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Webb scores with two minutes left, a bad-angle wrister from the half-wall that squeaks through the goalie's arm and his side, and the building goes up so loud I feel it through the walls of the trainer's room, lying on my back on the table with my leg packed in ice to the hip.

Three to one, with the empty-netter. Nashville leads three games to two. There's a game six on Saturday, in Nashville.

I'm not going to play in it. I know that before anybody tells me. I know it the way you know when a puck's going in before the light goes on.

The guys come in after. Webb first, still in his gear, still dripping. He sits down on the stool next to the table and puts his hand on my shoulder.

"You're done," he says. Not a question.

"I'm done."

"Anand told Moretti. Moretti told the room." He looks at my leg, at the ice packed around it. "Nobody said anything. Brandt threw a water bottle at the wall."

"Brandt?"

"Brandt." He almost smiles. "He's been weird since the plane. I think he's having feelings. It's upsetting everybody."

I laugh. It hurts. Everything hurts.

"Marcus," I say. "Where is he?"

Webb doesn't pretend not to know who I mean.

"Family lounge. With his folks." He's quiet for a second. "He scored the empty-net goal. Did you see? With ten seconds left. The puck went the length of the ice and he just stood there and watched it go in and didn't even lift his arms."

"I saw the first slapshot. The one off the glass."

"He broke his stick on the ice after that one. He broke another one on the bench in the third." Webb rubs his face. "Sorel had to take the third one away from him."

"It's my fault."

"Yeah," Webb says. He doesn't soften it. "It is."

I close my eyes.

"You want to know what he said?" Webb asks. "When they carried you off. When you were going down the tunnel."

"What."

"Nothing. That's what. He stood there at the circle and watched you go and didn't say anything. Sorel was holding his arm. He didn't try to pull away." Webb squeezes my shoulder. "I've seen that kid take a slur on national TV and swing his stick at the guy who said it. I've never seen him stand still before. Not once."

He gets up. At the door, he turns around.

"Fix it, Owen," he says. "You've got nothing left to lose now. Fix it."

Then Sorel. Then Kowal, who stands in the doorway and looks at my leg and says, "That's bad," and leaves.

Rémy doesn't come.

I wait for him. I lie there with my leg in ice and listen for his voice in the hallway, his laugh, the way he talks with his hands. I know it's his parents' night. I know he's out there in the family lounge with his mother crying on him and his father clapping him on the back. I know it. I wait anyway.

He doesn't come.

Around midnight, Dana comes in to check the ice, and she's got something in her hand. A folded piece of paper.

"The kid's mom gave me this," she says. "In the family lounge. She said, for the sad bear. She said Rémy didn't know she was giving it to me." Dana hands it over. "I didn't read it."

I unfold it. It's in blue ink, in a handwriting I don't know. Round and careful and slanted, the way people write when they learned in a different language.