Page 73 of Like a Power Play (Greenrock University: Icebound #1)

Thirty Eight

Darcy

B eep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

I groan, rolling over in bed, my blanket winding around me like a cocoon. My hand slaps around vigorously in an attempt to silence my alarm, but it flies past my nightstand, crashing into my bedframe.

"Ow."

Sunlight floods my vision as my eyes flutter open.

Rubbing them, I try to sit up, but the chrysalis of blankets traps me against the bed.

My chest aches, a strange, tender feeling like ropes are pulling my arms apart, stretching me wide until something's about to split.

As my sight clears, my bedroom comes into view.

It smells sterile. The illustrated posters of Middle Earth and the Isle of Berk are gone, replaced by abstract, shape-blocked paintings on beige walls.

My bookshelf has vanished too. In its place sits a sleek mid-century modern armchair that doesn’t look like it belongs here…

or to me, for that matter. And where my nightstand once stood, a vitals monitor now beeps steadily, its wires trailing down into me.

Wait. This isn't my bedroom.

"Oh! You’re awake!” a gentle voice coaxes.

My eyes drift toward a tall, slender woman, her curly blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail that sways as she moves.

She’s wearing black scrubs dotted with glittering green shamrocks, and little rainbow clippies in her hair.

As I try to grasp my surroundings, she lifts a clipboard from the foot of my bed, approaching my left.

With a shimmering pink Truffula-Tree-looking pen, she jots down notes, studying the waves on the monitor. “I’m Nurse Eva,” she introduces with a soft smile. “I’m just going to take your vitals, okay?”

I open my mouth to respond. A weak “oh-kay," slips out, ragged and scratchy. I lift a shaky hand to my throat, attempting to clear it, but it sends a deep, tender ache through my chest when I cough.

Eva lowers her clipboard, peering at me with careful eyes. “Don’t move too much,” she warns. “You’ve got a chest tube.”

My heart rate begins to quicken, hammering relentlessly, which is obvious not just from the jittery thudding in my chest, but from the beeps on the monitor, now speeding up. The green spikes on the screen inch closer together, stretching taller with each beat.

A chest tube? What the fuck happened?

Eva glances at the monitor, then back at me, her expression softening. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re okay. Dr. Hughes will be here soon. In the meantime, let’s take some deep breaths.”

Eva's eyes catch mine and she brings a hand up, breathing in slow and steady, showing me how. I try to match her, but my chest pangs with each one.

In. Wince.

Out. Wince.

In. Wince.

Ou—

“Where’s my mom?” I croak.

Eva pushes her sleeve up, checking the time on her sparkly watch. “She ran down to the cafeteria a little bit ago. She should be back any minute.”

I nod, calming just a bit, when a soft knock at the door draws both of our attention.

“Hi, Darcy,” the woman greets kindly. She’s curvy and small, even smaller than Peyton, with short, coily hair and a saccharine smile. She approaches the bed, holding her hand out for the clipboard, which Eva promptly hands her.

"Hi," I manage.

“Thanks Eva,” Dr. Hughes murmurs, flipping through the chart. Eva’s pager starts beeping and she gives me a little wave before walking out.

Dr. Hughes studies the papers, then looks up at me, raising her brows over her round metal glasses. “How are you feeling?”

I huff what’s supposed to be a sarcastic laugh, but the contraction of my muscles makes it feel as though a crowbar is wedged between each side of my ribs, leveraging painfully against me.

“Like shit.”

The corners of her plum lips lift and she lowers the chart to her side. “Do you know what happened?”

I pause, sorting through the fog, trying to trace my memory back to the last thing I can remember.

“I passed out, I think.”

She nods, pulling a pen from the collar of her scrubs and clicking the light on. She shines it into one eye, then the other, the intense beam causing my stomach to swirl.

“Your mom mentioned you have Rheumatoid Arthritis,” she says.

I rub the side of my nose with my knuckles, only to realize my little gold septum hoop is gone. My hand drops back to the blanket.

“Yeah. Stage three,” I murmur. “But my doctor said with the new treatment plan, it looks like I might be heading back toward stage two.”

"I have your records here," she gestures to the clipboard again, flipping through a few pages. "Your Methotrexate and Sulfasalazine dosage got increased in…"

"January. And I started physical therapy too." My throat hurts with each word, but I press on. "I'm supposed to get surgery in a couple weeks."

Pressing her glasses up the bridge of her beautifully broad nose, she asks, "Have you ever heard of pleurisy?"

