“YOU SHOULD HAVE HAD that last goal,” Jensen stood in front of my locker. “We would have won if you had made that goal.”
I ignored him. The entire team had played like shit tonight including our goalie. The pass to me had come a fraction too late and by the time I had a handle on the puck, the opposing defense had blocked me.
“Guess you’re not the hotshot that everyone says you are.”
“Hey, easy,” Max said from his side of the room.
We had looked like a misfit beer team out there tonight, and we were all to blame. I may have missed that last shot, but I had scored the only two goals of the night. It wasn’t like Jensen had been on fire. But I kept my mouth shut about that.
Jensen took off his shoulder pad and fired it towards me, narrowly missing my head. The entire locker room fell silent. Nineteen sets of eyes looked over towards me.
I stood up, picked up his shoulder pad. What I wanted to do was fire it back at him and get into a nice bloody brawl, but my meeting with the GM and Gordon came to mind. I needed to keep a cool head.
“No one trusts you.” Jensen hit below the belt.
I turned my back on Jensen. “At least I know how to put the puck in the net.”
I pulled my jersey over my head when a body jumped on top of me and yanked me to the floor. My arms were still caught up in my jersey, and he was on me, swinging hard. I took three hard shots to the side of the head before I got my arm clear. I swung hard, so hard, my fist connected with bone. His head snapped back. Blood gushed out of his nose.
Guys were yelling and then they hauled him off me.
“Walk it off,” two guys shoved him hard, pushing him towards the other side of the room.
My left wingman, Mica, leaned over me and pulled me to my feet.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” I said from between clenched teeth. I was beyond pissed but I kept my emotions in check.
“You’re a fucking dirty player,” Jensen called from the other side of the room.
The entire place erupted and for a long second it looked like we would have a full-on brawl. The coach stepped into the room and the entire place went still.
“Want to tell me what the fuck is going on in here?” he looked first at Jensen’s bloody face and then at my own. The entire right side of my face felt like it was on fire and I could feel a warm trickle of blood trace down my cheek.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just horsing around.”
He looked at Jensen. “Is that true?”
Jensen turned and walked around the corner, out of view.
“You guys looked like a bunch of clowns out there tonight. I’m embarrassed to be your coach. Tomorrow, be here at 7 AM sharp. We will be doing cardio drills all fucking morning, so bring your A game.”
That elicited groans from around the room.
He turned and stared at me.
“See a medic about that. You need stitches.”
In response, I turned my back and sat down to unlace my skates. In all my years, I had never been cold-cocked by a member of my team. I was seething, but hell if I would let anyone know how pissed I was. What a shit show.
I showered in record time. By the time the medic put three stitches above my right brow, my eye was swelling.
“Put ice on that to prevent your eye from closing,” he advised.
I started the long walk to my vehicle when my cell phone sounded.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Krista.”
“Jensen jumped you in the locker room?”
I stopped walking momentarily. “How do you know this stuff?”
“It’s all over social media.”
I unlocked my SUV and tossed my bag in the back. “It’s done.”
“What’s going on, Ryan?”
“We lost the game and tempers flared.”
A long pause hung between us. My face hurt like a son of a bitch and I wanted to go home and find a bag of frozen peas.
“Are you okay?”
“Don’t you have a life?”
“Don’t get smart with me,” she pretended to be offended.
“I gotta go.”
“Want to do breakfast this week?”
I paused and sat looking out my windshield. My entire social life comprised of my weekly meals with my agent who charged me for the time. “Yeah sure. What the hell.”
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and then settled down to watch the game again while eating two bags of salad and an entire cooked chicken. We had been a sloppy mess out there and it was a miracle the other team hadn’t handed us our asses. How we ended up losing by only one point was beyond me. One of my goals had been a complete fluke and the other one had only happened because their goalie was half asleep.
I looked at my phone, debating calling Gina, an old favorite on-again-off-again bunny that had warmed my bed more than once in LA. Maybe she would be up for some phone sex. I looked at my watch. It was late, and she was one of the few puck bunnies that had a real job so that was out.
I WOKE up on the couch, stiff and cramped, to the sound of my cell going off. Groggily, I looked at the number. It was my answering service. I let it go to voice mail and headed to bed. I needed to get up in a few hours.
I set my alarm and noted that the answering service had called four times.
I should just leave it until morning. Anyone close to me had my cell number. Instead, I dialed them back.
“This is Ryan Parker. I had a few calls tonight?”
I could hear the operator typing. “Yes, they were all from the same number. Gail from the Vancouver General Hospital. She said it was urgent.”
I sat up in bed. “Did she say why?”
“No, but she left a number.”
“VANCOUVER GENERAL HOSPITAL, emergency administration, how may I direct your call?”
“May I please speak to Gail?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Ryan Parker.”
“Mr. Parker, we’ve been calling you all night.”
“I just got your messages.”
“We’ve had a Jane Doe come into emergency tonight. She had no ID, but she was carrying your card with your number.”
My heart was in my throat. “What do you mean Jane Doe?”
“The patient was unresponsive when she arrived. We were wondering if you could shed light on who she is?”
Zoey.
Fuck. Please don’t let it be her.
“Is she okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
Heart in my throat, I could barely form the words. “Is she alive?”
A long pause. “I’m not sure. She came in hours ago. I don’t know what her status is.”
“What do you know?”
“I work in administration. I don’t deal with the patients. The nurse just handed me this card and asked me to call you.”
