Going Mental: Part One

I am not MelTing, and this is not a story about the Penguins.

But I got this idea when we had agreed to make our second bet, and since the Canucks received a point, shouldn't they get some love too? Once I get an idea in my head, I've got to run away with it.

This'll be longer than a one-shot (because one-shots are hard!), and it's not going to be typical fan-fiction either. It's going to involve what I think are sensitive subjects, so I hope it doesn't offend anyone.
--Jay






“But Coach—”

“No ‘buts,’ Raymond,” Coach Vigneault ordered, “you’re going. Now get your ass out of here.”

Mason Raymond shoved his hands in his pockets and left the dressing room with his head down, waiting until he out of hearing range before he cursed. Everyone was being so careful this season. Playing it safe. He tried telling the head coach that it was overkill and unnecessary, but Vigneault refused to listen and Mason’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, his teammates were dressing and preparing for another day of training camp. Unfortunately for him, Mason was injured and wasn’t slated to return for months. Instead of taking part in the rigorous practice to get into game-shape and to bond with his fellow players, he was being forced to yet another doctor’s appointment.

He continued to mutter to himself as he shuffled down the long hallway, away from the loud echoes of laughter, the sharp sound of tape being ripped, and the low hum of music—and toward the cold, impersonal atmosphere of the front offices. It wasn’t just any doctor’s appointment; Mason was scheduled for weekly therapy sessions with the team psychologist.

After a tragic summer for the National Hockey League, no one wanted to take any risks when it came to the mental health of the players. Appointments were usually mandated as a part of the beginning- and end-of-the-year physicals, so that a player could be adequately assessed and noted for reference purposes; other than that, no other sessions were required. Sometimes, the psychologists were called in to consult during losing streaks, and coaches would recommend that the players seek help during the season when they were slumping or struggling under the weight of the pressure on them, but Mason had never been pushed liked this to see the shrink. And he didn’t like it.

Shrinks were for crazy people, and Mason was not crazy.

No one actively sought out professional help; it had something to do with the stigma surrounding it as well as the macho, jock attitude of professional athletes who were bred and trained to handle heavy expectations. Policies were being changed, though, as a consequence of three “non-suspicious” deaths of men still in the prime of their lives—including Mason’s own former teammate, Rick Rypien. While everyone on the team had been aware that Rypien had his share of problems, it was still a total shock to learn of his death and how it had happened. Management wanted to make sure that never happened again.

The nature of Mason’s injury, as well as the projected long recovery time, made him a prime candidate to try out the new, proactive mental health program instituted by the Canucks. It started in the previous season: in game six of the Stanley Cup Finals, he took a hit that broke one of his vertebrae. It wasn’t just that he was missing training camp and the start of the new season, but that he also missed an epically important game seven. He had had to watch in a back brace from the press box as his team fell apart on the ice below him. If any of the guys were going to need special attention, it was going to be Mason. Ryan Kesler was missing camp, too, but he had finished out the previous season—for what that was worth. Now, while every other player he knew was training and rededicating themselves for a brand new start in October, he had his fingers crossed for a December comeback.

Sure, playing sports was stressful; there was no doubt about that. No professional athlete would deny it. There was a constant, heavy burden to win and to prove their worth on the team. Mason hadn’t performed quite up to expectations for the Canucks, and he struggled with feeling like a disappointment. Watching the most important game of his team’s season from the press box made him feel impotent, even though he didn’t quite have the capacity to voice that. And he still wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel now that he was missing training camp and the beginning of the new season—but no matter what was going through his brain, he knew that he didn’t want to have to talk it out with some know-it-all headshrinker who knew nothing about the reality of playing professional ice hockey.

He found himself in front of the office door with the plaque Dr. Carlyle, sports psychologist labeling it, and then he reluctantly knocked on the door. For a few moments, silence followed; Mason hoped that there was some kind of miscommunication or mix-up that would mean he wouldn’t have to go through with his appointment, but that was dashed when he finally heard, “Come in!”

Mason didn’t care for the office. The walls were bare and painted a dull taupe color, broken up only by the hanging, framed diplomas. He had to sit on a couch that was lumpy and uncomfortable; he fidgeted and adjusted his position several times, but he still couldn’t settle in. The shrink sat across from him in an armchair, instead of behind the big desk at the end of the room. That would have been preferable to him, because this faked some kind of personal connection, like it would make him feel more at ease. But it didn’t.

Dr. Carlyle had been waiting for Mason to arrive for his appointment was set to begin as soon as he arrived. She had her legs crossed at the knee, her patient folder in her lap and pen poised to take notes. She never looked like she enjoyed her job and that she had rather be anywhere else.

“Good morning, Mason,” she greeted. “How are you feeling today?”

“Uh, good. You know.” He squirmed again under her watchful gaze. Whenever she peered over her dark, thick-rimmed glasses at him, he knew she was judging him. Politely, he asked, “How’re you?”

