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Nobody says anything.

"I'm fine, Coach." I straighten up. It's the worst thing I've ever done. "Caught an edge."

He studies my face like he doesn't believe a word of it.

"Go see Deb," he says. "Now."

I skate off toward the bench. It takes about a year. I go right past Dane's crease.

He's taken his mask off. He's holding it in one hand. He's looking at me, his face white as the ice, his mouth open a little like he's going to say something.

He doesn't say anything.

I keep skating.

Deb is the athletic trainer. She's about sixty and has the hands of a woman who's been popping shoulders back in for forty years. She presses on my ribs, one at a time, on the left side, and I make a noise on the third one I've never made in my life.

"Mm-hm," she says.

"Is that a good mm-hm or a bad mm-hm?"

"It's a mm-hm." She keeps pressing. "Breathe in for me."

I breathe in. I see God.

"Okay. Probably not broken," she says. "Probably bruised. Deep. Maybe some cartilage. I want an X-ray Monday just in case." She stands up and pulls her gloves off. "You're going to feel this for three or four weeks. Ice. Ibuprofen. No contact. Sleep sitting up for a couple nights if lying down is bad."

"Can I play Friday?"

She just looks at me over her glasses.

"So that's a no."

"That's a no, honey."

She gives me an ice pack and a little paper cup with four pills in it and an elastic wrap for my ribs and a printed sheet about rib injuries with a cartoon of a man frowning and holding his side.

"What happened out there?" she asks while she's writing.

"Caught an edge."

She doesn't look up from her clipboard.

"Sure," she says. "Edge."

My phone's buzzing in my bag when I get back to the room. Everyone else is gone. Showered and out already. It's just me and the laundry bins and the sound of the compressor through the wall.

N: PT says 30 SECONDS next week if I hit the stretches

N: 30!!!!!

N: also priya wants to know if hockey players eat salad. this is a real question she's asking. I said no

I stand there in the empty room with an ice pack held against my side and look at the screen.

There's a version of this where I tell him. Where I type: a pile came down on me and your brother stood there and watched. And he calls Dane tonight, and it all comes out. Every text since August. The scholarship. Marrack. All of it.

I type with my thumb. Slow.