8. KAI
KAI
Wrong Side of the Glass
Eleven people show up to watch me leave the hospital.
My parents, Mira, four teammates, two nurses who have been managing my medication schedule for weeks, a physical therapist who makes me promise to keep up my exercises, and Dr. Harold who shakes my hand and tells me to call if anything changes.
I scan the hallway twice before I catch myself doing it.
Ava isn't here.
I don't know why I expect her to be. She made herself clear last night.
My lips still feel the phantom pressure of her mouth, the sharp inhale she made when I pulled her against me, the way she kissed me back without restraint.
Then she shoved me away and left.
I don't want this.
She said that while her pulse was hammering against my fingertips. I felt it in her throat when my mouth was on her neck.
But she left. And she's not here now.
"Ready?" Dad asks, hand on my shoulder.
"Been ready for weeks."
Mira takes the bag of clothes. Mom takes my arm, which I don't need but don't refuse.
Wyatt carries the hockey-stick balloon, which has lost most of its helium and now drifts at waist height like a sad, deflated flag.
He holds the string solemnly. "We should retire this balloon's jersey."
"Put it in the trash," I say.
"Heartless."
The sunlight outside the hospital entrance is blinding. I haven't been outdoors for so long, the brightness hits me like a check I didn't see coming. I squint, steadying myself against the door frame.
Los Angeles smells different outside the hospital. Exhaust, warm asphalt, something flowering nearby. My lungs expand fully for the first time in weeks.
Dad drives. Mom sits in the back with me like I'm twelve and recovering from a fever. I let her.
My phone sits in my lap, screen dark.
No messages from Ava.
At the penthouse, Mira has already set up the guest room for herself.
There's food in the fridge, fresh towels in the bathroom, a stack of books on the nightstand that she picked based on what she thinks I'd like.
She's probably right. She knows me better than I currently know myself.
I stand in the living room, looking at the floor-to-ceiling windows, the furniture. Everything is familiar and foreign at the same time.
"Dr. Harold's discharge notes," Mira says from beside me. "No skating for at least three more weeks. Light cardio only. No contact, no high-intensity anything. Follow up in ten days."
"I heard her the first time."
"I'm repeating it because you have a documented history of ignoring medical advice."
She's not wrong.
I last two days before I drive to the team facility.
I'm not planning to skate. I'm not stupid.
I just need to see the ice. Smell it. Hear the sound of blades cutting and pucks hitting boards.
The hospital stripped me of everything that makes sense to me. I need to stand in a place where the world operates on rules I understand.
By the time I get there, the parking lot is half full. Practice is already underway. The security guard at the entrance recognizes me. He stands straighter, a little startled.
"Captain. Good to see you."
"Good to be here."
The hallway to the rink is filled with cold air. My chest loosens for the first time in days.
I push through the doors to the viewing area above the ice. The glass stretches across the full rink, observation seating empty except for a couple of staff members reviewing footage on a laptop.
Below me, the team runs a neutral zone drill. Brennan's whistle cuts through the noise every now and then.
Wyatt takes the puck wide, cuts inside. Too wide. He's cheating to his forehand, leaving the backside exposed. A defenseman reads it and strips him clean.
"Tuck it in," I mutter. "You're giving away the angle."
Nobody hears me. I'm thirty feet above the ice behind soundproof glass.
I sit down. Stand up. Sit again.
Easton cycles through the offensive zone, calls for the puck from the half-wall. Jordan feeds it tape to tape. Easton shoots high glove, beats the goalie.
Good. The release is faster than I remember. He's been working on it.
Brennan blows the whistle. Line change. Theo lumbers to the bench. He grabs a water bottle and squirts it without looking, half of it hitting his beard.
They reset for a five-on-five. I lean forward.
The opposing unit sets up in a 1-3-1 forecheck. Our center takes the draw, wins it back to Jordan. Jordan moves it to Theo along the boards.
Theo holds too long.
"Move it. Move it up." I'm on my feet. "Wyatt's open on the weak side."
He doesn't move it. The forechecker closes, forces a turnover. The puck squirts free and the other unit transitions up ice.
I slap the glass with my palm.
"That's a two-on-one if you move it on time."
Nobody flinches. Nobody turns. They can't hear me and wouldn't see me if they looked up because the glass reflects the rink lights.
The drill resets. I stay standing, arms crossed, tracking every shift change, every missed assignment, every hesitation.
When Wyatt loses an edge on a crossover and nearly wipes out a defenseman, I shake my head.
