Chapter 31 #2
The next day, I send my parents on another takeout run.
Winter is sitting crisscross applesauce next to me, working on an assignment.
The only time she’s not here is when visiting hours are over, and yesterday she went to hockey practice, on my order.
Her professors have given her permission to work remotely, unless it’s a seminar, until the end of the week.
“I want to see the video.”
She sighs. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Noted. I still think I need to see it.”
She stares at me, and I stare at her. Her lips are pursed, and her eyes are tired.
It’s been a rough week. My parents want me to recover in Pearl Lake when I’m released.
I would prefer to stay in Chicago where Winter is.
Also, as cool as my parents are, and as awesome as our relationship is, my mother will smother the fuck out of me if I come home.
“It’s now or later, Snowflake. One way or another, I’m going to see the video.” I weigh my words carefully and admit, “I’d rather it be with you.”
“Okay.” Her jaw tics, but she flips open her laptop. It takes her a minute to cue it up. Her hands shake as she sets it on the tray that holds my water, a textbook, and a box of tissues.
“If it gets to be too much, just tell me.” She hits play.
The video starts at the beginning of our routine.
We’re in sync, and like Winter said, we’re nearly flawless, everything smooth and carefully executed.
The first combination is perfect, but then the shift happens, and I see exactly where it all goes wrong.
How it all goes wrong. The jump itself is fine, and at first Adele is a perfect, balanced arc in the lift.
But what she does next doesn’t make sense.
The lift should be smooth, but she drops her head and her hand, and at the same time lowers her leg a few inches.
I adjust, but the damage is done. A sense of déjà vu hits me.
Adele has done this before. I remember the feel of her weight shifting in my hands, but usually it was just a minor adjustment.
It’s different this time, and much more obvious.
She drops her hand and her leg at the same time.
It’s calculated and intentional. But this time the correction on my part wasn’t enough to stop us from falling.
I’m not prepared for how violently I go down, how even as we’re heading toward the ice, I try to break her fall. And I do, successfully, but when she pulls her knees in, it’s the perfect storm for even more damage.
I was wearing dark gray sweats. They don’t camouflage the quickly spreading stain on the fabric. And then Winter is sprinting across the ice, falling to her knees, and shrugging out of her coat, shouting at Adele as she tosses her phone to her.
A pool of red spreads across the ice under me, and Winter whips her belt free and uses it as a tourniquet. I close the laptop, cutting off the sound of my scream. My stomach rolls as reality hits me. My partner almost ended my life.
It makes me question a lot of things. First, I imploded a partnership of four years by getting romantically involved. Now my partner almost killed me because… I don’t know why. Maybe I’m the common denominator. Maybe the problem is me.
“I would have died if you weren’t there,” I whisper, looking up at Winter. I’ve heard that several times over the past few days, but seeing it firsthand? How much blood there was. How fast it all happened. That’s a mindfuck I’m unprepared for.
A tear slides down her cheek, and her smile is tremulous. “But I was, so you’re here.”
I inhale relief and exhale the pain of it all. “Nothing will ever be the same, will it?”
She shakes her head. “You can’t beat death and view the world through a lens that no longer exists.”
“I’m never going to skate with a partner again.” The words sound wrong and right at the same time.
“Not with Adele.” Her chin trembles, and the sadness in her eyes tells me more than her words.
There’s another piece of this everyone has been dancing around. When they come to change the dressings on my wound, someone is always here to keep me occupied. “How bad is the damage?”
Her gaze drops. “I don’t know. It’s too early to say.”
“That sounds like some real bullshit, Winter.”
She lifts my hand to her lips. “Why are you making me do this with you?”
“Because you’re the only person I trust to tell me the truth, even if it’s going to suck.” I’m right too. My parents will sugarcoat it. Lovey will downplay it and say everything will work out. But Winter won’t.
Her tears land on the sheets beside our clasped hands.
“It’s that bad?” My voice is a whisper.
“I honestly don’t know, but it’s a really deep laceration.
