Chapter 22 – Beau #2
Inside the clinic, it smells like bleach and old, stale coffee filters.
It makes my skin crawl, stripping me down from the inside out.
I blink against the fluorescent lights as the receptionist gives me a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes before handing me a clipboard.
I take a seat in the unreasonably uncomfortable chairs.
The pen feels too small in my hand, like it might snap if I grip it too tightly, and I answer all the questions with hands that don’t feel like mine.
Have you been experiencing fatigue? Yes. Like gravity tripled, and no one told me.
Joint pain? Yes. My knees, wrists, fingers, ankles—hell, my whole body sounds like a bag of Rice Krispies every time I move.
Shortness of breath? Sometimes. Even more so right now than usual.
Chest tightness? Yes. All day. Every damn day.
When they call my name, I flinch like I’m guilty of something.
I follow the nurse down the hallway on autopilot, nodding, humming responses, and trying not to throw up.
The blood pressure cuff bites into my arm.
The scale flashes a number I can’t process.
I hear her talking, but the words slip through the cracks in my panic, and then I’m alone.
The exam room is cold and humming. The paper beneath me crinkles like a warning as I rest my hands in my lap, useless, like they don’t belong to me. I stare at a crack in the floor tile and try not to let my mind spiral too far out of control.
Don’t think about what she’s going to say. Don’t think about Alise not answering. Don’t think about how this could change everything. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t—
The door opens, and Dr. Conway walks in like nothing’s about to change.
She’s as calm as always. Her salt-and-pepper black hair is pinned back, coat pressed, eyes sharp behind rectangular glasses.
Not cold exactly, but clinical, like someone who’s already ten steps past the worst news and into the logistics.
Like she’s practiced this conversation in the mirror a hundred times and didn’t once flinch.
She has a tablet in one hand, like it holds the weight of everything I don’t want to hear.
She doesn’t smile or frown, just looks at me the way a surgeon might look at a scalpel, and just like that, the floor disappears beneath me.
“Morning, Beau,” she says, like this is just another Tuesday, and maybe it is for her.
“Morning.” I swallow.
My voice barely makes it out, rough and frayed at the edges.
Dr. Conway nods once and lowers herself onto the rolling stool, the tablet balanced on her knees like a verdict.
Her fingers tap against the screen; her face remains perfectly still, not even a twitch to hint at what news waits for me on that tablet.
I glance down at the edge of the heart monitor peeking from beneath my shirt, the adhesive tugging faintly at my skin with every breath. The words slip out before I can stop them. “How much longer do I have to wear this thing?”
“At least another week. We need as much data as possible before we can make any decisions. The arrhythmias you’ve had—” Her eyes lift to mine, steady but not unkind. “How’s it been going so far? Any trouble with the device?”
I huff a sharp laugh that doesn’t sound like me. “Other than feeling like a cyborg with a sticker problem? Peachy.” My tone is dry, deflective, and I know it.
She doesn’t smile, just makes a note on her tablet, like she’s too used to patients hiding behind sarcasm to bother calling me out. Then her expression shifts, subtle but enough to make my stomach knot. “Beau, I got your bloodwork back.”
It only takes three seconds for everything to change.
My spine locks into place, my stomach drops into my toes, and something knocks the wind out of me like I took a slapshot to the chest. I’ve taken worse; I know this.
I’ve bled on the ice, broken bones and played through it, but the moment she talks, the room spins sideways.
ANA positive. Elevated inflammation. Autoimmune. Systemic. Chronic.
Her words are cold raindrops in winter—tiny, sharp stings I barely register until I’m soaked through.
Manageable, she says, like that means anything. We’ll start treatment right away. With the right meds and adjustments, we can keep it stable.
Then she says it, the words that split me in half: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) or lupus.
It’s a chronic autoimmune disease that can affect various parts of the body, most commonly the skin and joints, but can also affect other organs… We need more testing to rule out potential additional organ damage.
It hangs there in the air—clinical, casual, final—and I swear I feel something inside me crack. A thin fault line that runs from my chest straight down through my gut. My heart stutters, and everything slows down as if a punch, too hard and fast, landed on me, and my brain hasn’t caught up yet.
Dr. Conway keeps going, her voice steady while mine disappears.
Fatigue. Flares. Organ involvement. Monitoring.
Medication. Each word slams into me like a body check I didn’t see coming.
I’m nodding—at least, I think I am—but I’m not really here.
My ears buzz like static. My mouth is dry.
My body’s gone ice cold, like all the heat has drained out through the soles of my feet.
I can’t feel anything because how do you feel when the life you’ve built—the future you counted on—starts slipping through your fingers? How do I keep playing? What if I can’t? What if I lose the team? What if I become the guy they pity? The one who used to be something? What if I lose her?
As if she can read my mind, Dr. Conway adds, “For now, I’ll sign your release for practice only.
No games. Your trainers can monitor you while you’re wearing the event monitor, and we’ll use that data to see how your heart responds under exertion.
If anything feels wrong—chest pain, dizziness, even unusual fatigue—you stop immediately. ”
My chest squeezes like she’s dangling hockey in front of me but never letting me touch it.
“Practice only,” I echo, the word sour on my tongue.
“It’s a step,” she says gently. “Not a death sentence. We need to see how your body responds before we make bigger decisions.”
When her words settle, the silence that follows is deafening.
My ears buzz, my skin prickles, and I nod like I understand, but I don’t.
