjuring up a plan to research nearby doctors too. He and Yuna are very much two sides of the same coin.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. Will you be okay at practice?” She asks.
“Yeah, I should be alright. Just shocked.”
“I know, me too.” Yuna agrees, and he can hear her tapping away on her laptop in the background, no doubt still researching. “I’ll let you go, sweetie.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you too, Shane.”
They hang up, and Shane looks down at the counter for a few moments. It’s a sad and unexpected start to his day. She was a big part of his childhood, a big part of his teenage years and the buildup to the NHL. He sighs and places a handful of spinach into the blender.
He spends that night searching because the sooner he finds another doctor, the better, what with playing such a violent sport. It feels a little like a betrayal, but Dr Tremblay would have encouraged it, praising him for being proactive. Honestly, between her and Yuna, it’s no wonder Shane turned out as practical as he did.
His laptop is balanced on his knees, half paying attention to the Admirals versus Scouts game on the television. He makes his way down the spreadsheet Yuna had sent him.
There are multiple bad reviews and bad experiences. A few places have five stars, but only three reviews, and a lot of places have one star, and two hundred reviews. Shane shivers as he reads an exceptionally detailed review describing three failed appendectomies.
Luckily, with Montreal being such a big city, he’s bound to find a good place if he keeps searching.
That’s when Montreal Private Health Clinic crosses his path. 4.7 stars with four hundred reviews singing their praises. He’s worried that they’re fake, but he has developed a trained eye due to his picky taste in restaurants, and all of the reviews are from real people with other reviews on their profiles. He clicks onto the website. It’s got a lot of keywords: wellness, health-focused, patient-oriented healthcare. But it looks good.
He reads through the terms and conditions and comes out confident that this is the best clinic he could find. He types his information into the new patient form, sends the registration fee over, and exhales when he hits the send button. He hopes he's made the right choice.
By the next day, he already has an email about an initial appointment set for Wednesday. Just a conversation with his new doctor, a talk about health concerns, taking some measurements. If all goes well, he'll be in and out in twenty minutes.
He pulls up outside the clinic early on Wednesday morning, not past eight o’clock yet, with his guilty pleasure matcha in hand to calm his nerves.
It's much larger than he expected. There were limited photos online, and most of them seemed to be focused on the main entrance. He'd expected a modest private clinic.
Instead, the facility sprawls across six hundred acres of land, more like a university campus than a clinic. Large white buildings stretch over it, linked with labyrinths of corridors and blue-glass walkways. They have several facilities here, according to the navigation signposts on the way in: injury rehabilitation, operation rooms, surgical suites, and a sports therapy building that he'll definitely inquire about. It's crawling with people, nurses and patients alike, and he takes one last anxious sip of his drink before he leaves the car and heads towards the building at the centre with the sign that reads MONTREAL PRIVATE HEALTH CLINIC.
He pushes the door open. It’s nice, not at all the unfriendly white room he’d pictured. The walls are covered in medical posters, but underneath the walls are painted a cool green. He walks to the reception desk hesitantly.
“Um, Hi, I’m Shane Hollander. I have an appointment,” He says.
Thankfully, the receptionist doesn’t seem to recognise him. She types into her computer and then smiles at him.
“Thank you, Mr Hollander. You can take a seat, Doctor Rozanov will be out in a second.”
He walks into the waiting room and is grateful for the emptiness, especially with how busy it looked from the outside. The chairs are plastic like a classroom, but they’re comfortable enough. He checks his watch despite knowing that he’s a few minutes early; on time is late had been ingrained in him from an early age.
A smiling nurse appears in the doorway after not even two minutes. “Mr Hollander, the doctor will see you now.”
“Oh, thank you,” He says, standing and following her around a few corners and down a long hall, straight to an office at the very end. His eyes catch on the placard beside the door.
Dr. I Rozanov, MD
Head Physician
It doesn’t feel too dissimilar to Dr Tremblay’s office, and he knocks lightly as the nurse leaves, waiting for a “Come in,” before he pushes the door open.
