Chapter 30
The Red Wheels had one road game, wedged in before a long home stretch after Thanksgiving. It was a quick jaunt to Quebec, where they lost in overtime on a stupid bounce, but ugly goals still counted. They flew back that night.
Nick was nestled into his seat, earbuds in, too jacked up from the OT loss to fall asleep. They all were. His mellow evening playlist had ended, and he’d been listening to progressively weirder songs for the better part of an hour when the backup goalie shouted, “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” in a full panic. Nick pulled the earbuds out and turned around, and his breath caught. The guy was pushed back against his seat, elbows out, staring out a right-side window. “Oh, Jesus!”
“It’s … on fire,” Devin said dumbly, in shock.
Then the flames flared, and the inside of the cabin reflected orange.
And Nick was falling inside again. How could there be so much empty space within yourself?
The guys erupted, jumping out of their seats and rushing to the right side, hunched over, staring at the engine trailing fire through the night sky.
The pilot crackled on the speaker. “Yeah, we’re experiencing a starboard engine failure. Please remain calm and fasten your seat belts.”
The guys ran for their seats, buckled up, and turned to Nick. Everybody on the damn plane—like he’d carried this to them. Like he was the Typhoid Mary of aviation disasters. He stared blankly back at them. Then they fumbled for their phones. A big-deal sports reporter, traveling with them to cover their GM’s rebuild strategy, sat in the back. Bad luck for him, riding with the team this flight. But Nick was oddly calm—maybe the fire was good luck for him. Because he hadn’t wanted to survive without his friends—and now maybe he didn’t have to. He could unbuckle.
Guys were making quiet phone calls and texting, thumbs flying over the keyboards. It had been like this the last time—the panic, the shock. They’d texted then too. And then Sammy, Tyler, Luka, Eric, Dragan, and he had reached across the aisle and over seat backs to hold hands. Dragan had apologized, over and over, saying it was his fault they were on the plane. He finally stopped when Nick had said, “It’s a privilege to die with you guys,” and the others had nodded. As they entered the final tailspin, they’d just looked at one another. They were past talking. Their eyes said everything.
Nick blinked and was back here, seeing the Czech rookie hunched over, his face in his hands. There was one gift he could give these guys that no one else could—one final gift, maybe. He could talk about the thing he never talked about. He took a deep breath, unbuckled, and stood.
“Take your seat!” the coach barked.
“Maybe later,” Nick said. He looked out at his teammates. They stared at him, faces drawn, hoping he held some secret to survival. “You know I have some experience with this, right?” His voice was casual. The guys shifted. “This isn’t a crash.” He pointed out the window. “That’s an engine fire. There’s a big difference, okay? I’m not shitting you. This isn’t a crash.” He was totally shitting them. It wasn’t a crash yet, but he had no idea what was going to happen.
“That’s not a little fire,” André called.
“Nope,” Nick said. “It’s a pretty good fire. But it’s not a crash. Just a story to tell your wives and girlfriends when you get home. Think what great sex that’s gonna turn into.” A couple of the guys smiled.
“You need to sit down,” the coach hissed.
“Eh.” He stretched and yawned, deliberately casual, and looked at these men. He felt a flood of affection for them. God, they were terrified.
“We’re going to try to land in London,” the pilot’s voice crackled. “Ground made the decision. We’ll just get her down, then work on getting you guys back home.”
The team rumbled in approval. London was a few miles across the Canadian/U.S. border from Detroit. And a safe landing—anywhere—was good. They were fighting off the panic, although the right sides of their faces glowed orange with reflection from the engine that still burned.
“Sit down, you idiot!” the GM called. Nick sat, found the ends of his seat belt and held them, one in each hand.
“Those lights you’re seeing are London,” the pilot said. “We’re going to set this firebird down and then go get very drunk.” The guys laughed a little. The plane straightened and wobbled, and then shook.