The question caught her a little off-guard; typically, she was the one asking after her patients. She was so surprised that it took a couple seconds to respond, creating an awkward lull in the fifty-minute session. “I’m good, thanks.” The appointment was supposed to be solely about the patient; not only was it what she got paid for, but she couldn’t talk about herself. It would have ruined the doctor-patient relationship. She tried to always be authoritative and in control—and especially to never get personal. She had to be clinical in order to be effective.

She wasn’t a part of the team. Dr. Carlyle didn’t get invited out for drinks after the games or for lunch after practices like some of the trainers or other staff did. It was part and parcel of the position. She wasn’t a friend. Besides, everyone knew that therapists couldn’t be friends with their patients. That was unethical and unscrupulous.

Dr. Carlyle cleared her throat and officially started the session. “So, tell me, how has your rehab been going this week?”

“Good.”

“Progressing as expected?”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t know. I guess. No setbacks, at least.”

“So you’d say you’re on track then?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, that’s great,” she said, taking note of that. “And how have you been feeling aside from the physical aspect of your injury?”

“Good.” Mason liked to keep his answer as short and as simple whenever possible. He was afraid of saying something wrong, so he was terse.

Dr. Carlyle raised an eyebrow at his response. She always looked so harsh and stern, especially when she gave those kinds of disapproving expressions. With her brown hair pulled back into a tight, severe bun and those glasses perched low on her nose, she looked like one of those librarians that always yelled at him for being too loud in the library. Plus, she was dressed in head-to-toe black, like she was heading to a funeral after work.

“Care to elaborate on that, Mason?”

He shrugged again. “I feel... fine. Good. Just, well, good.”

She set down her pen and gestured toward him. “You know, you can be honest with me here. We have doctor-patient privilege, and this is all kept in confidence. I don’t go running to Alain to tell him what you’ve said.”

Mason gave one single nod of his head. “I know.”

“Okay then. The only way these meetings are going to be of any help to you is if you open up and tell me the truth. I mean, I know that this is only our second session, but you’ll be seeing me every week until at least Christmas,” she told him. “We just want to make sure that you’re dealing properly with the stress of your injury and then that you’ll make a smooth transition in rejoining the team.”

“I know.”

“Really? Because I have to sign off on it before you’ll be playing a game for the Canucks this season. So it’s very important that you take these appointments seriously and use them to your benefit.”

Raymond didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, he subtly nodded, knowing that he’d have to actively participate if he wanted to play—but he still wasn’t happy.

Knowing that their time for the week was slowly ticking away, Dr. Carlyle moved forward their session and tried to coax him into talking. “I know that a lot of players, in all of professional sports, don’t disclose injuries. They don’t tell the coach that they’re sore and should probably sit out, or tell the doctors or trainers about nagging injuries. They pop some pills, suck it up, and go out there and play. I know that you’ve undoubtedly done that in your career, am I right?”

She paused, waiting for him to answer her. At first, he had assumed that it was a rhetorical question; when too much time had passed and the silence become as uncomfortable as the couch, he muttered a cooperative, “Uh, yeah, I have.”

“Unfortunately, you don’t have that luxury with this injury. It’s public knowledge that you got seriously injured. You have a long road in front of you still, lots of doctors’ appointments and assessments. I won’t sugarcoat it: it’s hard. It’ll be hard on you physically and hard on you mentally. You’re going to feel a lot of different emotions as you progress, and I want you to know that it’ll all be perfectly normal. If you help me to get a feel for how you’re feeling now, then I can give you some strategies to help you through the process of recovery.

“Now, at our first appointment, we went over your diagnosis and your timetable for return, which was a very medical approach to help me understand what it is you’re dealing with. Today, however, I’d like to talk about the summer and how you dealt with it on your own.” She picked up her pen again and turned back to her notes. “You’ve been restricted to cardio-only workouts. No lifting, no skating. Sounds like a pretty idle offseason. What did you do with your time?”

Mason didn’t like the open questions that required more than either a “yes” or a “no.” He cleared his throat. “Took a couple fishing trips once I could stop wearing the brace. Rode the stationary bike for a lot of my cardio, but there wasn’t much else I could do. No golf. Couldn’t run for a while. Spent a lot of time in Vancouver, ’cause that’s where my doctors are. Played a lot of video games, hung out with some friends who came to visit me. Not much else.”

She scribbled as much of that down as possible. He made it sound he was taking everything in stride, but Dr. Carlyle knew that couldn’t be the case. She wanted to stir up some emotion to see how he was dealing with it all, so she brought up what was sure to be a touchy subject. “Did you hear from Boychuk?”

His voice changed a little when he said, “Yeah.”

“Did you have a conversation with him about what happened?”

“No. He just texted me, to say he was sorry and that he didn’t mean for me to get hurt on the play.”

“And did you accept his apology?”

He scoffed. “No. I didn’t bother answering his fucking text. He was obviously too busy celebrating winning the Cup to even give me call, so, you know, whatever.”

Dr. Carlyle took note of his angry outburst. It was the most emotion she had ever seen out of him, which encouraged her. “Would you like to confront him about it?”

Shrugging, he said, “Not really. It wouldn’t do much good now. I....” Mason stopped himself from venting further.

