Yankee Stadium is electric tonight as forty thousand hockey fans celebrate New Year’s Eve. It becomes like a cage of white noise as I try to block everything out beyond the plexiglass, staying in the zone. The freezing winter air burns my lungs, sharp and metallic in my throat.
We’re halfway through the second period and we’re down by one. The Habs are playing like lions tonight. Their forwards are throwing elbows and making hard checks. It’s bullshit because this is an exhibition game. There’s no reason these guys need to be out here checking us so hard. If they don’t back off, someone is gonna get hurt.
I’m puffing like a racehorse as I get into position for the face-off. Sully takes the center spot. Karlsson skates into position across the circle and gives me a nod. The player to his left is the worst one out here. I can see from the set of Karlsson’s shoulders he’s had enough of the rough play too. A word from us, and our defensemen will start bringing the heat. Let’s see how much No. 82 likes getting smashed into the boards by the Novikov freight train.
The ref skates in and we all tense, ready for that puck to drop. My gaze is laser-focused on his hand. I grip my stick, breathing deep, counting the seconds.
Focus. Speed. Control.
It’s my mantra. Focus on the puck. Move fast. Control your stick.
Eyes up.
The puck drops, and Sully just barely wins control of it, shooting it back to me. As soon as it hits my stick, I come alive, bursting with speed as I try to lose my shadow. But he’s right on top of me. I can hear him breathing like a mastiff around his mouthguard, thick and slobbery. He shoves his stick in, nearly tripping me, trying to wrestle the puck away.
Fuck, you’re gonna lose it.
I have to get it away from me. He’s herding me towards the boards. He won’t be gentle, and I can’t take another hit. My hips and shoulders are already screaming from the beating I took in the first period. I need this shift to end. Now.
Eyes up.
I scan the ice and slap the puck hard. It flies across the ice to Karlsson, and I’m saved a slam into the boards. I scramble down the ice, following Karlsson and his aggressor as they chase the puck over the blue line. A defenseman is ready to apply pressure, and Karlsson has to think fast. He slips the puck between both players, a clean shot back to Sully, who brings it around the back of the net.
I know what he’s doing, and I’m ready for it. He wants to pass it to me and offer me a corner shot on goal. But a blur of red comes blasting in from behind me, cutting off Sully’s pass to me. We lose possession of the puck, and it goes hurtling down the ice out of the defensive zone.
The Rays defense is ready. Morrow and Novy are a pair of Canadian moose, and Mars is our Finnish bear in the net. Novy wrestles the puck away right in front of the crease and sends it screaming down the ice towards Karlsson.
Focus. Speed.
I push with everything I have, cutting up the ice with my blades to make my mark so Karlsson can pass it to me. I’m faster than my shadow. I tear down the ice, breaking free of him. I glance back just in time to see Karlsson get boxed in. He drops the puck back to Morrow.
Eyes up.
I turn my gaze to the plexiglass, and a head of red curls with a wide smile stops my heart in my chest. Her hand is pressed to the glass as she screams, eyes locked on me. She’s here? How is she here—
The sudden flash of camera phones blind me, reflecting off the plexiglass and I blink, looking sharply away.
Focus—
“Langley!”
“Ahhh!”
Time stops as my body registers two things at once. First, I’m airborne. I float in suspended animation, the milliseconds slowing down, my legs swept out from under me. Second, I’m in a ton of fucking pain. It radiates from my knee, up my hip, down my shin. Fuck, it zaps me like lightning.
I clench down on my mouthguard hard enough to crack my teeth as I brace for impact. My helmet smacks the ice right at my temple. Shoulder. Hip. Knee. I cry out again, rolling to my side, my stick forgotten as I place both gloved hands on my knee trying to stabilize it. If something is broken, I need to hold it in place.
“Fucking asshole,” I shout as the Habs forward scrambles to his feet.
“Sorry,” he says as he skates off, chasing down the puck.
Panic swirls with my adrenaline. Both work to numb the pain as my knee suddenly forms its own heartbeat, radiating pain out in waves.
Not the knee. Please, God, not my fucking knee.
Without hockey, I’m nothing. My family needs me. My sister, my mother—I’m their only support. And hockey is the only way I’m ever gonna earn. If my knee is busted…if this is the end…
Panic is winning out over adrenaline as I hear the whistle. They’ve finally noticed I’m down and not getting up. I know it’s only been a few seconds. Somewhere beyond the plexiglass, Tess is watching me lie here on this ice. Was it Tess? Did I hallucinate her? I don’t even know. Can’t think about it now—
“Langley!” Sully gets to me first, sliding to a stop and dropping to one knee, his hand on my shoulder. “Langers, you okay, man?”
