Chapter 23 Stella
Stella
I run toward the ice as if they’re going to let me go to him. I’m stopped by security before I even make it down the stairs.
“Please!” I cry, fighting against him.
Nora and the others follow shortly behind me. “That’s her boyfriend!” Nora yells on my behalf, seeing as I can’t even speak through my panic.
Pitying stares surround me, suffocating me, but the guard only says, “I can’t let you on the ice. They’ve called an ambulance. A family member can ride with him, but you’ll have to follow—”
“He doesn’t have any family!” I cut him off, hysterically. Deep down, I know I shouldn’t have said that out loud, but I can’t bear the idea of Colt being alone.
Looking through the plexiglass onto the ice, I see a swarm of people surrounding Colt’s too-still body. Beau is on his knees on the ice beside him, looking as hysterical as I feel.
Oh, God. I’m going to throw up.
I’m going to pass out.
I do neither.
All I can do is stare. And stare.
The security guard eventually lets me go, and I feel two sets of arms come around me to keep me upright.
EMTs arrive and load Colt onto a stretcher and wheel him away, leaving the silent ice rink and a pool of blood behind.
Hours pass as we sit in the waiting room. Beau’s parents came down when Beau called to tell them what had happened. Nearly every chair in here is occupied by Colt’s people; Beau and his parents, Booker, Drew, a bunch of their other teammates, their coach.
And me.
After two hours of waiting, I told Nora to head home. I sat by Beau, who took my hand at some point, more to comfort himself than me, and never let go.
His parents introduced themselves to me: Jill and David. They seemed nice, but I wasn’t in the right headspace for polite conversation.
When the doctor finally came out, she spoke with Beau’s parents, who were listed as Colt’s next of kin. I almost start crying again at the fact that he has no family to be here for him. No grandparents, no aunts or uncles. No one.
Jill follows the doctor back to the room, and David comes over to tell the rest of us what she said.
Most of the time we spent waiting, they were doing scans of his brain.
The good news is that he doesn’t have any internal bleeding.
His skull sustained a fracture, but nothing that required surgery.
They put nine staples in his head where the skin split, and I’m transported back seven months when staples were put into mine.
I was told that head injuries bleed a lot, even if it’s only surface-level.
The doctor said the thing they were most concerned about in Colt’s case was that he hadn’t woken up on his own yet. They haven’t given him any medication, and they don’t know the severity of the concussion he’s inevitably obtained
Coach and the team leave after the update, but David allows me to stay with Beau and come back to the room as a member of the family.
Seeing him in that bed, looking so pale and broken, is almost enough to bring me to my knees. However, I promised myself in the waiting room that I was done crying. Colt is fine. He has to be fine.
Beau pulls up a chair for me at the bedside before pulling himself one up as well. His parents told us they were going to the cafeteria and would bring us back some dinner.
“He’ll wake up,” Beau whispers.
“He will,” I agree, just as quietly.
Neither of us speaks again, and I fall asleep leaning on the edge of the bed, holding Colt’s hand.
A while later, sometime so early in the morning that the sun’s not even out yet, I find myself looking at my disheveled appearance in the bathroom mirror. Not the bathroom connected to Colt’s room, but a guest restroom down the hall.
I just needed to escape the sounds of the beeping machines and the worried whispers of Jill and David.
I look like hell. My makeup is streaked from crying. My hair is knotted, first from jumping around at the game, but more so since I haven’t stopped twisting my hands in it since we got to the hospital.
I’m still wearing one of Colt’s jerseys. “Crosby” stitched across the back in black and white lettering. It still holds his smell—a mix of detergent, the spice of his cologne—but it’s faint and being overpowered by the smell of hospital.
Number fourteen.
When I found out what number he was, I laughed and told him that was my birthday. September fourteenth.
He said he’d never wear any other number ever again.
I do my best to scrub my face clean with water and a paper towel. When I finally start back toward Colt’s room, I hear many more voices present than when I left.
Stopping in the doorway, I see that a doctor and a nurse have both entered the room. The doctor is talking to Beau’s family. The nurse is injecting something into the IV going into Colt’s forearm.
Colt’s forearm that is no longer lying motionless on the bed.
His forearm that is now thrown over his face, blocking his eyes from the light.
Because he’s awake.
Beau is staring at him from the end of the bed, but he doesn’t look excited that his best friend has awoken.
No, the only way to describe the look on Beau’s face is devastated.
And when he turns—when Beau’s blue eyes lock on mine—that devastation turns into horror.
I can’t move my legs. My heart pounds in my ears because I can’t think of a single reason why Beau would look like that.
If there were an emergency, the doctors would be rushing around, wheeling him to surgery or something.