What if it crashed and he died this time? My god, his parents—after all they’d been through. He’d heard his mother tell friends about getting the phone call—they said they’d taken him to the hospital, and when she’d asked if he was alive, they’d said he was in surgery and there was no update. She never made it through the story without crying, and his father always had to finish it. They lived in fucking Minnesota, in the Arrowhead. His dad had loaded the car wordlessly and driven them to the Duluth airport. The trip took three hours because it was dark, and it was January, and it was fucking Minnesota. And then they sat in the airport until a flight left at one PM. What if their phone rang in the night a second time?
The plane rocked. “Sammy,” Nick whispered. “The fuck, man?” He remembered the first time he saw Sammy, in the orange juice line at hockey camp. They were friends by the time they set their trays down.
One wing tilted up and then the plane straightened. “Oh god,” Leif moaned. They flew another ten seconds, fifteen, and the lights of the city were behind them.
The pilot’s voice came back. “I wasn’t able to line up for the final descent, so we’re just going on to Detroit. We have decreased maneuverability, and I don’t want to try to circle back around.”
The plane rocked again, hard, and Nick said, “We’re doing okay, boys. Put your shoes on and make sure they’re tied.” He thought about Alyssa. About the way she trailed her fingers over a table. The way she kneaded them into his shoulders. How determined she was to make him help choose the paint color for his living room; how she’d talked him into having some plants. She was life—she was the future. And he had a choice.
He shoved the ends of the buckle together. He wanted to live. Fuck him, after all his moaning, he wanted to survive.
As they began their descent, Nick called back to the reporter, “What day’s your story coming out?”
“Um,” the guy said. “Um.” Sorting it in his mind. “Sunday.”
“When you write about the Red Wheels, make sure you tell people that we’re brave and handsome. I’m not sure they’ll be able to tell from the photo.”
The reporter exhaled softly, as close to a laugh as he could get. He clearly understood what Nick was doing—extending the future past the next two minutes. Ahead were the lights of the terminal. Even from this distance they could see people standing inside, hands pressed against the glass. Two lines of rescue vehicles, flashers already on, stood ready to rip toward them.
And then the plane descended sharply—it was going down, one way or the other. It bounced on the runway, landed again, fishtailed, and swung off the runway into the grass. A good landing, really.
“Emergency exit on the left side,” the pilot said, all business, but André already had it open. The big inflatable slide billowed out, and André launched himself down it, popping up at the end. They filed out efficiently, following him down the slide. Nick touched two fingers to his forehead as he passed the pilot, then jumped out into the night, the cold air bracing on his face.
In the terminal, Nick checked in with each guy, making sure he had someone to be with that night. Checked with the pilot too. It was like he was the host of the emergency landing. Everybody had a place to go but the reporter who was doing a story on them. “I booked a hotel room,” the guy said. He was a fifty-something white guy, thin strands of hair hovering over his head so you could see his scalp underneath. It was like an old-guy halo and Nick felt a surge of tenderness for him. For all of vulnerable, fucked-up humanity.
“You think you’ll be okay alone?”
“Yeah. I’m going to call my wife. What about you, Nick? You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good. And I’ve got somebody to talk to.” He chucked the guy in the shoulder, lifted an arm to his teammates, a couple of whom already had wives running at them. He pulled out his phone and opened his thread with Alyssa. How should he phrase this? Almost died, but didn’t. Just FYI. And then a thumb’s-up emoji? It would be better to call. Delivering a bad diagnosis or breaking up required a phone call, not a text. Probably an aviation near-miss was in the same category. His thumb hovered over the phone icon by her name.
But she’d said no when he’d asked her out. Who could blame her? He’d gotten her fired. And with her background, the struggles she’d had? Of course she was angry with him. He pocketed the phone.
And then he went home. He picked up a bottle of whiskey on the way. He carried it and two glasses into Sammy’s room and sat on the floor. “I’ve got something to tell you,” he said, pouring for them both. “You aren’t going to believe it.”