His daughter.
My gaze shifts to her. She’s still standing where we saw her earlier. Except now she’s not smiling and having conversations. She’s frozen. Her mouth is slightly open, and I can see the quick rise and fall of her chest.
I turn back to the ice, and Rhodes is now on a stretcher, but I still haven’t seen any movement. They pick up the stretcher, moving him off the ice and revealing the large pool of blood that was under him.
Nobody knows what to do. Everyone just watches as they take him off the ice, and right before he disappears, his arm moves.
It’s barely a twitch. We all know it could mean nothing. It could just be a reflex or a muscle spasm. But we all want to hold on to hope that his arm moving was a positive sign. In a situation like this, it’s all you can do. Hope.
When I look back toward where his daughter was, she’s gone.
“Do you think he’s okay?” Jeremy asks, his voice barely audible.
“I don’t know.” Declan sighs, all of their eyes still on the ice. “I hope so.”
“That was a dirty hit,” Jaxon mumbles.
But there’s no penalty called. I think everyone’s still distracted by what just happened. They bring out the Zamboni to “clean” up the blood stain, but I also think it’s to give the players a second to get their heads together.
The Hawks’ players seem hesitant to get back on the ice, and I don’t blame them. But I also know the last thing they want to do is forfeit the rest of the game when Rhodes carried them this far.
“Let’s go Hawks!” A scream comes from the crowd, breaking through the previous silence.
“Win it for Rhodes!” Someone else adds.
And then the game continues as if nothing happened.
We don’t win the game, though. The Blues come back full force, while our team doesn’t come back at all. Not mentally, that is. The Blues beat us by two.
But the loss doesn’t matter.
The loss is overshadowed by the loss of something much greater than a hockey game—
Dylan Rhodes.
He died the next morning.
thirty-five
Zeke
Ican’t imagine being at that game.” Avalon whispers, sinking into my chest. “Witnessing something like that, I mean—”
“I can’t imagine being his daughter. You’re there to watch your dad do what he loves, and because of some fucking asshole playing dirty you… you lose him.”
“What about her mom?” She gazes at me. “Was she there?”
“Her mom died when she was little.” I sigh. “As far as I’m concerned, he was the only family she had.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Shocked, obviously, but I didn’t lose a parent, you know? I can’t even compare how I’m feeling to how she’s feeling.”
All I know is after the game, the guys and I went home and just sat in the living room. Even Cam came over and ended up sleeping on our couch. I don’t think we fully comprehended what had happened until we woke up the next day.
It was the first thing we saw. ‘Dylan Rhodes has died at 37.’ I guess he had a tiny brain aneurysmthat he would’ve never known he had until it burst. They said the hit itself was something he might’ve survived, but pair it with the bleeding in his brain… no matter how quickly they treated him, he wouldn’t have made it.
“I know he wasn’t your dad, but he was your idol. He was why you felt like playing in the pros was possible.”