Page 82 of Player Misconduct
Kendall
By the time September rolls around I’m five months pregnant and the city feels crisp and alive. Inside the stadium, the medical wing is quiet; the boys are on the ice and I’ve got a rare half hour to catch up on charts, a heating pad wedged between my chair and my back trying to find some relief.
A knock pulls my attention from the screen.
“Doc?” Aleksi nudges the door with his shoulder and steps in, all damp hair and grin, a big brown shipping box hugged to his chest. Customs tape, crooked air-mail stickers, and large letters stamped along one side in blue.
My heart does a stupid sprint. “Please tell me you didn’t order me another ergonomic footrest shaped like a hockey puck.”
“Better.” His smile widens. “From my mom.”
He sets the box on my desk. I try to play it cool, but my fingers are already under the packing tape.
“Wait.” He catches my wrist, gentle. “Open slow.”
It’s ridiculous, but I do. Each fold of cardboard peels back like a curtain and the sweetest scent slips out. It smells like pine and baby powder and something milky-sweet and unfamiliar.
My throat tightens without warning.
On top, cushioned in tissue, are booties hand-knit in cream and a pale sky-blue that makes my throat clog with emotion.
“She knit those herself,” he says quietly. “She makes a lot of them and donates them to the NICU at the local hospital, for the premature babies. She wanted our baby to have a pair too.”
My thumbs trace over the tiny booties, the yarn impossibly soft beneath my fingers. It’s more like cashmere than wool. The kind of soft that makes you want to cuddle up to it and feel it against your cheek.
It’s hard to even imagine he’ll ever be this small… especially looking at the giant father that he shares half his DNA with. I try to picture a foot that tiny.Ourson’s foot.
“She made these for him?” I ask.
“Yeah.” His smile is full of pride. “She wanted him to have something from her… something made with love. My father is the reason I thrived, but my mother is the reason I survived… being the fragile twin and all. I was in the NICU for a while when I was born. That’s when she started the knitting habit.”
Beneath them, there’s a small bottle of baby lotion with a label I can’t pronounce. Probably written in Finnish or Swedish. It has a soft green print and a forest of little line-drawn trees. I uncap it and that scent rises again. It’s a mix of pine needles crushedbetween fingers, vanilla dust, and something almost clean that I can’t pinpoint.
There’s tea, too—two little muslin sachets tied with string, the tags handwritten. One says:for mama’s nerves,the other saying:helps with milk supply.Breast feeding, something I hadn’t quite thought of, but of course Aleksi’s mom would think of it. The nurturing kind of woman. The kind of woman I could learn so much from. A woman polar opposite from the mother I came from. And tucked under everything, folded three times —a letter in careful, wobbly English.
For the brave doctor and our grandbaby– You take care of my Aleksi, so we take care of you. We already love you. Please be healthy and happy. Love, Leena Mäkelin.
The room tilts. I press my palm to the paper like it could steady me.
“She doesn’t even know me,” I whisper, which is only half of what I mean. What I mean is:my own mother never remembered my birthday, abandoned me more times than I can count, and yet this woman halfway across the world is sending me a forest and a future in a box, telling me that she already loves me.
“She knows enough,” he says softly. “You take care of me. And you're the mother of her second grandchild. That’s all she needs to know to love you.”
I swallow, because if I speak I might break in two. I try to turn away, old reflex, but he’s already there, closing the distance.
“Hey.” His voice goes velvet-soft, hands warm on my upper arms. “You okay?”
I nod, but my face does the opposite. “Your mom—this is—” I have to stop. Breathe. Try again. “I’ve never had a mother like this. Not even when I needed it most. You’re really lucky Aleksi.”
He doesn’t say anything.He just stays. That’s somehow worse and better all at once.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
It feels natural to fold into him. Like we’ve been doing this for years. His sweatshirt smells like him, a smell that I now associate with safety and patience. My forehead finds the hollow at his sternum; his chin brushes my hair. The baby shifts, low and curious, like he knows his dad is close.
“He kicked last night,” I say into his shirt, because I want to give him something for showing up like this. “Twice. Like little bubbles.”
Aleksi stills. “He did?” The joy in his voice unties something inside me.
