38. Scottie-girl
Scottie-girl
It’s quiet.
It’s the kind of suffocating atmosphere that makes you want to stop breathing entirely, just so you don’t disturb the jagged edges of grief hanging in the air.
And then, of course, the quiet ends.
“I’m telling you, Nico, the nurse specifically said wing four! We are in wing two! We are currently trespassing, and I don’t have the bail money for this!”
“Shut up, Brick! You’re being loud! You’re gonna wake up the old ones!”
“You’re the one shouting, Nico! You have no internal volume control! You’re like a megaphone with legs!”
I close my eyes for a long, weary second, pinching the bridge of my nose. I stand up and step out into the hallway just in time to see the circus rounding the corner.
It is 3:15 AM, and the hospital wing has decided to host a chaotic, nocturnal convention.
Nico is leading the pack, balancing a literal mountain of grease-stained takeout bags that smell suspiciously of MSG and late-night regrets. Brick has an actual, full-sized plastic cooler strapped to his back, his sneakers thudding against the linoleum like a rhythmic, unwanted heartbeat.
Noah follows right behind them, holding a stack of rough hospital blankets with a bewildered look on his face, while Leo brings up the rear with sleep-deprived, spiky hair and a bag of coffee.
“What,” I hiss, my voice a dangerous blade, “on God’s green earth are you doing here?”
“We heard the news,” Brick says, his voice a ‘whisper’ that could be heard clearly in the next county over. “Family emergency. Code Red. Team member down. We brought the essential supplies.”
“Supplies?” I gesture to the cooler strapped to his back. “Brick, is that beer? Tell me you didn’t bring alcohol into a hospital.”
“It’s Gatorade and protein shakes!” he protests, looking wounded. “And maybe… two IPAs. For medicinal purposes. To balance the electrolytes of the soul, Scottie. It’s science.”
“It’s a hospital, not a locker room!” I whisper-shriek, stepping between them and the room door. “This isn’t a tailgate party! There are people in here who think it’s 1952, and if they see you, they’re going to assume the Cold War just started again!”
Nico steps forward, his usual goofy mask dropping away. He looks past me toward the dimly lit room where Cash is sitting.
“Let us in, Scottie,” he says softly. “We aren’t leaving him in there alone. Not tonight. Not when the ice is this thin. We’re a team. Nobody skates solo.”
I look at them.
These giant, unhinged, beautiful morons.
They look exhausted, rumpled, and entirely too determined.
They look like they haven’t slept, they probably haven’t showered, and they’ve clearly spent the last hour raiding every 24-hour establishment in a five-mile radius.
My resolve, usually as solid as a contract clause, softens into something mushy and entirely useless.
“One at a time,” I warn, though I know it’s a blatant lie as they start to shuffle past me like a herd of affectionate, oversized cattle. “And if any of you wakes up a patient, I will personally trade you to the KHL. Do not test me.”
Within twenty minutes, the small, depressing waiting area outside the room has been converted into a tactical base of operations.
Nico has laid out a spread of cold lo mein, egg rolls, and crab rangoon on the reception desk, the steam rising into the fluorescent lights.
Brick is currently trying to “stealthily” reorganize the facility’s magazine rack because he claims the feng shui is depressing—he’s currently swapping a Reader’s Digest with a National Geographic.
But inside the room, a deeply uneasy silence settles over the guys.
They stand near the doorway, staring at the frail old man hooked up to the monitors, and then at Cash. Now that they are standing here, the truth is staring them right in the face, and it makes the air feel incredibly thick.
Cash is the loudest person on the roster. He is the life of the party, the guy who fills every room with absolute chaos, practical jokes, and non-stop noise.
To realize that someone that loud, someone who seemed to have zero filter, had been keeping a massive, agonizing secret like this entirely to himself makes everyone feel… unmoored.
It’s a side of him none of them can process.
Noah, who has basically been adopted into the group as their new friend while Cash and I were away on the road, shifts uncomfortably.
He awkwardly steps forward.
“Cash,” Noah says, his voice cutting through the quiet, sounding a bit stiff but earnest. “I ran the numbers on recovery rates for this specific cardiac unit. Statistically speaking, the variance is heavily in his favor. So… historically, mathematically, everything is going to be okay. Probably. Actually, definitely.”
