Chapter 13 Remi
A Week Later
Three days awake, and the ceiling of this room has become the most familiar surface in my world.
Textured plaster with a hairline crack running from the light fitting on the wall toward the window, which I'm sure nobody else would notice. A small blotch in the paintwork that I've been staring at long enough to find eyes in.
The monitors have changed their rhythm. Now they are less urgent, more maintenance. I wrap the blanket tighter around myself. It isn't hospital-issue. It's soft and warm in a way that has nothing to do with this room.
"You're awake."
I turn left. Crew is reading.
"It appears so," I say. "You're here again. Do you not have any hockey games to play?"
"It's the end of the season. Just play-offs."
"You're through to the Cup. God, that's amazing. You should be jumping for joy."
"You've been in a coma for weeks, Remi." He swallows. "Jumping for joy is something we haven't been doing."
"She's not now," Steele says. I turn to his voice. "And the knee is looking good."
I glance between him and Crew, and jealousy spikes.
"Why are you here? Don't you have an omega to look after?" I can't help it.
"You're the only omega we want to look after," Steele says, not missing a beat.
The door opens. I'm too busy looking at Steele's left hand where it rests on his knee, the tattoo catching what thin afternoon light there is. A phoenix, spanning his thumb and index finger, the lines clean and deliberate.
Last night, somewhere in the gray margin between sleep and waking, he sat beside me on the bed. I remember his weight moving the mattress.
And his hand over mine, not gripping, just present.
Bourbon and orange. The same scent from the maze, or close enough that a half-conscious brain in a hospital room at two in the morning isn't going to parse the difference.
A voice, very low, saying something I couldn't quite surface enough to hear, but then the chair was empty, and the room smelled only of antiseptic.
Was it all a dream or because I hit my head?
For now, I'll keep that to myself.
I keep a lot to myself.
"How's my knee?" I ask, because it's easier than the things I'm actually thinking about, and because the knee is a problem that has a scale and a treatment protocol and a finite answer, which is more than I can say for the rest of it.
Crew looks up from his book. "Dr. Oram said this morning that the surgical plan is looking straightforward. Probably six to eight weeks before you are weight-bearing."
"She's been in twice already," Steele says. "You slept through both. She seemed pretty pleased with the swelling."
"Great," I say. "My swelling is a success story. It's a pity my life is a disaster."
His mouth curves upward. "You're going to be okay, Remi."
On my left, Crew says nothing. He turns a page.
The door opens and Dr. Oram comes in with her tablet and her brisk, thorough energy. She's exactly the type of person who delivers information without dressing it up, which I've appreciated and am about to stop appreciating.
She checks the monitors. Checks me before she sits in the chair at the foot of the bed.
"I need to talk to you about something beyond the knee," she says.
I know what she's going to say. I've known since I woke up and the neurologist spent forty minutes with me, and his expression said everything before his words did. I've been waiting for someone to say it. The anticipation is the same as it is on the ice, before I jump.
"Your knee is the presenting injury," Dr. Oram says.
"But the fall caused a significant concussion, and the imaging we've done over the past three days has confirmed a traumatic brain injury.
Not catastrophic. You're here, you're coherent, and your prognosis is genuinely good.
" She pauses. "In terms of competitive figure skating, however—"
"I can't go back."
She holds my gaze. "Another fall at that level, another blow to the head risks permanent cognitive damage, seizure disorder, and memory loss." A beat. "The risk is not acceptable. I can discharge you to skate recreationally when you've healed. I cannot clear you to compete."
I stare at the ceiling. This time at nothing.
I've known this. I've known this for three days, in the same way you know a piece of music is ending before the final note. "This is just cautionary action, right?"
"Hopefully."
"Thank you," I say. My voice is level.
Dr. Oram nods once and leaves.
The silence lasts about thirty seconds.
"Remi—" Steele starts.
"Could you both leave, please?" Not a question. I need some space to comprehend this.
They exchange a look I have no translation for. Crew closes his book. Steele pushes off his chair. Neither of them says anything, they leave, the door closing softly behind them.
For twenty seconds I stare at the ceiling and hold everything in by force of the same discipline I use on the ice.
Then it comes apart anyway.
Not loud. Not dramatic. It starts with my shoulders, then my body as I think about every future I'd mapped. All the medals, the programs, the next four years, the retirement on my own terms with the body I'd built.
I press the back of my hand over my mouth.
