Chapter 38 Teddy
TEDDY
On my third morning in rehab, I drag myself out of bed, my body slightly sore from a night of restless sleep and too many looping memories.
I’m still not used to the quiet of the rehab facility and the new unfamiliar rhythm.
After a quick shower, one of the care assistants comes to get me and guides me to the cafeteria.
They help me by carrying the tray and setting my breakfast in front of me—eggs, bacon, and a cup of coffee I grip with both hands for warmth.
Then I’m left alone, the empty chair across from me a sad reminder of how different this is from the hospital.
Back there, Ivy would’ve been sitting across from me, distracting me with her chatter. Here, my only friend is silence.
I texted Ivy last night, but I haven’t heard back yet. It’s probably because of the time difference or how busy she is with the training camp. Still, I honestly can’t wait to hear from her. Three mornings done, over seventy to go before we’re reunited.
“Do you mind company?” a young male voice chimes from my left, taking me from my thoughts of Ivy.
I gesture in front of me. “Sure, go ahead.”
The stranger sits across from me, his chair scraping lightly against the floor as he settles in. He hums an old rock song under his breath, fingers drumming against the table like he’s keeping rhythm with the tune.
“Did you get eggs or the sad excuse for oatmeal?” he asks.
“Eggs.”
“Good call. The oatmeal is crap here. Zero out of ten. Do not recommend.”
His comment makes me chuckle. “Been here long enough to know the cafeteria’s sins?”
“Close to six weeks. That’s long enough to learn where to get the best food and what not to eat.”
“I’m Teddy,” I introduce myself. “I would offer you a hand, but can’t see much.”
“Yeah, I know who you are, Teddy Seaborn. I’m Aaron Hines,” he replies. “Before you get weird about it: no, I don’t care about hockey, and yes, I’ve heard of you. Only because the nurses here won’t shut up about the good looking hockey player who arrived a few days ago.”
I bark a surprised laugh, my cheeks reddening at the thought of another set of nurses being my fans. “That’s me.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll fall off the radar soon. Wait until the next hot blind guy shows up and knows how to play the ukulele or something.”
“Yeah, well, my talents start and end with hockey and looking pretty.”
“Same, minus the whole puck-chasing bit,” my new friend comments. “So how long has it been since your accident?”
“Around a month.”
“Oh, so you’re in the existential hell phase.”
“That the medical term?”
He chuckles. “Nah, just the standard adjustment period. You know the stages: grief, rage, despair, the whole I lost my sight unexpectedly starter pack.”
I’ve felt every one of those stages and keep circling back through them depending on the day. Hearing someone else say it out loud makes me feel seen and exposed at the same time. Part of me bristles, the other part wants to cling to the relief of knowing I’m not the only one.
“Great,” I mutter. “Do I at least get a complimentary T-shirt?”
“Only if you cry in front of your therapist and make it awkward for everyone else in the room.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling. This kid is something else. “So what’s your story?” I ask between bites. “How did you end up here?”
“I used to skateboard,” he tells me. “I tried a really stupid trick on a dare one night and landed head first on the stairs. Woke up three weeks later at the hospital without being able to see anything and having to learn everything again.”
“Fucking hell,” I comment, thinking how I truly got lucky with my injuries. “That’s rough, man.”
“At least I got a cool scar and a one-way ticket to Harborview after four months in the hospital,” Aaron jokes. “It could’ve been worse.”
With such a positive attitude, he makes me feel less like I’m stuck in the saddest chapter of my life and more like I’ve accidentally wandered into a weird buddy comedy.
“You seem well-adjusted for someone who lost his sight not that long ago.”
“I mean, I could be dead, so I’m accepting every extra day as a blessing.”
How does one reply to such a gut punch of a statement?
A small, bitter part of me envies how easily the sentiment behind it seems to come to him, like he’s already made peace with the blow he took.
I don’t feel anywhere near that point. I still wake up furious some mornings, choking on the unfairness of life.
I push scrambled eggs around with my fork. “I haven’t reached the acceptance phase yet. Not completely,” I admit quietly.
“You got any vision left?”
“I can see some light and shadows, but not much. The doctors warned me that I might not regain more than that.”
“But you could?”
“There’s a surgery. However, my doctor said there’s no guarantee,” I shrug.
“At least there’s something they can try, unlike my case. I don’t understand all the medical jargon, but the damage to certain parts of my brain was too extensive. In caveman terms, I’m fucked.”
I want to say something to make it better, but words feel clumsy when faced with someone else’s loss. “That’s…I’m sorry. That’s a lot to carry.”
“You’ll get used to it. The blindness, I mean. It’s not the tragedy some people think it is.”
“I hope to reach the acceptance phase sooner than later.”
The admission tastes bitter leaving my lips, but I know he’s right. The longer I fight against it, the more it eats me alive.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t lose yourself. You lost something you used to rely on,” he reminds me. “I used to play piano. Still do, actually. Just don’t read music anymore.”
“Damn, that’s so cool. So it’s, what, muscle memory?” I lean forward, admiration slipping into my tone.
“Ear training. Memory. Stubbornness.”
I smile faintly. “Stubbornness I can do.”
“Then you’ll be fine.”
We talk for almost an hour about rehab routines, vending machine tragedies and his theory that blind people drink better coffee because they rely more on smell.
