Delay of Game (40 page)

None of that seemed very likely to happen, though. If I knew anything about hospitals—and after the last couple of weeks, I was getting to know a lot about them—it was that they never left you alone. There was always someone coming in to draw more blood or change an IV bag or check your blood pressure. It didn’t matter if you were asleep; they just came in and did what they needed to do, and you had to deal with it.

At the moment, I was
not
in the right frame of mind to deal with it.

Daddy took a seat in the chair closest to my bed, and Dana found a drawer to put my clothes in, then sat out of the way near the window. Once the nurse and orderly had everything situated and they left, Daddy said, “The boys had to leave to go to practice a little while ago.”

The boys?
Just how many of them had been here? That meant one good thing, though—that meant Cam was gone, at least for now. He couldn’t come barging in here, forcing me to have the nurse kick him out.

“You should really go home, Daddy. There’s nothing for you to do here but worry.” Nothing but make me feel like crying again, at least. The longer he sat there beside me, the more it built within me. He knew how much I hated getting emotional. He and I were both far more comfortable being pissed off about something than we were about letting our feelings out. That was how we’d always dealt with things, and I saw no reason to change it now.

“There’s nothing for me to do at home but worry, either,” he said. “But…why don’t you let Cam come and sit here with you, and I’ll see if Dana will take me home?”

Cam? He shouldn’t be here still. He should be gone with the rest of the guys. “You said the boys all left for practice.”

“The rest of them did. The coaches and Jim and I all talked about it, and we agreed that he was needed here a lot more than he needed another day of practice.”

“Hell of a lot of good he’ll do anyone sitting around in the waiting room. He’s not coming in here with me.” If he wasn’t at practice with the boys, then he should be with his family. They’d come all the way from Winnipeg to see him.
And to meet me
. I quickly brushed that thought away.

Daddy stared at me for a long time, giving me the sense that he was waiting to see if I’d break. I couldn’t break. I was already broken.

“Well, be that as it may, I sincerely doubt he’ll be leaving this hospital until you do.”

“It wasn’t his baby,” I blurted out. “He wasn’t the father. He was just trying to protect me.” I was so shocked that I’d said it that I sucked in a breath and held it. What was I doing? Why would I tell Daddy
now
?

“I know that,” he said after what felt like an eternity.

“You knew? How could you have known?”

“I never believed the story he fed me about dating you behind my back. Not even for a second. Cam might not always follow the rules someone else tells him he has to follow, but he has his own code, and he sticks to it. He’s a stand-up man.” Daddy took my hand. “There are a lot of men who would run for the hills if a woman they were interested in was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He didn’t. He ran straight
for
you without any sort of an escape plan. That told me he wanted you—all of you—no matter what else that entailed. This baby might not be his, but he wants it to be his. Because he wants you, and he loves you. And he’s hurting just as much as you are right now. Maybe not physically. But in here.” He tapped his other hand over his heart. “Where it matters—that’s where he hurts. And that’s why he’s not going to leave, baby girl. Because for him, there’s nothing in this world that’s capable of easing that hurt but you, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the world that can ease the hurt inside you but him.”

He carefully got up from the chair and squeezed my hand before releasing it. “Dana, how about that ride home? I can help you put together a bag to bring back for her.”

“Of course,” she said. The two of them got up and left. I was tempted to throw my pillow in frustration, but then I would be without a pillow. Plus, it would probably just cause me more pain. Damn it.

EVEN THOUGH SARA
still refused to let me in to be with her, I didn’t leave the hospital. I couldn’t. The thought of being anywhere else while she was going through something like this, even though she wouldn’t let me go through it with her, tore me up in ways I had never imagined before.

I had hoped she would have let me come back while Dana was taking Scotty home, but that didn’t happen. She asked the nurse to keep me out of her room, as she would rather be alone than talk to me.

Mom, the girls, and Dylan stayed with me most of the day. They’d come to Portland to spend time with me, after all, though it wasn’t turning into a very good visit. Part of me wished they hadn’t come at all, but really, I was glad they were here. They kept me grounded. They kept me sane. Dylan, in particular, was proving to be more than what I’d expected him to be. He didn’t try to make me talk about any of it like Cadence wanted me to do. He didn’t hover like Mom. He didn’t look at me like I was going to blow at any moment like Chloe and Corinne did. He was just there, a steady presence when I felt like the rug had been ripped out from beneath me and tossed over my head for good measure.

Several of the guys came back after practice and brought us lunch so we wouldn’t have to eat cafeteria food. When Noelle arrived in the early afternoon, she went up to sit with Sara for a while so Dana could have a break. Rachel and her kids didn’t come to the hospital—instead, they went to sit with Scotty at his house. That was probably a better place for the kids to be at a time like this, anyway.

Each time the hospital ran the labs, Sara’s HCG levels had dropped further.

After the guys and my family left for the evening, leaving Dana and me the only ones still at the hospital, I tried to get comfortable so I could sleep upright in one of those horrible waiting room chairs. At one point, a nurse took pity on me and brought me a cot, a pillow, and a blanket. I was too heavy for the cot, though. It collapsed under me before I even got back to sleep, so I moved over to the chair again. At least I had the blanket and pillow.

