I just knew.
Later, I’d realize that this was the minute the whole thing fell apart. You can tell each other that your relationship is private. That nobody else needs to know. But that sort of thinking requires that everything go exactly right. It doesn’t account for the dark minute when your lover is being carried off the ice on a stretcher, while you try: A) not to puke from worry and B) not to even look interested.
This wasn’t soccer, where they ran onto the field every five minutes to cart somebody off. A hockey player gets up and skates off, even if he’s bleeding all over the place. Even if he has a broken limb. But Graham wasn’tmoving. The sight of his limp hand dangling off the side of the stretcher made me forget to breathe.
As his unconscious body disappeared down the chute, a chill slid down my spine, from my neck to the small of my back.
Bella and Coach followed on the medics’ heels.
The game resumed, but I couldn’t concentrate long enough to keep track of my own shifts. In fact, I don’t even remember the third period of that game, even though we clinched it.
Coach reappeared at some point to resume calling the shots. But Bella did not come back. I sneaked looks down the chute every chance I got. But neither she nor Graham emerged to put me out of my misery.
“Wake up, Rikker!” Hartley elbowed me.
I stood up and vaulted over the wall, jumping into the fray for what would prove to be my last shift of the game.
But even the final buzzer didn’t offer any relief, since the team took for-fucking-ever to shower and pack up. Coach spent a fair bit of time staring at his phone, while I tried to guess from his face whether or not he’d learned anything.
Naturally, I texted Bella about a dozen times. But she didn’t answer me, which was terrifying. I felt like vomiting just from the stress of not knowing what was going on.
Finally, Coach told everyone to get on the bus. “We’re going to stop at the emergency room so I can check on Graham.”
By the time the bus pulled up outside the little hospital, I was sweating through my clean shirt. I needed to go inside and see Graham. But at the same time, I knew he wouldn’t want me hovering in there. Too obvious, right?
Fuck!
But when Coach got off the bus, a handful of players followed him. So I got up too, and a couple more guys followed me. A minute later, there were probably a dozen guys in hockey jackets standing under the fluorescent waiting room lights, looking around for someone to tell us where Graham was. Coach approached the desk, but the lady manning it was on the phone.
And then, from somewhere behind the desk, I heard my name.
“Rikker?” It was Graham’s voice.
At first, I was just flooded with relief. If Graham was saying my name, then he was okay, right? I took a big breath, as if I’d been deprived of oxygen for hours.
“Rikker?” He called again, sounding agitated. Someone answered him in a low voice. But then Graham spoke again. “Where am I? What happened to Rikker?”
A chill snaked its way up my spine again. And one by one, my teammates, who had been talking to one another, went quiet.
“RIKKER,” came Graham’s hoarse voice again. Then my teammates were looking at me, confusion on their faces. Coach turned, his bushy eyebrows raised in my direction.
An older nurse wearing pink scrubs came out from the back just then. “Is someone here named Rikker?”
For a moment I just stood there, rooted to the linoleum, unsure what to do. Graham was going to burst a vessel when he found out that the team was standing out here listening to him call my name.
That woke me up. Lifting a shoulder in the world’s least-convincing casual shrug, I followed the nurse, with Coach on my heels.
Walking into that hospital room was like having an out-of-body experience.
Graham was lying on a bed in a hospital Johnnie, looking sweaty and confused. Bella stood next to him, holding his hand. And the look on her face was 100 percent freaked out. At that second, my heart went across the room to put my hands on Graham. I really just needed to touch him.
But my feet stayed locked at the foot of the bed, my body rigid with indecision.Don’t do it, I reminded myself. Graham wouldn’t want me touching him in front of other people.
His eyes locked onto me the second I entered the room. “Where am I?” he croaked.
The question took me aback. “Um, at the hospital?”
“Why?”
