Page 30 of The Fall

“Torey, listen to me. Your heart rate is too high. We need to—” He’s still talking, but his words are static. I can’t focus, can’t think past the pain. My heart’s been torn out and I’m coming apart at the seams. I’m wailing. Shrieking. Out of control. Convulsing with the force of my sobs.

“Sedative. Now,” Dr. Granholm says.

“No,” I plead. “Please, I need him. I need?—”

No, no, no, no. Don’t take him from me, don’t take him, don’t ? —

The walls bend inward. I’m losing him, the reality of him.

It’s all slowly dissolving, until the last thing left is a memory: a candlelit lanai, his hand on mine, his thumb tracing a path over my ring finger as if he’s already laid down a vow.

Stars above us, stars around us, stars inside the waves of his eyes.

I can’t?—

Our breath mingles until our lips brush. The canal whispers against the dock, but the sound is fading, a lullaby I can’t hear anymore. I’d pulled him close, kissed him until forever shimmered between us, bright and real enough to touch. Torey… do you want to be asked?

Please, please. Don’t take him away. Don’t make me live in a world where he doesn’t—where I can’t—where I?—

I love you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

The last thing I feel is the phantom heat of Blair’s lips against my forehead.

Then, nothing.

There are no palm trees here.

A dull, gray sky drips against my hospital window. It’s a dreary Vancouver morning, the same as they all are, and I don’t want to call this place home. I hate it here. I hate this city.

Sedatives move sluggishly through my veins.

My phone rests in my lap, the screen finally dark and the battery dead. I’ve been at it for hours, scouring every inch of the internet, every post on social media. I scrolled and clicked and searched, mainlining reality one ESPN highlight, one Instagram post, one brutally factual article at a time.

It’s March 22, one year before I woke up in bed with Blair.

Tears dry on my cheeks. Blair. His name in my mind ruins something inside me all over again.

Last night, in Vancouver, Zolotarev—a Tampa Bay Mutineer—laid me out on the ice, and?—

Zolotarev. The name echoes in empty spaces within me. It’s there, somewhere: a trace of Hayes’s voice, the crunch of bone on bone, but the details are lost.

Hayes’s Instagram is a minefield of what isn’t. There he is, bright smiles and goofy dad poses, a year younger and a lifetime ago. Erin’s there, too, beautiful as always, a scarf carefully wrapped around her head. There are pink ribbons on Hayes’s profile. Lily’s younger, so much smaller.

There are no pictures of me and Hayes and Blair, no carefree laughter or #BFF hashtags immortalized in pixels and bytes.

Blair has no social media presence at all.

He always guarded his privacy, but the articles I do find paint a picture of a man on edge.

They talk about Blair’s inconsistent season, the personal leave he took, vanishing from the public eye for months and leaving nothing but speculation and unanswered questions in his wake.

Now, he’s playing angry, the articles say.

There’s strife throughout the Mutineers.

The team is struggling, listless for reasons no one can trace.

Their season has been a disappointment, their place in the standings dismal.

They’re higher than Vancouver, though. A small comfort.

I thought, for a wild minute, that I’d call Blair. I’d hear his voice, demand answers, and beg him to remember me, but I can’t remember his number. It’s there; I feel it, but when I reach for it, the numbers disintegrate. Same with Hayes’s.

Maybe I did imagine this all-consuming, life-altering love for a man I’ve never met. Or maybe it’s the other way around; maybe this is the dream.

But either way, it’s March 22, and Blair doesn’t know who I am. Yesterday, I was—God, I was someone else; someone Blair would kiss and cradle and make love to, someone who mattered to him, someone he loved.

Now, I’m not.

He doesn’t know me. I’ve never met him, never spoken to him, never traced the angle of his jaw with my fingertips or kissed his bounding pulse. Never tasted the salt on his skin, or heard him moan my name as I brought him to the edge.

Except I have . Right? I remember him, I remember us, and I love him. I love him as fiercely as I did yesterday when we woke up together, limbs entangled, breaths mingling. Only it wasn’t yesterday. It wasn’t any day.

The how and the why tear at the margins of my sanity. My memories of Tampa and of Blair are shards of glass, and every time I reach for them, they shatter. They’re vanishing one by one; the details keep slipping away, but the feelings remain. I love Blair, present tense, full stop.

How can I love a man I’ve never met? And how can you miss what never was?

There’s a knock at the door, and then Dr. Granholm and the nurse from before enter. Professional empathy is written in every line of their faces.

I want to scream.

