Page 45

The stairwell's concrete, painted white, with a metal railing and a light buzzing overhead. It's quiet in here. It echoes.

He makes it up about six steps. Then he stops and sits down, hard, like his legs just quit.

"Hale?"

He's breathing wrong. Too fast. Short, shallow, like he just came off a double shift, except he hasn't done anything but walk thirty feet. His hands are on his knees, and they're shaking. His whole face has gone a strange white-gray, like the color's draining out of it from the top down.

"I can't," he says. "I can't get⁠—"

He can't get a breath. I know what this is. I've had them. In juniors, my first year away from home, I had one on a bus in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning, and I thought I was dying, and a trainer named Guylaine sat with me in the back row and talked me down.

I crouch in front of him, on the step below, so I'm lower than him. So I'm not in his face.

"Hey," I say. "Owen. Look at me."

His eyes come up. They're wide and wet, and they don't really see me.

"You're having a panic attack," I say. "It feels like you're dying. You're not. I promise you're not dying."

"My chest⁠—"

"I know. It's tight. It feels like a truck's parked on it." I keep my voice slow and low, the way Guylaine did. "It's going to pass. It always passes. You just have to ride it."

"I can't—breathe⁠—"

"You can. You're doing it right now. You're just doing it too fast." I reach out, slow, so he can see my hand coming. "Can I touch you?"

He doesn't answer. His breath is coming in gasps. He nods, once, jerky.

I put my hand flat on his chest, over his sternum, through his shirt. His heart is going so hard I can feel it slamming against my palm.

"Breathe into my hand," I say. "Push it out. Like you're trying to move it."

He tries. It's shaky. It barely moves my hand at all.

"Good. Again. Slower."

He does it again. My hand rises a little more this time.

"That's it. In through your nose." I breathe with him, loud, so he can hear it and follow. "Now out. All the way. Push it all out."

He breathes out. It rattles.

"Again."

We do it again, and then again. I don't count them. I just keep my hand on his chest and breathe, in and out, slow, and let him follow me, the way I'd follow a linemate up the ice. The light buzzes over us. Somewhere above us, a door opens and closes, and footsteps go the other way.

After a while, his breathing starts to slow down. Not all the way. But it's not gasping anymore. His hands have stopped shaking so hard.

"There you go," I say. "That's it. You're coming back."

He closes his eyes. He leans his head back against the concrete wall.

"Sorry," he says, rough.

"Don't be sorry."

"I don't—this doesn't happen to me."