I’m just holding on, hoping the ground stops shifting beneath me.
“You understand what that means?” She watches me like she’s not buying it for a second.
She offers me a pamphlet, and I take it, knowing I won’t read it.
“Yeah,” I say, flashing a tight, humorless smile.
“That gives you a general overview of what to expect, but we’re going to create a treatment plan together.
A combination of meds and lifestyle adjustments.
We’ll build something that works for you, but this isn’t a temporary flare, Beau.
This is something you will need to learn how to manage long-term. ”
Long-term. Those two words gut me worse than the diagnosis because that doesn’t mean manageable. What it means is: No more back-to-backs. No more pushing through the pain like it’s proof of my worth. No more guarantees. Maybe no more hockey. Not the way I love it.
“Great,” I say, too loud, too fake as the ringing in my ears gets louder. “So, just pop a few pills, do some yoga, and I’m good to go, right?”
Her expression doesn’t harden exactly, but she looks at me the way you’d look at someone holding their own broken bone together with their bare hands. It’s as if she knows that I use my sarcasm as armor, but she also knows it’s useless against what I’m facing.
“I’m going to give you some time. The nurse will come back in and go over the meds. You don’t have to decide anything today.” Dr. Conway rises from her stool and heads for the door, hesitating for a moment, her voice softening. “And you’re not alone in this.”
I don’t answer her, my eyes focused on the pamphlet in my hands like it might bite me if I open it. The door clicks shut behind her, and the silence rushes in. I stay frozen on the table, hands clutching the pamphlet tightly in my hand, long enough for the weight of this news to crush me.
After a few minutes, the nurse comes in and hands me a card, saying something about a follow-up appointment, and I nod numbly.
She runs through a list of medications the doctor wants me to start and a treatment plan that looks more like a full-time job.
Anti-inflammatories. Immunosuppressants.
Pain meds for the bad days. All with names I can’t pronounce and dosages that blur together.
I stare at the printout she presses into my hand like it’s written in another language.
Pills for inflammation. Pills for pain. Pills for a body that doesn’t listen to me anymore.
I nod at the right times, but I don’t take in a single word.
I slide off the table and stand on legs that feel like glass before walking out of the room in a daze.
Every movement hurts, not in the joint-aching, muscle-burning kind of way, but in a way that feels permanent.
I want to believe that this body isn’t mine anymore.
It betrayed me, quietly and without warning, and now I’m supposed to just keep walking like it didn’t.
I move on autopilot through the waiting room, past the same smiling receptionist who doesn’t know the ground just caved in beneath me, and out the door.
Outside, the sun is blinding. The breeze is soft and gentle, like a joke.
People are walking around, laughing and scrolling on their phones like the world is still spinning the way it was ten minutes ago.
They have no clue that someone just handed me a version of myself I don’t recognize.
I climb into my truck and close the door, then everything breaks.
My body folds forward, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, and my body shakes.
Not from the cold, but from the weight of everything crashing down on me.
The fear I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist, the grief clawing at my throat for the future I thought I had.
A sob builds in my chest like pressure behind a dam, and I try to swallow it down, but fail.
Tears sting my eyes, and I let them fall, just this once.
I don’t know how to be this version of me with limits.
The one who might have to sit on the sidelines.
The one who might have to ask for help when all I’ve ever known is pushing through.
I sit there for I don’t know how long—minutes? hours?—just breathing and breaking and trying to hold it together. Then, I reach for my phone. Alise’s name is already on the screen, even though I don’t even remember pulling it up. I stare at it as if it might save me, and I start typing.
Tiny Terror
have lupus.
Delete.
Guess who’s officially on the no-fun diet for life?
Delete.
You were right to be scared.
Delete.
I don’t know how to be this version of me.
Delete.
I don’t know if I can love you and not need you, not when I’m—
I lock the phone and toss it onto the passenger seat like it’s contagious. I want to call her, to hear her voice and let it ground me, but I don’t. Instead, I lean back against the seat and stare at nothing because right now, silence feels safer than the truth.
Alise doesn’t know yet, nobody does, and I want to keep it that way.
I close my eyes and pretend that I’m still that guy, even if it's only for another five minutes and a complete lie.
The second I say it out loud, it becomes real, and everything changes.
I become a liability, a cautionary tale, a potential problem that someone has to manage.
I’ve spent my whole life being the one who handles things, both on the ice and with my family. I show up, push through it, take the hit, and get back up. I’m not ready to bury this version of me that can still pretend he’s okay. The version of me who wasn’t sick.
I’ll keep showing up and pushing through it because the team needs me. We’re in the middle of the season, Coach Mercer is more than likely on his way out, and Cooper is burning the candle at both ends. The last thing anyone needs is for me to fall apart.
Alise asked me for space. I already scared the shit out of her once, needing more from her than she knew how to give, leaning on her so hard it was too much to face.
The flicker of panic in her eyes made her pull away from me, and I never want to see it again.
She needs me to love her when I’m whole, and I’ll never be that way again.
I can’t tell her, not until I can convince her that my love is more than out of necessity.
I’ll bury this deep inside, beneath the bruises and banter, the version of me everyone still believes.
I have to because there is no other option.
If I let anyone see how close I am to breaking, I might not be able to put myself back together again, and I can’t afford to be fragile.
Not when everything that matters is still within reach.
Even if it means pretending I’m not bleeding under the armor.
Even if it means I might lose the one person who’d hold me if I let her.