Chapter Text
“Don’t talk, baby, it’s okay,” Yuna Hollander said, holding his hand on the hospital bed.
Shane didn’t want to say anything, if he was being honest with himself. He was rather happy not to be concussed or more injured than he was, but his jaw was wildly painful. He had never experienced such a sharp sensation in his teeth. It was fairly common for hockey players to hit their mouthguard on something – stick, board, human being – but it had never happened to Shane before. His mouthguard had guarded what it could, but the blow had not come for his teeth first. After colliding into the boards, Shane had felt a brutal pain on the side of his jaw, just next to the chin. The hit had reverberated through his bones, and that’s when his teeth had potentially been broken. Or not. He could not dare to open his mouth yet. In any case, it was blocked by a cast.
“They will not let you go out with shattered teeth, sweetheart,” Yuna comforted him. “I told them to send the best dental surgeon in Ottawa, you can afford it.”
“Ugh,” Shane let out, and the vibrations of his own voice triggered a jolt of pain in his mouth. He groaned.
“Don’t talk, the dentist will be here soon. You don’t have other injuries, so just focus on not moving your jaw. Your head is fine.”
Your head is fine. Shane liked the sound of that, even if he was getting more and more worried about his teeth. He didn’t mind looking a little rough – most hockey players did, and he didn’t get brand deals for his smile. He rarely showed his teeth while smiling, so…
Shane’s phone was face down on the little bedside table next to him. He grabbed it and saw that Hayden had left him a message.
Shane tried not to sigh, because he was in enough pain as it was.
Shane had no idea what this was even about. He always watched the same ten movies, usually with his parents, and whatever this reference was supposed to be was not part of the list.
“Mr Hollander?”
Shane looked up without moving his chin at all, very careful not to make the pain any worse. An incredibly good-looking man with curly dark blonde hair walked into the hospital room, sending a tornado of unnecessary feelings in his stomach. Shane knew he was certainly not straight, and his recent breakup with Rose had only made it obvious that he preferred his secret thoughts about men over the reality of a relationship with a woman. He knew that he could not indulge in his undisclosed desires if he wanted to keep his career afloat, not publicly at least, but he could talk about it with Rose any time he needed to let some steam out.
Maybe, one day, he would actually cross that bridge and kiss a man. Maybe. And he definitely needed to tell Rose about the handsome dentist who was going to repair his mouth.
“Good evening, Dr Rozanov,” Yuna said before Shane could emit any sound. “Thank you for making yourself available.”
Rozanov… Shane had indeed heard a Russian accent when the doctor had pronounced his name. The doctor showed him a schematic drawing of a skull neatly tucked into a folder with other medical documents.
“We will do radiography first, panoramic X-ray of the jaw, yes? This will show if your jaw is fractured or not. It is currently locked, the nurse told me.”
Shane couldn’t help but try to open his mouth, just a little. The movement was enough to make his vision go white.
“Aaaand you tried,” Dr Rozanov said, matter-of-factly. “Do not try.”
“Shane, sweetie, please don’t move your jaw,” Yuna begged him, pressing her thumb into the palm of his hand. The sensation grounded him a little, and the pain receded.
Shane tried to focus on the doctor’s eyes, which were… extremely attractive, like the rest of him. He felt a sting of sadness at the thought that he could never ask this man out, in a totally casual way, just to drink ginger ale or something else. There was a wall around his heart, and he could barely dare to think how hot Dr Rozanov was. Maybe I shouldn’t, actually. He’s my doctor, not a Grindr match. That would be unprofessional, for sure.
“Let’s bring you to the radiologist,” the doctor said. “I will come back after.”
Shane was grateful for his jaw, in a way. In a more normal situation, he would have blurted out something unfortunate. He wished he could keep looking at the beautiful dentist – and he was worried about the surgery itself, so spending time with a hot doctor sounded more exciting. He had never ended up under the knife for anything on his head, and it was extremely scary.
⚇⚇⚇
After coming back from the X-rays, Shane took his phone again while he waited with his mother for the results to arrive.
Shane deleted all the messages one by one, hiding the screen away from his mother. He could not afford to be outed if someone hacked into his phone. Just as he deleted the last one, Dr Rozanov came back. He somehow looked even better than two hours ago.
“So, Mr Hollander.”
Shane loved how his name sounded in his mouth. Guilt immediately crept in, ugly, needless. Yuna didn't seem to notice his inner demons as they waited for the doctor to speak.