You were in surgery for hours. Tendons and muscles were severed, and some nerves, but they reattached everything, as far as I know.
It was touch and go, and I think the focus was on keeping you alive first, and putting you back together second.
The healing process will be long.” She sighs.
“These are things I’ve heard the doctors say, but I don’t have any timelines or definitives.
I have pieces and not the whole picture.
” She flattens my palm against her cheek, her eyes full of pain.
“I don’t want to tell you lies, BJ, but I don’t know what your future on the ice is going to look like.
I’ll be here, though, to help however you need. ”
I let that sink in.
All the things I’ve been working toward are no longer within reach. They’ve shifted, moved to a distant and indistinct future. For the first time in my life, I feel untethered. Uncertain. Like my path has been erased.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more answers,” she whispers.
“Don’t apologize. I needed to hear it, and it’s better coming from you than anyone else.”
The first time I see the damage, I vomit and then faint. The second time I’m better prepared, but it’s still a level of horrifying that’s hard to handle.
I’m stuck in the hospital for a week. The first few days weren’t that bad because I spent most of them asleep.
But now that the fog has lifted, I’m stuck in my head, replaying the events that brought me here—especially at night when I’m struggling to sleep.
That’s the hardest, being alone with my thoughts, questioning everything.
Feeling like this is my fault, like I should have seen it coming.
“I fucking hate being here,” I snap on the morning of the seventh day.
Winter had to go back to class in person today, and I miss her. I miss her presence. I miss her face and her voice and her sass and the smell of her shampoo.
“You want out of here, you know how to make it happen,” Dad says with an arched brow.
“It fucking hurts.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He leans forward in his chair and levels me with a challenging stare.
I want to tell him he has no idea how bad the pain is, but he sort of does. I know this because the whole teach-me-how-to-aim thing and using a urinal for the first time is some weird father-son rite of passage and I’ve seen his scar.
“Look, I know how difficult this is, son, but you make it to the bathroom on your own, and the doctor will sign the release papers. Then you can be in your own house, with your own bathroom, and you don’t have to eat shitty hospital food.”
“Fuck. Fine. Let’s do this.”
“I’ll get the crutches.”
Sitting up is fine. Getting my legs over the side of the bed sucks, yet I can breathe through the pain. But I stand up and sit down three times because of the wave of nausea and dizziness it produces.
“You got this, Randall. Just take it one step at a time, okay?” Dad says.
I pause between each step, worried I’ll pass out from the pain. Halfway there, I want to quit. Twice I almost puke. But I make it to the fucking bathroom.
Reality comes crashing in when I see my reflection.
I’m standing in the hospital bathroom with my dad, crutches under my arms for support.
I’m covered in a sheen of sweat from the exertion, my head swimming from the pain.
My beard is a gross mess, and my hair is greasy.
I probably stink. All I’ve had for the past seven days are wet-washcloth baths because I haven’t been able to stay upright long enough to shower.
My dad is right in front of me, ready to catch me if I fall. “Just breathe, son. Just breathe through it.”
“What if I can’t ever skate again?” The question has been floating out there like a lost balloon.
“It’s early, Randall. You’re in the worst of it, and we won’t have answers to that for a while.” His tone is gentle, his words unsteady.
“Adele took my fucking future. I was supposed to do what Mom couldn’t.” My vision blurs. I’ve been fighting this emotion for a while now, not wanting to give in to debilitating sadness. But it’s been waiting, ready to sink its claws in.
“Hey.” Dad’s hands come to rest on my shoulders, and his eyes reflect every emotion I feel—sadness, understanding, fear, and a helplessness I assume can only be understood when you’re a parent trying to hold your child together while his world inverts.
“If that’s what you want, we will do the work to try to get you there.
But you need to focus on your own goals, and not the ones you think you need to attain for someone else, okay?
We’re not going to conquer the world today.
We’re just going to take it one step and one breath at a time. ”
I can’t form words, and I can’t hold myself up anymore.
He wraps his arms around me.
“It’s all right to fall apart, Randall. You’re safe to mourn what should have been.”
So I do.