Chapter 4 Four #2
“It wasn’t really optional,” I say. “Mandatory grief counseling. League policy.”
She smiles, but it’s the kind of smile you practice in the mirror. “Mandatory doesn’t mean you have to talk.”
“That’s good,” I say. “I’ve got nothing to say.”
Another smile, this one a fraction warmer. “How are you sleeping?”
“Fine.”
She makes a little mark. “Any nightmares?”
“Not that I remember.”
“What about appetite?”
I shrug. “I eat when I’m hungry.”
She flips to a new page. “You’re very measured, Darius. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“All the time. Coaches love it.” I let my gaze drift to the window, watch the cars crawl by, everyone rushing toward something that’s probably going to kill them in the end.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Dr. Sharma says, voice still soft, still patient.
“Not really.”
She waits, gives me the rope. I don’t hang myself with it.
After a while, she asks, “What’s the first thing you remember, after the shooting started?”
I pick at the hem of my sleeve. I don’t want to answer, but that’s the trap, if you don’t answer, they assume you’re hiding something. I don’t want to seem weak, or worse, broken.
“I remember the sound,” I say finally. “Not the gunshots. The sound after. Like everything just…stopped.” I don’t look at her when I say it.
She’s quiet for a moment, then, “Is it the silence that bothers you?”
I shake my head, no. But my hands are betraying me, fingers tapping out some code on the back of my thumb.
“What about that silence makes it hard?”
“It’s not hard,” I say, voice sharper than I intend. “It’s just there.”
She nods, marks another something in her notebook. “What else do you remember?”
I think about the blood, the way it moved across the ice, bright and alien. I think about the feel of Rosen’s hand on my arm, the press of muscle and bone, a human anchor in a room of sinking men.
I think about Cap, face-down, blood pooling out like a signature.
I look at my hands, realize I’m squeezing them so hard my knuckles are white.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just the sound.”
She doesn’t call me out on the lie.
“Do you ever wish you could forget?” she asks, but it’s not a challenge.
I almost laugh. “I don’t think about it that way. What happened, happened.”
“And what are you supposed to do with that?”
I blink. I know the answer she wants. “Process it. Move forward. Heal.”
Dr. Sharma sets the notepad aside, leans in just a little. “And how’s that going?”
I look her straight in the eye. “It’s a day at a time. I’m managing.”
She nods, like she believes me, but I can see it in her eyes—she knows. She always knows.
There’s a long pause, the kind that makes me itch under my skin.
“Sometimes,” she says, “when something traumatic happens, people compartmentalize. They seal it up so tight they don’t even know it’s there. Until something, or someone, cracks the seal.”
I say nothing. I’ve heard this speech before, from guidance counselors, from coaches, from Nia. Never sticks.
“Do you feel like you’re compartmentalizing?”
I smile for the first time. “If I am, it’s working.”
She gives me that practiced smile again. “If you ever want to talk about it, really talk, I’m here.”
“Thanks,” I say, because it’s what you’re supposed to say.
Dr. Sharma glances at her watch, even though there’s no clock on the wall. “Our time’s almost up. Is there anything you want to ask me?”
I consider it. “Do these sessions ever actually help?”
She thinks about it, doesn’t rush her answer. “Sometimes. But not always right away.”
I stand, smooth my shirt, and thank her again. I make it to the door before she calls after me, “Darius?”
I turn.
“The way you’re managing, it’s impressive. But you don’t have to do it alone.”
I nod, once. Walk out without another word.
———
In the hall, I flex my hands until they ache. I watch the skin, watch the way it stretches and contracts, and for a second I see Cap’s blood again, see the red pooling out, unstoppable.
I shove the memory down. Compartmentalize. It’s what I’m best at.
I take the stairs instead of the elevator. By the time I hit the street, my heart rate is normal, my stride even. No one looking at me would know a thing.
On the walk home, I tell myself the session was a waste of time. That no one can help when you’re already this far gone. That some things can’t be fixed, only endured.
But the echo of Dr. Sharma’s voice follows me all the way back to my building.
You don’t have to do it alone.
I wish she was right.
———
The night of the vigil, the world outside the Steelhawk Center is transformed into something almost unrecognizable, a field of candles, shivering dots of orange fighting against the sprawl of darkness and press of bodies.
Hundreds show up, maybe more, faces pinched by cold and something worse, the hush not a silence but a tension, a held breath waiting for its cue to shatter.
