31. Buzz #2
For half an hour, the morning was ordinary.
The kind I had spent years not appreciating enough because ordinary did not come with lights or stats or crowd noise.
Grandma ate half her breakfast and insisted she was full, then stole bacon off my plate when she thought I was not looking.
Grandpa asked about practice and listened like line combinations were a weather system he had been tracking since October.
I checked the clock twice, not because I wanted to leave, but because the Paper Lantern stop had become part of the structure now.
Run.
Shower.
Breakfast when I could steal it.
Coffee.
Arena.
Lucy’s doorway.
Leave before wanting turned into asking.
At six forty-eight, I stood and carried plates to the sink.
Grandma Ruth started to rise. “I’ll get those.”
“You will sit there and supervise like management.”
Grandpa Hal stood slower, taking his empty mug with him. “I’ll scrape.”
“You will both sit down,” I said. “I have a system.”
Grandma sniffed. “Your system leaves water spots.”
“Then look away.” I cleaned the kitchen while Grandma issued unnecessary instructions and Grandpa pretended not to enjoy it. By seven fifteen, the pans were washed, the counters wiped, and my phone buzzed with a reminder I did not need.
Paper Lantern.
I looked at the screen and felt the ridiculousness of it all lift in my chest.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Go before your face gets worse.”
“My face is beloved by many.”
“It is tolerated by family.”
Grandpa nodded. “Strongly tolerated.”
I pulled my coat on in the mudroom, still smiling. My keys were in one hand, phone in the other. I was halfway through texting Naomi when Grandma came in behind me carrying a dish towel.
“Grandma, I told you I had it.”
“I am not chasing you.” She reached for a reusable grocery bag hanging on the row of hooks beside the door. “You’re taking the leftover potatoes.”
“I have food.”
“You have protein powder and decisions your mother would not approve of.”
“I own vegetables.”
“In theory.”
She stepped forward, slipper catching the edge of the small rug by the bench.
It happened quietly. No dramatic cry. No crash big enough to warn my body before my brain understood it.
Just the soft skid of fabric, Grandma Ruth’s breath cutting off, Grandpa saying her name from the kitchen, and my grandmother folding toward the floor in a way that was wrong before it was loud.
I caught her shoulder, but not fast enough. Her hip bumped the bench. Her ankle twisted beneath her. She hit the floor with a sharp little sound she tried to swallow. Everything inside me went cold.
“Ruth,” Grandpa Hal yelped.
“I’m fine,” she snapped immediately, which was how I knew she was not.
I dropped to my knees beside her. “Don’t move.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I heard you lying. Don’t move.”
Her face had gone pale around the mouth. She looked more embarrassed than scared, which made something in my chest hurt so badly I had to clamp down on it.
Grandpa crouched slower on her other side, one hand braced against the wall. His face was steady, but his eyes were not.
“Where?” I asked her.
She glared at the rug like it had betrayed the family. “My ankle.”
“Which one?”
“The one currently being dramatic.”
“Grandma.”
“Left,” she said through her teeth.
I looked without touching too much. No obvious break. No angle that made my stomach turn. Swelling already starting near the outside of her ankle, though. She tried to pull her foot back when I reached toward it. “Absolutely not,” I said.
“You are not a doctor.”
“No, but I have donated half my body to various team medical staffs’ continuing education since I was sixteen.”
Grandpa Hal’s hand settled on Grandma Ruth’s shoulder. “We should go in.”
“I do not need a hospital,” she objected swiftly.
“You need an X-ray,” I barked.
“I need everyone to stop fussing.”
“I can do the X-ray or the not fussing. Pick one.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You think you are charming.”
“I am in crisis. This is triage charm.”
Grandpa gave a quiet cough that might have been a laugh if fear had not been sitting so plainly in the mudroom with us.
I got my grandmother upright carefully. She hissed once and immediately looked furious with herself for making any sound at all.
Grandpa brought her coat. I got one arm through the sleeve, then the other, my hands moving slower than my pulse wanted.
Keys. Wallet. Phone. Her purse from the chair.
Grandpa Hal’s hat from the hook because he would forget it and Grandma would yell about that in the car, which seemed, suddenly, very important to preserve.
“Truck?” Grandpa asked.
“No,” Grandma Ruth said at the same time I said, “Sedan.”
Grandpa Hal’s sedan sat in the garage, low and sensible and designed by someone who had never met a professional hockey player with legs.
By the time I folded myself behind the wheel, my knees were close enough to the dashboard to become a legal concern.
