Delayed Penalty — Shey Stahl

I am Evan Masen, a hockey player for the NHL. I spend my nights roughing up two hundred pound defensemen and spend more time in the penalty box than I do on the ice. That's my job. One night changes everything I thought I once knew about my life on the ice. A girl. A brutally beaten girl left to die in an alley. I don't know why or how but something made me stay that night after taking her to the hospital. I didn't know her, nor did I have an obligation to stay but something inside of me rooted me there telling me I should. And I wouldn't have been me if I just simply left her there. Any man who could put his heart and soul into a game of hockey couldn't just walk away when someone needed them. She had no one else. The same guy who saw determination where there was desire, now saw hope where there was once despair. I couldn't just leave as that wasn't a man that put all he had into something some called just a game. I couldn't walk away from someone holding onto life, weak and powerless to something she had no control over. So I stayed. In a room full of family members praying for their loved ones to come through, I prayed for a girl I didn't know, never met before, to have a beating heart. While others sorrows turned to grieving pain, I sat waiting on the words of the unknown.