Page 116 of Hat Trick

“Thanks.” I drop onto the leather and stretch out my legs, massaging my right thigh. “What’s up?”

“How’s you’ve been?”

“Busy. I, ah, am working with the Stars in a sort of coaching capacity now. Coach got approval from the league for me to be a team official instead of the roster for the time being, so I don’t get to hide out in the tunnel anymore. I’m behind the bench now.”

“Are you enjoying that role?”

“More than I thought I would,” I admit. “It’s nice to feel like I have a purpose, and it’s even nicer to feel like I have a purpose that involves hockey. I go to practice. I talk about lineups and help my teammates run drills. I know it’s not going to be a long-term thing, but I’m falling back in love with the sport I spent weeks grieving because I thought I lost it. There’s a little bit of whiplash.”

“That’s understandable. You’re nervous it’s a Band-Aid that will get pulled off and wondering what happens if and when the wound is open again.”

“How the fuck are you so good at this?”

“My student loans don’t let me benotgood at this.” He rests his foot on his knee and makes a note in his folder. “Let’s talk about your physical health. No more assistive devices. No more limping. When you walked in here, if I didn’t know you had a prosthetic, I never would’ve guessed you were using an artificial leg. I take it you’ve been going to your rehabilitation sessions like the team asked?”

“Yeah. I know I was stubborn in the beginning, but turns out, if you do something you’re supposed to do, you get better at it.”

“Wow.” Dr. Ledlow smiles. “Funny how that works.”

“Sucks, honestly.” I snort. “I’m learning to be comfortable. I’m adapting to this new body of mine. I still struggle occasionally when I don’t have my prosthesis on. Seeing myself in a mirror is… hard. Especially as someone who’s constantly seeing pictures and videos of what they looked like before.” I reach for the glass of water he set out for me and take a sip. “I’m not sure it will ever be normal.”

“It might not be, but that doesn’t take away from the progress you’ve made. You can be comfortable but not content. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.” He underlines something on the document in his lap and looks up at me. “We’ve gone a couple months without talking about the heavier stuff because our conversation hasn’t led to it, but given our interactions when you first started meeting with me, I’d be remiss if we didn’t spend a minute or two talking about?—”

“My mental health,” I say, and he nods. “It’s up and down. In the last few months, it’s been more up than down, but the downs hit me out of nowhere.”

I rub my jaw, thinking about last night and how I couldn’t get my sneaker on my prosthetic foot. It took me twenty minutes and a shoehorn before I finally chucked it at the wall and gave up. There’s the mood I was in last week, a beautiful January day whereeverythingpissed me off: the sandwich I had for lunch, how scratchy my sheets felt against my leg, the pillow that didn’t help with the crick in my neck.

There’s no rhyme or reason for any of it. Some days the irritation and depression last for twenty minutes. I’ll take a bath, and it’ll disappear. Other times it stretches for hours, and I turn off my phone, lie in bed, and stare at the wall. The only good thing during those rough stretches is Lexi. I can always count on her to send me a funny text. I’ll get a meme that compliments my dick or a selfie of her in the athletic trainer’s room, Liam flipping off the camera behind her.

She’s a good friend.

“Some people think of recovery as a straight, flat line. A direct route from point A, which is the onset of grief, and B, which is a new normal. That’s not true. It’s more like rolling hills and valleys. There will be highs and lows, but they lead to the same place. And sometimes, you’ll have a flat line for months before a bump in the road shows up and you have to climb up another hill.”

“I have seventy more years of going uphill? I can’t wait.”

“It can always be worse. You could have eighty.”

I bark out a laugh. “Touché, Doc.”

“We have to address the elephant in the room.” Dr. Ledlow caps his pen and steeples his fingers under his chin. “Before, your depression was bringing on suicidal thoughts. After one of our first sessions, your mother pulled me aside to tell me she found a bottle of medication in your bathroom with a substantial amount of pills missing. I’ve been doing this long enough to know it’s easy to mask the pain by smiling and pretending like everything is fine on the surface when you’re battling an army of demons internally. Hell, I’ve done it myself. Do me a favor for a second. Forget I’m your doctor. Forget I’m a medical professional. Right now, I’m a man asking another man how he’sreallydoing, because we don’t get asked it enough.”

I clear my throat and lean forward in my chair. I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that. Has anyone asked my teammates that? Like,reallyasked them? I probably should. It seems pretty important.

“I’m not going to lie. I was having those thoughts,” I say quietly. “Frequently. That pain—physically and mentally—was… I can’t even describe it.” I turn my head and stare out at the window. “Every day I was in that hospital, I thought howeasyit would be to just end it all. It’d free up a bed for someone who would actually recover. My parents wouldn’t have to give up weeks of their life to help me move around my apartment because I couldn’t fucking walk. Would I have gone through with it? We’ll never know. I’m not… that’s not something I want to do anymore. I’m not kidding when I say the hard days are stillso fucking hardno matter how much I smile around my friends, but I’m hanging in there. I’m reading again. I picked up a paintbrush for the first time in forever. I’m finally starting to see who I could be without hockey, and I’m trying to find something new to live for after the greatest thing in my life was ripped away from me. I realize there are people who would miss me, and I’d miss them.”

“Your parents? Your teammates?”

“And other people.”

“Ah.” Dr. Ledlow smiles. “A girl or a guy.”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “A girl.”

“Want to tell me about her?”

“We’re friends. All we’re ever going to be is friends, and I’d rather have her in my life as that than not have her in my life at all.”

“You care about her,” he says.

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