The pain took its toll, even more than Gilles could know.  All that disrupted sleep. Standing and sitting awkwardly, favouring his left hip. (His left knee and his upper back started to bother him too.) It went on for a few years. Five, six, seven. He lost track. For a while he thought the pain could be cancer, but after five years cancer would have killed him or at least spread, or so he assumed. He wasn’t a doctor. He had worked in the brewery since he was young and was now two years away from retirement.

At some point he tried going to physio, but the therapist was not very helpful. She offered no diagnosis, firm or tentative. During his visits, she had him do glute activations and then gave him an enormous bag of ice to put on the sore area. Fifteen minutes later, she returned to remove the ice. She didn’t massage the area or use the ultrasound machine, like one of his co-workers suggested she might. Gilles thought she was embarrassed with the location of the pain, which ran from his hip to his groin. He wondered if she suspected him of lying about the injury to get someone to touch him. One day when she took the ice, she informed him that the clinic would be closing for six weeks for renovations. She gave him a card with the name of another clinic. “You could even continue there,” she said, “if that’s easier.”

He was ashamed of his awkwardly situated injury and of his aging body. Younger people did not want to touch him. He understood that. It was part of life. He never made an appointment at the other clinic.

But the pain got worse.

He started to do what he had never been one to do: take painkillers. He had to—to sleep. Early in April, after taking pills a few nights in a row, he went to the walk-in clinic and was sent for an x-ray, which was inconclusive. The doctor, a gentle man who spoke French with careful enunciation, looked through a well-thumbed registry and found the name of a specialist. He wrote out a referral and put the specialist’s number at the bottom. He read the number aloud as he pointed at each digit.

The specialist’s secretary, when Gilles called later that day, sighed. She meant, “Good luck.” She muttered to herself as she, presumably, looked through the calendar, searching for a date. It seemed strange to Gilles she did not already know when the doctor’s next availability was. Hadn’t she just given someone else an appointment? Wouldn’t Gilles be fifteen minutes after the last person?

“Novembre,” she said in French. “It’s going to be November. That works for you?”

Gilles chuckled. “No choice,” he said.

In May the city swept the outdoor basketball courts and installed the nets. For the last twenty-five years, Gilles had played basketball once or twice a week when the weather was suitable. It was free entertainment and a good way to get some exercise. It was painful and it may have even made his hip worse, but he did not want to give it up. It was one of the few hobbies he had, one of the few things he did outside his apartment other than working and buying groceries. He put away his boots, unpacked his Reeboks, pumped up his ball and started the process of scrubbing off the winter rust.

He had never been on a basketball team as a boy, but he joined the Y for a few years in his late twenties and started to play then. He liked the rhythm of dribbling and the silence of the shot ball arcing through the air, the suspense, and of course, if he was lucky, the swoosh.

He was too slow now to join the pickup games, but he could shoot hoops. Sometimes the other guys played half-court, leaving Gilles and the little kids the other half. Other times, if there weren’t too many players, the game went on around him, in which case, keenly aware that he was in the way, he wouldn’t stay long.

There were new faces at the court each year. It took a few weeks to get a sense of the crowd. No one was particularly friendly. He exchanged a few words with other guys when they were alone, but as soon as more players arrived, he was the outsider, and they mostly pretended he wasn’t there.

One day in June, he showed up at around noon—to shoot a few hoops before he had to go in for the 3-11 shift. The trees along the side of the court were full of fresh leaves that rustled in the wind. If he threw the ball too high, the wind would carry it off course. This had to be adjusted for. He enjoyed the challenge.

There were five guys at the other end of the court. He thought he recognized a few of them, but he didn’t look at them closely. They were in their teens and twenties. They spoke loudly and carried themselves as if they were current or future NBA players. He was only half-aware when they were joined by a sixth guy. In fact, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed, but the new arrival was friendlier than the others. As Gilles dribbled toward the center of the court, intending to circle back to the net, the new guy was doing the same from the other end. He gave Gilles a smile and a nod before both turned toward their respective nets.

A few minutes later, the guys started to organize their game. The friendly one came over to ask Gilles if he wanted to play. He didn’t know Gilles couldn’t run.

Gilles was unprepared. “No, it’s okay,” he said, blushing. “Merci.”

“Non?” the guy asked again. “Come on.”

Gilles raised his hand in gracious refusal. “I can’t keep up,” he explained.

“Neither can I.”

“Well, you’re young,” said Gilles. “I need guys my age.”

“If you change your mind …,” said the young man. As he walked back to his group, he lowered his head and dribbled with high bounces.

Gilles continued to take shots, but he and the players avoided each other, as if, though they were on the same court, they were in different realities. He took one last shot, a long one from an angle, which missed. The ball deflected and rolled onto the grass on the other side of the court.

He couldn’t cross yet because one team was on a rush. The new guy was running hard with the ball. He laughed. He was being defended so closely he had no path to the net. He stopped suddenly and raised the ball to make a pass–but he had no open man. Smiling, he passed the ball to Gilles. “Shoot!” he urged.

Gilles shot, but it had all happened so fast–and all the eyes were on him–that he was flustered and did not get the shot off well. The ball dropped in front of the net.

“Sorry,” he said. He started to cross the court, to pick up his own ball and go home.

“Sub in?” the friendly guy asked.

“I have to go to work.”

“Next time.”

Gilles laughed and offered an apologetic wave.

