Page 63 of A Loser by Christmas
“Yeah. His time was running out.”
That’s what I keep coming back to—Calum talking about how much time he had left. I thought he meant until the New Year. I can’t help thinking a different clock was ticking for him the whole time I’ve known him. I speak faster, screenshotting examples and inserting them into a different story than I ever thought I’d share with contest judges. “That player went public. Got the fans on his side. There wasn’t anything in his contract to stop him talking about his own health.”
“What happened?”
“To him? Eventually he was traded to another team that didn’t veto that second surgical option. It meant he had to leave his club to get what he needed.”
But he still got to play. That feels important.
“Now listen to this.” I offer an earbud to Dad, and he switches seats to take it. We eavesdrop shoulder to shoulder as another hockey player talks about his contract small print.
Calum huffs in my ear and in Dad’s. “Tried negotiating through my agent but she got nowhere.” He huffs again, and I could be back in that alley where a first kiss surprised me. Dad’s shoulder pressing against mine is equally out of the blue. And needed. I lean on him as Calum continues, “I thought that was it until I remembered a player on another team.”
I tap the still-open page of hockey gossip on my laptop screen, and Dad nods.
He gets it.
We’re on exactly the same wavelength while Calum sighs in our ears. “He got released.”
Dad tapping the article detailing a trade proves he heard that. I sit very still then, straining to hear what I hadn’t realised was most important about that conversation—a clue that Calum let slip the very first day that I met him. It’s only now that I hear his next sigh as a distress signal. As an SOS for someone to come save him.
“Forget about him,” he tells me through a shared pair of earbuds. “My club insisted on us signing extra NDAs since then.”
Dad shifts in his seat. His concerned gaze is a reminder of when we stood together in a sales booth with Calum frozen on his phone screen. “You think your Trelawney has the same problem?” He lowers his voice. “He disagrees with his club about a health decision? Wants to take a different option?” Dad’s realisation could be my mirror. “But he’s not allowed to publicise their difference of opinion, maybe? And his club gets the final say?”
I repeat what I say at the end of every upload to my channel.
“I won’t stop until I find the real truth.”
That’s what I get busy chasing while traffic snarls the motorway outside this service station with what turns out to be perfect timing. It gives me the hour I need to hunt through footage and rearrange my contest content, and I don’t do it alone. Dad helps me click pieces together, and just like Père Noël always promised, I finally do see the whole picture after I open a map of London and zoom in on a building.
Dad studies this Street View image. “What’s that?”
“A hospital. Part of one, anyway. No. This entrance is for...” I squint at blurry signage. “Does that say ‘research centre’?”
He googles to find out for me. Finds a phone number too. He taps it into his handset, passes it to me, and when that call is answered, I have to work hard to speak clearly in only one language. “Do I have the right number to ask about sports injury treatments?” I pluck a word from the air that I’ve heard a few times lately. “About a trial running this week?”
The answer I get snaps another puzzle piece into place.
“No? The only research trials currently running are for neuro-ophthalmology? For candidates at risk of total sight loss. Okay, thank you. Sorry for the mix-up.” And I am sorry then. So sorry that I didn’t join these dots sooner. They cast a different light on how Calum crossed paths with a little girl with vision issues.
He didn’t deliver a Christmas dinner to little Violet.
I find more audio to confirm that, and this time Dad and I listen to a worried mother.
“Maybe things are finally looking up.” Her voice is an echoey reminder of an ice rink. “First this, then getting a call back for the trial.”
We both hear my voice echo. “Trial?”
“For a last-chance intervention.”
Dad says, “Look.” He’s found details of the trial Calum and Violet both got called back for this morning. “It’s for people with a congenital issue. The one trial anywhere in the world testing a pioneering surgical intervention.” He reads aloud as I edit. “Most people don’t find out about the pressure building here until it’s too late.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “Their optic nerves are already damaged. But sometimes...”
“Sometimes what?”
“But sometimes it’s discovered before that permanent damage happens. During other investigations, like?—”
I know this answer. “CT scans after a concussion.”