The monitors tick on.
Outside, very faint, the sounds of a hospital floor that doesn't know or care.
I cry until I don't, and then I lie on my back, holding the blanket and watching the light on the ceiling.
The door opens quietly. Beck's footsteps are heavy but measured. He sits in the chair Crew vacated, says nothing for a while, puts his hand over mine the way he has since I was nine years old and the problem was a failed jump, not whatever this is.
"I'm okay," I say.
"I know," he says. "You'll be okay. That's different from right now."
"Yeah."
"Where's Emmie?"
"At the hotel." His thumb moves once on the back of my hand. "She needs to rest. The pregnancy is taking its toll on her." A pause. "She sends her love."
A longer silence.
"You should go back to Boston. She shouldn't be in the hotel. She needs her pack."
"We will. But first there's something I want to ask you," he says. "And I want you to hear it as a choice. Not a plan, not a solution. Just something on the table that I thought you deserved to know about."
I turn my head.
Beck's face is kind. He has the steadiness of someone who has been the reliable one for so long it's become structural. He also looks tired.
"Marilyn Mansfield runs PR for the Scented Scorpions," he says.
"What's that got to do with me?"
"Nikki called her with a proposal. Marilyn agreed it has merit."
"A plan?"
"It will help you recover."
"What plan?"
"I'm getting there." He takes a breath. "Steele and Crew have a spare room. And what Dr. Oram told you about the omega drop and what your body needs to stabilize and recover. Well, that's going to be true for the next several months. Medication helps, but it isn't sufficient."
"They have an omega living with them."
"She moved out."
“Oh.”
"You need a consistent alpha presence," Beck says. "Not occasionally. The way Dr. Oram described it." He pauses. "Steele and Crew have offered their home for your recovery."
I say nothing because I'm not sure I can.
"You'd have your own room. Your independence. Your say over everything that happens or doesn't happen. Nikki will continue as your trainer for physical rehab. River—" He stops.
"River said no," I say.
"River said no." Beck's mouth does something complicated. "But River has now revised his position. He's outside talking to Steele and Crew."
The door opens, and River walks in. His jaw is set, his shoulders square, the same posture he uses at a faceoff he knows is going to be contested. He takes the other chair and sits forward with his elbows on his knees.
Crew and Steele come in behind him. They take up space near the window, not at the bedside, giving the family room.
River looks at me for a long moment.
"I'm agreeing to this because you had an omega drop," he says.
"That's all it is. You've been touch-starved for years.
I know that, Rem. I should have done something about it before now, and I didn't." His jaw works.
"They can hold you. Be present. Give your body what it needs to regulate.
Nothing else happens unless you say so." He meets my eyes.
"That's the only version of this I'm agreeing to. "
I look at him. The effort it cost him is visible in every line of his face.
"Okay," I say.
"Remi—"
"Okay, River. I heard you." I turn my head toward the window. Crew and Steele are there, and the afternoon light catches the lines of the phoenix on Steele's hand where it rests at his side.
The tattoo.
Last night. Bourbon and orange. His hand over mine and the tattoo, and I'm sure of it the way you're sure of things in the dark.
Steele did come.
Why didn't he say anything when I woke up this morning? Just sat in the chair with his elbows on his knees and asked how I'd slept, ordinary as anything, and I said fine and looked at the ceiling and held the knowledge of it like something breakable.
I'm still holding it.
River is watching me. Beck is watching me. Steele is looking out the window.
Crew is looking at me.
His eyes hold the quality of someone who knows how to be patient.
Two problems, from somewhere practical underneath the grief. My career is gone and my biology is eating me alive, and those are two separate problems that have one answer standing at that window, and I've spent enough of my life running from things that were good for me to prove I didn't need them.
I straighten slightly against the pillow.
"I'll do it," I say.
River's exhale is controlled but audible.
"But I want to be clear." I look at him directly.
"I'm in charge of my own body. Not you, not Beck, not Marilyn Mansfield.
Whatever happens in that apartment, or doesn't, is my decision.
" I hold his gaze until the space where he might argue collapses into something quieter. "My body, River. My terms."
A long pause.
River nods. Once. The cost of it is on his face.
Beck squeezes my hand.
Steele, at the window, says nothing. When I glance at him briefly, a small smile is there, but he looks away before it becomes something he'd have to explain.
"When?" I ask. "When can I leave here?"
Beck stands. "I'll go and find out."