Page 226 of The Fall
But this dread is an undertow, pulling me backward. It tugs at my ankles, my wrists, my throat, and every time I think I’m surfacing, it yanks me down. Sleep isn’t coming tonight.
I have four hours until dawn.
Forty-Five
I’ve been to the Mutineers’medical rooms dozens of times for the thousand little injuries that come with playing professional hockey. Stitches and ice packs and wraps; the routine of injury assessment has become second nature.
But this is different.
Blair and I perch on the edge of an examination table, his thigh pressed against mine, and wait for Dr. Lin. I keep my eyes on the tie of my shorts, fingers fumbling with the knot as if it holds the answers. I’m not scared of this. I’m not scared of the hit last night or the ache still beating behind my eyes. I’m not.
Except I am, and I don’t know why.
Dr. Lin breezes in, cheeks flushed as if she’s fresh from an early-morning run. “How are you feeling, Torey?” She pulls up the wheeled stool and smiles at me.
I exhale. “Headache’s hanging on.”
She nods, typing on her tablet.
“No dizziness?” She doesn’t look up from the screen.
“Not this morning.”
“Fatigue?”
“A little.”
“Disorientation? Confusion?”
I hesitate. Something inside me stirs, a shadow flickering through an open doorway. “No, nothing like that.”
“That hit you took was solid,” she says. “Shoulder to jawline, lifted your skates clean off the ice.”
“I’m still shook up, I guess.”
“He woke up sick in the middle of the night,” Blair says.
Dr. Lin tilts her head. “Blair, can you give us a moment?”
I feel the moment before it happens: Blair’s hesitation, his eyes on me. He pauses, a fraction of a second.
“I’ll be in the room.” He brushes his hand down my back, and the silence thickens once he’s gone.
Dr. Lin sets aside her tablet and looks at me. “Tell me about what’s really going on.”
My fingers stop fiddling with my drawstring. I’ve sat through concussion protocol dozens of times, fielded the questions about dates, names, and plays, but this, her exact cadence… I’ve been here before, haven’t I?
“Dr. Lin—” My voice cracks.
“When I walked in here a few minutes ago, you had the same look on your face that you had the last time you had an episode.” The room contracts, sound receding, white light sparking at the edges of my eyes. “Like your whole world has collapsed.”
She leans forward. She’s watching me sharply, gauging micro-reactions. “I kept your secret before. When you were overwhelmed, when the pressure was too much. Do you remember that?”
The question hangs in the sterile air, and the answer is yes, I do remember. I remember the real reason I collapsed, too. I remember cracking apart from the inside.
But this is— Her words… I’ve heard them before. The intonation, the compassionate dip in her voice on the word “overwhelmed.” It’s not an echo; it’s exact, hitting the samebeats, the same notes. Her words are exactly the same. Every syllable, every pause, every breath between them.
How is that possible?
