Chapter 12

The crowd roared but not for us. The stands were filled with dark blue and white jerseys despite the fact we were only ten minutes from our home campus. Yale filled these stadiums quick, and that was no surprise to me. They wouldn’t want those dreaded bobcats in their stands when they could have a wall of bulldogs. Sarcasm aside, I was enjoying this game. Almost halfway through the season and I was defending my ninth shut out.

Considering our first game of the season almost ended in a fight, this season had been going amazingly well. There had been no injuries, suspensions, scandals; you name it. Our record was undefeated as well,

Which was adding to everyone’s egos. The best part? Sylvia and Finn were in the crowd booing as I kicked my sister’s employer’s ass.

My heart was pounding in my ears as I watched Beck take the face off with the Yale center, John Velnov. I watched Beck flick his stick, sending the puck to Axel before John even had a chance to try and take it. For a center, Beck never kept the puck for long. Instead of hogging it, he played a quick game. Every possession had purpose and a plan. He dominated the ice without even needing to play rough, but he did anyway like everyone else. Beck just had an aura that kept people away from him, and if they got too close he was able to escape his defenders like a knife through butter.

The more time I spent on the ice with him the more I recalled our games against St. Cloud over the years. They were our biggest competitors speaking in the terms of records, not geography,

And they had always posed problems for us. I wasn’t sure how many games we had lost and won against them, but they had to be about even and sometimes that seemed solely because of Beckett.

Axel took the puck up the ice, dodging his defender and taking a shot at the goal from the left. The puck bounced off the goalies arm, going up into the red metal bar of the goal and bouncing back into the goal off the shoulder of the goalie. Talk about frustration with your own performance; I would not want to be that goalie right now. The referees announced the goal as another face off got ready to go. On this one John won, but Sebastian was up on his left in milliseconds. I saw Seb hit his body against John, sending the puck out of reach as it hit someone’s skate. Zeke, my right defender, swooped in and grabbed the puck before one of the Yale players could get it, launching it down the rink to Melvin, the left winger.

Melvin went to shoot on the goal when the Yale defender snatched it out from Melvin’s possession, dribbling it between his moving stick as he swerved from left to right. He got closer to the goal as I started to lower my body to block the shot. Sebastian couldn’t get to me in time and neither could Melvin, catching us with bad positioning. Beck came up on the side and slammed into the Yale players back, but almost immediately another Yale player crashed into Beck, taking the puck from Beck before he could even really get it. How none of them got a penalty, I don’t know.

The black puck slid across the ice towards me. My eyes darted around the ice as I started to move out of the goal to grab it when John appeared out of no where and snatched it up. I wasn’t far from the goal, but neither was John. I backed back into the goal and lowered my body again, bending my knees a little more as John came at

Me. He was about to take a shot when Melvin, who was moving to block the shot, accidentally got bumped by one of the Yale offensive players, causing John to fall towards me at full speed from a foot away

Things happen fast on ice, so when I say John was moving, he was moving. I tried my best to get out of the way but there was nothing I could do because he had only been a foot away. It happened so fast that all one hundred eighty pounds of him slammed into my body, my head hitting the side of the goalpost as John’s body flipped over mine. Pain blossomed in the back of my neck as the air got knocked out of my lungs, shocking me as I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

I heard the whistle but I was already on my back with my eyes closed, the cold ice bleeding through my clothing and chilling my skin. My inner leg was throbbing up near my crotch, the sharp pain in my hip radiating up and down

My side. I didn’t even know where my stick was, I was so discombobulated.

I gritted my teeth together as I tried to roll onto my left side to get up, instead falling flat onto my back again as the pain shot through my hip. I could here the stadium going silent as someone called for a trainer. The back of my neck was throbbing but no where near as much as my hip.

I didn’t even realize I was rocking back and forth ever so slightly until I heard the sharp stop of two pairs of skates as the goal I had slid into was removed. “Danny, open your eyes. Can you hear me?” Sebastian’s worried voice asked. I forced myself to part my lids despite my pain to see him peering down at me from his knees, looking over my body.

I saw Axel on the same side as Seb where he turned his attention from moving the goal to my body. Beck was on my right, getting on his knees like Seb near my waist. “I can hear you,” I

Managed to get out in a startled voice. I spit my mouth guard out, the black plastic dangling on the cage of my mask where it was attached.

“Danny, they’re getting the doctors,” Seb paused, glancing over his shoulder most likely looking at the men dressed in black pants and button downs with their medical bags and maybe even a gurney. Sebastian’s attention turned back to me. “Danny they’re going to have to look at you. I can’t stop them and neither can you.”