“What?” she prodded, hoping he would be open with her. “Go on.”

Mason played with his hands in his lap. He didn’t want to talk, but he knew he had to. “I thought a lot of this summer about what would happen when we played the Bruins this year. What I would do when I was out there on the ice with Boychuk. And then it occurred to me that I’d be lucky to be back on the ice in time for that game.”

She checked her file because something seemed off. “But that game is in January. You’re projected to be back on the ice in December.”

“I know, but that’s if my rehab and reconditioning goes according to schedule as we planned. If I have a setback or if I’m just not in shape in time, well, I might not be back in that game.”

She wrote fourth stage down, which was what she had assumed. Anytime a player got seriously injured and had to miss considerable time, they experienced the five stages of the Kübler-Ross Model of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Mason was no exception, and until he realized that, his rehab and conditioning were going to be a lot more difficult on him and infinitely more stressful. Not to mention, they hadn’t even begun taking about the natural, ensuing anxiety over re-injury.

“So, if you are able to play in January and you’re on the ice with Boychuk,” she posed, “how do you think you’ll react?”

“I don’t know,” Mason answered honestly. Dr. Carlyle kept quiet, forcing him to expound on the possibility. “Over the summer, I kept imagining I would go in for the hit. Not to hurt him, I don’t want to break his back or anything, I just... I don’t know, I want him to know that I’m there. Remind him of what he did. Make him feel sorry.”

“You didn’t think his apology was sincere then? You don’t think he feels any remorse for what he did?”

“I think he might feel bad, but not sorry. Why would he? He didn’t even get punished. No call on the ice, no suspension or anything. He just kept on playing, and his team ended up winning.”

Her instincts were to ask him how he felt about the seeming lack of justice in the NHL discipline system, but she was quickly learning that she needed to do more to provoke a response. “How much does that bother you?”

“A lot. A whole heck of a fucking lot. After everything we heard about how dirty we were playing—which, okay, that’s what Boston wanted to portray us as, and everyone who didn’t want us to win was going to buy into it—but Boston could do no wrong. I was really mad for a while.”

“So do you think you’ve moved on then?”

“Hmm. I, well, I don’t know.”

She underlined fourth stage in her notes, now fairly certain that he was stuck in the depression phase. It made sense from what she heard from Coach Vigneault, and also fit in with the time of the year. Mason was isolated from his teammates because he couldn’t practice with them—and even though he hung out with them, it was never the same as bonding by going through the experience of camp: pushing his body and discovering chemistry with the group of players that he would spend so much of the next seven to nine months with. Dr. Carlyle’s job was to help get him past that and into the stage of acceptance. The final jump was always the hardest. Now that she could pinpoint his frame of mind, it made proceeding easier.

“I’d like to talk now about the importance of having a support system to help you through the next few months. Now obviously you have me and the rest of the staff here,” she said with a comforting smile, “to listen and help in anyway we can. The trainers, the doctors, we can all give you tips to guide you on your path to recovery. But who else do you have to talk to you, outside of that?”

“Uh, my parents, I guess. They worry a lot already though, I don’t like to tell them stuff other than the good news.”

“Okay, what about friends, other than your teammates?”

“I don’t know, I don’t talk to them about the medical stuff or hockey.”

“Why not?”

“They don’t really understand it. Like, they watch the games, they know I’m hurt and stuff, but they don’t get it really.”

Dr. Carlyle scribbled down about his lack of network away from the team. “Okay, so then do you talk to your teammates about your situation? Like Ryan Kesler, who’s also missing the start of the season, or Kevin Bieska, who’s gone through missing big spans several times?”

“No. See, it’s different for Kes. He’s skating at least. I mean, I haven’t laced up for months, haven’t done anything that’ gonna help me get into game shape. And Juice, it happened during the season for him, both times when he got cut, so he’s talked to me a little bit, but, you know, it’s a different situation.”

Dr. Carlyle was worried that he had set himself apart from even his own teammates—who were in the best position of all to commiserate and empathize with him. Mason was essentially on his own when he needed support and camaraderie the most. If he wasn’t seeking out his friendships, then he was wallowing in his own depression. Bottling up those feelings would only backfire on him if he hiccoughed up on his way toward full recovery.

“I want to give you some homework for the week,” she said. “When you feel like you’re struggling or alone, I want you to reach out to someone. And I want you to do it at least three times in the coming week, with three different people. Maybe a teammate, or a friend, or a relative. You don’t have to talk about your injury or rehab—unless, of course, you want to—but you just have to connect with them on a personal level. Okay?”

Mason struggled to not roll his eyes. He wanted to give the impression that he was willing to actively participate in these head games so she’d have no trouble signing off on his eventual return to the ice. “Yeah, sure, okay,” he lied. He would have said anything to get out of that office. Luckily for him, it worked.

“Great. We have about ten minutes of our session left, so let’s work on some relaxation techniques that you can use whenever you’re feeling stressed,” Dr. Carlyle said, instructing her patient to close his eyes and picture the ocean. Instead, he imagined that he was back out on the ice, ready for the home opener against the Penguins.