By morning, the doctors confirmed that Sara was miscarrying. They sent her home with a prescription for pain, since her cramping had only intensified, and said it shouldn’t last much longer than a day or two more. She was supposed to rest for a week. Then it would all be over…only it wouldn’t be. Not really. The physical part of it would eventually come to an end, but that barely scratched the surface.

When she was discharged, she begrudgingly let me take her home—but only because all of her other options were busy. The guys were all at the morning skate since Game Six was that night; Rachel had dropped her kids off at school and gone to work; Katie was getting what should be her final chemo treatment and so, of course, Laura was with her; Dana had to take her mother back to the airport; and Scotty still wasn’t allowed to drive. That only left me.

The whole way to her house, she wouldn’t speak to me. She just stared out the window of my pickup truck while tears fell down her cheeks. When I pulled into the driveway and put the truck in park, she climbed down without waiting for me to help her and headed straight for the door.

Scotty had invited my family to come over for the day, so they were all there waiting. Sara took one look around the living room and headed up the stairs without a word, locking herself in her bedroom. She was supposed to rest, so I knew she wouldn’t be coming to the game that night. Mom and the girls were all going, and Dylan, too. Scotty intended to stay home to look after Sara while we were gone since I couldn’t stay, not that she was letting me do anything while I was there. I got the impression that she wanted to call the cops to have me escorted off the property, but the house belonged to Scotty, and he told her I was his guest. That was probably the only thing stopping her.

When I had to leave for the game, Scotty reached for my hand before I could get to the door. I took his, and we shook.

“Will you be coming back tonight?” he asked.

I looked up to the top of the stairs while I debated my options. Eventually, she was going to have to come out of her room. If I was around enough, at some point she would have to talk to me, even if it was just to tell me to get out of her way or ask me to reach something she couldn’t. It didn’t matter what initiated the conversation between us. If we were going to talk, if we were going to work through this and come out on the other side of it, I had to be around. I nodded.

“Good man.”

Most of the usual suspects were up in the owner’s box when we arrived, along with a few other out-of-town family members like mine. I got Mom and my sisters settled, making sure they found people they at least recognized to talk to before I headed off to do my thing, and Dylan planted himself right by Chloe’s side. He was one of very few men up here, but Babs’s dad had come even if the rest of the Babcock family was still back home in Ontario. Cadence and Katie had really hit it off over the last couple of days, so I was glad to see Katie was there. I hadn’t been sure she would be since she’d had to go in for a treatment only that morning.

I sat through the pre-game meeting in the locker room. I went up to the press box with the other guys who’d been scratched tonight—including Nicky. He’d apparently been sent home from the hospital in Vancouver finally, but he still wasn’t cleared to play. I didn’t know when he would be, but it felt awkward to ask him. This wasn’t a typical injury or illness situation. This seemed more like an addiction. My father’s addictions had broken my family apart and forced me to take on his role for my sisters. That didn’t leave me with a good taste about addictions. But Nicky was one of the boys—one of my friends. I just didn’t know how to proceed with that, so I figured it was best to leave it for him to determine.

He sat down next to me in the press box, but we didn’t really talk. We just watched. Everyone up there was on edge tonight. If the boys won the game, then we’d win the series and move on to the next round. If they lost, we’d have to head back to Vancouver for one more game to sort it all out.

It turned out to be a great game, one I wished I’d been able to focus on better. I couldn’t get my mind off Sara, though, and how I was going to get her to come around. What could I do to convince her to stop pushing me away? Nothing came to mind, and before I knew it there were only a few minutes left in the game, and the Storm were up three to one.

Nicky nudged me in the ribs. I’d hardly said a word to him even though we had been sitting next to each other all night long. “Come on, Jonny,” he said. “We need to go put on our gear.”

“Put on our gear?”

“For the handshake line.”

That was one of the longest-standing traditions in the NHL. When a playoff series came to an end, the two teams met at center ice after it was all over, and everyone shook hands. If the boys held on to this lead for these final few minutes, that would be happening soon. I ought to be excited about that. I ought to feel
something
. Anything.

I stumbled after the other boys and went down to the locker room. They had some TVs playing in there so we could keep up with the action while we changed. With three minutes remaining, the Canucks pulled their goalie for an extra attacker and they promptly scored, pulling within a single goal.

As soon as they got possession of the puck again, they tried for a repeat performance. Their attack was relentless. Our defenders were winded. Hunter somehow held on, and the clock ticked down to zero.

We’d won.

The boys with me in the locker room went nuts, celebrating together before we got out to the ice with the rest of the team. I gave them high fives and that sort of thing, but I couldn’t seem to get my excitement to where it ought to be in a situation like this.

I followed the guys down the tunnel. I celebrated with the team on the ice. I went through the motions of the handshake line, not hearing a single thing any of the Canucks said to me as I skated past them.

We still didn’t know which team we’d face in the next round. LA and Phoenix were heading to a game-seven situation. Whichever team it was, if we managed to get to five games, I’d get to play again. I’d get to go back on the ice and do the job I was paid to do.