I’m stuck between accepting what’s happening or dissociating to a place I’ll never want to leave. One where I’m not bleeding out on the ice, where my arm isn’t immobile and lifeless. One where I’m still a professional hockey player with a bright career in front of me with my friends and family at my side.
Oh my God, my family.
Thank God my parents aren’t at this game, but I know they’re watching from home and losing their minds right now, trying to either get ahold of someone or get here.
Lifting my right hand up, I form a thumb and raise it up as high as I can. The crowd claps in response, but it’s not for them.
When I was growing up, my parents and I always discussed that if anything bad were to happen on the ice, I was supposed to signal to them if I was good, maybe okay, or bad—thumb up, thumb sideways, or completely turned down, respectively.
But I’m going to be just fine, so I go with a thumbs-up. It’ll reassure them and make them feel better. Which, in turn, will do the same for me.
“Hang on, Shay. Here they are,” Andy murmurs.
He squeezes my hand again, and my vision blurs, tears pooling down the sides of my face and running into my hair.
“I can’t f-feel it.” My voice isn’t my own, pained in a way I’ve never heard before. “I can’t move it.”
“I know. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he tries to assure me, but hope is the furthest from what I’m feeling.
Time seems to be impossible to grasp. I can’t tell if seconds or minutes have gone by. How long have I been lying here?
I glance down, and my usual white-and-purple jersey is saturated in deep red, each stitch and tiny mesh circle unrecognizable.
Jesus Christ.
Squeezing my eyes shut as tightly as they’ll go, I will my arm to twitch, my fingers to move, to do anything. But nothing happens.
Bright light floods my vision as I grunt with frustration, staring at my arm and waiting for it to cooperate.
Come on!
A gasp tears through me, panic bubbling up and taking over as my arm fails me over and over again.
This can’t be happening.
I thought it was all going to be okay. I thought that maybe my arm’s resistance was a weird reaction from my body going into shock. But I think it may be much worse than I initially imagined.
What if … what if I can never use my arm again? What if it never heals normally? What if I can never play hockey again?
Terror like I didn’t know was possible rips through my body, and my breaths quicken with each ticking second.
Oh God.
I’m going to lose everything, my team, my dreams, my future.
I’m going to be nothing.
No. No. No. No.
My racing inner thoughts turn outward.
“No. No. No! No!” I cry out. “Please! Please!”
“Out of the way!” EMTs rush over, hands immediately finding my neck. “Stretcher now! Over here!” Kind brown eyes find mine. “Shay, take a deep breath for me. Come on.”
Dramatically, he demonstrates the slow and steady inhale until I finally manage to do the same, my heart rate slowing down gradually. That lasts only a second before it once again tries breaking through my rib cage.
Multiple hands reach for my body, and the next thing I know, I’m loaded on a stretcher and being rushed toward our bench.
