Page 5 of The Fall

Three

The sun isn’t up yet when Blair and I cross the empty parking lot to the arena.

Our arena, home of the Tampa Bay Mutineers. It’s all lit up, the windows reflecting an early-morning sky that’s turning from deep indigo to a washed-out blue.

Blair’s wearing a white team hoodie with the Mutineers’ logo on the front and dark blue sweatpants. I’m wearing my old shorts and a Mutineers T-shirt, and I feel like a fraud, like I’m playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes.

And I guess I am. This isn’t my team. This isn’t my arena. I don’t know anything about this place, and I don’t know anything about what I’m supposed to be doing here.

Inside, it’s like a lot of other arenas. I’ve played a handful of games here for the past four years—and a lot more home games, I guess, this year—and every rink is about the same. Enough to get the gist. Home side, away side, facilities, operations.

It’s the details that are going to fuck me up.

I keep behind Blair, letting him lead. Clearly, leading is natural to him. Still, he checks over his shoulder, shooting me tiny smiles and affection-filled looks.

Down in the home side, deep in the Mutineers’ Den, we amble through hallways with open doors where early risers are already hard at work.

No other players—let’s be real. It’s the trainers, the equipment managers, the video team, the coaching staff.

I search for faces I might know, but there’s no one here I recognize.

Blair calls out “hey”s and “what’s up”s, and I start mimicking him after the third time someone says, “Hey, Torey,” and looks pleased to see me.

People here seem to like me.

It’s a completely alien sensation. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to fuck this up so badly?—

Blair gives me another little smile, a casual glance and a lightning bolt of perfect blue all in one.

Blair—big, beefy, intimidating Captain Callahan—was undeniably adorable earlier this morning.

He’d been, as predicted, crampy and uncomfortable about the night he’d spent wedged between the toilet and the wall on the bathroom floor, but he never complained.

In fact, he didn’t say much of anything, because before his first cup of coffee, Blair is apparently preverbal.

Partway through his first cup, Blair had caged me against the kitchen island, where I was picking at a banana.

He’d wrapped one arm around my waist and rested his forehead on my shoulder.

We stood like that, breathing together, him holding me, nothing but the single sink lamp on in the kitchen, and it was…

Indescribable.

Finally, we reach the medical wing of the Mutineers’ facilities. Blair taps his access card against a scanner, and the door unlocks with a click.

As soon as we’re inside, I’m hit by a wave of familiar-but-not.

I know exactly where I am, but I don’t know this place at all.

This is the medical suite of every NHL team.

I’ve been in one of these in every city, but they’re all eerily similar: a row of exam tables, medical supplies tacked to the walls, a smell of antiseptic and the lingering scent of old sweat.

I’ve been in these rooms before, but not here .

Blair and I are perched together on the edge of an examination table when Dr. Hana Lin strides in, holding a bottle of water and a tablet. Her cheeks are flushed, and she looks like she’s been running.

“How are you feeling, Torey?” she asks as she pulls up a stool.

“Headache’s hanging on,” I admit. It’s the only true symptom I can give her.

“No dizziness?” She doesn’t look up from the screen.

“Not this morning.”

“Fatigue?”

“A little,” I admit.

“Disorientation? Confusion?”

“No, nothing like that.” It’s a lie, and I don’t know if I’m lying to her or to myself. I am disoriented. I am confused. I can’t remember the past year of my life. That’s pretty fucking confusing.

She nods. “That hit you took was solid. Shoulder to jawline, lifted your skates clean off the ice.”

“I’m still shook up, I guess.”

“He woke up sick in the middle of the night,” Blair adds.

Which… There’s a lot to unpack in that addition of his. Are we out? Public? Google didn’t seem to know we were in a relationship—or that either of us were gay—but does the team? Dr. Lin?

I have a whole new set of land mines to fret over now. Who knows and who doesn’t? How do I navigate this?

“Blair.” Dr. Lin’s voice is soft but commanding. “Can you give us a moment?”

Blair hesitates. His gaze—piercing and blue—searches me. I can’t look back. I’m fiddling with the tie of my shorts, staring down at my fingers as I worry over the knot. I am not afraid of being here, on this exam table. I am not afraid of the year I can’t remember. I am not afraid.

Except that I am.

“I’ll be in the room,” he says, gliding his hand down my back. He lets it linger at the small of my back.

And then he’s gone. The door clicks shut.

It’s me and Dr. Lin.