My bare right hand grabbed onto Beck’s arm, gripping the plastic padding like death itself. Only Sebastian knew why I was suddenly panicking, trying to sit up on my own despite all of the pain I was in. Beck and Seb wrapped their own hands around my arms to hold me in place, not pinning me down because there were cameras, but not letting me up. “Danny, it’s going to be okay, just let them take a look and take you to

The locker room,” Beck told me in a soothing voice but it didn’t help despite his best efforts.

My heart was pounding for an entirely different reason now and my breath was heaving. “Seb don’t let them touch me!” I begged, my eyes growing in size and intensity, pleading with everything I was. If those doctors put so much as a hand on me I’d have a mental breakdown on national television.

“Danny, they can’t hurt you. This is not him. Sylvia and Finn are here. I’m sure they will find you. Just relax, I’ll tell coach to let them through. As soon as the game is over I’m there by your side. I promise you. Nothing is going to happen.” I didn’t have time to respond to Seb as he and Beck were pushed aside by the team doctor and two trainers with blue gloves on. Their hands left my arms and were replaced my the trainers. I saw Sebastian say something to the doctor who whispered to the trainer next to him. Immediately

His grip seemed to lighten on my pads.

“What hurts?” The doctor in black asked me, kneeling near my head as I tried to pull of my helmet. He helped me with my glove and helmet, letting my head rest on the cool ice. It was almost calming but not enough.

“Left hip and the back of my neck,” I gritted out between sporadic breaths.

“Do you think you can walk?”

“Yes,” I was not letting them take me somewhere if I couldn’t walk. I’d have a full on panic attack. That god damn Zoloft isn’t doing a damn thing right now. Everything was woozy, going by in a blur as I only focused on the hands near my body. It was like tunnel vision. “Help me up.”

To their credit, all three of them pulled me up with their hands under my armpits and the other trainer helping support my left leg as I got up. When i was on two skates with a doctor and a trainer under each arm, I looked up at Seb, Axel, and Beck with panic in my eyes. “I better see one of you in fifteen minutes,” I rushed out, still panting, adrenaline shaking in my limbs. Coach was already on the ice in his yellow button down with the bobcats logo on it.

“Williams, I want the goalie gear on in 30 seconds. It’s 5-0 and we got 8 minutes. I’m putting the second string in. Riley, are you alright?” Bradley has a lot of powerful people watching making sure he won this, I didn’t blame him for looking stressed out, but nothing could top my stress. Seb was our only back up goalie because the front office wanted more diversely skilled players, so they pulled Seb from defense to put him in goal if I got hurt. I thought it was stupid, but Seb was a hell of a good defender, even if he was no starting goalie.

“No, she’s not. You need to let Sy-“

“No,” Bradley cut Seb off, but not unkindly. “Look,” he turned his attention to me. If he wa swilling to cut his favorite off than he was stressed in more ways than one. “There’s injury protocol. I let your brother or your sister in-law back her and I lose my job and she loses her job. She is an NCAA coach. Neither of us can afford that.”

Seb only needed to glance at my pale face before looking back at coach and practically growling at him. “Unless you want your goalie going from standing with doctors to passed out on the ice in a few seconds, you let them through.”

“No,” I protested weakly, feeling sicker by the second. I tried to put weight on my hip but ended up wincing and almost crumpling to the ground as I did so. It was a good thing the two men under me were strong. “Don’t let Sylvia through.” I wouldn’t let her risk her job to check on me. It wasn’t worth it.

Bradley fought the urge to clench his jaw at Seb while nodding sympathetically at me before glancing at where John was standing to the side with a trainer under his right arm. “You’re more injured. Velnov wants to see you walk off first. Sampson is a captain, he can come with you. Now let’s get moving, I need to know if my player is alright,” he ended up speaking to the doctor at the end. Bradley knew why I was panicking; at least he was trying to be as nice as he could in this moment. Tenderness wasn’t his forte.

My breathing hadn’t calmed and if anything, I was getting more light headed. It warmed my heart that even my biggest competitor was making sure I was alright and waiting for me to leave the ice first, but I couldn’t concentrate on that right now. “I’ll see you in half an hour, Danny. I promise,” Seb told me while locking his dark eyes with my woozy ones before skating to the bench, jumping over the rail to put.

Sure I was alright and waiting for me to leave the ice first, but I couldn’t concentrate on that right now. “I’ll see you in half an hour, Danny. I promise,” Seb told me while locking his dark eyes with my woozy ones before skating to the bench, jumping over the rail to put on his gear.

My eyes turned back to Beck with fear in my winded face. “Let me carry her,” Beck’s deep voice commanded the doctor. They gingerly switched positions, Beck’s much taller frame and stronger arm holding me up on the left where my leg was killing me. I was in so much pain and panic that I almost didn’t even realize the difference. “Let’s go before she passes out.”

The crowds clapping as I was half carried off the ice was the last thing I remembered before losing consciousness.