Page 73 of Lighting the Lamp
As if she can read my mind, Dr. Conway adds, “For now, I’ll sign your release for practice only. No games. Your trainers can monitor you while you’re wearing the event monitor, and we’ll use that data to see how your heart responds under exertion. If anything feels wrong—chest pain, dizziness, even unusual fatigue—you stop immediately.”
My chest squeezes like she’s dangling hockey in front of me but never letting me touch it.
“Practice only,” I echo, the word sour on my tongue.
“It’s a step,” she says gently. “Not a death sentence. We need to see how your body responds before we make bigger decisions.”
When her words settle, the silence that follows is deafening. My ears buzz, my skin prickles, and I nod like I understand, but I don’t. I’m just holding on, hoping the ground stops shifting beneath me.“You understand what that means?” She watches me like she’s not buying it for a second. She offers me a pamphlet, and I take it, knowing I won’t read it.
“Yeah,” I say, flashing a tight, humorless smile.
“That gives you a general overview of what to expect, but we’re going to create a treatment plan together. A combination of meds and lifestyle adjustments. We’ll build something that works for you, but this isn’t a temporary flare, Beau. This is something you will need to learn how to manage long-term.”
Long-term.Those two words gut me worse than the diagnosis because that doesn’t mean manageable. What it means is: No more back-to-backs. No more pushing through the pain like it’s proof of my worth. No more guarantees. Maybe no more hockey. Not the way I love it.
“Great,” I say, too loud, too fake as the ringing in my ears gets louder. “So, just pop a few pills, do some yoga, and I’m good to go, right?”
Her expression doesn’t harden exactly, but she looks at me the way you’d look at someone holding their own broken bone together with their bare hands. It’s as if she knows that I use my sarcasm as armor, but she also knows it’s useless against what I’m facing.
“I’m going to give you some time. The nurse will come back in and go over the meds. You don’t have to decide anything today.” Dr. Conway rises from her stool and heads for the door, hesitating for a moment, her voice softening. “And you’re not alone in this.”
I don’t answer her, my eyes focused on the pamphlet in my hands like it might bite me if I open it. The door clicks shut behind her, and the silence rushes in. I stay frozen on the table,hands clutching the pamphlet tightly in my hand, long enough for the weight of this news to crush me.
After a few minutes, the nurse comes in and hands me a card, saying something about a follow-up appointment, and I nod numbly. She runs through a list of medications the doctor wants me to start and a treatment plan that looks more like a full-time job. Anti-inflammatories. Immunosuppressants. Pain meds for the bad days. All with names I can’t pronounce and dosages that blur together. I stare at the printout she presses into my hand like it’s written in another language. Pills for inflammation. Pills for pain. Pills for a body that doesn’t listen to me anymore. I nod at the right times, but I don’t take in a single word.
I slide off the table and stand on legs that feel like glass before walking out of the room in a daze. Every movement hurts, not in the joint-aching, muscle-burning kind of way, but in a way that feels permanent. I want to believe that this body isn’t mine anymore. It betrayed me, quietly and without warning, and now I’m supposed to just keep walking like it didn’t.
I move on autopilot through the waiting room, past the same smiling receptionist who doesn’t know the ground just caved in beneath me, and out the door. Outside, the sun is blinding. The breeze is soft and gentle, like a joke. People are walking around, laughing and scrolling on their phones like the world is still spinning the way it was ten minutes ago. They have no clue that someone just handed me a version of myself I don’t recognize.
I climb into my truck and close the door, then everything breaks. My body folds forward, forehead pressed to the steering wheel, and my body shakes. Not from the cold, but from the weight of everything crashing down on me. The fear I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist, the grief clawing at my throat for the future I thought I had. A sob builds in my chest like pressure behind a dam, and I try to swallow it down, but fail. Tears sting my eyes, and I let them fall, just this once. I don’t know how tobe this version of me with limits. The one who might have to sit on the sidelines. The one who might have to ask for help when all I’ve ever known is pushing through.
I sit there for I don’t know how long—minutes? hours?—just breathing and breaking and trying to hold it together. Then, I reach for my phone. Alise’s name is already on the screen, even though I don’t even remember pulling it up. I stare at it as if it might save me, and I start typing.
Tiny Terror
have lupus.
Delete.
Guess who’s officially on the no-fun diet for life?
Delete.
You were right to be scared.
Delete.
I don’t know how to be this version of me.
Delete.
I don’t know if I can love you and not need you, not when I’m?—
I lock the phone and toss it onto the passenger seat like it’s contagious. I want to call her, to hear her voice and let it ground me, but I don’t. Instead, I lean back against the seat and stare at nothing because right now, silence feels safer than the truth.
Alise doesn’t know yet, nobody does, and I want to keep it that way. I close my eyes and pretend that I’m still that guy, even if it's only for another five minutes and a complete lie. The second I say it out loud, it becomes real, and everything changes. I become a liability, a cautionary tale, a potential problem that someone has to manage.
I’ve spent my whole life being the one who handles things, both on the ice and with my family. I show up, push through it, take the hit, and get back up. I’m not ready to bury this version of me that can still pretend he’s okay. The version of me who wasn’t sick.
