Out of the Game3 (21 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Alex found out the next morning from the doctor that he was not going to be playing for the Cup. The impact of the puck had broken his eye-socket bone. He hadn’t even known he had a fucking eye bone. But they couldn’t fully assess the damage until the swelling went down, which could take a week to ten days. Great.

He spent the next ten days watching his team lose their battle for the Stanley Cup in six hard-fought games. Fuck. Then, to add insult to injury, or maybe it was the other way around, he found out that puck had caused irreparable damage to his optic nerve. Numerous tests proved his peripheral vision was shot on the right side and it was likely he’d never play professional hockey again, at least, not at the NHL level.

Alex didn’t believe the doctors. He didn’t think they were lying exactly, but people made mistakes, even medical professionals. So he spent several weeks consulting other doctors, taking countless tests, scrutinizing medical papers until his brain hurt, to no avail. They all said the same thing.

And yet, there were ten thousand stories on the internet about people conquering adversity—walking when they’d been told they never would, beating a cancer that only had a 10 survival rate, climbing Mt. Everest with a prosthetic leg. Shit like that happened all the time. Plus, there was Bryan fucking Berard, the defenseman for the Leafs who got slashed by Marian Hossa, almost lost his eye and
came back.
After seven surgeries, Berard got a special contact lens and played for six more years. He was Alex’s beacon of hope, even though everyone said their situations were too different and Berard couldn’t be used for comparison.

One day, determined to prove everyone wrong, Alex impulsively went to the BIC. It would be the first time he hit the ice since getting injured. In the dressing room, he was gratified to see his stall still bore his name. He’d been afraid to even look because if it hadn’t, he might have cried. But it still said A. Sullivan and his gear was still there. Thank God.

With his skates on, stick in hand and a puck in his pocket, he walked through the corridor and exchanged nods with a couple of BIC staff members. He wasn’t supposed to be on the ice as a Barracuda right now, but if anyone gave him shit, he planned to argue that it was the off-season and technically the BIC was just like any other ice rink in America and he had as much a right to skate here as anyone. Thankfully, no one said a thing.

At the bench he paused to breathe in the dank metallic scent of the rink. It smelled like a hundred-thousand hours of hard work, fun, camaraderie and memories. Nervous about getting onto the ice, he ran a thumb over the blade of his stick.

“Hey, Sully! I thought I saw your car.”

Alex looked up to see Hart Griffin amble up. He had a stick in his hand, too. They performed a bro-style handclasp and shoulder slap.

“Good to see you, Four Eyes.” Hart said.

Alex touched his new dark-rimmed eyeglasses. Claire had picked them out, saying they were geek-sexy. He didn’t give a rat’s ass what they looked like, but if wearing this pair over another pair made her happy, so be it.

“How are you?” Hart asked. “How’s the eye?”

“All right.” Alex shrugged. “I’m doing vision exercises. Not sure if they’re helping, but I’m doing them anyway.”

Hart chuckled. “Been there done that. I swear sometimes I think the physical therapists get paid based on how many exercises they prescribe. Are you doing the ‘Cuda Kid thing too?”

The six-week ‘Cuda Kid program was designed to introduce little boys and girls to the sport of hockey. Although it wasn’t the program Alex had been banned from, it was similar enough for Alex feel pissy about not being invited to participate. Before his injury, he wouldn’t have given a shit. Now, it felt as if they were culling him from the team. Shit, they were probably stripping his name from his locker stall this very moment.

“No,” he replied. “I’m just...I was going to get on the ice and see how it felt.”

“I have a few minutes before I have to report at the other rink. I’ll go with you.”

Alex didn’t really want any company, but he didn’t protest. Trying to appear confident, he stepped onto the ice, without his stick, and began to circle counterclockwise, like kids did during the public skate. He was tense and tight, and he tried to loosen up, rolling his shoulders, twisting at the hips.

“On your left,” Hart said.

Alex grunted as he realized he now had a “good” side. That irked him. He switched it up to go backwards and almost fell.

“Whoa,” Hart said.

Regaining his balance, Alex ignored him, partly because he’d completely lost track of where Hart was. He turned his head slightly and saw him. He turned it back and lost him.
Shit.
That was bad.

Alex darted right, leaving Hart behind him. “Do me a favor. Fall back, then catch up to me.”