“Tell me about what’s really going on.”

I can’t speak. There’s a roaring in my ears, a howling in my soul. She knows, how the fuck does she know? Blair doesn’t know, but she does. Fuck, I am going to lose this life before I’ve even lived it.

“Dr. Lin—” My voice breaks.

“When I walked in here a few minutes ago, you had the same look on your face that you had the last time you had an episode.” Her voice is low and intimate. “Like your whole world has collapsed.”

She’s waiting for something, a response, a confession. She leans forward. “I kept your secret before. When you were overwhelmed, when the pressure was too much, and you couldn’t take it anymore. Do you remember that?”

I’m going to shatter. This isn’t the first time? I’ve never had this happen to me before. Or have I? I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember?—

“I’m going to be direct with you, Torey, because I think you need to hear this. This is important: if you are having ongoing issues after the hits to your head you’ve taken, especially with your history, that could be a sign of something very, very serious.”

“I don’t…” I’m flailing, grasping for words, for explanations. But there’s nothing. My mind is blank, a vast, empty void. I can’t think, I can’t breathe. I’m pinned by her stare, and she’s looking right through me. She knows I’m lying; she has to know I’m lying.

“What would it mean, um…” I swallow and look down. I can’t look her in the eyes. “What would it mean if it was more? If things were… serious?”

“Serious how? Are you experiencing something specific, Torey? Something beyond the typical concussion symptoms?” I feel her watching me, cataloging every twitch, every hesitation.

Her expression is carefully neutral, professional, but there’s something in her eyes that makes my stomach drop. What if this has happened before? What if I’ve lost time before and... forgot that I forgot? I grip the edge of the exam table. My heart pounds so hard she has to hear it.

“So… hypothetically. If someone had... recurring issues. After multiple hits.”

She shifts on her stool. “That would depend on the nature of the issues. Memory problems, mood changes, difficulty concentrating can all be part of post-concussion syndrome. But there are other possibilities we’d need to rule out.”

She’s watching me so carefully, like she’s trying to read the truth in the way I’m breathing.

If I tell her I’ve lost a year, what happens?

Do they pull me from the roster? Do they send me for brain scans that might find something worse?

Do I lose this life—Blair, this team that apparently likes me, this best hockey I’ve ever played—before I even get to live it?

Breathe. “Everything feels...”

It’s a little memory problem. I took a hit last night, that’s all. This will pass. It will .

...hazy.” I lie. “That’s probably the best way to describe it. The hit, and last night. It’s all hazy.”

“Can you be more specific?” She doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink.

“I’m a little slow on the uptake.” I shrug. “Like my brain’s trying to get out of first gear. Pretty standard, right? After a hit like that?”

She sets her tablet aside and wheels her stool closer. Her fingers are cool against my temples as she checks my pupils with a penlight. Left eye. Right eye. “Follow my finger.” Side to side. Up and down. It makes my head swim but I focus on her finger.

Don’t let her see the way the room tilts. Normal players have normal reactions.

“Any episodes of confusion? Lost time?”

If she only knew. “No.”

She blinks. The silence between us hangs, and I realize she’s waiting for me to clarify things. Trouble is, I can’t, and I stay stubbornly silent.

“Torey, your health is more important than?—”

“I’m fine,” I plead. “Really. I know the protocol.” My voice sounds thin even to my own ears.

I’m trying to dodge the protocol that’s supposed to protect players like me, that’s meant to catch the damage before it becomes permanent, because I’m terrified of what they’ll find. Or what they won’t find.

Dr. Lin’s eyes narrow. She’s too professional to call me a liar outright, but we both know that’s what I am.

I look down at my hands. They’re steady, which seems wrong. Shouldn’t they be shaking? Shouldn’t there be some external sign of how thoroughly I’m falling apart inside?

She studies me, and I feel her weighing her options, deciding how hard to push.

“All right.” Dr. Lin picks up her tablet again. “Let’s run through the cognitive tests.”

Numbers backward from 100 by sevens. The months in reverse order. Word associations. I nail them all. She has me balance on one foot, touch my nose with my eyes closed.

“Your motor function looks good,” she says. Then come the questions.

“Now, can you tell me the date?”

I answer correctly.

“The current president?”

No problem.

“Can you tell me the name of the team you play for?”

“The Mutineers.” So far, so good, but I can’t tell if these answers are from memories, from luck, or from what I googled overnight.