"Sharpen your blades, kid."
When Jordan pinches at the wrong time and gets burned on the backside, I take two steps left like I'm covering the point myself.
When Brennan runs a power play set and nobody rotates to the bumper position, I call it out loud: "Bumper's empty. Somebody fill the bumper."
I'm pacing the observation area like it's a bench. Hands on the glass, leaning, pulling back, shifting my weight. Reading the ice the way I've read it since I was a teen.
My feet move on instinct, mirroring what I'd be doing down there.
Twenty minutes of this before I stop.
My reflection stares back at me in the glass. A man in street clothes and sneakers, hands pressed flat against a barrier, talking to a room that can't hear him.
I drop my hands.
Brennan blows the whistle. The team stops running drills. The pucks have stopped hitting the boards with their familiar sharp crack.
And I'm up here watching.
The walk to the locker room is automatic. My legs carry me down the corridor without thinking. The smell hits first: sweat, tape adhesive, the sharp chemical bite of equipment sanitizer. Then the noise.
Wyatt's voice bounces off the concrete walls before I even open the door.
"...and then Theo tried to deke, which was like watching a grizzly bear try to parallel park..."
Laughter. Sticks clattering. The hiss of shower steam.
I push through the door.
The room goes quiet for exactly one second. Then it erupts.
"Cap!" Wyatt vaults off the bench. "You're here. Are you skating? Please tell me you're skating."
"I'm not skating."
"But you're here. That counts. Theo, he's here."
Theo glances up from unlacing his skates. His blue eyes find mine, steady and warm.
"Good to see you, Kai."
Jordan lifts a hand from across the room. Cole calls out a quick, "What's up, Cap?" while Dmitri gives me a nod from where he's stripping off his gear.
Camden looks up from his phone. "You voluntarily came back to this?"
"Don't know what got into me. Must've actually missed you assholes."
Easton's at his stall, peeling tape off his stick. He doesn't look up, but he shifts over to make room on the bench beside him. The invitation is silent and specific.
I sit.
The room resumes its rhythm around me.
Wyatt launches into a play-by-play of a goal he scored in last week's game, complete with sound effects. Theo corrects him on every detail. Someone throws a roll of tape at Wyatt's head and misses.
They move around me with the ease of men who share this space daily. Inside jokes I'm not part of. References to games I haven't seen. A shorthand built over years I can't remember.
Wyatt drops beside me, still in half his gear, and nudges my shoulder.
"I saw practice from up there," I say.
"How did I look?"
"You're cheating to your forehand on the entry. You did it four times. The backside was open every time."
He blinks. "I thought I cleaned that up."
"You didn't."
He grins. "Still coaching from the press box. Classic Cap."
The nickname settles on me like a jersey that doesn't fit. They call me captain, but I don't feel like one.
Brennan appears in the doorway.
"Kai. To my office in five minutes."
The meeting is short. He tells me the same things Dr. Harold told me: rest, patience, incremental progress. He says the team's holding steady without me, which is meant to be reassuring but isn't.
"When you're cleared, we'll build you back into the lineup gradually."
"I don't want to be built in gradually."
"That's not your call."
"It should be."
His expression doesn't change. "Come watch practice whenever you want. Stay off the ice until your doctors say otherwise. That's not a suggestion."
I drive home in silence. The radio stays off. My hands grip the wheel at ten and two, the way I've held a stick my whole life. Left hand high, right hand low, ready to control whatever comes next.
Except nothing comes next.
The penthouse is empty. The afternoon light falls across the living room floor in wide, warm bands. Mira left a note saying she’s gone out to buy groceries.
I sit on the couch, stand up then walk to the kitchen. Open the fridge. Close it.
The city stretches below the windows, indifferent to the fact that I have nowhere to be and nothing to do.
Hockey was the answer to every question I've ever been asked. What do you do? Hockey. Who are you? Another hockey answer. What comes next? The next game, the next win.
Without it, the questions don't have answers.
Now, I have nothing else to do.
Before I think about it properly, I pull out my phone.
My thumb hovers over Ava's name. She told me she doesn't want what I'm offering. She pushed me away and walked out.
But she also kissed me back hard enough to make me forget I was standing in a hospital room. That part keeps playing on a loop.
I hit call before I can talk myself out of it.
Three rings.
"Kai." Her voice is guarded.
"You weren't at the discharge."
A pause. "I know. That's because I already said goodbye."
"That wasn't a goodbye. That was a retreat."
Silence. Then a sharp exhale. "Did you call just to pick a fight?"