Page 2 of Yard Sale
When the room was quiet for a second, I let go of my laces and clapped my hands. “Fuck yeah! Let’s go, boys!”
The room erupted into cheers, and that gave me enough time to fix my skate, then grab my stick and wait for Jonah to take the end of it so I could guide him back to the ice.
Halfway to the door, Tucker snagged my sleeve and yanked me close. “I know you’ve got this, bud, but you’re playing tired. Tell me you’re good.”
I knocked my bucket against his forehead a little harder than I might have on another day. “I’ve got this.”
“You fuckin’ beauty. I love your whole face.”
That made me smile, especially when Jonah tapped the back of my helmet with his stick and said, “Let’s go send them home with tears on their cheeks and a little pee in their pants!”
“You’re so weird,” I said, but I was smiling as I headed back down the tunnel and toward the rink.
And I was smiling as I got Jonah back to the net, and then I closed my eyes and let myself feel the choppy, familiar glide of third-period ice.
Unfortunately, my smile lasted only a minute and thirty seconds, because that was all I got after the puck dropped and everything went to shit.
“Stretcher! We need a goddamn stretcher over here!”
I couldn’t tell who was screaming. I think it was Antoine or maybe Matty. Maybe one of the refs? The pain was too great for me to do anything other than lie on my side, holding my knee, which felt bent at a weird angle.
I had no idea what happened. I took a hard check, which wasn’t unusual, but I went down weird. It was like my skates tangled up with each other, and then there was a weird sort of…pop. And a rip.
And now it felt like my knee was the size of a balloon, and I wasn’t convinced I wasn’t dying from how the blood in my veins felt like it was made of fire.
“Let me sit up,” I gasped, pushing my gloves against the ice. It was too wet for me to get any real traction, and I slipped back down.
“Hey. Don’t move, okay?” I turned my head to see the bright red armband letting me know he was Danny, the ref.
“I can’t breathe, Dan. Please,” I begged him.
His hand hit the back of my neck and then carefully pulled my helmet off. That helped. A lot. I took in a deep lungful of air and closed my eyes, letting my temple rest on my arm.
“The stretcher’s coming, okay?”
The loud murmur from the crowd blended with Tucker’s raised voice, and I knew he was pissed because his prosthetics didn’t offer him enough balance to walk out onto the ice.
The next few moments were a blur as I was strapped to a board and stretchered off the ice, but the moment the light around me went dim, I heard the familiar sound of Tucker’s gait, and then his hand slipped into mine as I was rolled down the hallway.
“Hey, bud. Talk to me.”
“It’s my knee,” I told him. I was calmer now, but that made the pain worse since my adrenaline wasn’t firing as hard.
“Fuuuuuck.”
That was definitely a hockey death sentence in more cases than anyone wanted to admit. And it was worse for a fucking blind guy who needed to be able to walk comfortably unaided to use a cane.
Not that it was impossible. Tucker did it all the time.
But I was not Tucker. I didn’t have years of practice, and although I didn’t need my guide cane all the time, I was using it more and more as my eye disease ate up more of my vision.
“Braedon’s out sick tonight,” Tucker was saying, sounding frantic, “but someone’s called Quinn, and he said he can help. Then we’ll go from there, alright? I…fuck, I should get back to the game, but I can send in Lis for me if you need me—”
“No,” I interrupted. “No. Get out there and make those fuckers pay for this.”
I felt lips press against my forehead, and that settled me a bit more as Tucker walked away and I was rolled into the training room and then into what some of the Star Trek nerds dubbed the MedBay.
The room was dark, which was soothing, though I hated when I had no ability to see at all. My disease had progressed far enough that any dim lighting stole all of my vision, but right now, I would take some reprieve from the bright arena lights.
