The 'what-if's' haunt Chris Perry Jr.

Nearly a year after life-threatening hockey injury, Marshfield athlete keeps moving.

Fact: One millimeter is roughly the width of a sheet of paper.

Fact: One millimeter, roughly, comes between Chris Perry Jr. and death on March 30, 2011.

***

This begins as one of the greatest days of Chris Perry's life, skating on the ice sheet at Boston's TD Garden. It nearly becomes his last.

The Marshfield High School hockey player, a 5-foot-9 junior forward with hopes of playing in college, is skating in the Massachusetts Division 1 state championship game. With about four minutes gone in the second period, the Rams are tied at 1 with Wakefield, a team playing in front of a hot goaltender.

All Perry is thinking about as he takes his next shift is scoring the goal that could mean a title.

He's skating down the right wing, gliding past the penalty box door, when Jake Sartell, Wakefield's league all-star defenseman, checks him into the boards. Perry goes down awkwardly, with Sartell on top of him and his legs trapped beneath him. There is a slight stinging sensation in his right leg. He gazes down at the ice.

"That looks like blood," Perry thinks to himself.

At first, a drop, then two, then a pool of red grows larger every moment beneath him. On the Rams' bench, Marshfield head coach Dan Connolly is following the action up the ice when he hears a voice down the bench exclaim, "Perry's still down."

"I looked up and everyone was screaming back to the bench to get the trainers out there," Connolly said.

The trainers skitter across the ice. Players ferry every available towel from both benches across the ice to soak up the blood. A house physician and a team of paramedics are summoned.

"I had no idea what had happened,'' Connolly said, "but I knew it was serious. You could tell in everyone's voice."

***

Fact: The sartorius muscle is the longest in the body. Running along the front of the thigh, it originates at the anterior superior iliac spine. Hockey players use it while skating, helping them maintain an inside edge.

Fact: The sartorius muscle of Chris Perry Jr.'s right leg was severed on March 30; his leg also sustained damage to the surrounding muscles and branches of the femoral artery.

***

From his seat, diagonal to where Chris Jr. is on the ice, Chris Perry Sr. watches his son go down and immediately knows something is wrong.

In his day, Chris Sr. was an accomplished hockey player. He won a Massachusetts Division 2 state title as a high school senior with Arlington Catholic in 1978. He played collegiately at UMass-Boston.

"Chris isn't the biggest kid, but I've seen him get up from some pretty big hits over the years," the father says. "He's been injured before while playing, but he always gets up and gets back to the bench."

He thinks he hears one of his daughters say something about blood on the ice, but after that, the scene becomes a movie with frames missing.

Something clicks in his head; he runs to the nearest exit to find a security guard.

"That's my son," he barks, pointing back to the ice.

Racing through a labyrinth of corridors, sweat collecting on his brow, Chris Sr. runs through the possibilities of what has just happened. By the time he reaches the Garden ice, his son is on a stretcher, surrounded by a horde of trainers and paramedics.

"I remember seeing the doctor; he was a big guy, about 6-foot-2," Chris Sr. says. "I couldn't see around him, he was blocking my view. Then when they turned the corner, I could see the doctor had his hand inside of Chris's leg."

The EMTs roll him to an ambulance, with its back doors flung open, in the Garden's cavernous underworld. They lift him in gently, his father watching. They're about to slam the doors shut when they notice Chris Sr. hovering nearby. They gesture for him to climb in beside Chris Jr. "It made me nervous," Chris Sr. said. "They usually don't let people back there. I started to think that maybe he wasn't going to make it."

***

Chris Jr. wears a Celtic cross around his neck. Like any good Irish boy from the South Shore, Perry attended CCD classes as a child and made his confirmation a few years ago.

"We raised the kids Catholic," Chris Sr. says. "We miss Mass occasionally, usually it's because of hockey."

The faith of the Perry family has been tested before.

In 1999, doctors discovered a tumor on the brain stem of Eileen Perry, Chris Jr.'s mother. There was no choice but to perform an aggressive operation. There were complications. Eileen suffered a stroke and aneurysm during the procedure, leaving her with limited movement on the right side of her body.

