Page 71 of Actions and Reactions
“I’m Helen.” A woman’s voice this time, right in frontof me. She’s one of the ones I suspect is a hockey fan, and her nervous smile confirms it. “I recognized you right away yesterday. Even though they told us you were coming, I still couldn’t believe it.” She takes a deep breath and looks away for a second while she rubs her hands as if they’re too cold. “My dad loved hockey all his life, and I was his sole caretaker for the last couple of years before he—” She stops herself to swallow hard, and I don’t think I’ve ever admired anyone more than her when she looks right at me again. “He took his own life last year.”
Yeah, it might be a whisper, but I doubt I’d be doing any better if I were in her shoes.
“I’m sorry.” I’m glad I get the words out because I really am. I must be an awful reminder for her, but she offers me a smile.
“I’m Consuelo,” the older woman next to me says, and this time it’s easier to meet her eyes. “I have no idea what Helen’s talking about by recognizing you, but you seem like a nice young man. I was born and raised in Ecuador, and moved here with my husband thirty-five years ago for his work. Our son was murdered in front of me three months ago, and my neighbors brought me to this place to get better.”
God, that’s fucking brutal.
“I’m sorry, Consuelo.”
I feel beyond uncomfortable, but my gut tells me to do it, so I reach over and touch her arm for a second, and she too smiles at me.
“I’m Colin.” It’s the other hockey fan, the one who’slost his legs, and I force my eyes to stay on his face. “And we recognized him ’cause his Dad’s a legend, Connie, a great hockey player.”
“Ah,” is all Consuelo says, but nods slowly as if that’s all she needs to know.
I shove all thoughts of hockey away from my mind and look at Colin again.
“I was in the Navy since I graduated high school,” he starts, his words coming out easily. “When I got out a few years ago, I came back home and started working in private security. About a year later I was in a car accident and lost both my legs.”
“I’m sorry. Thank you for your service, Colin.” The words come out easier this time, and then my breath stalls in my chest. His stoic nod is something I’ve seen in movies countless times, but never in person, and it looks respectful somehow, but I have no idea why he’s showing me respect. I’m no one, I...
“I’m Annie,” the young girl on my other side says in a hauntingly empty voice. When I turn to look at her, she meets my eyes for a fraction of a second only, but it’s enough to see so much pain that my heart instantly breaks. I’m pretty sure I’m not ready to hear what she’s going to say. “I moved to Chicago last fall for college. I have a scholarship for swimming. One of my teammates assaulted and raped me.”And I was right.“I’ve only been here two weeks.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat but it sounds so hollow. How can that be enough? How can anything ever be enough? I keeplooking at her, and now I notice the slight bruising under her eye and a red line on her neck.
She still hasn’t fully healed either.
I don’t know what the purpose of this introduction is, but for me, all it’s accomplished is to remind me what a fucked-up world we live in and that what happened to me is nothing,nothingcompared to what these people—good people from what I can tell—have gone through.
“Silas?” Dr. Jody speaks again and I snap my head in her direction. “It’s your turn.”
“What?”
Seriously? They’re going to hate me the second I open my mouth—rightfully so too.
“Please share with us what happened to you,” she tells me with an encouraging nod that’s so absurd in this situation.
But I see all their expectant faces and I can’t not say anything, right?
I have to give themsomething.
“All right.” I clear my head and rub my hands down my thighs. “Like Colin said, my dad was a hockey player, and that’s what I wanted to be too. All my life. I don’t remember the first time I put on skates and learned to skate, but I know that from that moment, it’s all I wanted to do. I was going to do it too because I was... I was very good. It’s all I thought about, so I had to be, right?”
The room around me disappears while I remember, and suddenly I’m back at home. I’m fifteen and carefree.
“When we were fifteen, my best friend Vinny and Iwere joking around one day during summer break, only a month before we were going to move to Canada to go to a boarding school that specializes in hockey, and we were on the roof of my house with one of those car toys, the ones you control with a remote, and it got stuck in the gutter. Our parents were having a double date, out for the night, and we were just havingfun.” That one word comes out broken, because how can all of what happened next have come from something so simple? “Vinny was going to slide to the edge of the roof and grab it, but I stopped him and told him we better get a ladder and do it from the ground.
“So we did that, and I was on the ladder, reaching for the toy, but it was really stuck, so I yanked it hard and lost my balance. My leg got stuck between the ladder steps and broke into a million pieces basically. One bone was sticking out of me, and I don’t remember much more, I passed out. When I woke up in the hospital they told me I was lucky Vinny remembered what the femoral artery was, and that he ran into the house to get a belt so I didn’t bleed out. Then they told me I couldn’t play hockey anymore.”
Colin’s face comes into focus and I’m back in the present. He’s frowning hard, and I don’t blame him at all. This is some weak shit compared to him losing his fucking legs.
“They told me I have delayed-onset PTSD, that it only came out all these years later because I’m working for a hockey team now, but I don’t think I have PTSD, or that what happened to me is in any way comparable to whatyou’ve all been through. I think I’m just wasting everyone’s time here.”
“Loss is loss,” Louis says gruffly.
“It is,” Helen adds, her tone as sad as her smile.