It’s surreal to stand outside a place that’s both a crime scene and an altar, to see the arena’s brutal lines softened by the haze of votive smoke and the endless river of people.
The air smells like wax, frozen grass, and the sharp metallic cut of news truck generators.
There’s a bank of cameras at the curb, lenses aimed and ready, searching for the first person to crack.
They want us to be tragic, or noble, or at least interesting.
I show up late on purpose, drift through the crowd unnoticed until I’m a safe distance from the scrum at the main entrance.
I find a spot under the overhang, just outside the yellow police tape, and watch the spectacle as if it’s a documentary about someone else’s life.
The fans have built a memorial along the glass, jerseys, flowers, hand-scrawled posters. Someone’s lashed a row of battered hockey sticks together, blades up, a fence of tribute.
There’s a pile of pucks, each one marked with a number and a name. Cap’s number is everywhere, 4 on hats, 4 on faces, 4 on the backs of toddlers too young to remember the man they’re mourning.
The team is here, too, gathered in a knot of black jackets and bowed heads, the usual social order disintegrated by trauma.
O’Doul is crying, big ugly sobs that make his whole body jerk. Raz stands next to him, staring at his shoes.
The rest of the roster fills in around them, a single organism, holding itself together out of pure stubbornness.
I don’t join them. I hover at the periphery, hands buried in my pockets, posture loose but alert.
I’m scanning for threats, even now, even though the odds are microscopic. Once you’ve been hunted, you never really stop.
A woman with a Steelhawks beanie and a face like a paper cut is the first to recognize me.
Her eyes go wide and wet, and she makes a beeline through the crowd, her candle trailing hot wax down her wrist.
“Oh, Darius,” she says, and before I can react she’s crushing me in a hug, her arms wiry and insistent. “I’m so, so sorry.” She smells like cinnamon and baby powder.
I pat her back, gentle, awkward. “Thanks for coming,” I say, because it’s the right thing to say.
She lets go, wipes her nose on the back of her glove. “You were so brave. You all were. My son, he’s in peewee, he worships you guys.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
She retreats, and instantly her place is filled by more, a ripple of mourners who want a piece of the story.
Some just touch my shoulder, some recite lines from the news coverage.
A few ask for a photo, as if tragedy is a collectible now.
I move sideways, using my height and the shadows to fade out.
I end up by the makeshift memorial, fingers absently counting the sticks lashed together, the warped tape and chipped paint, each one evidence of years spent in the game.
Cap’s old stick is there, I recognize it by the frayed knob at the end, the joke he always made about “maximum surface area for whacking idiots.”
I remember the first time he called me “rookie,” remember the sting of it, and how proud I was when he finally dropped the qualifier.
I feel the burn in my throat, but nothing gets through. I focus on the sound of candles hissing in the wind, on the collective shuffle of feet as the crowd grows restless.
Someone steps up to the little podium by the doors, taps the mic. It’s Coach Vasquez, face harder than I’ve ever seen it, every line etched deep by grief and fury.
She doesn’t waste time on platitudes. “They tried to take this from us,” she says, voice steady. “But they don’t get to decide how we remember. That’s ours.”
A murmur runs through the crowd, an agreement made out of noise.
Coach goes on, talks about brotherhood, about legacy, about “family that bleeds together.” She calls each of the lost by name, and the crowd echoes them back, a litany of absence.
When she says Cap’s name, I see O’Doul clutch his own jersey, knuckles white.
The speech ends.
There’s a moment of actual silence, real and perfect, before everyone starts lighting more candles, adding to the river of flame.
I stay off to the side, letting the crowd thicken and thin, until it feels safe to leave.
I’m halfway to the parking lot when a kid, maybe ten, intercepts me. He’s got a Steelhawks cap pulled low and a parka so big it swallows his arms.
He’s shaking, either from cold or nerves.
“Mr. Webb?” he says, voice tremulous.
I crouch, make myself smaller. “Yeah, buddy?”
He holds out a marker and a scrap of cardboard. “Will you sign? For my brother. He’s in the hospital, but he loves you guys.”
My hands are clumsy with cold, but I take the marker and scrawl my name.
I add a “Stay strong, #30” because it feels like the kind of thing Cap would do.
The kid beams, thanks me, then runs off into the sea of legs.
I stand up, pocket my hands, and watch the lights blur together.
For a second I let myself imagine that all the candles, all the noise, could actually add up to something, some kind of meaning, or closure, or even just enough heat to keep us from freezing to death.
But when I walk away, the night is just as cold as before.
———