Chapter 44
Bliss
By the third morning, the hospital had stopped feeling like a place and started feeling like a world I had been sentenced to live inside.
The windows in the private family room were the only things telling me the outside world still existed.
There was no real sense of time anymore beyond the dim shift of light slipping through the frosted glass near the nurses’ station and the rhythm of people entering with soft voices and leaving with careful faces.
Someone had brought coffee. Someone had brought muffins.
Someone had brought blankets, chargers, bottled water, and the kind of snacks people bought when they wanted to be helpful but had no idea what grief ate for breakfast.
I hadn’t touched any of it.
Cade was off the ventilator.
That was the only sentence that mattered in my life right now.
They had removed it around five the morning before, after his lung held steady long enough for the doctors to let the machine step back.
I had watched through glass while nurses moved around him, while tubes and wires and monitors turned his body into something terrifying and clinical, while Elenore Mercer cried silently beside me and Harrison stood behind us with one hand pressed to the wall like even all his money couldn’t keep him upright.
He was breathing on his own. Not easily. Not normally. But on his own.
The doctors were careful with hope, like it was a medication that could hurt us if they gave too much at once.
Cade was still critical. Still heavily medicated.
Still sleeping more than waking, drifting in and out beneath pain control strong enough to keep his body from fighting every stitch, tube, drain, and breath.
They kept saying the next few days mattered.
They kept saying recovery would be long.
They kept saying he was young, strong, healthy, and those words were supposed to comfort us.
All I heard was that his body had needed to be young, strong, and healthy to survive at all.
He had opened his eyes twice.
The first time, he didn’t know where he was, let alone who he was.
The second time, he found me.
Barely.
His eyelids had lifted only enough for a sliver of blue, hazy and unfocused beneath the bruised exhaustion on his face.
His lips had moved around the oxygen cannula, but no sound came out.
I had stood over him with both hands wrapped around his because I needed him to feel me there even if he couldn’t make sense of anything else.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “I’m right here, Cross Check.”
His fingers twitched once beneath mine.
Then he was gone again, dragged under by pain meds and trauma and the kind of sleep doctors said his body needed but my heart hated anyway.
After that, I refused to leave his side unless a nurse physically required it.
Even then, I went only far enough to shower in the bathroom attached to the private room Harrison had somehow acquired like rich people could simply point at hospitals and make them rearrange.
Aura brought me clean clothes. Charm brushed and braided my hair while I sat on the toilet lid and cried so quietly I thought maybe the water would hide it.
It didn’t.
They heard every broken breath and cried with me anyway. My pain was a heartbeat they felt beneath their own skin. That was friendship unfiltered, raw and real.
By eleven the first night, the whole world knew something had happened.
By nine o’clock this morning, Harrison Mercer had decided what the world was allowed to know.
The television mounted in the corner of the private waiting room showed Coach Little standing off to the side of a press conference beneath the banner of a local news station that had somehow gotten footage of The Furnace from the night of the attack.
The image behind the anchors showed the hospital entrance where the news conference was taking place.
The headline beneath Cade’s name made my stomach twist so hard I thought I might be sick.
KFU STAR CADE MERCER INJURED AFTER POSTGAME ATTACK.
The volume was low at first until Briggs reached for the remote with a hand that shook more than he wanted anyone to notice.
My family, Cade’s parents, his closest friends, and the girls filled every inch of space around me while we watched what Cade’s father had allowed.
The news announcer spoke over footage of the hospital and the crowd forming outside it.
“We are going live now to the press conference regarding Kimball Falls University hockey captain and center, Cade Mercer, who is currently recovering after a vicious attack Friday night following the Fury’s five-to-one victory over the Vancouver Icehawks.
The Mercer family has asked Detective Knox Bennett with the KFPD to speak on behalf of the department due to his connection with both the victim and the alleged assailant. We take you there now.”
The screen shifted to Knox as he stepped behind the podium, his face drawn and pale beneath the harsh press lights.
For one terrible second, he didn’t look like my brother.
He looked like a detective. Like someone who had folded every personal thing inside him into a place no one could reach until the statement was done.
Then his voice filled the room.
“Friday night, after a hard-earned victory by the Kimball Falls Fury, Cade Mercer was attacked in a restricted service area of the Kimball Falls Hockey Dome by an individual who had no authorized reason to be in that part of the building.”
The words hit me wrong.
They sounded too clean. Too polished. Too far away from the hallway I hadn’t seen but had imagined so many times my brain had started building nightmares out of concrete and fluorescent light.
Knox looked harder than usual. Older. He wore his Kimball Falls police uniform and stood in front of a line of microphones with the Mercer family lawyer just visible off to the side and Sarah standing behind him, watching every word like it had been drafted, revised, and loaded into his mouth by people who understood damage control better than grief.
“Fury captain and center Cade Mercer sustained serious injuries during the attack,” Knox continued.
“He underwent emergency surgery that lasted nine hours and is currently recovering at Sutton County Medical Center. His medical team is optimistic, and we expect Cade to make a full recovery, though that recovery will require time, privacy, and patience. I will now turn the podium over to Lansen Hawthorne, attorney for the Mercer family.”
The reporter questions began immediately, voices overlapping as Lansen took Knox’s place at the podium.
“Mr. Hawthorne, can you identify the attacker?”