“You have a small jaw fracture, and two cracked teeth. There will be two surgeons taking care of you, now.”
“Not you?” Shane couldn't stop himself from asking through his gritted teeth.
“Yes, me, I will be one of the surgeons. We need neck specialist and dental specialist, it is safer.”
“Neck?” Yuna asked.
“This is for safety,” he insisted, still looking at Shane. “Your head appears to be okay, but we need to confirm that your neck has no issues during the surgery.”
Shane liked that Dr Rozanov was speaking directly to him. He usually didn't mind his mother doing all the official talking around him outside of a rink, but this felt more important than usual. He would have hated feeling like a child when it came to his health – this wasn't a brand deal for shoes.
“Okay,” Shane said, and it sounded like two vowels with no consonants.
“The surgery will take three hours, maximum. Is standard.”
Shane wondered how often people injured their mouth until they couldn't open it anymore for it to be a standard procedure, but his thoughts were cut short by Dr Rozanov smiling gently. Damn.
⚇⚇⚇
When Shane opened his eyes, he was already back to his hospital bed, and alone. His head was spinning a little, and there was a delicious warmth in his chest. After a few seconds, his brain registered that this must be the remnants of anesthesia, as well as some solid painkillers. It's great… woah.
Shane grabbed his phone on the bedside table without thinking. A part of his hockey-infested brain wanted to know what the final score against Ottawa had been, which he had completely forgotten to ask Hayden earlier, but his mind went blank when he saw the text on his screen.
“Hey, it's sexy Doctor Rozanov 😜 Hope you woke up well. Let me know if you want to grab a drink.”
Shane's heart inflated four times its size, at least. The information going through his brain felt like they were swimming in thick soup, but he knew that his pulse was higher than it should be. He closed his eyes and tried to decide if he was excited or terrified. Rose. Rose will know.
He struggled through the icons on the screen and texted Rose.
Shane was, all of a sudden, acutely aware that his jaw felt weird. His head was caged in a plastic or silicone cast, he couldn't tell. It made him feel tired in a way he rarely experienced. He locked his phone and fell asleep. When he woke up again, the most beautiful face was looking at him.
“Hi, Mr Hollander. Your parents will come back tonight, okay?”
“Oh… Can I speak?” Shane carefully tried. “Ouch–”
“Is acutely painful, but not for much longer,” said Dr Rozanov. “You will stay at least two days here, yes? And only soft and liquid foods for two weeks, at least.”
Shane shrugged. He was used to protein shakes, anyway. He didn't want to say that in front of Dr Rozanov in case it made him sound silly, though. Why do I care? Nothing is going to happen.
“Will I be fine?” he asked, remembering what his priorities were.
“The surgery went very well, do not worry, Mr Hollander. You may look round like hamster for a while, but there are no medical issues anymore now.”
“Good. Did you… Well…”
Dr Rozanov looked at him expectantly, with the body language of someone who needed to get going as soon as possible but had to stay professional. He was a busy man, after all.
“Yes, Mr Hollander?”
“The message you sent me… Yes, I say yes.”
The monitor showed that Shane’s heart rate went from 76 to 91, which was extremely embarrassing.
“A message?” Dr Rozanov repeated, puzzled.
“Yes… You sent it to my number…”
“I did not steal your number from your file, Mr Hollander. Totally illegal. You are high from painkillers, yes?”
“I– no, I mean–”
“You must be, because you think I am unprofessional. Is better if you are high, less embarrassing for you.”
“Hey, no–”
“You should rest, and stop moving your jaw too much. Is fine.”
Shane wanted to protest, but the pain was starting to be extremely uncomfortable. He watched the doctor leave the room and felt both humiliated and angry. Why was this man gaslighting him? He grabbed his phone with the intention to send a response to the doctor's text, something like “Well? Didn't you steal my number?”.
But, after scrolling for a good minute, he could not find it. What the fuck? The only trace of the text in question was him writing it to Rose, with a number of typos that made him blush. He had not dreamed of receiving it, so what had happened? Only he knew his phone lockscreen code, and it was certainly not his date of birth or anything that the doctor could have guessed. Nobody could have deleted that text.
Shane’s mind was now very clear, and his jaw on fire, but he didn't want to take more painkillers. He combed through his phone with desperation, as if something could appear out of thin air. He opened his Notes app to find an old tutorial he had saved about retrieving deleted content from his phone, after losing a nice team picture the previous year, and his stomach sank.
“heeey, it's roz 🌹🪆 sleepy. Drink ?.”