Hart complied and Alex was stunned to find he didn’t detect Hart’s presence until he was almost on top of him. They got their sticks. Thankfully, Alex found he could still stickhandle, but there was a small blank area, again on the right lower quadrant near the ice. If he looked down, he could see the puck. If he lifted his head, like he might when trying to shoot or pass or even just see where the fuck he was going, he couldn’t.

The worst part was when Hart made a pass. If the puck came from the right, half the time he couldn’t catch it. When he didn’t miss, he was so late seeing it, he had to scramble. The longer he skated, the clearer it became that he might be able to hold his own in a pick-up game or in a beer-league, but not in the NHL.

Alex skated to the bench and resisted the urge to break his stick against the low wall in front of the bench.

Hart joined him. “Hey, I have to go. Time to work with the kidlets.”

They exchanged a look and Alex saw a flash of pity in Hart’s eyes. It only made him angrier.

“Don’t get discouraged,” Hart said. “You can beat this. Just keep doing those exercises. You’ve got all summer.”

After they bumped fists and Hart left, Alex sat on the bench and tried to convince himself Hart was right. If he worked hard all summer doing his exercises, by the time training camp rolled around, he might have made some progress.

But he knew that was bullshit. Today proved it. To keep denying it was to invite even more pity and that, he couldn’t stand. Better to suck it up and finally accept that his career was over.

He was never going to play professional hockey again.

Chapter Thirty-Five

In the kitchen of his beach house, Claire put a sandwich in front of Alex. He wore his new eyeglasses, the black-framed ones that made him look like Clark Kent except for the two months of Stanley Cup playoff beard smothering the lower half of his face. Funny how she’d known about the tradition of not shaving while you were in the playoffs, but hadn’t thought about the repercussions of being the girlfriend on the other side of that beard. Alex’s facial hair follicles were...very active. If he didn’t shave soon, small animals might begin to make homes in there. She’d offered to help him trim it, but he had refused even though every other man on his team had de-bearded weeks ago.

She sat down at the table and leaned forward. “So, I wanted to talk to you about something sort of important,” she said.

“Okay.”

“What do you think about finding out the baby’s sex? I have a checkup today and they said we could find out if we wanted.”

“I don’t know. It’s up to you.”

He said that a lot lately. He didn’t seem to want to make any decisions about what to have for lunch, what to wear, anything. Ever since that day he went to the BIC, he’d been depressed. Whatever happened there had killed his hope. After that, he’d stopped doing his vision exercises. He became the poster boy for couch potatoes everywhere. The phrase “next season” disappeared from his vocabulary.

She wanted to give him the time he needed to grieve the loss of his career, even if his retirement had not been made official by either him or the team, but it took a lot of energy, emotional and physical, to keep up a cheery outlook in the stony face of his depression. She wanted to suggest he get professional help, but wasn’t sure he was ready to hear that yet. Hence, the talk about the sex of the baby. She hoped he might feel some excitement or curiosity. Maybe when they knew what they were having, they could choose a name and then she or he would become more real to him. Maybe then he could latch onto his son or daughter as the light at the end of the tunnel. Alex’s life was far from over, even if he felt like it was. He was just starting on a new path and she needed to help him see that.

“Let’s go find out if it’s a boy or a girl together. Unless you’d rather it be a surprise, like Tim and Erin did.”

“I told you, I’m fine either way. You decide.” He picked up the sandwich and took a bite. He chewed and swallowed with no enjoyment on his face. He might as well have been a prison inmate eating food made out of cardboard.

“Okay, then I want to find out. The appointment’s at three. I’d like it if you came with me.” She said it casually, as if she were asking him to go pick out a couch.

He put the sandwich down and took a swig of beer. “You know, now that you mention it, my head’s hurting today and I didn’t sleep well last night. I think I’m going to take a nap and see if that helps.”

She nodded. That was exactly the answer she’d expected, right down to the headache and the nap. “Okay, just trying to keep you in the loop.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it,” he said, picking the sandwich up again like a robot.

Pressing her lips together tightly, she stood, went upstairs to the bathroom, shut the door and cried.

* * *

At the doctor’s office, she found out she was having a girl. Her spirits buoyed for the first time in a long time, she went on a shopping spree and bought a few hundred dollars’ worth of baby clothes and accessories. Immersing herself in adorable, sigh-worthy outfits and being in the presence of people who were not seriously depressed helped her remember there was a part of her life that wasn’t in the crapper. Her precious baby girl was three months away from being born and she focused on that.

