Page 68 of For the Boys
Brent didn’t hesitate before throwing himself over the boards, eyes already zeroing in on the puck and where his teammates were located in relation to it.
Mitch had the puck behind the Quakers’ net and passed it to Brent, who skated it down the side and out to center ice, trying to hurry and catch his opponents on a bad change. One of the Quakers caught up with Brent and trailed him into the corner, where he pushed Brent against the boards and stuck his stick between Brent’s legs, attempting to knock the puck loose. Brent drove his elbow back into the guy’s stomach, earning him a few inches of space. He yanked on his stick, trying to free it from where it was tangled up in the legs of another Quaker. It finally came loose, and he attempted to turn and get his stick in front of him at the same time.
Then everything went black.
Flashes of light made him blink his eyes, and he only picked up every few words through the intermittent buzzing in his brain.
“…you…hear…? You…bad hit…taking…hospital…”
Blackness descended again.
The next several minutes—hour? days? Brent had no idea—passed in a wave of lights, faces he didn’t recognize, and a lot of staring up at ceilings.
When he woke, he cracked open his eyes to find himself lying in a hospital bed.
“Fuck,” he said, that one word and the resulting exhalation making his head throb. Brent scrunched his eyes shut against the pain.
“Thank God,” a female voice said.
“Berk?”
“You wish, loverboy,” the voice said.
Brent opened his eyes, blinking to bring the woman in front of him into focus.
“Lexie?” he asked. “What—”
“What am I doing here? Berk asked us to come check on you.”
“Us?”
“Hey, Brent,” Amelia said, popping up next to Lexie.
Brent looked back and forth between the two faces, smiling despite the pain in his head. “How did you two even manage to get in here? I know I’m not exactly the president or anything, but there’s gotta be security out there.”
“We told them we were your sisters,” Amelia said with a laugh.
“Well it’s nice to wake up to familiar faces. What even happened? The last thing I remember was fighting for that puck in the corner.”
“Some dickbag from Pittsburgh crosschecked you from behind. You slammed your chin on the edge of the boards and passed out. There was blood everywhere.”
Brent tipped his head back and ran his shaking fingers across the underside of his jaw, wincing when he encountered the stitches there. His flesh was tender and swollen. Running his tongue across his teeth, he breathed a sigh of relief that they were all still intact. A quick inventory of the rest of his body revealed no other injuries.
Minus the splitting headache, of course.
“Okay,” he said. “Concussion. Check. Not my first, surely won’t be my last. Same goes for the stitches. I’m just glad my teeth are okay.”
Amelia laughed, and Lexie rolled her eyes.
“When was the last time you had one?” Amelia asked. “A concussion, I mean.”
“God,” Brent said, squinting as he thought. “College? Yeah, college.”
“Okay, okay,” Lexie said. “Don’t hurt yourself. That hit was gnarly.”
Brent nodded. “Explains why my head feels like someone took a hammer to it. Wait, you guys were at the game?”
“Yeah, Mitch gave us tickets,” Lexie said.