The doctor is sitting at his desk, reading something on his computer before he looks over when Shane walks in.
“Hello,” Shane says awkwardly. He’s not entirely sure how to address doctors, always calling Dr Tremblay just that; whenever he’d call her by her first name Marie he’d receive a disapproving look.
Thankfully, the doctor just smiles and motions for him to sit. “Hello. I’m Doctor Rozanov, but you can just call me Ilya.”
Shane nods and sits in the chair beside the desk. The doctor, Ilya, is tall and blonde, and he kind of reminds Shane of a pediatrician, all soft smiles and a pleasant accent. His anxiety dissipates a little when Ilya leans back from his computer and fixes his blue-eyed gaze on him.
“You’re a first-time patient,” Ilya states.
“Um, yeah. My last doctor passed away last week.”
Ilya nods. “Yes, I was sad to hear about Doctor Tremblay. She was a good woman, she would visit our wards from time to time.”
“Yeah, she was super nice.”
“She was. So, you’re looking for clinics in Montreal now, yes?”
“Yes, she was my doctor since I was a kid. So I’ve always just travelled back to Ottawa for check-ups, but I might as well find somewhere closer to home now.”
“Very loyal patient,” Ilya comments before he leans back in toward his keyboard and scrolls down Shane’s medical chart.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, don’t worry. You’re in good hands here. All I need today is a few tests and some blood, run labs to get your medical information.”
Shane raises his eyebrows at this. He usually needs a whole different kind of mental preparation for medical procedures. Nobody really likes hospitals, but least of all him, associating them with seeing himself or his friends badly hurt. “Um, I thought they already sent you my labs?”
“I prefer to do them myself, if you don’t mind,” Ilya replies, smiling back at him.
“Okay. I guess that's alright,” Shane shrugs. He’s a little nervous, but he’s also a 200-pound hockey player, and he’s had worse procedures. A needle should be nothing.
“Don’t worry, I’m very light-handed,” Ilya tells him, probably sensing his nerves as he stands up and walks towards some drawers behind him. Shane’s inclined to believe that, the room has a vanilla kind of smell, unlike the disinfectant reek of most hospitals, and Ilya’s easy demeanor is already telling Shane that he’s in safe hands here.
Ilya pulls a blood pressure monitor and a penlight from the drawer. Shane watches. He does look like a pediatrician, wearing pale yellow scrubs, and on closer inspection he wears a few charms on his stethoscope.
“Do you treat kids, too?” Shane asks as Ilya sets up the blood pressure machine.
“I treat whoever needs to be treated. Occasionally children, but most of my patients are adults.”
“That’s nice,” Shane says, looking closer at the charms as Ilya threads the cuff up his arm; one is a hockey stick, one is a little bear, one is the Russian flag, and there are a few vague nature-y ones, leaves and flowers. Shane, always one to hate an awkward silence, decides to zone in on the hockey pin.
“Do you like hockey?”
“I do like hockey, Shane Hollander,” Ilya says with a knowing look, and Shane grins.
“What team?”
“Ah, I follow Russian hockey. But I am a big fan of the Boston Bears.”
Shane feels his eyes widen, and he stares as a smile grows on Ilya’s face as he looks down and tightens the cuff. Shane narrows his eyes sceptically.
“...Are you messing with me?”
“Yes. I do follow Boston a little, though. My best friend is a big fan.”
Shane pretends to wince. “You sure that’s your best friend?”
Ilya laughs. “Unfortunately, yes.”
The machine beeps, and Ilya takes the cuff off Shane’s arm, gently holding his elbow as he does so. He writes the reading down.
“One hundred and fifteen over seventy-five. Those are good numbers.”
“Thank you,” Shane replies, though he’s not sure if that’s something to say thank you for.
Ilya doesn’t seem to dwell on it, just picking up his penlight and leaning towards him.
