Page 38 of Tough Call

Out came Madars, giving me a little zing of excitement. He was locked in, cycling along with his teammates as Sweden’s skaters looked like they were ready to die. Latvia was closing in, tightening their circle and passing faster and faster while the crowd shouted at them in multiple languages to fucking shoot already.

A Swedish blueliner tried to stop a pass going to Madars, but he missed it by a mile. Madars whipped the puck back the way it had come, past the exhausted player, and it landed right on his teammate’s tape. One dagger of a one-timer later, the goal light came on.

All of Latvia’s fans—myself included—flew from our seats and roared as the players celebrated the goal.

A 4-3 lead with two minutes left in the second and a whole period of regulation left to play. I fucking loved games like this.

Sweden did a line change but Madars’ line stayed out. After a center ice faceoff, the action moved toward Latvia’s zone. One of Latvia’s blueliners knocked a Swede off the puck, though, and he passed to Madars. Madars and one of his linemates broke away, tearing across the neutral zone while the crowd roared.

A Swedish player caught up with Madars before he could shoot. Madars managed to pass to his linemate, but he and the Swedish player continued past the goal. Madars tried to go around behind the net. The other skater—I wasn’t sure what he tried to do, but the two of them collided awkwardly, tangled and toppled hard against the boards.

I grimaced. Even with protective gear on, that shit could still hurt.

Please don’t bang him up too much, asshole. I need him in working order.

My own thought almost drove a laugh out of me, but then my breath stopped in my throat.

Because Madars was still down, and he wasn’t getting up. The player who’d collided with him was standing over him and frantically waving for help.

“Oh shit,” I whispered into my gloved hands. “C’mon, Madars. Get up. Get up!”

He didn’t. A trainer hurried out onto the ice. Behind him, someone who I assumed was the team’s doctor also started making his way across the sheet.

Two players and a linesman were crouched beside Madars. I could see his skates, but that was it. Was there blood? Was he conscious? What even happened?

The replay showed the crash from a different angle. It wasn’t a dirty hit or anything—not even a hit at all, really—just a collision. They’d tumbled over each other, and they’d landed in a messy heap.

The other player had gotten up, and he’d immediately started waving for help.

Madars… hadn’t moved.

There was a brief clip of him on his side, agony written all over his face as he clutched his right leg. I sighed with a little bit of relief. He was conscious and apparently able to move. That ruled out a lot of scary things that could happen during a crash like that. Not all of them, but the very, very worst of them.

The arena was eerily quiet. I always hated when a player was down—even when I was on the ice with them, there was precious little I could do. But at least when I was down there, I could see them. I could hear what the trainers and teammates and doctors were saying.

This many rows back from the glass, all I could do was wait like everyone else in the stands. Holding our breath. Not making a sound. Just… waiting.

After what seemed like days, two of his teammates carefully helped him to his feet. The crowd applauded as all the players—both teams—tapped their sticks in a show of support. Madars leaned hard on his teammates, not putting any weight at all on that right skate, but he lifted his head and waved to the crowd.

Relief hit me so hard, I almost tumbled from my chair. He was obviously in pain, and there was potential for a major injury—the kind that could end a season or even a career.

But he was upright.

He was lucid.

All I could do now was hope I hadn’t just watched the end of his career.

CHAPTER 14

MADARS

I made it out of the arena by leaning hard on my teammates and the medical staff, but the team doctor immediately ordered me onto a stretcher. After a cursory—and painful—examination of my knee, I was being wheeled out by the medical staff, heading to a hospital for an MRI.

That was when my day managed to get even worse. I was already in a ton of pain, but as the gurney turned a corner, I saw a flash of blue. A Vancouver jacket. The scout—the one who’d approached me the other day—gave me an apologetic look, but he didn’t say a word. He just turned his attention back to something on his phone.

My heart had already sunk when I’d felt that familiar pop in my knee. Now it hit the floor. Fuck. I’d known as soon as I went down that I wouldn’t play again for the rest of the Games. Maybe even the rest of the season. And I knew as soon as I saw that NAL scout that he wouldn’t be calling me any time soon. Nobody from the League would be.

I’d gone down when my team needed me. I was injured when the NAL was scouting me. Fuck. Fuck! And it felt an awful lot like the same injury that had made every NAL team lose interest in me when I was a free agent.