Shane wanted to cry. The note was right there, clearly saved before he had sent it back to Rose. He had written “Dr Rozanov”’s text to himself, completely high, with a rose and even a freaking Russian nesting doll emoji because it started with R. He had apparently looked for a Rozanov emoji twice, as if Big Tech had ever bothered inventing one. It barely made any sense, but his brain full of painkillers had invented a nice story about it. Oh my god, I'm a fucking imbecile.
He had to apologise, somehow.
“Mr Hollander,” said an energetic woman, suddenly entering his room. “I am Dr Vetrova. You have not met me before surgery, but I was there to monitor your neck.”
Shane nodded mentally, remembering a certain Dr Svetlana Vetrova on the file his mother had tried to make him read hours earlier. She looked at the monitor next to his bed and shook her head.
“Do you have a history of atrial fibrillation, Mr Hollander?”
“Uh… no, is it dangerous?” he managed to ask.
“It depends on the cause. Let me take your blood pressure.”
He waited in silence as she took it with a portable device, wondering if he was in trouble.
“No, it's fine,” she concluded, releasing his arm. “Are you particularly upset about being here, Mr Hollander? High stress can provoke this.”
“Um…”
She blinked, waiting for him to say something, but his jaw felt like it was glued shut. He tried pronouncing sentences by only moving his lips, which was very annoying, but she seemed to understand.
“I think I made Dr Rozanov angry.”
“Oh, really?” She seemed amused. “Did you tell him he was incompetent?”
“No, but… well, I hallucinated that he sent me a text because of the painkillers, and I confronted him about it. He said that I better be high, otherwise it was embarrassing of me to think he was unprofessional like that.”
The pain was atrocious, but he needed to tell all of this to his second doctor, automatically motioned by forces he couldn't control anymore.
“Don't worry about it,” she said. “He's snarky, but he would never be truly angry at a patient. What was the text about?”
Shane knew he must have been blushing furiously, because his heart rate increased on the monitor. How humiliating. He had to tell Dr Vetrova what had happened. He had to.
“...asking me out?” he breathed out, and he realised with horror that his eyes were wet.
“Oh! Well, I can confirm to you that Dr Rozanov would never steal your personal information to flirt with you, if it makes you feel better. This would be highly unprofessional, and you would be in your right to sue. But you are correct in thinking that it never happened, so you can stop worrying about it.”
She paused, and when she saw no relief on Shane's face, she added:
“Oh. You wanted it to be real, didn't you?”
“Uh–”
“Don't speak more, you will get sore way longer if you move your jaw too much. Listen, Mr Hollander.”
She sat on his bed next to his legs, which startled him.
“Dr Rozanov is a great surgeon, but also a normal human being. There is a limit to how much he can hide, and if he had been outraged by your words he would have snapped at you. I know him.”
Shane felt relieved.
“I will not repeat any of this to him, this is in your hands,’ she added. “Also, I am here for a completely different reason. You might spend longer than you think in this hospital, because I came to tell you that your neck will indeed need monitoring for at least a week.”
Shane inhaled sharply.
“Nothing serious, but we have to do a few checks every day. With me,” she added with a pointed look. “You will only see Dr Rozanov from time to time.”
“Okay.”
“Your parents are coming, by the way,” she said, standing from the bed. “Whatever they try to pester you with, try not to move your mouth. We might free you from the cast tomorrow, if the X-ray looks good.”
Shane closed his eyes, ready to pretend to sleep to avoid his parents’ questions, but Dr Vetrova had something more to say that made him blink.
“Dr Rozanov will always look uninterested in you, because he is focused on his mission, and his mission is to save patients. But there is something I can tell you… While you will never get any attention from him in this hospital, nothing forbids you from meeting him in the future, where you will not be his patient anymore. You are allowed to have a drink with him or become his friend. He's not going to jail for walking into old patients and being polite with them.”
Shane didn't like how she seemed to say that he would absolutely never care about him romantically, but her speech let the most dangerous feeling bloom into his chest: hope.
⚇⚇⚇
After his parents visited him – and he pretended quite successfully to need a lot more sleep than he actually did –, Shane contacted Rose again.
Shane scoffed. Indeed, maybe his jaw was actually in a catastrophic state, and he had no business crushing on this man. He looked at the time on his phone and sighed. The whole evening had been atrociously long, and his parents had visited him in the middle of the night to be there for him after the surgery. Maybe he had been harsh with them, but he felt genuinely exhausted.
