What Nobody Saw: Day 3

Word Count: 18,017

Summary of Events:

Walker continued working at gutting the house with his coworkers, being disappointed as they progressed through the house to not find any more papers stashed anywhere else. After work he sorted through the papers he'd found, dividing them into ones he wanted to keep in case the family who'd written them wanted them back, and ones he was going to discard. Once he'd finished sorting the papers he was contacted by a friend asking him if he could be on the bench as a spare goaltender for a charity hockey game, which he agreed to; during the warmup in advance of the game, however, his fellow goaltender went down with what Walker suspected was a muscle sprain of some sort, which meant Walker would have to mind the net for the duration of the game . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Settling into the net and idly running through the warmup motions again, Walker looked at the event sponsors who’d paid for space on the boards. He stopped when he saw the one just inside his own blue line.

The primary focus of the ad was the beneficiary organisation, but in the bottom corner, in a decent size, was an unexpected name: Schissler.

Walker glided closer and saw that the ad had been paid for by Drs. Ellis, Usyk, and Schissler of Mobility Orthopaedics.

Slowly he glided backwards, glancing toward his downed compatriot who was now being attended to by uniformed paramedics, who’d brought out a stretcher. Of all the places he’d have thought he’d run into the Schissler name, it wasn’t at a charity hockey game.

Yet, as he neared his net, watching as his fellow goaltender lay on the stretcher without being secured to it and was towed off the ice, the crowd in the stands applauding as he waved at them, he had to admit, it wasn’t right. It didn’t fit.

He knew the name Schissler from somewhere, but it wasn’t medical; there was somewhere else that he knew the Schissler name from, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of where.

Even if this Schissler wasn’t the one he was thinking of, though, Walker had to admit that he suspected a connection; this Dr. Schissler could maybe be a son, a nephew, or a brother of the Warner Schissler whose wife had left two boxes of unopened mail in the attic of their house, thus he might know where other Schisslers were.

After all, Walker didn’t think Schissler was a common surname, seeing as he’d only recalled one Schissler before, and was surprised to discover a second, and Schissler was likely a German surname — as most names that began with Sch were — while Manitoba was a little bit more dominated by French/Métis and Ukrainian-rooted populations, such as Walker himself, who was fully Ukrainian on his father’s side, his great-great grandparents for sure, if not his great grandparents too, having been born in Ukraine.

At the moment Walker had a game to focus on playing, but following the game he had every intention of looking up Mobility Orthopaedics to see what Dr. Schissler’s first name was, and then he’d have to go through the papers in his garage to see if the first name came up anywhere to give him an idea of connection.

As for his recognition of the Warner Schissler name, he had to admit that he felt like Dad would have an idea of where he knew that name from, and since he was seeing Dad tomorrow he would have to ask and see.