“Eyes as wide as you can,” He instructs, and Shane follows. Ilya hums, flashing the bright light into his eyes. He spends a minute staring into one eye and then goes to the other.
“Perfect,” Ilya says and pulls back. He places the penlight on the desk and pulls his gloves off before looking back at Shane. “Now time for a blood sample. It will not be scary, I will use a very small needle. You will not feel it.”
Shane just shrugs. His heartbeat picks up a little, suddenly thankful that Ilya isn’t using his stethoscope right now.
He follows Ilya into a smaller room down the hall, a plainer, more clinical environment than Ilya’s office. Shane sits on the paper-covered bed, and he watches Ilya pull a set of new gloves on and take various instruments from different containers. A single-use needle, some kind of port, a vial.
There are many different sizes of needles in the container, and Shane’s eyes widen at the sight of the eighteen-gauge one with the inside hollowed out.
“What do you use the big needles for?” He asks.
“For patients I do not like,” Ilya quips, and Shane huffs a laugh. He comes to sit in the chair beside Shane, placing the instruments on the table beside them.
He picks up the port and fits the needle onto it, holding the tip to the inside of Shane’s elbow. “Don’t worry, you have very good veins. I do not even need a tourniquet,” The doctor says, trying to ease Shane's worry.
Shane just nods, but can’t help the small flinch he makes when the needle goes in. Ilya quickly clips on the vacutainer and it fills, Shane’s blood mixing with the clear anticoagulant already sitting in the bottom.
“Sorry,” Shane says quickly, realising it’s probably annoying for him to move with a sharp needle in his arm.
“Do not be sorry, many people are afraid of needles.”
“I’m not afraid,” Shane’s quick to defend himself. “It’s just weird to have a needle in your arm.”
Ilya nods before sealing the vial and quickly withdrawing the port, in such a way that Shane doesn’t even feel it.
"There," Ilya says, pressing a cotton pad against the pinprick wound. "Not in your arm anymore. You did very well.”
Shane feels a bit small, like a child needing to be comforted, but he just smiles and nods awkwardly. Ilya smiles back before taking some tape and sticking the pad down.
“I will take your blood to the lab. We are not busy today, so it will not take long for your results,” Ilya assures, placing the vial in a plastic bag and going to leave. Before he does, he pauses, looking back at Shane. “Do you need some apple juice?”
Shane huffs a laugh. “You only took a few drops.”
Ilya rolls his eyes. “Everyone needs apple juice. Hold on,” He says, turning back around and opening up a miniature refrigerator, pulling a small carton of apple juice out. He comes over and hands it to Shane, and their hands brush for a brief second, Ilya still wearing his blue gloves.
“Thanks,” Shane says. There’s a picture of a smiling apple on the front, and with the combination of a clinic and the juice box, a small wave of nostalgia rushes through him.
“I will be back in a few minutes. Drink your juice,” Ilya instructs before leaving the room and letting the door swing shut behind him.
Shane sits in silence for the few minutes.
He’s thankful that this first clinic was the right choice, not having to shop for doctors around the city. It seems nice here, his new doctor is kind and relaxed, not at all like the horror stories he’d stayed up late reading online this past week.
He takes a sip from the juice box, and it helps him feel better in more of a psychosomatic way than anything else. He’d only had a small vial taken after all.
He’ll have to call Yuna after this and tell her to stop the obsessive searching she’s been continuing even after he told her he’d applied as a new patient here, though he is grateful that she’s so concerned.
There’s been a brief period of instability in Shane’s life over the last few months, with slow changes happening as he becomes more of an adult and as his role on the team becomes more vital. The death of Dr Tremblay had just added to it all. But it feels like things are slowly beginning to fall back into place now. He knows he’s a bit of a control freak, so even one small part of his life changing is treated as a catastrophic event in his mind. But he thinks Dr Tremblay would be glad he's found a good new clinic, clearly somewhere she approves of since Ilya said she'd visited.
He sips his juice again, drinking the last of it before crumpling it and dropping it into the wastebasket to his side.
