Walsh looks away and then lifts his margarita to his lips and takes a sip. “We wait and see. She gets monitored frequently, and if anything gets worse, they’ll have to do emergency surgery and remove it. They’d like to avoid that scenario until she’s far enough along that the baby could survive because they’d have to deliver during the surgery, but we don’t know what will happen. Especially as the baby grows and pushes things around in there.”
We all sit there for a moment, trying to absorb the risk to his wife and what this means for his family. They could lose the baby, or he could lose her, or possibly both.
There’s a lump rising in my own throat when I picture myself in his shoes. Of course, the woman I’m picturing is Morgan, which is delusional, but also the most real fear I’ve ever felt. I never thought I’d have feelings like this for someone again. In fact, I did everything in my power to make sure it didn’t happen, yet somehow she slipped right through every wall I put up. Andthe worst part is, the feelings I once had for Hayley don’t even compare to the feelings I have for Morgan.
But now I keep picturing this exact scenario playing out with her, and I can’t—literally can’t—imagine how I would survive another loss like that in my life.
“What can we do?” McCabe asks. “Is there any way we can help?”
“I need to talk to AJ and Wilcott about this. I don’t know if I might need to be home with her more. I certainly will if anything goes wrong, so I just need to”—another gulp—“lay that groundwork.” Walsh sniffs and wipes at his eyes with the back of his knuckles. “Maybe you can talk to the guys. I want them to know what’s happening, but I... I can’t talk about it, obviously, without breaking down, and I don’t want to constantly be discussing it. I’ll keep you guys posted if there are any developments, but I don’t want this to be part of our locker room discussion. It’s hard enough at home right now... playing with my girls and trying to imagine what life would be like without Marissa.” He sniffs again, then clears his throat. “I need hockey to be the place I go tonothave to think about that possibility.”
Using hockey as an escape from worry and grief is something I understand all too well.
“Yeah, of course,” Colt says. “We’ll let them know what’s going on.”
“And ask them not to talk about it,” I add. I remember how the only thing harder than losing my dad was everyone constantly asking me if I was okay, and how my mom was doing without him. I know they meant well, but I was just trying to hold my shit together, and constantly being reminded of my dad’s overdose didn’t help
I imagine the same is true for Walsh. He knows what the risks are, and until they’re able to safely deliver the baby andremove the IUD, he’s always going to be worried. Asking him for updates constantly will only exacerbate that anxiety.
“All right, I’m going to get home,” Walsh says. “I’m probably going to spend as much time as possible there for the foreseeable future. So you likely won’t see me around much outside of the rink and road trips.”
After he leaves, we all sit there a bit shell-shocked.
“I can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now,” Colt says.
“Yeah, me neither,” McCabe says.
They look at me, like they’re waiting for me to chime in. But I just shrug, because how do I tell them that Icanimagine it, because I lived it.
My college girlfriend, Hayley, was pregnant when I found out I was being called up to the NHL. And by the time I left two weeks later, not only had she lost the baby, but I’d lost her. In the end, she elected to stay at school so she could have a typical “senior experience” the following year, because without the pregnancy, I wasn’t enough of a reason for her to uproot her life.
I’d gone from having a girlfriend I planned to marry and a baby on the way, to living by myself in an apartment in a new city and playing with guys I barely knew.
If a contract renewal with the Rebels doesn’t materialize this year, or if I get into a relationship with Morgan and things don’t work out, I could easily be in a similar situation at the beginning of next season.
And there’s no way I canevergo through that again.
Iglance at my phone as I turn the corner from Arlington Street, at the edge of the Public Garden, and walk up Marlborough Street. The bare branches of the trees that line both sides of the street are lit from below by the streetlamps, and they sway slightly in the breeze like gray tentacles over the sidewalk. It’s amazing how turning just one corner takes you away from a bustling part of the city and puts you on one of the quietest, most quintessentially Boston streets. I guess that’s what you get at this price point.
A text from Morgan has come through, nearly three hours after I texted her.
Aidan
Are you alive?
NerdGirl
Thanks to you, yes. Are you home? I’m just about to your place.
I pause halfway up my block. Less than twelve hours after I last saw her, I already miss her like crazy, but I’m still processing everything I learned tonight about Walsh’s situation and working through the painful memories it dredged up.
It’s the kind of night where I need to be alone.
I start to type out a response telling her I won’t be home until later, then delete it because I hate lying to her. I stand there for a moment, thinking about what to say, when I hear her call my name.
My head snaps up, and through the low black wrought iron fencing that borders most people’s tiny front yards, I can see Morgan sitting on the front steps of my brownstone half a block away, one arm raised in a wave.
The temperature is cool and the breeze is light, but she has her jacket wrapped around her tightly like it’s winter. Her bodyhas probably not fully recovered from what it just went through over the last two days.