I frown. It sounds familiar, probably something I read in a biology textbook. But whether it’s from passing out or just not paying enough attention in class, I can’t remember what it means. I shake my head.

“Pleurisy is inflammation of a lining in the chest,” Dr. Hughes explains. “Same idea as what happens in your knees or fingers. When it gets inflamed, fluid builds up, which is why you were struggling to breathe, and subsequently, lost consciousness. The chest tube’s there to drain it.”

My frown deepens. Frustration starts bubbling in my chest, which is a problem given that there's a hole in it. I get what she’s saying. I just don’t understand why .

“But I was doing better,” I insist. “I was hurting less. I could move more. My morning stiffness wasn’t even that bad anymore.”

She nods. “That can happen. Some of the treatment was helping. But DMARDs can increase the risk of pleurisy. I think when your doctor upped the dose, your joints improved, but your chest started reacting.”

The monitor between us starts beeping faster.

“So what now?” I ask frustratedly. “I take the meds and get fluid in my chest, or I don’t, and my knees fuse?”

Dr. Hughes flashes me a sympathetic look.

“There are other options,” she answers. “Plenty of them. First, we’ll take you off the DMARDs, if that’s what you want.

There are newer biological treatments we can try.

I’ll make sure you have everything you need to make whatever decision feels right to you.

But right now, the most important thing is rest. Okay? ”

Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, and a couple of them fall before I have a chance to blink them away. Not that it matters. I’m lying alone in a hospital bed with a tube in my chest, after doing everything right. I stopped practicing. I went to PT. I took the meds. I did all of it.

And still, here I am.

I don’t know if there’s ever going to be an end to this. I don’t know if I even care about “options.” Right now, I’m just tired. Too tired to pretend I have hope.

“Okay,” I whisper.

Dr. Hughes asks if I want her to stay for a bit. She seems like a good doctor, but right now, I can’t take another minute of being someone’s patient.

I just want my mom.

I want my bed.

I want Peyton.

Only a minute or so after Dr. Hughes leaves, my mom walks into the room, balancing a teal tray with what looks like a piece of cardboard draped in half-melted cheese. Her emerald eyes land on mine, and her whole face lights up.

“Hi, baby,” she coos.

The second she calls me baby , I fall apart like one. She climbs into the bed beside me without a word, and for twenty minutes, she just holds me while I sob. Which only makes me more irritated, because the more I cry, the more my chest hurts.

When the tears finally dry, and the sad excuse of a slice of pizza has disappeared into my stomach, I come to a realization.

I passed out in an ice arena packed to the brim with people.

People I know. People who believed the worst I’d dealt with was a sprained wrist and a rough bout of food poisoning a few months ago.

People who’d heard about my past in Minnesota and thought I quit because I lost the passion and not because I lost the ability.

“Does the team… know?” I ask quietly.

She tucks a strand of strawberry hair behind my ear. “I told them,” she answers hesitantly. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I just—they needed an explanation, and—”

“It’s okay,” I cut in. “It was probably the right thing to do.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

I shake my head. I don’t know how I could be.

What else was she supposed to do? Lie? Leave them with no context, knowing they’d figure it out eventually anyway?

I don’t want to be seen as weak. But I’m tired.

Tired of pretending things work the same for me as they do for them.

Tired of making up stories about stomach bugs and imaginary trips down the stairs.

Tired of feeling like I don't deserve to live my life the way I need to in order to survive.

“No,” I say. “I’m not mad.”

“Good." She smiles comfortingly, sending a flood of warmth to my aching chest. “Because they’re all here to see you.”

“What?”

She laughs. “They’re wreaking havoc in the cafeteria right now. Probably eating the hospital barren. A few of them went home to shower, but I think most of them are back.”

As if on cue, a familiar pair of blunt black bangs peek through the window.

Bailey.

“If you’re not ready to see them,” my mom says gently, “I can tell them to come back later.”

I hesitate. I know I want to see Peyton . That's easy. She's used to all of this by now. But the rest of them?

I’m scared that once they see me like this—in a gown, with a tube in my chest, eyes swollen from crying—it’ll be the only version of me they remember.

But then I think about how they rallied when I stood up to Kaiser. How they made space for me at the diner when we watched the Sabertooths destroy the Porcupines. How they started calling me “Coach” like I deserved the title, even though I was kind of a dick in the beginning.

At this point, if all they see when they look at me is someone fragile, then they haven’t been paying attention.