Afterward, she picked up some takeout—Alex’s favorite baby back ribs from the barbeque joint down the road. When she pulled into his garage, she looked at all the bags in the trunk of her car and decided not to bring the baby stuff inside. If she showed him what she’d bought, he’d know they were having a girl and a masochistic part of her wanted to see if he’d say anything about the ultrasound or show any curiosity at all.

He didn’t. And it hurt. It hurt her so badly, she wanted to go to her own home and binge on whatever was the most fattening food in her house and then curl up in her own bed and cry herself to sleep. But she couldn’t do that because later in his bed, Alex turned to her, like he did every night, to find solace in her body. She gave herself willingly to him, her heart breaking. He was lost and he was broken and she didn’t know how else to help him cope. Sex was the only way they seemed to connect these days, and damned if she was going to give that up. She needed it as much as he did. Sure, it wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Before he was injured, they’d laughed and teased each other, he often talked dirty to her to rev her up. Now, their time in bed was devoid of all that. He still made her come, but they were silent except for grunts and groans. There was desperation in his lovemaking and often he stayed inside her until he went flaccid, clearly reluctant to separate from her.

* * *

The next day she went to Erin’s. She knew she could count on her sister to ooh and ahh over all the things she’d bought, and maybe Claire would even ask for her advice on what to do about Alex.

“Hey, sis!” Erin hugged her. She still looked a little chubby, but it looked good on her. She did really seem to glow. “What a nice surprise. Is all that for us?” She peeked into one of the bags. “I don’t think Tim will allow Anders to wear any pink.”

They’d named the baby Anderson Reilly Hollander, Anders for short.

Claire laughed, and it felt really good. Just getting out into the fresh air felt good. “No. I went on a shopping spree yesterday and I wanted to show you what I got.”

“I can’t wait. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a half hour before the baby wakes up.”

Over tea, they unpacked the bags and exclaimed over each tiny, adorable outfit. Claire’s favorite was a soft pink velour one-piece with a bunny on the chest and little bunnies on the feet too. Erin was partial to a Ralph Lauren floral coverall with a white collar that should have looked dated, but didn’t.

“I can’t believe you’re having a girl. I love Anders more than life itself, but I have to admit I’m kinda, sorta jealous. What does Alex think? How is he? I’ll bet focusing on the baby is helping take his mind off...oh, no. Honey, honey, don’t cry. What’s wrong?”

Claire put a hand over her mouth as if that would hold everything in. She hadn’t intended to cry, but was unable to help herself. Erin’s innocent comment opened the floodgates.

“It’s been horrible. All he does is mope around and he doesn’t care about the baby at all! I’ve been trying so hard to be understanding, but I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Erin moved to put an arm around her as Tim appeared in the doorway. He slowed and paused, looking uncomfortable. “I, ah, was coming to tell you I think Anders is waking up, but you’re busy. I’ll change his diaper. You want me to get one of the bottles?”

Claire sniffled and tried to look inconspicuous as she pulled some tissues from the box on the table.

Erin smiled at her husband. “Yes to the diaper change. No to the bottle. I need to nurse him. Thanks, honey.”

After Tim left, Claire told her about how he’d not gone with her to the ultrasound.

“I purposely did not tell him it’s a girl and he hasn’t asked.” Her hands curled into fists. “He hasn’t even asked.”

“Oh, sweetie. I feel so bad for you. You and him. Tim has told me a little bit about how he’d feel if he were in Alex’s shoes and I can only pray that when the time comes for Tim to retire, he can do it on his own terms.

“But that’s not an excuse for being an asshole. Even if Tim were blind in both eyes, he’d be there for me and for the baby.”

This only made Claire’s tears flow more freely. She struggled to hold back the sobs. She’d wanted it to work with Alex. It
had
been working. They’d been so happy and now he’d regressed into the self-centered, boy-man everyone, including Erin, had warned her about.

“Alex is a good guy,” Tim said, coming back with baby Anders in the crook of his arm. “He’s going through a bad patch, but he’ll come through. He might need a little time, a little prodding, but he’ll do the right thing eventually, and when he does, he’ll do it one hundred percent.”

Claire blew her nose into the tissue then took another to dab her eyes. “How much is a little?’”

As Erin put the baby to her breast, Tim sat in the armchair. “I don’t know. Just don’t give up on him. He’ll come around. I know he will.”