Page 66 of Gravity
Our days settle into a routine.There is the business of caring for Bryce and his injuries, and there is also the business of recovery. Mornings of taking care of his needs transition into our workouts. I do the same routines as Bryce, stopping to breathe alongside him, to hold my oxygen deep in my lungs, and to center myself in the middle of our stretches and weights.
He comes with me to practice. Going to the rink requires special care, and he has to wear a Humid-Vent over his tracheostomy valve to warm up the cold air from the arena.
He stays off the ice when the team is on. There's too much risk of even an inadvertent injury. Our whole lives, skates have meant sticks, which mean pucks, which mean we play. And as devotees of hockey, we can't turn off the need to play with all of our hearts. A bump or a collision could mean disaster for Bryce this early on, so he sits in the stands and watches. Jacques joins him, and they talk—Jacques speaking, Bryce texting—about his healing and his home workouts and how he's feeling.
Eventually, Jacques clears Bryce for a gentle skate.
Everything reverses that afternoon: Bryce takes the ice alone while we hang along the boards, watching him as we cheer and applaud.
He is like a bird taking flight after a broken wing. Joy washes over him, followed by relief, and then, tears. He skates an endless loop from goal to goal, his skates carving deep in the fresh ice in crossovers and switches and tight turns. Jacques stops him, takes his pulse, checks his breathing. Then he claps him on the shoulder and sends him back out to skate some more.
I'm allowed to join him after a few minutes, and we skate together like we're teenagers, holding hands and making loops around center ice. Someone pulls out their phone and starts playing love songs, but instead of it being funny, it feels right. I pull him closer, he wraps his arm around my waist, and we skate for two love songs with his cheek against my shoulder and mine resting on his hair.
Every night, we call his family. It was nearly a disaster the first time we tried to speak to Bryce's family on a video call in the hospital. His father and mother speak only French, and his brothers have a pop culture understanding of English. I only know the romantic parts of the language, and I easily get lost in the upriver Quebecois accent. Bryce's father was frantic, with furious rapid-fire French questions coming through the phone. Bryce couldn't speak, and I couldn't understand, and the only way we got through to them was when Bryce started holding up handwritten notes for them to read across the screen.I'm okay, Bryce told them.I'm going to be okay.
We were on the hospital bed together, and I had my arm around Bryce, so naturally, there were questions about who I was and what I was doing. Bryce closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and wrote,Il est mon copain. He drew an arrow that pointed toward me when he held up the note.
There was surprise and silence, and then Bryce's father asked, “Il prend soin de toi?”
Oui, Bryce wrote. He underlined the word three times.Très très oui.
Now, I can hold my own for a few brief talks. “Bonjour, Monsieur Michel!” I say when the call connects. “Comment ça va?”
“Ça va bien!” his father, Leo, says. Leo is beaming through the video screen, and looking at him feels like I'm looking into my future. Leo’s face has the same long lines as Bryce, the same exquisitely French features, aged and matured after a life of happiness and hard work. “Comment va mon fils?”
Bryce is beside me, and he takes over the call by holding up his paper scribbled in marker.Très bien, Papa!
One night, Bryce pulled out his guitar, and on the other end of the line, Leo grabbed his, and they played a duet purely from memory while I held the phone. Then Leo sang as they played another song together, and when it was done, Bryce was sobbing. “Je t’aime, mon fils. Je suis si fier de toi,” Leo said.
Tonight, Leo tells Bryce a rambling story, something I can't keep up with. Leo's raspy, smoke-stained voice lulls me, though, and I stroke my fingers through Bryce hair and hold him against my chest as Bryce raises handwritten notes for his father. Eventually, they wish each otherbonne nuitand sayà demainand blow each other kisses through the phone.
After the call, we get ready for bed, reversing our morning routine. Bryce's feeding lines are flushed and cleaned, and we set up an IV bag on the pole by the bed for the night. I shave Bryce, slowly and tenderly, to keep his face and his neck, and the area around his tracheostomy, smooth. Growing playoff beards for good luck may be a league-wide superstition, but Bryce has to stay neat. We've all decided to go beardless in support. After all, how lucky can a superstition be if every team in the playoffs stops shaving and every team—but one—ends up losing the Cup?
I clean his cannula and change his dressings, and rub balm into his skin around his nose and his neck where there is irritation from the feeding tube and his tracheostomy valve.
He kisses me when we're done and mouths the wordsmerci beaucoupagainst my cheek.
“Tu es mon amour,” I say, and kiss him back.
We sleep tangled together, him in my arms, our bodies connected from head to foot. He is a cat again, always trying to press closer, to find places where we can trade molecules and atoms and slide a little more into each other's hold. He is warm, and alive, and he's here. I stay awake at night after he's fallen asleep to revel in the simple joy of having him snuggle closer as he throws his thigh across mine.
* * *
The first twogames of the Eastern Conference Finals are played at home in Montréal.
Bryce is with us. He doesn’t sit on the bench because the chaos there makes it too risky. Instead, he watches from the owner's luxury box, and he takes copious notes during both our and New York's warmups. Before the first game starts, he texts that he’s coming down to the dressing room.
We are already waiting for him.
As he crosses through the door, we spring our surprise. A dozen bottles of sparkling cider are popped at once, and we spray him from head to toe as we shout his name and cheer. Cider foam drips from his hair and his eyelashes and his fingers, and a puddle builds beneath his feet. I'd wrapped a scarf around his neck oh-so-tenderly before we walked into the rink to keep him warm… and to protect his tracheostomy from the splashing.
We laugh when he calls us allconnardsover text, and then he bear-hugs each of us so we can share in his sticky joy. He sees the monument we've built for him covering his seat—our pyramid of pucks, Valery's sticks from each of our shutout games, and a massive pile of wadded-up stick tape. His fingers trail down the pucks as MacKenzie points out exactly which one scored which goal. “I'll have a few more for you tonight, Bunny,” he says with a wink.
Bryce passes his notes from the warmup to MacKenzie. I pass Bryce the clean clothes I smuggled for him in my duffel, and while he changes, we dissect Bryce's observations. New York's goalie misses many of the shots taken on him high to the blocker side and he's slow when traveling across the crease. If we can move the puck quickly from side to side, we'll keep him off balance, and if we fire our shots high over his left side, we're likely to score more often than not.
Bryce fist-bumps everyone as we head down the tunnel toward the ice, and before I skate out, I turn to him and trace a heart on the center of my chest. He smiles and does the same.
After each period, Bryce returns to the dressing room with more notes about how New York is playing. MacKenzie reads them to the team, along with Bryce's suggestions for how to tighten up areas where we're vulnerable.