The sheer, awkward bluntness of the math breaks the tension. Cash looks up from his chair, his eyes bloodshot, and lets out a tiny, wet laugh.
It’s the first real spark of the old Cash I’ve seen since the phone call.
“Statistically, huh?” Cash mutters, his voice cracked.
Before Noah can double-check his mental spreadsheet, Cash stands up and pulls him into a sudden, fierce hug.
Noah freezes for a split second, his arms pinned to his sides like a startled penguin, entirely unaccustomed to the casual, bone-crushing affection of hockey players.
But then, surprisingly, Noah lets go of the blankets and wraps his arms back around Cash’s broad back, giving him a firm, solid squeeze.
“Yeah,” Noah whispers. “The math doesn’t lie, man.”
Cash taps his back, letting him go with a quiet, grateful nod, and sinks back down.
The guys don’t treat him like a victim, and they don’t walk on eggshells, but there is a profound, heavy reverence in the way they quietly deposit the food and take up defensive positions around the perimeter of the room, guarding his grief without demanding answers.
At 3:45 AM, the double doors at the end of the hall hiss open again.
Callahan walks in first, wearing a sleeping shirt tucked into gray sweatpants, looking like he rolled out of bed and didn’t bother to check the mirror or his sanity. Ivy is right beside him, her hand tightly gripping his arm, her eyes wide with anxiety.
Behind them come Dean and Jenna, with Dean looking like he’s aged twenty years since we left Boston, holding six boxes of donuts and a gallon of coffee.
The moment Callahan crosses the threshold into the room, the entire atmosphere shifts.
His absolute best friend, the man who knew the timing of his glove hand and the exact cadence of his breathing on the ice, had kept this massive, agonizing secret locked away in the dark.
There is no anger in Callahan’s eyes, only a profound, shattering sorrow. He steps across the room, ignoring the boxes of cold takeout.
Cash stands up from his chair, his movements stiff and fragile, looking smaller than I have ever seen him.
When they meet in the center of the room, Callahan doesn’t hesitate.
He reaches out, grabs Cash by the back of his neck, and pulls him into a crushing, fierce embrace.
He locks his arms around Cash’s broad shoulders, burying his face against his shirt, holding onto his goalie with a quiet, terrifying intensity.
Cash collapses into the hold, his fingers burying into the fabric of Callahan’s jacket, his shoulders shaking as the weight of his hidden world finally breaks wide open.
It is a moment full of an unshakeable, devastating love, two brothers standing in the gap where secrets no longer matter.
While they hold each other, Ivy moves directly toward me. She doesn’t say a word; she just opens her arms and pulls me into a tight, quiet hug.
“You did good, Scottie,” she murmurs into my hair. “You brought him back.”
Before I can even exhale against her shoulder, Dean steps up beside us, his hand coming down firmly on my shoulder, a steady, protective weight. Jenna’s arms wrap around both Ivy and me from behind a second later.
It’s overwhelming.
We’ve been gone for two months—living in a tiny, isolated tin box where the only reality was the white line on the asphalt and the heat between Cash and me.
To be dropped straight back into the middle of them like this is dizzying.
On the other side of the bed, Cash’s mom is sitting in a vinyl armchair, looking fragile but deeply moved by the sudden influx of giant, heartbroken athletes. Callahan releases Cash, keeping a steady hand on his shoulder, and turns toward her.
His expression softens into something incredibly tender.
“I am so incredibly sorry for missing the wedding,” she whispers, her voice cracking with the weight of everything she has been managing alone in this hospital while they were celebrating.
Callahan drops to one knee beside her chair, completely disregarding the dirty floor, and shakes his head. He squeezes her hand with a practiced sort of care.
“You don’t ever have to apologize for that,” he says softly. “Family comes first. We are here now.”
It is a ridiculous scene—a retired captain on his knees in a hospital, surrounded by cold lo mein and an offensive amount of Gatorade, comforting a mother while his best friend breaks down behind him.
When Callahan stands back up, Cash immediately sinks down into the space beside me.
