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4 hours prior Sara sits in the doctor's office, waiting for him to come in with the MRI results, the pain in her neck has slowly spread down her back, and left arm, causing her left hand...her dominate hand too...to go numb with the slightest movement. In Charlotte, she had been told that the pain was a result of a pinched nerve, and would most like subside in time. But over the past few days, has just gotten increasingly worse. Meanwhile, her Step-sister, and Step-father remain in Charlotte, North Carolina, waiting for her Uncle Nathan to regain consciousness. Her step-father, Will Schorg, was actually the one that suggested her taking this trip to Atlanta, giving her the name of the doctor too see. Within hours Sara was being driven to Atlanta by a RWA employee under the instruction of RWA's current owner, Jane Schorg. When she arrived at Atlanta General, the doctor was already waiting for her, and everything was set up. And now after being scanned, head to toe again, the second time in a week and half, she waits for the doctor too tell her what is wrong. As the door opens, the doctor walks in with a folder in hand. He sits down behind his neck, and notices Sara rubbing the back of her neck. "Miss Pettis, I think it's best if you don't rub your neck like that anymore. In fact, I think it'd be best if we get you fitted with a neck brace as soon as possible...possibly even a halo." the doctor tells her as he opens the folder, and flips through the pages.
"A halo? I thought it was just a pinched nerve?" Sara exclaims, shocked by that revelation.
"Miss Pettis, I'm going to tell you straight forward, you're neck is broken. I was told before you got here about the diagnoses in Charlotte, and I can't tell you how lucky you are too be walking right now. Especially since you performed last Saturday even. You've cracked your C2, and C3 vertebrae, and the disc between them is definitely bulging. You need to keep your neck supported, and still till the cracks heal, and then we can fix the disc. This would explain the numbness you feel, as there is probably pressure on a nerve, or even the spinal cord right now. I know you're a young woman, and this will all be very hard to handle, but I think a halo would be the best, and safest thing to do right now." the doctor says to her.
"But doc, you don't understand, I'm needed, I can't work wearing a halo." Sara says leaning forward, obviously upset.
"Miss Pettis, right now working shouldn't be one of your worries. The fact of the matter is, you're lucky to be walking. You're lucky that the spinal cord hasn't been severed, right now, the slightest jerk, or jaw, or bump of your neck could cause that pressure that you're feeling to server the spinal cord, and you would find yourself in a wheelchair probably for the rest of your life. You don't want that Sara. Nothing is worth it." he tells her.
Sara just looks down at the floor of the office, and back up at him, "How long would I be out?" Sara asks.
"More then likely...six to twelve months, we'd need the vertebrae to heal first, then perform some surgery to relieve the pressure. This is extremely serious Sara. How someone, some other doctor up there in Charlotte could attribute this to being a pinched nerve is disturbing to me. I mean, the fact that your head and neck aren't restrained at the moment is bothering me as we speak." the doctor tells her.
"Does it have to be a halo?" Sara asks the doctor, a concerned look on her face, "I mean, do you really have to drill those screws into my skull?"
The doctor sighs, "No, not necessarily. I mean, first of all, we don't drill screws into your skull, we just place pins into the front of your skull, you're skull does not get penetrated. And no, we could, and I'm not sure if I'd want to do this but I have to make you aware of your options, we could just take a hard plastic brace, with a lot of padding, and lock it onto your neck, up too your jaw. Neither is comfortable, and both have bad things and good things. With the Halo, you'll find yourself probably having difficulty doing some things like, washing your hair, and dressing at first...but you'll heal much quicker with it. With the neck brace, you can obviously take it off to wash, and you don't have the bulkiness of it. But the healing time will be longer, and the support isn't as great. Either way, you can not work. I can't stress this enough..."
Back to the Present
Those words echo in Sara's head as she sits on a plane, heading onto her next public appearance. She hasn't told her step-sister, who actually arranged the appearance prior to taking over RWA, about the severity of the injury. As she sits uncomfortably in her coach seat, a pillow supporting her neck, she thinks about the veterans of the business, people like Shawn Walsh, and Tony Barrera. The ones who have gotten to where they are, not through sacrifice, but by screwing people, and thinking only of themselves.
Never have the likes of them had to go through this, injured to the point they shouldn't even be traveling, flying coach, rushing just to make ticket times. Nope, if Shawn Walsh misses a flight, he'd just call Andrew Foley, and say 'hey Foley, give me the jet' and off he'd go, doing whatever he wanted until he felt like getting on the plane. People like Shawn Walsh, barely work their way to the top of a company, and then do the minimum too make sure they stay there as long as they can. Never making a break for anyone if they don't feel like it.
Yes, it's no one's fault that my neck is broken. But if I stopped wrestling now, I'd lose everything I've been working so hard for the past few months. Because I'm not at the level of a Shawn Walsh, Jeff King, or Tony Barrera. I can't afford to take time off and leave, because if I did, I'd end being back at the bottom again. I'm so close to the CWF Title, just two more wins, and it's mine. I can't walk away now, even if the risk are so great. Because who knows how long it'll take for me to get another shot like this. I'm not going to be like a lot of those guys, and screw people till I get back to where I was. And I'm not Brandi James, or Lucia King. I'm not going to sleep my way back to relevance.
It's just not right how some people have to work so hard for everything they have, and then just by a twist of fate, lose it all. Meanwhile some people just seem to get everything they want handed to them. And not because they deserve it, because they just take it.
I don't have too much to say about Dave Van Dam. I'm just glad that he's decided to try being on both sides of the fence, like me. And realize that it's not about loyalty to an organization that should motivate someone to be in this business. It should be because they enjoy doing it.
Sara tries to sleep on the flight, but unfortunately due to the neck brace, can not get comfortable. She spends the time in thought, thinking about what she has been told, and the risks involved in being on Xplosion. The thought of going back down too the bottom makes her uneasy, but the idea of further injury, even too the point of becoming paralyzed are terrifying. She thinks about her Uncle, in the hospital, more then likely with her Step-Father and Step-sister with him. Theres a great chance that if Sara were to wrestle this weekend, that she'd end up right back in the hospital.
But no matter how much she tries to convince herself to call off the match, she can not seem to bring herself to do it. Even with the possibility of greater injury.
But really, in the end, the CWF Title isn't what she truly wants right now. What she really wants, is just to go home. To Ozone Park. To life a year ago, before it became a question of how far she'd go too be a champion. Back to when it was just school, and her friends, and those were the only things she had to worry about. Heck, she'd even settle for just going back to CCWA&ICE, before becoming a part of RWA and SFT. And in all truthfulness, she'd give anything to just turn this plane around and go to New York.
End...
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