I look at the ice.
"Cray," he says.
"Fine."
He does not ask the follow-up because the game is tied and coaches are paid to balance care against need in real time, which is an impossible job and therefore mostly done badly. Callahan does it better than most. He skips me for one rotation. Puts Isaac out for a defensive-zone draw with Cole. I watch the kid take his first NHL shift in a tie game on the road and look briefly like he might throw up in his glove.
Then the puck drops.
He goes.
Wrong first step. Correct second. Cole covers. Isaac recovers. The play survives him. He comes off breathing hard and alive.
"Better wrong," I say when he sits.
He looks at me like I have handed him water in the desert.
We lose in overtime.
This is not relevant to the hip except that losing makes every pain feel less useful.
By the time we get back to the hotel, the joint has cooled into stiffness. Cooling is worse. Hot pain is information. Cold pain is a locked door. I take the elevator with the team, say nothing through Jonah's postgame autopsy of Tampa's neutral-zone trap, and walk to my room with the careful stride of a man pretending the floor is not tilted.
The trainer's room is locked. Technically the hotel conference room serving as the trainer's room is locked. Technically I could call Katie and she would answer, because Katie is a professional and because trainers sleep with one ear open during road trips.
I do not call Katie.
This is not intelligent.
It is private.
I get ice from the machine down the hall, wrap it in a towel, and sit on the floor outside my room because the hallway wallgives my back a better angle than the bed and because if I lie down in the room I may not get back up without making a sound. The carpet is ugly. Hotel carpets are always ugly because hotels have decided that hiding stains is a design philosophy.
I put the ice on my hip.
The first minute is bad. The second is worse. By the third, the cold bites through the pain and gives me something else to think about.
I breathe through my nose.
Private is where I do pain. Always has been. Locker room noise, game noise, crowd noise, all of that is performance. Pain belongs in hotel hallways, parking garages, apartment kitchens with one light on. Pain belongs where nobody has to decide what to do with it.
The elevator dings.
Of course it does.
I close my eyes for one second and consider becoming a man who believes in curses.
Footsteps. Then a stop.
"Nolan."
Caleb.
I open my eyes.
He stands twenty feet away with his suit jacket over one arm and his tie loosened. Front office came on this trip because division games in March apparently require three layers of management and because the universe has timing. His hair is messy. His face changes when he sees me, then changes again when he stops it from changing too much.
That second face is the one that gets me.