Grandma Ruth, buckled in the back with her foot elevated across the seat, looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You look ridiculous.”
“You are welcome for my emergency services.”
“Your femurs are against the steering wheel.”
“I know where they are.”
“You should move the seat.”
“It’s all the way back.”
Grandpa Hal settled into the passenger seat and looked at my knees. “Huh.”
“Not helpful, Grandpa.”
My grandmother made a small sound in the back.
My eyes snapped to the mirror. “Pain?”
“Annoyance.”
I texted Coach at the first red light with one thumb.
Grandma fell. Taking her to hospital. I’ll miss practice. Will update.
Then I texted the team staff thread because I was still enough of a professional to know an absence without explanation turned into someone else’s problem.
Family emergency. At hospital. I’ll miss practice this morning.
Northbend General was already crowded by the time we got there, because apparently every person in the city had chosen that morning to cough, bleed, slip, or reconsider their relationship with cholesterol.
I got Grandma into a wheelchair at the entrance, which she accepted with the expression of a woman being publicly slandered.
“I can walk,” she insisted.
“You cannot.”
“I could hop.”
Grandpa leaned down and murmured, “Let him have this.”
Grandma Ruth looked at him. “You too?”
“He looks ready to carry you through a wall.”
“I am ready to carry her through a wall,” I confirmed.
The waiting room smelled like disinfectant, wet wool, burnt coffee, and the particular fatigue of people who had been awake too early for bad reasons.
A toddler cried near the vending machines.
An older man in a Vikings hat slept with his mouth open beneath the television.
Someone’s phone played a video too loud until a nurse at the desk looked up with one lethal eyebrow.
We checked in. We waited. Grandma Ruth told the intake nurse she was fine with the kind of conviction that made the nurse glance at me instead. “She tripped,” I said. “Left ankle. Swelling. Pain with weight bearing.”
Grandma muttered, “Show-off.”
The nurse smiled without looking up from the screen. “Athlete?”
“Unfortunately,” Grandma scoffed with a flawless eye roll.
I sat beside her wheelchair and tried to laugh when appropriate.
It was easier than admitting my hands still felt strange from the moment she fell.
Like my body had caught the fear and had nowhere to put it now.
I kept checking her face, her foot, Grandpa Hal’s posture.
I kept standing and sitting and standing again until Grandma finally reached over and smacked the back of my hand.
“Sit down, Ty.”
The use of my name, quiet and firm, did what it had always done in my family. It pulled me back into my body.
Hours in hospitals moved strangely. Fast when someone asked questions.
Slow when no one did. We got called back.
We waited again. X-rays. More waiting. Grandma complaining about the possibility of a gown despite the fact that no one had asked her to change into one.
Grandpa Hal reading every poster on the wall like blood pressure education might be on a test later.
The doctor finally came in with a tablet and a kind face. Hairline fracture. Left ankle. Boot. Rest. Ice. Follow-up if pain worsened, which Grandma Ruth acted like was a personal insult.
“A boot,” she repeated.
“For stability,” the doctor explained.
“I have stability.”
“Not in your ankle,” I interjected.
She pointed at me. “Quiet.”
By the time they fitted the boot and gave us instructions, the sharpest part of my fear had loosened.
Not gone. Just no longer sitting on my throat.
Grandma was embarrassed and cranky and already discussing how she could still make soup if someone moved the stockpot to the counter.
Grandpa Hal looked ten years younger once the word fracture came with hairline in front of it and no surgery after it.
I pulled my phone out while Grandma argued politely with a nurse about whether she needed a second pair of non-slip socks.
Three missed calls from Coach.
Two from the staff coordinator.
One from Marco, which I ignored on principle because any voicemail from Marco during a family emergency would somehow involve an insult and sincere concern wearing the same hat.
A text from Naomi:
You are not dead, right?
My stomach dropped. The time at the top of the screen read 10:42.
The waiting room noise pressed in around me again, louder now. My thumb hovered over Lucy’s name. Then stopped.
I had promised myself no ambushes. No cornering. No using emotional urgency to push past the space she had asked for. But this was not that. This was an explanation.
Still, something in me hesitated.
I opened Naomi’s text instead.
Alive. Grandma fell. Hospital. Hairline ankle fracture. I missed coffee.
Naomi: I know.
How do you know?
Naomi: Because the woman who owns the dog noticed the missing pup cup
Before I could type out a response, a voice carried across the waiting room and went straight through me.
“Ty.”