Through rehabilitation, Eileen has learned to write with her left hand and walk with a cane. She attends all of Chris's hockey games. Eileen sat beside Chris Sr. and their two daughters for last year's state championship game.

"That's where Chris gets his strength," Chris Sr. says of Eileen, whom he met in college while she was studying at nearby Suffolk University. "She's a fighter. He learned that from her."

Chris Sr. doesn't say so, but he is a fighter too. He's a residential real estate appraiser by trade. But when the economy went in the tank and the real estate bubble burst, he returned to bartending as a way to supplement his income. With Eileen unable to work and with his daughters' college and his son's ice time to pay for, Chris Sr. has walked a financial tightrope supporting the family, mainly by working nights at a local tavern.

As trainers attend to him, Chris Perry Jr. decides the pain of the initial cut isn't so bad. Then he looks up and sees the Garden doctor leaning over him.

"This is going to hurt a little,'' the doctor says.

Preparing for the worst, Chris fishes under his bulky hockey sweater and grabs hold of his cross. He slides it between his teeth and clenches.

The doctor slides his hand in. Chris writhes and screams.

***

When Chris Perry Jr. awakes after emergency surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, family members are gathered in his room. They present him with a state championship medal.

Marshfield had rallied in the third period to win 3-2.

Chris's rehabilitation is nothing short of miraculous. Two days after surgery, he's released from the hospital. A day later, he is roaming the halls of Marshfield High with the aid of crutches.

He offers longtime athletic director Lou Silva, "Wanna see my scar?"

By the end of the week, against his doctor's wishes and without his parents' knowledge, he tries jogging down the street. A week after that, he inspires the entire community by walking to the stage during a ceremony honoring Marshfield's state championship accomplishment.

Two months later, he's back skating at the Bog in Kingston.

By the end of the summer, Perry turns his attention to a new athletic endeavor -- football. Chris Sr. cautions his son about picking up the sport on a whim.

"I was a little concerned about the body contact," Chris Sr. said. "He's a good athlete and all, but I was worried about him getting hurt against kids who have played the game a lot longer."

The transition to football comes naturally.

"If we'd had him from the beginning, he would've been a three-year starter in the secondary," said Silva, who also serves as the Rams' head football coach. "He had such a knack for the game and great instincts. He's obviously a great athlete, but it was amazing to see him flying around, considering what he went through."

***

Before signing off on his son's playing football, Chris Perry Sr. asked him to promise that he would keep his commitment to hockey, the sport for which both father and son had sacrificed.

Now a senior, Chris Perry Jr. has 19 points (7 goals, 12 assists) in 17 games for the Rams. Any fears he might have harbored returning to the ice vanished during the first game of the season.

"Once we started playing for real, he was a little tentative," Connolly said. "After the first period, he was back to normal. He ended up with the game-winning goal."

Perry still aspires to play hockey at the next level, but he's keeping his options open. He's applied to a long list of colleges for next year while exploring options to play a year of prep school or junior hockey.

"I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life," he said.

First, he hopes, will be a return to the Garden. Last week, the Rams made the short list for Massachusetts' top-tier hockey tournament, known as the Super 8. Even if they fall short of selection for the Super 8, they will remain a favorite in the Division 1 tournament.

"It's cool playing for your town and playing on a stage like that," Perry said. "It's more than you. You're playing for your teammates and everyone in town."

***

Fact: Doctors tell the Perry family that one millimeter is all that separated the skate blade from clipping Chris Perry Jr.'s femoral artery on March 30. Had it done so, he could have bled to death.

To this day, Chris Perry Jr. remembers the metallic taste of the cross he clenched between his teeth while lying on the ice, a doctor's hand inside his wound. He remembers asking himself questions that teenagers seldom have to contemplate, questions about his own mortality.

"I have so many nights tossing in bed, thinking about it," Chris Jr. said. "I think about what could have been all the time."

Fact: Chris Perry Jr. is lucky to be alive. And he knows it.

Scott Barboza