The one you keep favoring in game tape. The one that’s affecting your shot. The one you’re too stubborn to get checked out. Sound familiar?
Fuck.
Ryder
It’s fine.
Jackson
That’s what I said. Then I tore my rotator cuff in my second NHL season and missed half a year. Get it checked, Ryder. Before it’s too late.
I don’t respond. Can’t respond. Because acknowledging that Jackson’s right means acknowledging that I’m not fine, that I can’t do this alone, that I might actually need help.
And needing help feels like failing.
Instead, I grab my skates and my stick and head back to the arena. It’s almost ten PM. The rink will be empty. Perfect time for solo practice without coaches or teammates or expectations.
Just me and the ice.
The way it’s supposed to be.
The arena is dark when I arrive, only emergency lighting illuminating the corridors. I use my team key card to get in, make my way to the locker room, lace up my skates.
My shoulder is screaming. The ibuprofen has barely touched the pain.
I should go home. Should ice it more. Should stop being an idiot and admit that Carter’s right, Jackson’s right, everyone’s right.
Instead, I step onto the ice.
The fresh Zamboni surface gleams under the overhead lights. Perfect. Untouched. Waiting.
I start skating, slow at first, letting my body warm up. The shoulder protests but I push through it, building speed, taking the corners with the kind of reckless abandon I never allow myself during practice.
This is what I’m chasing, he feeling of flying, of being untouchable, of existing in a space where nothing else matters. Not the pain, not the pressure, not the future that’s simultaneously too close and too far away.
I pick up speed, pushing harder, faster. My shoulder is on fire. I don’t care.
I attempt a tight turn into a backward sprint; a move I’d never risk in practice and my skate catches wrong on the ice.
The fall happens in slow motion.
Ice rushing up to meet me. My shoulder taking the full impact. A crack that’s definitely something inside me breaking, not the ice.
Pain. Immediate. Total. Consuming.
I lie there, staring up at the arena lights, trying to breathe through the agony radiating from my shoulder down my entire right side, across my chest, into my ribs.
This is it, I think distantly. This is how it ends. Not in glory. Not in a championship game with scouts watching. On an empty rink at ten PM because I was too stubborn to stop, too proud to ask for help, too terrified of failing to admit I was already failing.
I taste copper. Blood. I must have bit my lip when I fell.
I hear footsteps. Running. Someone’s here.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, don’t move. I’m calling?—”
The voice cuts off abruptly.
I turn my head carefully, which sends new waves of pain through my shoulder, and see her.