⚇⚇⚇
At the crack of dawn, Dr Rozanov was back. Shit, I thought it would only be Dr Vetrova! He was acutely aware how disheveled the bed looked.
“Mr Hollander,” said the doctor, and once again Shane couldn’t get enough of the way he pronounced the Rs. “Let’s look at your jaw, yes? No pain?”
“Lots of pain,” Shane said flatly. He had spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, but too proud to call for painkillers. Maybe that had been an absurd thing to do, considering.
“Let’s look at that.”
Dr Rozanov slowly removed the cast from under his chin, and Shane believed for a hot second that his lower jaw might just drop on the bedsheets. Stop panicking, Hollander. For fuck’s sake.
“Tell me if there is pain, yes?”
“Okay.”
Shane closed his eyes, the only safe way to avoid staring at the doctor’s beautiful eyes. Blue? Hazel? He couldn’t remember and was spiralling.
“No stress,” Dr Rozanov said, after the monitor betrayed his heart rate.
Shane let him touch his chin with the tips of his fingers, and every single part was painful.
“Everything hurts,” he admitted. He felt shameful, as if he was somehow guilty for telling this wonderful man that his bones had not perfectly healed in half a day.
“Is normal. I will make the nurse give you painkillers, you should feel better soon. You need to be comfortable before you eat something, you will need straw inside your mouth.”
“Can I avoid taking painkillers, though?”
He was so scared of saying something stupid while high…
“Pain does not help. I know athletes are like this, I am also like this a little, but you need painkillers. Just a little, okay? Low dose.”
Shane sighed and nodded as Dr Rozanov put the cast back under his chin. He was so delicate… thoughtful, even. Well, professional. This was normal. He was doing his job.
“You’re an athlete?” Shane asked, unable to stop himself.
“I work out a lot,” the doctor simply replied.
Shane dared to look at his face, which made his heart skip a beat – metaphorically, not visible on the monitor – and let his eyes wander downwards. Dr Ilya Rozanov seemed to be fit as fuck. Beautiful. Perfect. A Greek statue, actually. When he looked up again, the doctor seemed amused, but his smile disappeared immediately.
“Take the painkillers, and try to rest. There will be some movement exercises later with Dr Vetrova.”
“Thank you.”
“For?”
“Well, for saving my teeth?”
Dr Rozanov shrugged.
“Is my job.”
“Yeah, but… Our faces are important.”
“For ads on television?”
“For– no, for life in general! For eating!”
Shane was embarrassed by the whole conversation, but equally as surprised that the doctor seemed to know him.
“Have you seen my ads?”
“No, your mother told me when she called me for help.”
“Oh. Well, don’t watch them, it’s fine.”
Dr Rozanov raised his eyebrows, but did not comment on that.
“Call if you need anything. The nurse, I mean. Yes?”
“Fine.”
He left, and Shane wanted to disappear into the mattress.
Shane smiled, which hurt him greatly. He loved his friendship with Rose. She was probably the best thing that had happened in his life in recent years, even if it had been at the cost of an awfully stressful relationship with her.
⚇⚇⚇
On the second day, after Hayden and JJ visited him and had to be threatened to put their phones away – no, pictures of Shane in his cast would not be funny to post on Instagram –, Shane didn’t see Dr Rozanov at all.
“He’s tasked me to remove your cast for a few hours and see how you feel,” said Dr Vetrova as she got to work.
“Is he okay?”
Shane realised a bit too late how catastrophic his question was.
“Well, he is performing surgery in another hospital on Tuesdays, nothing worse than that. Don’t worry about Dr Rozanov, Mr Hollander. He works hard, that’s all.”
Shane tried not to smile, but failed. He had not heard or seen anything that made him dislike this man so far. That’s dangerous. I shouldn’t. People don’t even know I like men. Oh my god, I’m going to out myself by accident if I take more painkillers.
“Are you going to experience anxiety every time I come to see you?” Dr Vetrova pointed out. “I am starting to believe that it’s my fault, you know.”
“Very sorry–”
“Don’t apologise, I was simply joking. Are you in pain? Move your neck like this.”
Shane carefully tried to imitate what the doctor was showing to him, and did not feel anything strange.
“No, I only feel pain in my teeth and jaw. And the occasional headache.”
“That is to be expected, yes. How many painkillers have you taken today?”
“Uh… zero?”
“I can’t say that I like hearing this. Well, I will leave you without the cast for a few hours, and I will come back to you later. A nurse can bring you books from the hospital library, if you spend all your time stressing about Dr Rozanov. Okay?”
