Sports Medicine Master System-Chapter 70: Flashed by Like a Shooting Star (Part 2)
Hardaway blinked, a little stunned.
"I wasn’t born in some high-and-mighty Manhattan. Just like you, I grew up in a trashy neighborhood in Chicago. My father... he used to be a good dad, but after an injury forced him to retire, he became an alcoholic asshole. And my mother? She wasn’t some lawyer. She was just a poor woman who worked two jobs a day, struggling to raise me."
"And brownies? When I was a kid, most days I ate the leftovers she brought back from the restaurant where she worked. One time, I even found a set of dentures in them."
"Oh, and Nick? That bastard’s dad cleaned a bank for a living, and his favorite thing to do after school was chase me down and beat me up. And don’t you dare talk to me about being abandoned by your parents. I wished my bastard father *would* abandon us, instead of being a good-for-nothing who got drunk every day and took out his misery on us, only to end up drowned in a river, leaving us to borrow money for his burial."
"So, Anfernee." Chen Yu’s gaze was fixed on Hardaway. "Cut the pathetic self-pity. We’re the same kind. We’ve worked too damn hard to get here. Failure is not an option in our lives. You should be a fighter. I know you’ve been plagued by injuries for years, but if you give up now, people will only remember a guy named Anfernee Hardaway who was like a shooting star—brilliant for a moment, then gone forever."
"’They called him the next Jordan, but he could never be Jordan. He was just a poor bastard, broken by injuries, who never reached his peak.’"
Hardaway stared blankly at Chen Yu. In the distant night sky, as if on cue, a streak of light flashed past at incredible speed and vanished into the darkness.
Chen Yu didn’t give Hardaway a chance to respond. He stood up and brushed off the back of his pants.
"And one more thing. Don’t you fucking say I’m afraid of a little dirt. Some people know these stands are filthy and just sit down anywhere. Me? I’ll work to find a clean spot."
"So if you want one more shot at being the man you used to be, you’d better be at the hospital tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock sharp!"
With that, Chen Yu turned and walked away.
As he passed a vending machine, Chen Yu paused. "Watch him. I don’t want to turn on the morning news tomorrow and see a story about the Phoenix star Penny being shot dead."
From the shadows, Snow quietly set down his chocolate bar and nervously touched the gun at his waist.
「The next day」
Chen Yu arrived early at Saint Luke Hospital.
He put on his white coat again.
Chen Yu had already contacted Wash, and she had agreed with barely a moment’s hesitation.
For doctors like them, the chance to successfully treat a celebrity was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
She also proposed that they collaborate on writing a paper about the surgery.
Of course, Chen Yu agreed. He also made a special request, asking if she could bring in the nurse, Julian Koppelk, to assist in the operating room.
This was a critical surgery, and Chen Yu wanted a little extra luck on his side.
Wash had heard of surgeons being flown in for special cases, but this was the first time she’d ever seen someone fly in a nurse. Kopke agreed, however, because Chen Yu had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.
They would be arriving in Phoenix the next day.
Today, however, the main task was to get Hardaway admitted to the hospital.
However, before Hardaway arrived, someone else showed up first.
It was Gugliotta, the former Wolf King, the first All-Star in the history of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
He was tall and somewhat lanky, dressed in a loose-fitting shirt. He had a head of curly black hair and a gentle demeanor.
Chen Yu’s gaze fell upon his knee.
A shocking injury: three torn ligaments. The anterior cruciate ligament, the lateral collateral ligament, and the patellar tendon.
The ACL was likely a complete rupture, while the LCL wasn’t fully torn, only about halfway.
The patellar tendon was in much better shape, with only a grade one tear. After all, that tendon is incredibly thick and strong; a complete rupture is rare.
Chen Yu could deduce how the injury happened. His knee must have buckled outward with extreme force, causing the joint to nearly dislocate and tear three ligaments at once.
Aaron Nelson, who had come with him, handed over Gugliotta’s thick medical file.
In truth, Chen Yu didn’t even need to look at it; he could already see how Gugliotta had been treated.
His ruptured ACL had been repaired with an autograft.
The graft was harvested from his patellar tendon.
Because the patellar tendon is so thick, a section can be taken from its center to replace the ACL.
Chen Yu figured that the surgeon at the time, Emerson, must have seen the tear in the patellar tendon. Since it needed to be sutured anyway, he likely decided to just harvest the graft from there instead of using the hamstring tendon from the back of the thigh.
’Why didn’t they use an artificial ligament?’ Chen Yu muttered to himself.
Artificial ligaments were now in their third generation, and the risk of inducing synovitis had dropped to less than one percent, making them a good option.
The biggest problem with an autograft is that the transplanted tissue has no blood supply. Without blood flow, it’s very difficult for it to heal properly.
The ACL repair surgery Hardaway was about to undergo faced a similar problem. The ACL is located in the center of the joint, surrounded by synovial fluid, which actually inhibits ligament healing. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞
’If it weren’t for the System, who would dare claim they could restore ninety percent of its function?’
Furthermore, the graft was a tendon. While both tendons and ligaments are fibrous connective tissues, tendons are more elastic. This means the transplanted tendon, being overly elastic, would cause joint instability.
