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CHAPTER 7

ALEXEI

One of the linesmen skates over to me and I flip up my visor. “What’s going on?”

“They need to use the ambulance on standby for someone in attendance, so we can’t resume the game until a replacement team of paramedics arrives. They’re on their way.”

I nod and grab my water bottle from its pocket on the back of the net.

Both teams are invited off the bench to skate on the ice, basically a repeat of warm up, just to keep muscles loose while we wait.

“Arty!” The head coach waves me over to the bench.

As I approach, Makie steps past me onto the ice, and my head swivels in confusion as he starts to go through a quick warm up routine.

“What is happening?”

“Son, there’s been a medical emergency…”

The rest is a blur.

The equipment guys meet me in the dressing room and help me get out of my gear in record time. Dr. Forge meets me in the hallway between the dressing room and our street lockers.

“Your mother is stable, alert, and talking. You need to get to the hospital, but we don’t need to break traffic laws to do it.”

I nod. For all that my English is so much better than it was two years ago, at the moment words are beyond me.

“She has symptoms consistent with a cardiac event, possibly a heart attack. But it could be something else.” He lists panic attacks and a few other options.

I’m sure it’s not any of those.

She’s been complaining about heartburn and rubbing her chest for two days now.

I feel sick.

“Do you want to have a quick shower?” he asks.

I stop and sniff myself. “Fuck.”

“You’ve got time.” He leans back against the wall. “I promise.”

After the world’s fastest shower, I dress in team clothes, sweatpants and a t-shirt, and shove my feet into socks and slides. “Where is my daughter?”

“She’s upstairs with Shannon Barker and some of the other team family members, including my sister. Your mother was with them when they called for a doctor.”

I relax slightly. Shannon’s very kind. She and Ani Hale both helped me a lot when I bought my house. “Tell them?—”

“They know. It’s okay. They’ll take good care of her. Harper’s there, too.”

I exhale. Harper Roberts is a nurse at the children’s hospital. She works with little kids every day.

Grant drives me to the hospital, where he slides into a priority physician parking spot and takes me directly to Emergency through the back entrance.

All of it is much appreciated, but I still don’t breathe properly until I hear my parents talking to each other in Russian as we approach a curtained off hospital bed.

“I need to go home,” my mother says.

“You need to stay here,” my father retorts.

“He has to leave tomorrow. He has two games?—”

I swear under my breath. It’s my fault that she worries about that right now, even when she’s in the hospital.

“The team will take other goalies on the road trip,” I say, sweeping the curtain aside.

“Alexei!” My mother reaches for me, but as soon as she lifts her arms, she winces.

“Don’t tax yourself,” I mutter. And then I let out a sound that’s suspiciously like a sob.

My father grabs me in a tight hug. “She’s going to be okay.”

She has to be. My parents are my rocks.

But I lean on them too much. Since Inessa’s arrival, I’ve sponsored them to emigrate and they’ve completely transformed my life from a young bachelor pro athlete to that of a family man. When I was traded, they flew across the country with my toddler. They live with us full-time, sharing in the parenting work, and fulling carrying that burden when I’m playing at home and on the road.

In return for that, I make sure they want for nothing. In the off season, I send them on incredible cruises and land trips with Russian speaking guides. I pay for them to take English classes.

But I didn’t fucking notice my mother having the warning signs of a heart attack.

“I’m sorry,” I manage to get out.

Someone behind me quietly clears their throat. I turn and find Dr. Forge standing with a hospital doctor in scrubs. She introduces herself as an ER doc and gives me a quick update on the tests they’re going to run. “I expect your mother to be admitted soon, I’m just waiting to hear where we have a bed for her. Depending on what we see, we might initially put her in the ICU...”

My mother looks…tired. Pale. But the ICU?

“She’ll be able to come home in a few days, maybe a week at the outside. But there will be rest and recovery?—”

“I have a toddler. My parents take care of her.”

The two doctors exchange a look.

Yeah, they won’t be able to do that for a while. Or maybe ever again.