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“Don’t I? My bad. I bet when I hobble to New York with my fucking femur in two separate pieces they’ll be just dying to sign a contract with me.”
I really don’t know what to say to that. I’ve never lost anything like this before, but somehow I don’t think throwing out trivial promises about how he’ll come out stronger on the other side will make him feel better right now.
“I mean, it won’t be in two separate pieces. That was the point of the surgery,” I say.
Even his laugh is cold.
“Funny,” he says tonelessly.
“Occasionally I manage to pull it off.”
He doesn’t seem to know what to say to that. Frankly, he looks a bit like I caught him off guard. It’s much better than the heavy, loud bitterness.
He drops his head back on his pillow and stares at the ceiling.
“Why are you here?” he asks after a minute of silence.
I lift my hand the tiniest bit and slowly move it until my fingertips meet the back of his hand. It’s so cold. Not like Ryker at all. He’s usually like a furnace.
“You’re here,” I say simply.
Very slowly, like he’s not sure if he should do it, he turns his hand over and traps my fingers with his. Let’s them go. And traps them again. Almost like he can’t decide what he wants. Me to stay. Or me to go. Or maybe he’s afraid to want me to stay because I haven’t given him a single reason to believe I would stay.
Even more determination spreads through me.
This is the fight for him.
And I’m here to have it.
With a heart that’s beating out of my chest from fear, I’m going to stay because I finally get what people mean when they say courage doesn’t mean the absence of fear. They’re right. Courage means staying in spite of fear.
I pull the chair that’s by his bed closer and sit down. I wrap my other hand around his fingers and hold them still. Lower my head and softly kiss his knuckles.
He sucks in a shuddering breath.
He still doesn’t look at me.
He doesn’t say anything else.
Neither do I.
We just are.
The next few days are a whirlwind of doctors, PTs, and prognoses. And no matter how many experts walk through Ryker’s room, none of them are able to contribute anything groundbreaking or even useful, to be honest. The general consensus is that it’s too soon to say anything, which seems obvious, but I suppose we needed a bunch of experts to give their two cents to really be sure. At least Genevive seems to have come to that conclusion, judging by the way she shuffles them through Ryk’s hospital room.
His coach stops by and talks to him for a while. I don’t know what they’re discussing because I give them their privacy.
His team files into the room in the afternoon of the morning that follows the injury. They won the game. Conference champions. Headed to the Frozen Four. All of them, except for Ryker.
Ryker gets even more withdrawn after they’re gone.
A few more days pass. They all bleed into one another in a haze of worry and very little sleep.
Ryker seems apathetic to everything. He does what the nurses tell him to do. He listens to what the PT says. He answers the doctors when they stop by with questions on their rounds. The only sign that he’s paying any attention is an occasional silent nod.
We don’t really talk that much.
When nobody else is around, he rests his hand on his side on the bed, and I link my fingers with his, and he clutches them like I’m the only thing holding him steady. He doesn’t reach for me himself, though.