It’s too soon to tell if he’ll never play hockey again, right?
Oh, God, what if he’s paralyzed? Can you get paralyzed from hitting your head? I don’t know.
My thoughts are spiraling out of control when Colt finally—finally—speaks.
“Can someone just tell me where the fuck my dad is?”
My stomach drops. The whole room goes silent, but then Jill lets out a choked whimper, her perfectly manicured hand covering her mouth.
His dad. He wants his dad.
The doctor’s soft voice finally makes its way to my ears. “…called post-traumatic amnesia. It can happen sometimes…”
He doesn’t know his dad is dead.
Colt still hasn’t opened his eyes. Still doesn’t know I’m here.
And now I know that’s a good thing. A small mercy. Because even if he did, he wouldn’t know who I was.
Amnesia.
The word rakes through my skull like nails on a chalkboard, making me dizzy.
Colt has amnesia.
Before I hear anything else, I run back down the hall, needing to get away from this place. I hear Beau coming after me, but I don’t stop. I run and run until I get to the parking lot, and then I just keep running.
I make it all the way to a covered bus stop, not that I had planned to get on the bus.
I didn’t have a plan besides get away from here.
Beau catches up to me, grabbing me around the middle to avoid tackling me to the ground, and the feeling of his arms around me—the wrong fucking arms—brings me back to reality.
I collapse in his hold, gut-wrenching sobs taking every bit of the strength I had left.
He turns me, and I cry into his chest. He holds me like he needs my support just as much as I need his. I can feel his shaky breaths, trying to stay calm.
“He can’t not remember, Beau,” I choke out. “After everything, he can’t forget. He—he can’t go through that again.”
Beau steers us to the bench inside the covered bus stop and lets go of me after setting me down next to him. “I know,” he whispers, unshed tears on the brink of falling from his eyes.
“He just got off his medicine! He was happy, and we were happy and, no, I may not have been with him all that long, but I know him. He can’t go through losing his dad again. He can’t relive that; it’ll crush him.” I’m rambling. Word-vomiting my fears into the air between us.
I can’t even say the other thoughts in my head. They’re too selfish. He doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t remember the last two years, let alone our few short months together.
“Fuck!” Beau shouts, clenching his fists and leaning forward on his knees.
“Beau, I can’t go back in there. I can’t look at him and realize he doesn’t recognize me.
I can’t let him realize he lost his father—and his girlfriend—in the same conversation.
Don’t tell him about me, please. I don’t want to hurt him more than he’s already going to be.
I don’t want to be another tragedy for him to deal with. ”
Beau turns to face me earnestly. “Stella, no. He loves you.” I choke on another sob, shaking my head in denial, but Beau doesn’t give me the chance to speak.
“No, don’t. I know it’s true. He may not have said it yet, but he loves you.
He may not remember you, but you remember.
You can remember everything for both of you.
The difference between him losing his dad before and now is that he’ll have you to help him, even if he doesn’t remember yet. ”
“I can’t cure his depression! He doesn’t even know I exist!” I feel the hysteria rising in me again, closing my throat.
“But he will! We will walk back into that room, my parents will hopefully already have told him about his dad, because, God, I know I can’t do it. But then, instead of turning to alcohol, thinking he’s alone, he’ll have us. He’ll have you.”
I look at him dubiously. “I’m serious, Stella.
He’s better with you. It may have taken me a while to see it, but it’s true.
Before you, he was guarded. He wasn’t the same guy as he was before his dad passed.
He had a temper. He had mood swings. He thought he was alone; never really let anyone in.
Now, he’s been like the old Colt. With you, he’s… lighter.”
“And what about you? Why weren’t you there for him before?” I ask angrily, letting my emotions get the better of me. I know it sounded horrible the second it came out of my mouth, but I can’t take it back.
Beau flinches slightly as my words land their intended blow, but he doesn’t look angry with me.
“When we were seventeen…let’s just say I fucked up.
Royally fucked up. And it cost my sister her life.
” His words are guarded, hesitant, but anguished.
Suddenly, I wish I hadn’t asked. “I didn’t handle that well.
Hell, I’m still not handling it. But when Colt lost his dad, it broke him.
And I didn’t want to make it worse, like I did with Gracie.
So, I stayed back, watched him from a distance, but I was terrified of saying the wrong thing, and he’d go packing.
“But I’m not going to make that mistake again. He’s not going to break because he’ll have us. But I don’t think I can do it by myself, Stella. He needs you. Whether he knows it or not, he needs you. And he will need you when his memory comes back.”
“What if it doesn’t come back?” I whisper, finally voicing my biggest fear.
“Then he’ll just fall in love with you all over again.”