“Hey, Torey. How are you feeling now?” Dr. Granholm is talking to me in that careful way that doctors reserve for the delusional, the hysterical, and the broken.

I shrug. Words feel impossible.

“Do you remember the last time I was here?” His voice is wrapped in cotton and kindness, and it salts the wounds in my soul.

“I remember enough.”

“You were pretty disoriented. Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. What is there to say? That I lived a different life, loved a man who has never met me, and now I’m shattered by the loss of something I never had?

“All right.” He doesn’t push, and I’m sharply thankful. “Can you tell me where you are?”

“Vancouver General.” Tears sting my eyes; I blink them away.

“And what’s the date?”

“March 22,” I whisper. A lifetime ago. A blink ago.

Another nod. “Why are you here?”

“I took a bad hit at the game last night and I... blacked out on the ice.” Irrationally, my words taste like betrayal, like I’m wiping away Blair’s touch from my skin and his love from my life.

“Good, that’s good.” Dr. Granholm smiles. I should be so proud. “Do you remember regaining consciousness in the ambulance?”

I shake my head.

“That’s normal,” he says. “You were out for about twenty minutes after the on-ice hit. That’s not ideal, but we’ve been monitoring you closely since you came in last night. So far, your scans look good. There’s no significant swelling in your brain.”

My fingers grasp at the sheet, knuckles white.

“We’re going to keep you here for one more night, keep monitoring you, and run a few more scans. Right now, I think everything is looking good, and there’s every reason to believe it will stay that way.”

Tears scald the backs of my eyes. I dig my nails into my palms, willing them not to fall. I nod along. How can he be so calm? How can he look at me and the wreckage of my life and discuss brain scans and swelling and symptoms as if they’re another entry on his daily rounds?

“Your father has been trying to reach you.”

I’ve been letting my dad’s calls ring until they go unanswered because how do you tell your father that you’re heartbroken over a man who doesn’t know you and a love that never existed? Oh, yeah, and the man part of that, too.

“He’s relieved you’re doing better. He asked me to tell you he wishes he were here with you.”

The words fall flat. I’m alone in this. There haven’t been any of my Orcas teammates rallying around me. There’s no hand to hold, no quiet voices of comfort. In Tampa, I wouldn’t be alone. I wouldn’t be?—

I crush that thought before it grows.

“Torey, I want to talk to you about something called post-traumatic amnesia.”

I go very, very still.

“It’s not unusual, after a brain injury, for someone to be… confused.” Dr. Granholm chooses his words carefully. “Disoriented. It’s common not to know where you are, or even who you are, as you were.”

I hesitate. “My disorientation...” I falter. “Why did it even...”

His gaze softens. “You were placed in a coma overnight. Comas are often like dreams, where your subconscious and conscious minds blend together hopes, fears, experiences, and random, disconnected thoughts.” He hesitates. “You were asking for Blair Callahan?”

I nod.

“Blair Callahan is the captain of the Tampa Bay Mutineers, the team you were playing when you were hit last night. It’s possible that your brain incorporated some elements of the game and of the Tampa players into your coma.

And as for dreams—sometimes they’re meaningless.

Sometimes they reflect our deepest wants. ”

Deepest wants. A sob rises in me.

I was in love . I had everything . Blair looked at me like I was the only star in his sky.

And none of it was real.

Silence stretches between us. The last threads of hope unravel inside me.

Dr. Granholm rests his hand over mine as my tears spill down my cheeks again. “I’ll be back to check on you later, Torey. Get some rest.” He walks out, and the door clicks shut behind him.

I want to melt out of this bed, out of my own skin, scream until my voice gives out, until the world reshapes itself back into the life that I recognize.

I cave inward like a collapsing star. My body curls into itself, knees-to-chest, forehead-to-knees, trying to hold the pieces of myself together.

Sobs tear through me. This is a wound in the center of me that spills out a grief I don’t have the right to feel.

I cry until my throat is raw, until my chest aches, until there’s nothing left inside me but an endless emptiness.

Two weeks. Fourteen sun-drenched and perfect days. It felt real . It all felt so real .

But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. He never held me like that, and I’m in love with a lie, the beautiful, cruel trick of a damaged brain.

I had everything, and now I have nothing. Less than nothing, because it was never real. There was no great love story, no epic, timeless romance between me and Blair. There’s only me, shattered and alone and clutching these fragments of a life I never lived and a love I never had.

He’s gone, and he was never mine to lose. The sobs come and come. There’s no escaping it. There’s no end. I am acutely, devastatingly alone.

There are no palm trees here.