Page 89 of The New Guy
“No problem,” he says as he vacates the table just in time for Hudson to sit down on it.
“How’s the hip?” I ask.
“It’s doing well,” he says. Then he clears his throat. “O’Doul is right. The team needs you tonight. We’re, uh, lucky to have you.”
“Thanks,” I say quietly.
He drops his voice. “Kind of wondering who you’re rooting for tonight, though. Boston’s playing.”
I let out a bark of laughter as I rotate his hip. “Look, we had a deal. No mention of that.”
“Aw, fine. Steal my fun.” He gives me a rugged smile, and my heart does a stupid little backflip.
It might have been my call to end things with him, but I miss him so much.
Hudson leaves, and my night becomes a blur of other faces and other body parts. I tape and stretch and manipulate amidst the pregame chaos.
Game time comes before I’m ready. I hustle out to the bench with my kit and watch the players skate their warm-ups. And when the puck drops, I’m full of tension.Please no Brooklyn injuries tonight, I beg the universe.
The universe listens—sort of. Crikey gets into a fight with a Boston player. I watch the way some people watch horror movies—through squinted eyes. I still don’t really understand why fighting has to be part of this game, and Crikey still has a bandage over his stitches.
Seriously, I don’t get it.
But the fight ends quickly when Crikey lands a punch to the Boston player’s torso, and his opponent goes down hard with a blood-chilling scream.
Whenever a fighter goes down, the officials swarm the fight, ending things immediately. This fight is no different, except the official whose job it is to restrain Crikey doesn’t even have to touch him. Our player is just standing there, his fist still curled, staring down at the guy like he can’t understand what just happened.
Meanwhile, the poor guy from Boston is curled up on his side in obvious pain, and Boston’s trainer is trotting across the ice with a look of dismay on his face.
The game stops for a few minutes, and the player is carted off. Crikey skates to the boards, and the whole bench leans in to listen as he tries to explain. “My punch was, like, right to his chest pad but somethingsnapped, man.” He makes a horrified face. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He serves a five minute penalty, and the injured player doesn’t return to the game.
Afterward, I’m standing here feeling like I dodged a bullet. Does it make me a bad person to feel super lucky that it’s not me assessing that injury?
I’m not the only one, though, who’s a little startled, apparently. The game gets a little chippy after that, and both teams look put out.
“I’ve seen better play in the junior leagues!” Coach reprimands them during the intermission. “Get it together. Especially you, Drake. You look asleep out there.”
“Yeah, got it,” the forward says. But he’s visibly pale, and his game doesn’t improve much during the second period. We’re down 1-2 already, to a team we should be beating.
“I got déjà vu,” Hudson grumbles to me before he vaults over the wall for another shift.
During the second intermission I sneak a look at my phone. Reggie informs me, via an emoji, that Jordyn has vomited. “Only once, though,” she says cheerfully.
But she follows that up with a photo of Jordyn watching the Brooklyn game and smiling.
People love to say kids are resilient. And yet half the people I know are in therapy for things that happened in their childhoods.
I can’t believe I’m here instead of at home with my sick baby girl.
“Gavin!”
My chin snaps up, and O’Doul is waving me across the room. “Help! Drake is acting weird.”
“I’m not acting weird,” the forward grumbles, rubbing his forehead. “I just have a headache.”
“You just fellasleep,” O’Doul snaps. “In the middle of a fucking game.”
