My angry heart threatens to thaw just a little.
“We’ve got you, Amigo. We’ll get you back on the ice before you know it.”
Blinking back tears, I nod and make the American Sign Language sign for thank you by touching my open hand to my chin and moving my hand away from my face. Who knew watching our old teammate Raffi Shaw teach his kid Wyatt sign language would come in handy?
“Drink up. We’re going to need to look at your nutrition plan to make sure you don’t turn into skin and bone. Your mom has already told us that thirty four times since she arrived.” He chuckles. “Considering the amount of food she just made for the whole house, I can see why she’s worried about you losing body mass. She’s a feeder.”
I nod. She is. She loves to cook and take care of people. If it wasn’t weird as fuck, she’d move in for the next three months and cook three square meals a day for everyone without batting an eyelid.
She’d make us all clean up after ourselves, of course, and make us help out as sous chefs with the food prep but she’s happiest when she’s making pans of food for large groups of people. Thanksgiving is her favorite time of year, and mine too.
By the time she leaves, the whole team is in high spirits, well-fed, and the house is cleaner than it’s probably ever been.
Mom sheds a tear when she leaves, but Artemis and Scott reassure her that they’ll take good care of me, keep me full of smoothies, and distract me from the fact I’m currently incapacitated with a fucked up face.
Both Mom and Dad hug me tenderly, tentatively, like they’re afraid they might break me if they hug me too hard. Truth is, I’m already breaking, and their hugs squish the fractured pieces of me back together, just enough to keep me going for a while longer.
I slip up to my room when the guys disperse after my folks leave. Apollo tries to come with me but I shake my meds bottles at him and point to my face. It’s on fire. Actually, it’d probably be less painful if I set my jaw on fire.
Who knew your pharmacist should have liquid forms of almost all medications, including heavy duty pain meds, on hand? Not me. At least not until I needed it, and now I’m very grateful for liquid face-numbing-juice.
When I settle into the unsettled quiet of my new surroundings, I let the pain I’ve bottled up for the last couple days leak out my eyeballs.
I can’t even lie face-down on the bed and cry into my pillow. Sitting upright, the tears stream down my face. On one side, they’re absorbed by my dressings, and on the other, my shirt picks them up as they drip off my chin.
How can I be anything but a hockey player? How can I exist when I’m not on the ice? What am I without hockey?
I guess I’m going to be forced to find out.
There’s probably a strength somewhere buried deep inside me that I can tune into. I wasn’t born the best hockey player in the world, I busted my ass to get to where I’m at.
Wasn’t a draft pick, or even on anyone’s radar. When I turned sixteen, I shot up a few inches, hit six foot, and skated every fucking day until I could score more than the average person on a hockey team.
I just wanted to play hockey. Did so well in my first year of Bantam hockey in my early teens that I was named captain in my second year.
Scouts liked what they saw.
But I wasn’t fast-tracked, no one paid me special attention—despite the fact I was the son of an NHL player—and I only started to take working out and eating properly, seriously, right before I turned eighteen.
I earned my place on every team I’ve played on, the hard way, through sheer grit, determination, working every damn day until my legs burned so much that sometimes I thought they’d stop working.
My rise to the hockey elite was less than conventional. And now I’m approaching my prime, readying myself to face the NHL, the universe comes and slapshots me in the face—literally.
It would almost be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking tragic.
Throbbing head, throbbing jaw, throbbing face, exhausted body, exhausted mind, I lie staring at the ceiling. When my phone vibrates, lighting up beside me on the bed, I almost flip it over, or throw it at the wall.
As ungrateful as it sounds, I’m so tired of all the ‘get well soon’ messages that have appeared on my screen since my accident. They’re just a painful reminder that I’m on the bench for the next few months. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and right now, it’s stuck in the back of my throat.
The name on the screen catches my attention. Pitstop. It makes me smile, then wince. Everything fucking hurts.
Pitstop: Satan, rumor has it that you’ve fled the dorms, and you’re taking refuge with your hockey buds for the foreseeable future. Admit it, just say I’ve won in our war. I won, and you ran away because you couldn’t handle my superior prank skills.
The urge to grin is overwhelming, but I have to keep my face stoic, or the pain intensifies.
Me: Never, She Devil. Just a brief interlude before I go back to driving you crazy.
Me: Though I have to admit, plastic wrapping my car was next level.
