Page 15 of Blind Side
That was how long it took Jamie to pop back up, recover his stick, and skate to the bench under his own power. Four seconds.
He was fine. He'd taken a thousand hits like that in his career. He was already shaking it off, rotating his shoulder, making a joke to Eriksson on the bench.
Four seconds was also how long it took me to experience something I had no professional framework for.
My hands went numb inside my gloves. It was the adrenaline-numb of identifying a threat and responding before the brain could intervene. My vision narrowed to the point of impact and stayed there even after Jamie was up and skating. My stomach dropped entirely disproportionate to what had happened.
A hockey player got hit during a hockey game. It happened. This was the sport. I'd watched hundreds of hits. I understood bodies and ice and the physics of collision.
This was not detachment.
This was four seconds of pure, animal terror, bypassing every rational system I'd spent my life building and went straight to a place in my chest.
I sat on the bench and recovered my breath. I watched Jamie Hayes joke with Eriksson about the hit while my hands slowly regained feeling inside my gloves.
Backup goalie math. I'd been doing it for years. The formula accounted for starts and save percentages, contract values and career trajectories. It never accounted for the way your body responded when someone you loved got hurt in front of you.
Someone you loved.There it was. Someone I loved had gotten hit. I had experienced four seconds of terror. Now I was sitting on an NHL bench pretending to watch a hockey game while my pulse slowly returned to normal.
I looked at my hands.
They were goalkeeper's hands, thick-knuckled and tape-calloused, designed for exactly one thing. I'd spent my entirecareer training them to react without thought, to process information at the speed of a slap shot, and to respond before consciousness could interfere. Tonight they responded to Jamie Hayes hitting the boards as involuntarily as they responded to a puck.
The Storm won 4–2. Jamie got a point.
He was fine.
Back at the hotel in our room, the post-game ritual was as familiar as anything in my life—room service ordered and jackets tossed on the desk chair, shoes kicked off, and the slow unwind coming down from the adrenaline of competition.
Jamie sprawled on the bed. He was still in his travel suit from the arena, his tie loosened and his shirt untucked. The lamplight was warm against the white sheets.
"Good game," I said.
"That hit in the third rattled my fillings." He rolled his shoulder experimentally. "Their kid can skate. I'll give him that."
"You didn't see him coming."
"I saw him coming. I chose the pass."
"Over self-preservation."
"The pass was a primary assist. Self-preservation doesn't show up on the scoresheet." He grinned. The grin faded into something softer as the adrenaline finished draining. "You look tense."
"I'm a goalie. I'm always tense."
"You're more tense than usual. You've been more tense than usual on this trip."
He was watching me with that warm, perceptive attention. He was focused entirely on me.
"It was a good game," I said again. Repetition was safer than honesty.
"It was. You know what was weird? I could feel you watching me from the bench."
I went still. "You could feel me watching you?"
"I was working the boards and I just—I knew. I could feel your eyes on me." He said it casually. "You watch differently than other people."
"I'm a goalie," I said again. It was becoming a deflection pattern he was going to notice if I used it a third time. "Watching is my job."