He tells me about a girl he used to fancy in high school, who has visited him weekly since his accident.
Unlike his last ex who ended things while he was fighting for his life.
“Her exact words were, ‘I’m not ready to be a caretaker.’ As if I asked her to wipe my ass.”
“People say the worst things when they’re scared,” I reply, thinking about Ivy. She never once made me feel like a burden. She walked away only because of her dream of being an Ice Cross racer, never because I wasn’t worth the effort. And it makes me miss her even more.
Aarons hums across from me. “They say even worse things when they’re selfish. But hey, her loss. I’m a solid seven. Eight with good lighting, nine and half if you enjoy sarcasm.”
“You’re not what I expected,” I tell him honestly.
“Blind kid with a tragic situation?”
“Yeah. That. You’re just a guy instead.”
“Exactly. That’s the trick, man. Many who aren’t part of the blind community think we’re inspirational or pitiful. Nope. We’re just people. Our humanity didn’t change overnight because of our disabilities.”
Something inside me eases. For weeks, I’ve been drowning in labels—a patient, newly blind, an injured hockey player. Hearing him strip it down to the simplest truth makes me breathe easier.
“You know, it’s kind of nice, talking to someone who gets it. Even just a little. Maybe that’s one good thing about being here,” I admit.
“It’ll get even easier once more time passes. We have biweekly group therapy sessions and you get to hear the success stories. Those will give you more hope.”
When we finally stand, he bumps my elbow lightly. “Come find me later or don’t. I’ll be around. Follow the trail of sarcastic commentary and peanut butter cup wrappers.”
Later that night, lying in bed, I go over what Aaron said: You didn’t lose yourself. You lost something you used to rely on.
I needed to hear those words carrying the important reminder I forget almost every day: I didn’t lose myself. I’m still here. Still Teddy. Only a new version.
They assign me a new therapist the next day. Her name’s Mel, and she reminds me of Ivy with her no-bullshit attitude. She doesn’t tiptoe around me like I’m a fragile, broken athlete.
Her office smells faintly of eucalyptus, the massive couch creaking when I plop down on the textured fabric. A clock ticks steadily on the wall behind me. I catalogue it as something I’ll fixate on if silence stretches for too long.
We start slow with the basics and logistics, discussing how often we’ll meet—daily for the first two weeks, then twice a week unless she thinks I would benefit from more.
Afterwards, I offer her the surface level answers I’ve perfected since the hit, describing my vision loss, career collapse, and adapting to the new life of an injured athlete.
As the sessions progress, I still steer clear of the deep stuff, including the way I miss the sound of skate blades slicing across fresh ice more than I’ve ever missed anything before.
Except Ivy, of course. I’m quiet about the dull ache in my chest when I think of my teammates and how the team is doing without me. I also leave my parents unmentioned.
“What do you remember about the night of the injury?” she asks out of the blue during the fourth session.
My entire body stiffens and I give her the rehearsed version. “Third period. A bad hit. The boards. The sounds.”
“And then?”
I rub my clammy palms against my sweats. “The hospital.”
“No. Before that. Right after the hit.”
Well, fuck. I flinch before schooling my expression, but I’m sure she didn’t miss it.
"A voice in the back of my head screamed, don't die in front of thousands of people," I finally whisper. “I didn’t want my life to end there. I held on because I didn’t want to be remembered as the player who died on the ice.”
It’s the first time I’ve said that to anyone. At least I don’t think I told that to Ivy. How did it come to me now? What’s this sorcery?
“That was the scariest part, wasn’t it? The idea of dying in such an inhumane way?” Mel asks gently.
I nod, because she’s right. I truly thought I was going to die in the spotlight. Nobody deserves that. “And then my worst moment was broadcast in high definition, frozen on replay. I wasn’t just injured. I was stripped of every ounce of humanity and millions of people have seen the clips by now.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Violated, humiliated, bare…take your pick. Everyone saw me broken, and suddenly my story wasn’t mine anymore.”
There’s a faint scratch of her pen on paper before she speaks again.
“Since meeting you for the first time, I could tell it’s not your vision loss you’re grieving the most. It’s the version of your life you thought you’d build for yourself in the future.
The one where your story stays yours and you’re the one making the choices. ”
That lands in my chest like a punch. Because she’s right once again.
“I don’t know who I am without the game,” I croak, the words catching in my throat.
“Hockey has been the main focus in my life for so long. It gave me purpose and a place to belong, an identity I could point to when everything else was messed up. Now it’s gone.
I’m just a guy sitting in a rehab center, trying to pretend the future doesn’t terrify me. ”
“You have an opportunity to find out who you are outside of the game. Who’s the real Teddy under all those layers?”
The question should be simple, but it’s anything but. “What if I don’t like what I find?” I ask her back.
“Then we sit with the discovery, too. We don’t run from it. You’ve done enough running.”
I couldn’t agree more, even if I tried. It feels freeing to have someone name what I’ve been doing all along. Maybe it’s time to stop running from myself. “Yeah…I guess I have.”
“Who knows, you could still have a future with the sport, just not the way you hope. There are plenty of opportunities for someone passionate about the game.”
I remember Ivy telling me the same. When the session ends, I step out into the hallway with my white cane in hand. The future still fucking terrifies me, but for the first time in a long while, it doesn’t feel like a black hole waiting to swallow me whole.