Page 97 of Empty Net
"I knew."
"I know."
"I knew and I still..."
The sentence does not finish.
Caleb's hand moves over my back once. Slow. "Still hoped."
There it is. The word I had not let myself use.
Hope.
Stupid. Undisciplined. Necessary.
I make another sound. Louder this time. My body shakes once and then again, and then the control goes in a way I do not recognize. I cry into Caleb's shoulder with my hands fisted in his shirt and my hip aching and the whole room reduced to the fact that he is there and I am being held and I cannot play next year.
I say it again.
"I can't play next year."
"I know."
"I don't know who I am."
"I know."
"Stop knowing things."
His laugh breaks, wet and small. "I'm trying."
I hold him harder.
The grief comes in waves. Not clean. Not noble. Anger first. Then shame at the anger. Then a memory of my father driving the Zamboni and me skating wet circles on fresh ice before the public session. Then Isaac at the blue line. Then the sound of the crowd after my first NHL goal. Then the doctor's voice saying quality of life.
Quality of life.
I hate the phrase so much I say it out loud.
Caleb says, "Terrible phrase."
"Awful."
"Bureaucratic."
"Medical."
"Deeply unsexy."
I laugh into his shirt.
It hurts. Everything hurts. The laugh too. But it arrives, ridiculous and small, and the grief does not reject it.
Eventually we sit on the couch. I do not remember deciding to sit. Caleb gets water. I drink because he hands it to me and because apparently I have become the kind of man who accepts water when devastated.
"Surgery in May," I say.
He sits beside me. Not too close. Close enough. "What did they say?"