At home Gilles stood naked beside his shower. Straightening his right leg, he slowly rotated his hips. It was one of the three or four stretches he sometimes tried—for pain relief and rehabilitation. One had to try something. In the shower, he would aim the stream of water between his hip and his leg. Water was always soothing, but it did not wash away the pain.

The next week Gilles saw the friendly player again. He was shooting hoops with two other guys, but they each had their own ball and they were not playing a game. The friendly guy dribbled slowly down the court. He held out his hand, but not for a traditional handshake. Gilles mirrored his gesture. They touched hands and letting their fingers slid through each other’s palms.

“Julien,” said the new guy.

“Gilles. Hi.”

Julien stayed down at Gilles’ end, sharing the net with him. He was light on his feet and had a graceful throwing motion.

While Julien shot, Gilles raised his right knee and swung it from side to side, another one of his pain management exercises. Julien retrieved his ball and turned in Gilles’s direction. He nodded toward Gilles’s leg. “Knee injury?”

“Hip,” said Gilles, who karate-chopped himself lightly along the painful seam between his leg and his groin.

Julien stopped dribbling. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t know. Going to see a specialist in November.”

“November? What the hell. You’re in pain, right?”

Gilles shrugged and smiled philosophically.

“How’d it happen?”

“Not sure. Wear and tear maybe.”

“Have you tried physio?”

Gilles nodded.

“You should try yoga. Have you tried yoga?”

“No. I do a few stretches.” He bounced the ball and launched it toward the net.

Julien watched Gilles limp after the ball. “Have you tried just walking into Emergency?” he called to him

“I went to a clinic,” Gilles said over his shoulder, “not Urgence.” He retrieved his ball and dribbled back to the free-throw line. He was getting a little uncomfortable with the focus on his injury, but Julien asked him another question.

“Where does it hurt again?”

Gilles tucked the ball under his left arm to free up his right hand. “Here.”

“Have you tried this?” Julien walked over to one of the benches beside the court, put his foot on the edge and leaned forward. “I feel it right there. It feels pretty good.”

Gilles shook his head. “I do this.” He showed Julien one of the exercises he sometimes tried. “I don’t know if it works.”

“Try this one,” Julien advised. “You can put your foot on a chair.”

“I will.”

There was a moment of uncertainty. Would Gilles try the exercise now or at home? He took one, two, three steps toward the bench and stepped onto it. Julien watched him as he leaned forward, held the position and straightened up.

“Do it again,” said Julien. He dropped his ball, put one hand on Gilles’s shoulder and one on his lower back. “Make sure your whole body goes forward, not just your shoulders.”

Gilles leaned forward, but he was so flustered that he forgot to breathe first. When he straightened up, he felt light-headed.

“How’s that?” Julien asked him.

Gilles inhaled. He tried to assess if there had been a change in his hip, but it was hard to tell. “We’ll see,” he said, taking his foot off the bench.

“They need to do an MRI,” said Julien. “So you can see what’s going on.”

Gilles nodded. He agreed, sure, but what could he do? It took months, he had heard, to get an MRI appointment. He hoped the specialist had access to one. He half-expected to wait until November and then be told the doctor needed to see an MRI, which would be another eight months.

“I would like to know,” Gilles admitted.

“Me too,” said Julien. “If you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it.”

A thoughtful expression crossed Gilles’s face. “I used to think it was cancer, but …” He didn’t finish. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt his tear ducts tingle. He had to re-route his emotions to keep from crying.

Julien watched him, smiling expectantly. “But” implied the possibility of good news, maybe some key bit of information that Gilles hadn’t disclosed.

“… I’m alive.”

Julien didn’t follow the logic.

“Cancer would have killed me by now,” Gilles explained. “I think.”

Later, when Gilles was at work and there was no one around, he put his foot up on a safety railing that was about the same height as the bench. As he leaned forward, he felt a stretch in his upper hamstring, not his groin. Perhaps a tight hamstring was pulling on another muscle or causing a bone to be misaligned in a joint. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after, with the muscle stretched, he would feel better. Maybe, but probably not. Julien had been shocked that Gilles would have to wait until November for his appointment. Gilles for his part had never been as upset about it. He did not really expect the doctor to cure him. Living without pain had become inconceivable.

When he got home from his shift at 11:30, he took a container of boiled potatoes and fried sausages out of his fridge. He slid a chair away from the table and tried Julien’s stretch again, leaning forward, his leg up, while his meal rotated slowly in the microwave.

He ate thoughtfully, washed the dishes and got into bed. It took him longer than usual to fall asleep, not because the pain was any worse than usual but because he was troubled by a vague sense of possibility.

It took a few days for his resolve to strengthen. One day, after he came back from a brief basketball session (Julien wasn’t there), he took his medical referral out of the drawer and called the specialist. It sounded like the same receptionist.

“I have an appointment for November,” he explained after a brief hesitation.

“Yes.”

“The pain” (“la douleur” in French) “it’s intolerable. November is a long time still. I was wondering if there is a possibility of an earlier appointment.”

“One moment,” she said.

Gilles pictured a woman staring at a computer screen, wearing an earpiece with an attached microphone. Was she scrolling through the doctor’s schedule, looking for a way to help, or thinking up the words to get him off the phone as quickly as possible?

He heard a click and then the silence, like a ball arcing through the sky.

Tom Abray teaches English at John Abbott College in Montreal. He has published one collection of short fiction, Pollen, and two novels, Where I Wanted to Be and Short Films. He also likes to play with video cameras. A few of his short films have appeared in festivals in North America and Europe.