“Can you find out?”
“I can check.”
I paced for an interminable amount of time. Then Gail came back on the line. “She isn’t awake yet.”
“But she is alive?”
“Yes. We still don’t know who she is.”
“What is your address?”
She rattled it off and then I was out the door.
It was pouring rain and dark outside.
The entire drive I prayed I would get there and it would be someone I didn’t know.
THE AUTOMATIC DOORS of the emergency room opened with a muffled whoosh. To the left was a large room full of aging plastic chairs. Bleach slightly overpowered other, indistinguishable bad smells. I explained my story to the woman at the counter who took my name and told me to wait for the doctor.
I sat and waited. Finally, a male doctor wearing green scrubs and cap came walking towards me.
“Ryan Parker!”
I stood.
He smiled up at me. “We were watching the game tonight and man, you came so close to putting us in a tie.”
I gave him a weak smile. “Sorry about that.”
He slapped my arm. “No. God, I was so happy when you got traded to us. You looked great out there. The rest of your team though, could use some work.”
Like I said. This town was hockey crazy. “So, I got a call about someone who was brought in here tonight. The hospital called my answering service.”
He switched from a fan to a doctor. “Yes, a Jane Doe came in. She was assaulted in a deserted parking lot. A bus driver chased off the perp. She was knocked out. The EMTs said she was incoherent in the ambulance. She is still out.”
I winced. “Did she say anything?”
He folded his arms around the file. “She was asking for her mom. Would you be willing to look at her and see if you can identify her?”
“Of course.”
Our shoes squeaked across the hospital floor. We approached a curtained off bed. He peeked in and then pulled the curtain back.
Zoey.
She looked tiny and broken. Her left eye was swollen shut. She had a fat lip. Bruises covered her face. A machine beeped quietly over her head. An IV line dripped. Her arm was in a sling. Dried blood was around her nose, her lips and on the hospital gown. She was, in plain words, a complete mess.
“That’s Zoey.” I stepped back, feeling nauseous.
The doctor shut the curtain. “Do you know her last name?”
I shook my head, trying to remember the name on her health care card. “I don’t really know her. She helped me with my taxes once. She seemed down on her luck, so I fed her dinner and gave her my card. That was a couple weeks ago. I haven’t talked to her since.”
“Do you know if she has any family we can call?”
“She told me she was a foster kid and that now she is on her own.”
He looked concerned. “Okay. Well, that is too bad.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
He looked at her chart. “Her vitals are stable. She got knocked around pretty good. No concussion but she took enough hits to the head that her head will ache. Her shoulder is sprained, and it looked like she got kicked repeatedly in the abdomen area, but we did an ultrasound and there is no internal bleeding,” he snapped the file shut, “but we’ll be keeping her overnight for observation.”
I had terrible visions of other things happening to her. “Was she…?”
“There are no signs of sexual assault.”
My breath let out. “Thank God.”
“Do you know if she has a fixed address?”
“She was living in a shelter when we met.”
“Yes, these foster kids don’t really have a fighting chance,” he said with a resigned look. “Well, we really appreciate you coming down here. And I wish you all the best of luck in this season.”
“What about Zoey?”
“What about her?”
“What’ll happen to her now?”
“Well, we will hold her overnight. Probably release her sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Just like that?”
“She’ll be in pain, but she’ll heal. She’ll need to keep her arm in a sling for a couple weeks.”
“How’s she going to do that when she is on the street?”
He shrugged. “We see this kind of stuff all the time. These street kids get the brunt of it. Poor nutrition, no social support. No home. No family. A lot of them turn to drugs or even worse.”
Fuck me.
He slapped me on the shoulder. “There are some fantastic fundraisers, if you’re ever interested in helping out. Someone of your status would go a long way.”
“Yeah,” I said, still distracted by Zoey’s fate. “I’ll talk to my agent.”
“Great. Sorry to bring you down here on such a miserable night, but I can’t wait to tell my friends I met you. Any chance I can get an autograph?”
Was he for real?
“No problem.”
He handed me a pen and a pad of paper and I signed it.
He had ushered me to the front waiting area. And then he was gone. I walked back to my vehicle, unsure how to process how I felt.
COACH WAS OUT FOR BLOOD. He made us do speed skating sprint drills for an hour. I was functioning on limited sleep so by the time we finished I felt like puking. Then we had our regular practice. Then he reamed our asses out, and told us we were cowards, idiots, and dumb ass jocks that didn’t deserve our coveted positions as star athletes.
He wasn’t wrong.
The locker room was silent when we came back to change. No one looked at each other. No one spoke.
I walked out to the parking lot and just sat in my SUV. It was pouring rain again. I couldn’t get my mind off Zoey. What the hell was she thinking, hanging out in a deserted parking lot in the middle of the night? I had met farm dogs who weighed more than she did.
I couldn’t get the image of her lying in the hospital bed out of my head. She looked so lost and defeated. Would they send her somewhere in a cab? Where would she go? She would be in crippling pain. Would she even be able to afford pain meds?
Frustration ripped through me. Deep calm breaths. What I needed to do, was let this go. I had enough shit on my plate.
I put my SUV in reverse. I didn’t get here by being distracted by anyone or anything. My career was in crisis. It needed my complete focus. I couldn’t afford any distractions.
I would call Krista and tell her to make a donation to the food bank or something. And to set up a charity event for the homeless. That is where it ended. The game, as always, needed to come first.