“What happened? Where is he hurt?” I hear Novy’s voice, but I don’t look up into the blinding stadium lights. They’re all standing around me, casting my prone body in shadows as I pant, my hot breath making steam against the sheet of ice at my cheek.
“Oh fuck, it’s his knee—”
“Langers, can you get up?”
Someone’s hand is on my hip. He wants me to roll over onto my back. But I’m frozen, letting the pulsing pain in my knee paralyze me.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I cry with a voice not my own.
“I’m so sorry,” comes Morrow’s voice. “I thought you had it. I’m sorry. It was a bad pass—”
“The asshole took you out at the fucking knees,” Sully growls.
Yeah, I know. I was fucking there.
“Let’s give him some space, fellas,” calls the ref, ready to push my teammates back.
“Langley!” calls a new voice.
Doc and Assistant Coach Andrews are hurrying across the ice from the bench. Doc has her medical bag on her shoulder.
An EMT beats them to me. “That was a nasty hit, but you’re okay,” she soothes. “Where does it hurt? Your knee?”
A big guy in a matching EMT jacket is at my head. “We should stabilize his neck.”
“Langley,” Doc calls again.
Coach Andrews drops down on one knee next to her. “You’re alright, Langley.”
“Coach, the asshole fucking clipped him,” Sully says.
“I know,” says Coach. “We all saw it. Let’s let the EMTs work.”
“Let me look at it, Langley,” Doc says.
I breathe out through my mouth in sharp pants as I drop my hands away, giving her leave to touch me.
“What’s your pain level?”
“Ungh—seven,” I groan. But then she presses in with her thumb, and I practically levitate off the ice. “Ahh—fuck—ten,” I gasp. “It’s a fucking ten. Don’t do that again.” My arm flails as I react instinctively, just wanting the pain to stop.
“Okay, it’s okay,” she soothes, catching my arm before I can hit her. I’ll apologize to her later. “His left knee took all the impact of that hit,” she says at the female EMT.
“And his head hit the ice first in his fall,” the male EMT replies. “How you feeling, sir? You feeling dizzy at all? Look at me, please. Follow the light.”
He shines a light in my eyes, and I groan.
“We need to get him off the ice,” says Coach. “Can he walk off?”
“You got this, Langley,” one of my teammates call.
But Doc shakes her head. “With that hard of a hit, we need scans to be safe. We need to rule out a break.”
I let their medical talk float over my head like snowflakes caught in a flurry. I gaze up, my eyes focusing beyond the lights to the haze of the sky overhead. I’m flat on my back on an ice rink…in the middle of Yankee Stadium. Forty thousand people are watching me lie here.
“I can walk,” I hear myself say. “Doc, help me.” I rock forward with a groan, trying to sit up.
Her gentle hands push me back down. “Easy, Langley. You’re getting a ride off the ice this time, okay?”
“Hang in there, Langers,” says Sully, his face visible over the shoulder of Coach Andrews.
“You got this,” Novy calls.
It’s the work of moments before they have me on the stretcher and strapped down. I groan as the hydraulic lift shoots me into the air. I’ve never in my career been wheeled off the ice. It’s humiliating, like I’m lying here naked instead of clothed in my full hockey kit.
“Where’s my stick?” I mumble.
“Don’t worry about it,” says Coach, patting my padded shoulder.
I’m missing a glove. When did it come off? I feel the sharp winter chill on my fingertips. It stings so cold it burns. As if she can sense my problem, Doc steps in next to me, her bare hand taking mine. “It’s okay, Ryan,” she soothes. “I’m right here, okay? I’m going with you to the hospital.”
This all happened because I lost focus for a split second. I saw a pretty face, and my brain skipped like a scratched vinyl record.
“Tess,” I mutter. “She’s here, right?”
Doc leans down over me. “What? I didn’t hear you.”
My head rolls to the right, and my vision goes hazy. I blink to clear it and peer through the plexiglass, looking for a freckled face and red curly hair. Tess is here. She distracted me. She’s under my skin. She—
The pretty redhead at the glass wearing the Rays jersey looks stricken with worry as I pass by on my stretcher. Not my redhead. Not Tess. No, the woman behind the glass is too short, too thin. Dark eyes, not green.
But the mind sees what it wants to see.
“Not here,” I mumble, turning away. “She’s not here.” My eyes close, and I feel like I’m sinking through the stretcher into warm water.
“Hey—Langley, stay awake for me, okay?”
Doc’s voice sounds far away. Her grip on my hand is my tether. I’m a hot air balloon floating above the stadium, watching it all from on high. She calls at me from the ground, her hands cupping her mouth as she shouts through the din.
“Ryan, stay awake…”
I groan, wanting to do as she says. I’m a team player. I always do what I’m told. Doc says stay awake.
“Ryan…”
I’m a hot air balloon, and I’m floating…floating…
