“But if we want a better position,” Nancy said calmly, “tonight is basically a must win.” She winced. “Okay, depending on the other games tonight and their scores, but it’s getting very tight, and the road trip they have is brutal.”
I sat in the back corner, listening, knees drawn up in my chair, arms wrapped around them. Not hiding. Just trying to take up as little space as possible, which felt appropriate given my current status as the medical staff member deemed too inconvenient to do his actual job.
Last night according to what I’d heard had been a shit show, and everyone was on edge after Taz had been replaced. The game tonight was in Dallas, and the travel on this trip would be brutal. Three flights and the games in three consecutive days. The arena looked enormous on screen, the crowd a wall of green and white, hostile and deafening even through the tinny speakers of Nancy's desktop setup. The scoreboard read 0-0 midway through the first period, and Levin was in net.
He looked good. I hated that my first reaction to that observation was relief, followed immediately by guilt, followed by a hollow ache that had taken up permanent residence behind my sternum three days ago and showed no signs of vacating. He’d tried to call me. Once shortly after Ignatius. Once before I’d had to talk to the cops this morning and confirm what the security guards had told them, and once after he’d gotten off a plane. I hadn’t answered. I couldn’t. I couldn’t listen to him try and explain how he’d turned his back like everyone else in my life, then wanted to pick up where he left off when the problem was solved. I’d already decided to talk to Nancy privately and mention changing jobs. I knew hospital work was still a closeddoor, but maybe it was time to get out of Colorado. She’d be sorry to see me go, and I wouldn’t leave them before the end of the season, but I was done.
"Levin's moving well," someone said. I think it was Harris, one of the strength coaches.
Nancy nodded from her desk, arms crossed, watching with the particular intensity of someone who was tracking every player's body mechanics from eight hundred miles away. "His lateral movement's improved since last week. Kinkaid must have worked with him."
I said nothing. Sipped my water. Watched the screen and tried not to look for number thirty-five on the bench.
I looked anyway. Of course I did.
Taz sat at the far end, helmet off, his face that particular shade of unreadable that I'd once spent weeks learning to decode. He wasn't watching the ice. He was staring at his gloves, turning them over in his hands with the slow, methodical movements of a man running calculations he couldn't solve.
My chest constricted. I looked away.
The first period ended scoreless. Levin had stopped eleven shots, two of them difficult, one of them genuinely impressive. The commentary team was enthusiastic about his performance in a way that felt pointed, like they were constructing a narrative about a young backup seizing his opportunity, and the subtext was clear even to someone who didn't understand the sport's politics: Rees was losing his grip, and Levin was ready.
I excused myself to refill my water. Stood in the hallway for forty-five seconds with my forehead pressed against the wall, breathing through the tightness in my ribs, then went back in and sat down like nothing had happened.
The second period started fast. Dallas pressed hard from the opening face-off, cycling the puck through the Dragons' zone with the kind of patient, suffocating pressure that even I couldrecognize as dangerous. Levin held his ground, making save after save, his movements increasingly frantic but effective.
Then, at what the clock said was 8:47, it happened.
A Dallas forward drove hard to the net. Bodies crashed into the crease area. Levin went down to cover the puck, but he missed and the puck landed in the net, but the forward's knee caught him on the side of the head. Not malicious, I didn't think. Just the violent physics of large men moving at high speed in a confined space. But Levin crumpled sideways, his mask knocked askew, and he didn't get up.
Nancy was on her feet instantly. "Shit."
The whistle had already blown for the goal. Players circled. The camera zoomed in on Levin lying on his side, one glove off, the other pressed against his temple. The arena went quiet in that particular way crowds did when they recognized something had gone wrong beyond the normal parameters of the game.
"That's a head injury," I said, the words coming out before I could stop them. Clinical autopilot. "The way he went down, the delay in response. That's concussion protocol at minimum."
Nancy shot me a look that was half exasperation, half anguish. "Patel's there. He'll catch it."
On screen, the medical staff rushed onto the ice. I watched Patel kneel beside Levin, watched the careful assessment, the penlight, the questions I could guess without hearing. Levin tried to sit up. Patel gently pushed him back down. Good. Correct protocol.
They helped Levin off the ice. He was skating, which was encouraging, and seemed to be okay. Maybe it had looked worse than it was. he would need a minimum of a twenty-four hour assessment.
"Patel will remove him for the rest of the game," Nancy said quietly. Not a question.
The broadcast confirmed it thirty seconds later. The dragons protested the goal, but it was allowed because it had cleared before the injury. The commentator's voice carried a weight that felt disproportionate until I remembered what it meant: the Dragons' backup goaltender was injured, on the road, in the middle of a game they needed to win, and they were one down.
Which meant Taz was going in.
The camera found him on the bench. He was already pulling his mask on, his movements mechanical, precise, utterly devoid of the fluid grace I'd watched him carry for months. He stood, tapped his stick against the boards, and skated toward the crease with the heavy deliberation of a man walking into something he wasn't sure he'd survive.
The office went quiet. Everyone watched.
"Come on, Taz," Harris muttered.
I couldn't speak. My hands were clenched so tight in my lap that my nails were cutting half-moons into my palms, and I could feel my pulse in my throat, rapid and thready, the vital signs of someone in acute distress.
He settled into the crease. Tapped his posts. The ritual I'd watched a hundred times, except tonight it looked different. Slower. Like the posts didn't answer back the way they usually did.
Dallas came at him immediately. They could smell blood. A shot from the point that Taz deflected with his blocker, sending it skittering wide. Another from the half-wall that he smothered with his chest, dropping to his knees and covering it with the methodical precision of muscle memory operating independently of whatever was happening inside his head.