He clings to me like a man drowning, his fingers wrapping into the fabric of my hoodie, his face buried deep in the crook of my neck. He refuses to let go, his entire body trembling against mine as he seeks whatever solid ground I can provide.
Across the room, the guys, Dean, and the girls glance over at us. They see the raw, desperate way he is holding onto me, the sheer vulnerability of a man who usually protects everyone else now needing to be held together.
But no one comments. No one makes a joke or points out the tears soaking into my shoulder. They simply look away, offering him the dignity of their silence while remaining an unbreakable perimeter around us.
***
At 5:00 AM, the facility is at its darkest, that pre-dawn hour where everything feels like it’s held together by threads.
Despite the hour, the room feels full of light.
The boys are scattered across the floor on blankets they “borrowed” from the linen closet.
Nico is sound asleep with his head resting on a half-empty bag of donuts.
Leo is staring at the ceiling, whispering power-play stats to himself like a holy prayer.
Noah is sitting cross-legged near the wall, methodically checking the hospital WiFi speed on his phone just to have something to do with his hands.
Cash has let go of his father’s hand long enough to lean back in his chair, though his other arm is still clamped tightly around my waist, pulling me flush against his side. His thumb traces the seam of my sweatshirt in a fast, restless motion.
“I can’t believe they all came,” he whispers. “They have practice in five hours.”
“I can believe it,” I say, leaning my head against his temple. “You’re the anchor, Finny. When the anchor drags, the whole ship moves to find it.”
He stops the moving thumb, burying his hand into the fabric of my clothes, pulling me even tighter if that’s even possible.
“I didn’t know how to tell them, Scottie,” he murmurs. “I didn’t know how to say it out loud. If I said it out loud, it made it real.”
“You don’t have to explain it,” I tell him softly. “They don’t care about the secret. Look at them. They just care about you.”
He shifts, his forehead coming to rest against my neck, hiding himself away from the room for just a second. “Thank God I have you, my Scottie-girl. Don’t leave this chair.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, wrapping both of my arms around his neck, holding him right back. “I’m right here. I’m staying.”
A minute later I hear Cash saying my name, confused.
“Yeah?”
“Nico is currently wearing a stethoscope. Is that a problem?”
I look over.
Nico has indeed woken up and found a stethoscope, and is currently “listening” to a box of leftover pepperoni pizza with a look of intense, grim concentration.
“I’m detecting a very weak pepperoni pulse,” he whispers solemnly to a sleeping Brick. “The crust is failing. We might be too late to save the rangoon.”
“I’ll handle it,” I sigh, though I don’t move. I can’t move. I’m pinned to the spot by the weight of a man I love and the sheer, ridiculous, unshakeable loyalty of the family we’ve built out of scandals and saves.
Suddenly, Cash’s dad stirs.
His eyes flutter open, cloudy and distant, but for a second, they sharpen. He looks around the room—at the pizza boxes, the giant men sleeping on his floor like oversized dogs, and finally, his gaze settles on Cash.
“Finn?” he asks. His voice is clearer than it was three hours ago, the fog momentarily lifting like a curtain.
“I’m here, Dad. Right here.”
The old man looks at the chaos, then at me, then back at his son. A tiny, mischievous glint appears in his eyes—the exact same glint Cash gets right before he does something monumentally stupid.
“Who are all these… incredibly loud people?” he whispers.
Cash laughs—a wet, beautiful, relieved sound that fills the sterile room. “These are my friends, Dad. They’re… they’re the family.”
His dad nods, his gaze landing back on Nico.
“That one,” he points a shaking finger, “that one is definitely a defenseman. You can tell by the forehead. Built like a brick wall, that one. No brains, all shoulders.”
The room erupts in quiet, smothered laughter from the guys who were pretending to sleep.
I look at Cash. He’s watching his dad drift back into a peaceful sleep, his thumb starting that slow, rhythmic stroke against my side again.
“We should probably get them out of here before the morning shift starts and the head nurse has a literal aneurysm,” I whisper into his neck.
“Five more minutes,” Cash says. “I just want to remember this.”
“The pizza or the stethoscope?”
“The feeling,” he says, closing his eyes.
***
6:02 AM
Ivy: You’re so in love with him.