Page 149 of The Blame Game

Dom had done more than enough of that to Christian.

And, truth be told, it felt kinda nice. Like Shea’s soft, worried ‘baby’ had. Weird, but not necessarily bad.

“Okay.” Dr. Strickland cleared his throat. “So, you know your arteries carry the blood to your muscles and other tissue, yes?”

Dom assumed that was aimed at him so he nodded.

Dr. Strickland continued. “An aneurysm is when there’s a weak spot on the artery wall. That can take place anywhere in your body. There are multiple causes for them, some of which are genetic, but in your case, it appears to be due to an injury. That would technically make what you have a pseudoaneurysm, but we’ll stick to aneurysm to keep it simple.”

“An injury?” Dom echoed, confused. Also, nothing about this seemed simple to him, but whatever. He’d muddle through and hope it all made sense at the end. “What injury did I have that would have caused this?”

“Well,” Dr. Strickland said, pointing to the image on the screen. Even Dom could tell that it was of his hips. He didn’t know a lot about x-ray images but that one was pretty obvious. “This one was taken from the front, so this is your right hip here, and your left hip here. The aneurysm is essentially tucked between your left hip joint and your gluteus maximus, so it’s invisible in this particular shot.”

Dom knew what the gluteus maximus was. The big meaty part of his ass. He said as much to Dr. Strickland, who laughed and nodded.

“It’s probably a little hard for you to see in this image so let me switch to a 3D rendering that shows your circulatory system. Your heart is here.” He pointed to it with his pen, then traced it partway down what looked to Dom like a big cord. “These red things are your kidneys.” He pointed to two bean-shaped things on either side of that cord.

“Okay,” Dom said slowly.

“As we travel toward your feet, do you see where it branches?”

Dom nodded.

“On the right, it continues to branch. But on the left here, you see the big red blob?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the aneurysm. The wall of the artery has ballooned out but hasn’t burst. The pressure from that is partly what’s causing the nerve issues you mentioned recently. As that balloon grows, it presses more and more on the nerves and causes numbness and weakness. It’s also caused an imbalance in your hips, which has contributed to your back pain. Eventually, left untreated, it would cause atrophy to the muscles it feeds.”

Dom stared. “And this is all good news?”

Dr. Strickland beamed. “It is! I know it sounds scary but compared to disc surgery, it’s relatively easy to treat.”

“Wait, before we talk about that,” Dom said, feeling a little overwhelmed. “How did this happen? You said there was an injury?”

“Oh, yes. So do you remember in January when you took that hard hit from Luke Crawford in the game against Boston?”

“Sure.” Dom frowned. “A check from him is like hitting a brick wall and I got slammed into the boards and went down hard. My ass was bruised for—oh.”

“Yes,” Dr. Strickland said grimly. “You were limping after, so we did some scans but the best I can tell is that it was a very slow-growing aneurysm. It would have taken a while for the blood to begin to pool, so it was undetectable in the initial testing and, unfortunately, it was in a spot where it was very difficult to get a clear angle of it anyway.”

“So that seems dangerous,” Dom said with a frown. “I mean, you can’t have your arteries ballooned out like that, right?”

“Correct. You were very fortunate that none of the hits you sustained since then were either forceful enough or at the right—or wrong, in this case—angle to do further damage. If it had hemorrhaged, it would have been life-threatening.”

“Jesus.” Dom felt a little shaky and Shea squeezed his leg reassuringly.

Dom suddenly felt grateful that he hadn’t been playing enough minutes or considered enough of a threat for teams to go after him much. He’d taken hits, sure. But nothing major since that one from Crawford.

It was possible that his declining play had actually saved his life. Fuck.

“But it truly is good news, Dom,” Shea said softly. “This is treatable, like Dr. Strickland said.”

Dom glanced over, searching his face for reassurance. Shea looked calm and relaxed, the expression in his blue eyes warm and comforting. It made the tightness in Dom’s chest loosen and he was able to draw in a deep breath.

“Yeah, okay,” he said before he turned back to Dr. Strickland. “So how do we treat it?”

Dr. Strickland described the procedure.

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