Adam sat morosely in the locker room he was sharing with Chris Benoit, his mind not focused on anything but the terrible news he'd recently received.

The news had come from his doctor, whom he'd been to see recently.

The last time he'd competed in a match against Kurt Angle, he'd felt something pop in his neck when the Olympian had German suplexed him. Normally, such pain would go away after a matter of hours, sometimes even minutes.

But this pain was different. It had been more than a week already. This pain hadn't disappeared.

The blond man flinched, raking a hand through his long hair as he recalled Dr. Andrews' words.

"I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, Adam - but you are going to require neck surgery... You will not be able to wrestle for an entire year...

Adam clenched his hand into a fist instinctively, angry at his fate. Actually, he was even more angry with his body for giving out on him.

It shouldn't have come to this... Just when things were really starting to take off for him, when his character Edge seemed nearer and nearer to winning prestigious singles championship gold...

Wait a minute... he told himself, recalling what had gone down during his meeting with Stephanie McMahon three months earlier. 'Seemed' was a word that stood out. The General Manager had promised to play with him, dangle the metaphoric carrot before him.

Then what did any of this really matter?

And then it hit him - it didn't matter.

Running a hand through his long blond hair, Adam shifted his gaze a small distance away to his cellular phone, which he'd left on the small table nearby.

Thoughts of a certain person, someone he'd always deemed special to him, ran through his mind. The one soul he knew would and could relate to him, who would understand better than most anyone what he was going through - had given him a call as recently as three days earlier, but he hadn't called her back. Not because he didn't want to, but he'd been overly distracted and busy planning what to do - with his final SmackDown for a year, the upcoming No Way Out pay-per-view and his impeding neck surger.

Now, he reached over for the phone, flipped it open and pressed some buttons. After, he held the device up to his ear and waited.

"Hello?"

Adam opened his mouth to speak but held his breath for a beat at the sound of Amy Dumas' voice. It was a tone he'd always found very sexy - the redhead's voice was ever-so-slightly deeper than a 'typical' high-pitched female voice - and regardless of that, that tone touched him in a deep and profound way. She was a dear, treasured friend. And the truth was, the blond man didn't know what he would ever do without her.

"Hello?" she repeated, her voice just slightly louder.

"Hello? Amy..." the Canadian spoke.

"Adam?" Hi!" the redhead said, and the tall blond man could hear the brilliant smile in her voice. He pictured her beautiful visage, and, as he closed his eyes, he could actually imagine and feel her right beside him.

"I've been thinking about you..."

"You have?" the blond asked, his eyes opening at the surprise he felt at her admission.

"Sure..." she replied. "So, how are you?"

Despite the joy he felt at the mere act of talking on the phone with this woman, Adam flinched at the innocent question.

"I've been better..." Then, he began to explain, in detail, his current and bleak predicament.

"Oh, Adam!" Amy exclaimed. "I...oh, God...I feel for you...You know I completely understand and empathize with what you're going through..."

The beautiful redhead herself had undergone the very same surgery - performed by the exact same doctor - just under a year earlier, after she'd broken her neck on the set of the TV show Dark Angel.

"I know...that's why I wanted to talk to you, of all people..." the Canadian admitted. "I want to see you, Ames...Is that do-able?"

"It's definitely do-able...name the time and the place," the woman replied. "I'm there..."