Page 60 of Gravity
Machines beep in a slow and steady pulse. There's a ventilator beside his bed, whirring with ahush-shushof oxygen. It flows through a maze of tubing winding up and between his bedrails and across his chest before snaking into a tracheostomy valve implanted at the base of his swollen throat. Bloody gauze sticks out from the sides of the bulky plastic around his tracheostomy hole. His lips are open, parted, and motionless. Above the valve, his neck is violent-aubergine and putrid-emerald. Bruise-black, too, echoing the shape of a puck across the center and sweeping to the left.
Ten steps take me to his side. I'm expecting his eyelids to flutter, for him to smile, for his voice to slide down my spine.Mon coeur, he'd say.Je t'aime aussi, mon coeur.
But he doesn't. He doesn't move. His chest rises and falls with the rhythm of the ventilator, and that's it. He's so, so still.
I take his hand in mine and lift his palm to my cheek.Touch me, please.I want his fingers to curl against my cheek. I want to feel him, to know he's still here, that the man I love is still alive inside this too-still body.
There's nothing.
It's too soon, I try to tell myself. Sedation, surgery. Brain damage. Lack of oxygen.Bryce. Bryce, mon amour. Mon coeur. L'amour de ma vie.The love of my life.
My knees buckle, and I collapse across Bryce's chest and bury my face in the scratchy cotton of his surgical gown, howling, screaming into Bryce's stomach as I fist his bedsheets and punch the mattress. But there's no response. There's nothing, save for the whirr of oxygen, the beep of the heart monitor, and the echo of my sobs in this cold and lifeless room.
* * *
It's late.Sometime after four a.m., I think.
It's been six hours and twenty-one minutes since Dr. Morin brought us to Bryce's side. I count his inhales and his exhales, watch the steady rise and fall of his chest. Listen to thebeep, beep, beepof the heart monitor and thehushof his oxygen. His hand lays in mine, cold and still. Every few minutes, I press my fingers against his pulse, and I count the beats of his heart as I chantI love you, I love youinside my head.
Everyone is here. The whole team is sleeping on the floor of Bryce's room. We're cluttering up the place, but we keep a walkway clear for the nurses who come to check on Bryce every twenty minutes.
Earlier, everyone took turns holding Bryce's hand as they whispered to him. Etienne and MacKenzie spoke in French, Valery in Russian, Slava in Slovakian. Janne in Finnish. The others whispered in English, repeating the stories we share in the dressing room, this time through tears. Memories from past games, when Bryce was their champion, their hero, their shooting star. It's like they were saying their goodbyes.
No. Don't think that. Not for one second.I bring Bryce's hand against my cheek and kiss his knuckles and the tips of his fingers.
Six hours and twenty-three minutes. The sedation should be wearing off.
He'll wake up soon. His eyes will open, and the first thing he sees will be me. I'll be here, smiling down at him before I kiss his palm and press his hand to my heart. He'll look at me and he'll know who I am, and he'll know who he is, and everything is going to be all right. He'll wake up soon. He will.
There’s rustling on the floor. Someone is rolling over. No, someone is getting up. My eyes don't move off of Bryce, though, so only the curses and groans give me any clue about who is stirring. I hear “Esti de calisse de tabernak,” and I know. MacKenzie.
He pulls himself to his feet and winces. His hand is black and blue, and though he iced it earlier, it's swollen now. The skin over his knuckles is split and scabbing. He shakes his hand out, holding it against his chest as he grimaces. Then his eyes find mine, and he lets out a sigh. “Calisse. Have you slept at all?”
I shake my head. How could I close my eyes? I barely trust myself to blink. What if I miss an inhale, an exhale? What if I don't see Bryce's eyelids start to flutter or feel his hand twitch against mine?
There's a chair on the other side of Bryce's bed, opposite the one I'm in. Valery was sitting in it for hours, but he left with a grumble about needing coffee two nurse-checks ago and hasn't returned. MacKenzie sinks into the chair now. He reaches for Bryce's other hand and takes it in his own. “Calisse de crisse,” he whispers. “Bunny…”
I still have Bryce's hand against my cheek, and my lips press light kisses to the callouses on his palm. MacKenzie's gaze drifts across the bed, then sharpens when I breathe in the scent of Bryce’s wrist and kiss his faint pulse.
If the team didn't already know about us, they do now.
“We're together.” My voice is an impression of sound. I kiss Bryce's palm and fold his fingers around the memory of my lips. “I love him.”
“I know.” MacKenzie jerks his chin to the rest of the room. “We know. We've known the whole time.”
For a half-second, my eyes dart to MacKenzie before slipping back to Bryce.
“Bunny is ourcapitane.Non, he is more than that. He is our best friend, our brother…” MacKenzie lets out a slow breath as he lays Bryce's hand on the mattress and covers it with his own. “WeknowBunny.Calisse, we could tell he was heartbroken when he came back from Las Vegas. We knew he'd fallen in love there. We didn't know who he’d given his heart away to, but that didn't matter. We thought it was probably a man, but if he wasn't ready to tell us, he didn't have to. He’d still be our brother whether he did or did not. We told ourselves we would just be there for him, and his broken heart would heal in time.”
He pats Bryce's hand, then bites his own lip, rolling it between his teeth. “But you showed up, and,tout à coup, we knew exactly who shattered our Bunny's heart.”
My eyes are burning. My lungs are burning. I can't breathe, and my vision is starting to fracture, to turn to liquid and split into a kaleidoscopic array.
“We didn't know what to think. Was it good or bad you were here? Was this the start of a love story, or were you grinding up Bunny's broken heart? We had that good game your first night, and we thought, maybe, maybe, this can be good for Bunny. Maybe this is what he needs. Maybe you two could work it out.”
MacKenzie's voice drops. Suddenly, this isn't the joker, the team ruffian, the guy who's always ready with a guffaw and a French one-liner. “But then we saw how he was inagonie, and from where we stood,youwere the one hurting him. We'd decided, after that road series, when we lost every game, you were not going to be an Étoiles for one more day. We were done with you. Valery wanted to break you into tiny pieces and dump you in theFleuve Saint-Laurent, but I saidnon, that was too much effort to waste. We should dump your shit from the back of the plane before we crossed the border to Canada. I didn't care how you left, just that you were gone. All that mattered was that you couldn't hurt Bunny any longer.”
Tears cascade like a rushing river down my cheeks. I bury my soaked face against Bryce's fingers and try to choke back the sobs that are strangling me.I'm so sorry, Bryce.If only I'd figured things out sooner. If only I had realized from the moment we met, the moment he said, “Bonjour,” the moment our eyes brushed each other across that Vegas ice, that he was the love of my life. The man I was destined to fall for, not just as a hockey hero, but as my soul mate. The other half of me.