The door swings open again suddenly, having only been five minutes, and Ilya stands in the doorway for a moment. Shane looks over at him, and Ilya smiles.
“Follow back to my office, please.”
“I have your results,” Ilya says once they’re sitting down and he’s pulled something up on his screen. “Very good. Excellent white blood cell count, low blood glucose but I assume that due to the time, you haven't eaten yet today.”
“No,” Shane replies. He wasn't going to tell Ilya about his morning intermittent fasting rule, judging by the way Dr Tremblay had reacted to it when he’d told her last year. He just nods as Ilya continues.
“You have a history of tendon damage, yes?” Ilya asks, looking up from the file.
“Um, yeah. My shoulder and my knee.”
“Okay.”
Shane sits awkwardly as Ilya looks from the paper file back to his computer.
“Okay, sorry, one last physical test. I forgot it earlier.”
“That’s fine,” Shane replies, and Ilya tells him to sit on the bed in the office. He lets his legs dangle off the side, and Ilya reaches into a cupboard beside him. He retrieves a soft rubber hammer and comes to sit in front of Shane. Shane looks at it skeptically.
“These things actually exist?” He asks.
“Yes, a percussion hammer. They test how your reflexes work.”
“Hm. I thought they only existed in cartoons,” Shane replies, then instantly feels dumb for having said it.
Ilya just chuckles and nods his head. “They are real. I’m just going to test your leg reflexes.”
He leans down and presses gently below Shane’s left kneecap. He then pulls his wrist back and gives a hard tap to the same space, causing Shane’s leg to kick lightly. It almost makes him laugh at how silly he feels, but Ilya's gaze is serious and so he holds it in.
He does it twice more and then repeats the procedure on his right leg. Shane doesn't see a difference; his leg kicks the same as the other one did, but Ilya’s frown deepens.
He does it four more times, the patch of skin he was hitting beginning to bloom into a small red splotch.
“Hm.”
Ilya takes his leg into his gloved hands, pressing delicately around Shane’s knee.
“Um… What's wrong with it?” Shane asks uneasily. His body is his job, he's always anxious to keep it working and in shape like a well-oiled machine.
“Just the tendons. Very tense, perhaps another small tear.”
Shane feels the rush of anxiety from earlier return. He tries to keep his breathing even as Ilya’s fingers press the side of his knee.
“I didn’t notice,” Shane mumbles.
“It’s okay. It's a chronic injury, yes? Flares up many times?”
“Yeah."
“I thought so. You can still play hockey, is not very bad. Just strained, I believe.”
“Are you sure?” Shane asks.
“I'm sure.” Ilya presses a thumb on his kneecap before gently letting it down. “But I think I want you to come back next week to look at it. I can give you a scan and see how we can help it.”
“What— What can I do to fix it?” Shane asks, tenseness rising in his entire body now.
“Well, there is no fix until I can find out what is wrong. Only helping. I will prescribe you some nitroglycerin patches, will stop it from getting worse until I see you again.”
Shane relaxes a small bit, but only a bit. Prevention and then healing, a process he's been through a million times.
“It is manageable, do not worry,” Ilya assures him, smiling gently from his position leaning forward in his chair.
“Okay. Thank you,” Shane says, sincerely.
“But you should pay attention to your body more, Shane.”
Shane sighs. “I know. I didn't realise but… I guess I've been neglecting myself a little. It’s almost playoff season, y'know,” He confesses, almost ashamed to meet Ilya’s eye; it should've been a very obvious injury.
Ilya's gaze stays calm. “I understand, Shane. It is my job to notice these things now, I do not expect you to know everything.”
Shane’s shoulders loosen a little more at his words. Ilya didn’t sound annoyed, just sympathetic, and Shane’s eyes were trained on the little cartoon bear pin on his stethoscope.
“I will book you an appointment for next Wednesday, alright?” Ilya asks, tone still soft.
“Alright,” Shane nods.