Lansen’s jaw flexed once. “The alleged assailant has been identified by police as Luke Dempsey, a former KFU alumnus and former Fury goalie.”
A sound moved through the room. Not one person. Everyone’s body reacting at once to Luke’s name hitting the air while Cade lay down the hall with machines proving he was still here.
The polished lawyer held still while cameras flashed.
“Mr. Hawthorne, did Mercer know the alleged attacker?”
“Mr. Dempsey had previously attended a private family barbecue over the summer where Mr. Mercer was also present with his girlfriend, Bliss Bennett, at the home of her father, retired Fire Chief Daniel Bennett. Mr. Dempsey was a longtime family friend of the Bennetts. At this time, law enforcement believes Mr. Dempsey had become fixated on Mr. Mercer after that barbecue, and investigators are reviewing whether Mr. Dempsey was experiencing an acute psychological crisis at the time of the attack.”
My dad’s hand tightened around mine.
Girlfriend.
Cade’s girlfriend.
The one thing I had denied him was now the thing I clung to. I pressed one hand to my mouth and tasted salt on my skin.
A reporter shouted over the others. “Can you speak to reports of unusual injuries found on Dempsey’s body?”
Lansen’s face did not change. Harrison’s personal lawyer, who stood in our room with a tablet tucked against his side, watched the screen with the calm focus of a man who already knew the answer.
“I will not discuss graphic details out of respect for everyone involved,” Lansen said.
“What I can say is that investigators are looking closely at Mr. Dempsey’s behavior leading up to the incident, including evidence that he may have been in an unstable psychological state when he entered the arena. ”
Lie.
Not because Luke wasn’t disturbed.
He was.
The lie was in the delivery language.
I had learned enough in three days to understand that truth and justice were not always the same thing, and sometimes people with power took the ugliest truth in the room and dressed it in something the public could swallow.
Luke was a crazed stalker now. Luke had a mental break. Luke had attacked Cade for reasons nobody understood yet. Luke had done strange, violent things before the attack turned outward.
Lie after lie, all carefully arranged around the truth they were smothering. Every lie was building a wall around Cade.
And me.
Knox returned to the podium to answer on behalf of the investigators.
“We also understand Mr. Dempsey had experienced a series of personal and professional struggles in recent years. He was no longer employed by Kimball Falls Fire Department and had been under investigation related to suspicious arson activity. I want to be very clear that this is an active investigation, and we will not speculate beyond what police have confirmed.”
My head turned slowly toward Ryker and Ryan, who were already looking at me.
Suspicious arson activity… Fired from the fire department… Under investigation.
My mouth went dry, and my dad’s face had gone gray. Lyon swore under his breath, low and vicious. Kellen whispered, “What the hell?”
Ryker’s expression tightened, but he didn’t speak.
Not yet.
Lansen returned to the microphone. “Coach Little will now speak on behalf of KFU Fury hockey.”
Coach Little stepped forward, and somehow that was the moment I almost lost it.
Not with Knox in uniform. Not with Lansen lying beautifully.
But with Coach Little standing in front of those microphones looking like a man trying to talk about hockey when his captain was breathing through pain down the hall.
“Cade Mercer will not be returning for the remainder of this semester,” Coach said.
“His health is the priority. He will take the time he needs to recover, regain strength, and return to the ice and his studies when his doctors confirm he is ready. Our expectation is that Cade will rejoin the Fury next semester to complete his senior year. Until then, the Fury team, the university, and his family ask for privacy.”
Another reporter pushed forward. “Coach, can you comment on how this affects Mercer’s future with the Saginaw Icers? There are reports their head coach has been following him closely and that Mercer was widely expected to be drafted after the season.”
Coach’s expression shifted for half a second. A little pride and a lot of grief, like fury wrapped in loyalty.
“Cade Mercer’s future is bright because Cade Mercer is one of the best hockey players I’ve ever coached,” he said. “That hasn’t changed. If anything, Friday night proved what everyone in this room already knows. He is a fighter. But hockey can wait. Right now, our captain needs to heal.”
Briggs made a broken sound and turned away. Easton’s jaw clenched as Aura gently stroked his back. Rider stood and turned to look out the window, probably hiding whatever emotion swarmed through him at Coach Little’s words.
Ryan just closed his eyes.
I stared at the television until Coach Little blurred.
Our captain needs to heal.
The press conference ended ten minutes later with Lansen Hawthorne refusing questions about me, refusing questions about Luke’s family, refusing to discuss Cade’s injuries beyond serious but survivable, and refusing to let anyone turn the attack into a spectacle while the man who had saved my life slept beneath layers of bandages and prayers down the hall.
The second Knox returned from the press conference, Harrison turned to me.
“We need to talk.”
No one argued with him. No one said not now or she’s too tired or let her rest.
Maybe because everyone knew rest had become a fictional concept.
Maybe because Harrison Mercer had spent his days here moving through the hospital with controlled devastation and the kind of influence that made administrators appear out of nowhere with keys, security badges, private hallways, and apologies.
Maybe because whatever was about to happen had been building behind Knox’s eyes since the moment he took that second call outside the arena.
The world had its story now.
Harrison had given them enough truth to keep them satisfied and enough lies to keep us safe.
But the real truth was still waiting.
And from the look on Knox’s face, it was going to hurt.