Chapter 22
LIAM
Eight minutes into the first period I scored on a one-timer from the slot — same shot, same lane, same instinct — and looked up into the stands without thinking.
Anne was on her feet. She caught my eye and something in her expression said *that's my work, right there* and I skated back to center ice feeling like we had this.
We didn't have it.
We tied it on a Carter power play goal. Then they scored again with four minutes left in the period.
3-2 Colorado going to the third.
One goal. We needed one goal to push for overtime and claw our way back in.
They collapsed defensively the whole third — five guys in the lane, blocking everything, daring us to go wide and shoot from bad angles. Six minutes left, I carried the puck into the zone looking for the opening.
Their defenseman stepped up at the blue line. Big. Six-five, at least 230. I tried to cut inside.
He caught me clean.
The hit sent me shoulder-first into the boards, and the pain was immediate and specific and nothing like muscle soreness.
I stayed down for a second.
"O'Connell." The ref skated over. "You good?"
"Yeah." I got up. "I'm good."
I wasn't good.
I skated to the bench and told myself it was fine. Tweaked. Nothing serious. I kept playing.
Every time I raised my arm the pain shot through the shoulder like a current.
Final: 3-2 Colorado.
Series: 0-2.
The locker room after was the kind of quiet that meant everyone understood what 0-2 meant.
Coach kept it short. "We're not done. Games 3 and 4 are in their building. We win both and we come home tied. One game at a time. That's all."
He left. Nobody said anything.
I sat at my stall trying to move my arm without my face giving anything away.
Carter watched me for thirty seconds. "Show me."
"It's fine."
"Show me or I'm getting Harrison."
I rolled my shoulder. Tried to keep the wince contained. Failed.
Carter stood up. "Harrison."
Dr. Harrison's assessment was efficient and not particularly encouraging. AC joint aggravation. Significant inflammation. Same shoulder, same site, everything Anne had rebuilt over four months now angry and lit up.
"Can I play?" I asked.
"Physically? Probably. Advisably?" He looked at me over his glasses. "You need aggressive treatment. And you need someone who knows this shoulder inside and out."
"Anne."
"Anne. Is she still in town?"
"Through tomorrow."
"I'll call Elite Sports Rehab tonight about extending her contract. She's the only one who's been inside this injury from the beginning."
I got dressed slowly, carefully, and went out to find her.
She was waiting in the corridor.
One look at my face and she stepped forward. "What happened."
"Shoulder."
"Same one?"
"Yeah."
"Let me?—"
"Not here. My apartment."
We drove without talking. I could feel her reading me from the passenger seat — the way I was holding my arm, the angle of my body away from the door. She didn't say anything. She was already working.
At my apartment I pulled off my shirt and sat on the edge of the bed.
She examined it the way she'd examined it the first day in the training room — systematic, thorough, nothing rushed.
Except everything was different now. Her hands on my shoulder knowing every scar and seam of it.
Both of us aware of exactly how much had happened in the space between that first assessment and this one.
"Inflamed," she said quietly. "AC joint. Harrison was right."
"Can I play?"
She didn't answer that. "When did it happen?"
"Third period. Blue line hit."
"How bad was it in the game?"
"Manageable."
"That's not an answer."
"Every time I raised my arm."
She pressed carefully into the tissue and I didn't quite manage to keep the sound in.
"Sorry," she murmured.
"Just fix it."
"I'm going to need more than one session." She sat back. "Liam. I'm flying back to Chicago tomorrow."
"Harrison is calling Rachel tonight. About extending your contract."
She went still.
"Through the playoffs," I said. "However long we last."
A long pause. I watched her work through it — Finn, her mom, the logistics of a life being pulled between two cities.
"Anne. I'm not asking you to choose. I know what I'm asking costs something. But I need someone I have to trust someone working this shoulder, and you're the only person in the world I trust with it."
She looked at me for a moment.
"If I stay I need to go back to Chicago tomorrow. Get Finn settled, pack properly. Back here by Tuesday."
"Okay."
"My mom will have to carry the week. I can fly home on off-days."
"Okay."
"And if Rachel calls me with any hesitation about the extension?—"
"She won't. Harrison is making the case tonight."
She looked at the shoulder again. Back at me.
"Lie back," she said. "I need to work the tissue before the inflammation sets any further."
She worked for thirty minutes.
It was not pleasant. She dug into the joint with the focused precision of someone who had mapped this injury from the inside and knew exactly where the damage liked to hide. I bit down twice. She said sorry once, then stopped saying it and just worked, which was more honest.
By the time she finished the shoulder was aching in a different way — looser, the sharp edge gone, replaced by the deep tired feeling of tissue that had been properly addressed.
"Ice," she said. "Twenty minutes on, twenty off. Three cycles tonight."
"Yes ma'am."
"Don't yes ma'am me. Do it." She sat back on her heels and looked at me. "Range of motion is already better than when you walked in. That's the good news."
"What's the bad news?"
"You're playing Tuesday. In Colorado. Down 0-2. On a shoulder that needs another week of rest." She held my gaze. "So you tell me during warmups if it's not right. You tell me during every intermission. You don't manage this alone and you don't be a hero about it."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
She held my gaze one more beat. Then she lay down beside me, careful of the shoulder, her head against my chest.
I pulled her close with my good arm.
"We're down 0-2," I said.
"I know."
"Three teams in NHL history have come back from 0-2 to win a series."
"Then you'll be the fourth." She pressed her lips to my jaw. "You came back from a torn labrum in four months. You can come back from 0-2."
"Those aren't really the same thing."
"No. But the principle is." She tilted her face up. "You play better when you're fighting uphill. I've watched you for months. You need something to push against."
She wasn't wrong.
I kissed her — slow and careful, aware of every angle — and she made a quiet sound and shifted closer.
"Your shoulder—" she started.
"Is fine as long as I don't move it." I pulled her over me with my good arm. "Which I don't need to."
She looked down at me with an expression that was half clinical assessment and half something else entirely.
"I have ice to apply in twenty minutes," she said.
"Then we have nineteen."
She laughed — low and real — and kissed me again, and for the next while the shoulder and the series and the 0-2 deficit all waited patiently in the hallway where I'd left them.
She flew back to Chicago in the morning.
I had a short practice — Coach keeping us fresh, running systems, nothing that would drain us before the back-to-back in Colorado.
"One game," Coach said. "Get one game and it's a series again. That's all we're focused on."
The room was quiet and hard in the way rooms got when teams had their backs to the wall.
Good.
That afternoon Rachel called Anne. I knew because Anne texted me three words while I was in video review:
Contract extended. Official.
Then, ten minutes later:
Finn asked me tonight why I have to go back. I told him it's because Daddy needs me.
I stared at that for a long time.
What did he say? I typed back.
Her response came a minute later and hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared for.
He said: Of course he does. You always fix everything.
I put my phone face down on the table and stared at the ceiling.
My five-year-old son, who had known me for three weeks, already understood something that had taken me half a season to figure out.
Anne flew back that night. I met her in the hotel lobby, took her bag, kissed her in front of Carter who made a point of looking intensely at his phone.
"How's the shoulder?" she asked.
"Tell me tomorrow after you've worked it."
She nodded. Took my hand. We walked toward the elevator.
Tomorrow we flew to Colorado.
Down 0-2, one bad game away from elimination, my shoulder running on treatment and stubbornness and whatever Anne could wring out of it before Tuesday night.
I'd been in worse positions.
I just couldn't remember when.