Shane blushed and looked away. How obvious was he? He was putting himself in great danger for a random crush. Had he never seen a handsome man before? Why did it feel more important? To be fair, he felt very different about it, for some reason. It was as if he had found the missing piece of a puzzle after hours of looking for it under the family couch. He felt exhilarated to be near him, and he couldn’t wait to see him again. To hear his voice.
Which happened on the same day, surprisingly. But he got scolded, which wasn’t very exhilarating.
The nurse was holding the phone near his ear.
“Mr Hollander,” said the voice of Dr Rozanov, sounding quite pissed off but polite. “I was told that you still refuse painkillers. Even low dose. Do you not trust me? I would never make you take too many of them, you can be assured of this.”
“I don’t know, it’s just– Can I be honest with you?”
He looked with pleading eyes at the nurse, who left the phone with him and stepped away from the room.
“I was very impolite with you after the surgery, and that was because of the painkillers. I am worried about becoming disrespectful again if I take them.”
There. The truth, plain and simple.
“I understand. You know, it is my job to make sure that patients are okay. The rest is not important. You should focus on your recovery, not my comfort. Do you understand?”
“Yeah… Sorry for being anxious about stupid stuff, I just hate being mean to people accidentally. You are not unprofessional. Like, at all.”
“Good to hear. Now, you take the pills, or I will have to come back to hospital to yell at you.”
Shane wanted him to come to the hospital so badly. But maybe not to get yelled at.
“And do not steal my number from the nurse’s phone.”
It took a few seconds for Shane to register that this had to be a joke, but he wasn’t fully sure.
“I wouldn’t do that!”
“Is joke.”
“Oh.”
“I saw your ad on television this morning, by the way.”
“Really?” Shane asked, failing miserably at sounding self-confident.
“You don’t smile with your teeth. Not sure why you needed surgery.”
“Very funny. Will you be here tomorrow?”
What the fuck! We’re not dating! What the fuck are you saying–
“Yes, I will be back. Have a nice rest of the day.”
“You too! I mean– See you tomorrow.”
Shane scrambled to hang up, his heart racing in his chest. He couldn’t believe how much impoliteness he was piling on top of his previous impoliteness. It was becoming a mountain of impoliteness, actually. How fucking embarrassing. Only one person could help him brainstorm this whole phone conversation.
Shane took the painkillers, and finally slept for more than three hours.
⚇⚇⚇
Shane woke up with the cast on his chin. Dr Vetrova…? He didn’t know how he slept through a whole medical procedure without anesthesia, but he wasn’t mad about it. Dr Svetlana Vetrova had a way to understand what he tried to hide that made him scared of interacting with her. Was she good friends with Dr Rozanov? She had said she knew him well, which could mean anything, really.
He spent the rest of the day looking at the wall in front of him, deadly bored. Every time he peeked at his phone, he remembered the ridiculous message he had written to himself, and he saw all the notifications from journalists wanting to know if he was badly injured or not. He didn’t want to deal with this, it was Yuna’s job.
Something he had not done yet was googling Ilya Rozanov, and he felt like this was a line he shouldn’t cross. He was already going way too far by talking casually to the doctor, and finding information about him online would only result in an absolute nightmarish hospital stay. Shane closed his eyes and tried not to think about his two-day crush, to no avail. When he finally gave up on trying to sleep, he opened his eyes again and saw that Dr Vetrova had silently entered the room. He jumped in fear.
“Any pain?” she asked.
“You scared me! Why are you so silent?”
“Why would I be loud, Mr Hollander? Show me the neck movements again, please.”
Shane obeyed. It did hurt, this time.
“Is this normal?” he asked, worried for the first time in forever about his health.
“We are only two days after a quite serious injury, Mr Hollander. I will add some neck physiotherapy to your daily checks and treatments, and it should help a lot.”
“Thank you.”
“And what about your teeth?”
“They still hurt, but a lot less.”
“See? Painkillers work, and you’re not saying anything unfortunate to anyone.”
Shane looked away, embarrassed.
“Did he tell you?”
“You told me that you were rude to Dr Rozanov two days ago. Should he have told me anything else?”
“N–no, nothing.”
Dr Vetrova rolled her eyes – Shane had not expected to ever see a doctor do this in front of a patient.
“He has that effect on a lot of people,” she said with a little smile.
I’m not special. I should give up, right? She didn’t say more.