Page 83 of The Understatement of the Year

Prying my eyes open, the first thing I saw was an unfamiliar ceiling. Wait. It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. I moved my eyes a few degrees, which was painful. But the edges of the room came into focus. Ahospitalroom. Memories of last night began flickering at the edge of my consciousness. There was a lot that didn’t make sense. But I knew Coach had been here. And Bella, Hartley and…

I moved my chin to see more. In my left hand I held my hockey helmet, which had a nasty crack in it. Under my right hand lay Rikker’s sleeping head. My heart gave a little squeeze just seeing him there, his strong arms folded onto my mattress, the soft skin at the side of his neck disappearing into the collar of his T-shirt.

Gently, I removed my hand from his hair, though. I never touched Rikker in public, not even a playful punch to the shoulder.

God, my head hurt so badly. What else happened last night? I’d been confused, and I could picture the faces of my friends trying to calm me down. Rikker, especially. He’d looked shaken. But why?

Beside me, Rikker groaned. He rolled his head around on the mattress, slowly stretching out his neck. Then he picked his sleepy face up and studied me. “You’re awake,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “We’re at the Central Mass hospital, because you got knocked on the head during the…”

“…Hockey game,” I said.

He blinked at me. “Okay. Good job remembering that.”

A doctor strode into the room then, stethoscope around her neck. She wore honest-to-God combat boots with her scrubs, and a blue jewel in her nose. “Morning, sunshine. I’m just going to look you over one more time before we can release you, okay? Same drill as last night.”

“Last night?” I asked. But as she came closer, I realized that I remembered her. It had been dark in the room, but during the night I’d awoken several times to see her stalking towards me with a light that she’d shined in my eyes while I was trying to sleep. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Yep,” she said. “Every two hours you tried to eject me from the premises. Good times.”

“Sorry,” I managed. “I was confused.”

Rikker moaned into his hands. “Yes, you were. It was a long night.”

The doctor moved around to the side of the bed where Rikker was still sitting. “Now that we’re friends again, I want to look at that contusion on your hip, too. Maybe your boyfriend could step out for a minute.”

Boyfriend.

The word hit me like an ice bath.Holy crap. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder whether my deflector shields had taken a worse beating last night than my hockey helmet or my skull.

I must not have kept the flinch off my face. Because the doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Sorry. My mistake. It’s just that you did an awful lot of yellin’ for him last night. Wouldn’t let him leave the room.”

I turned my head too fast toward Rikker. The result was a new flash of pain. But the troubled expression on Rikker’s face was even worse. “What happened here?” I croaked, afraid of his answer.

“We’ll talk in a bit,” he said. “I’m going to look around for coffee.” He got up and slid out of the room.

“Roll for me, hon,” the doctor said with a nudge to my shoulder.

Reeling, I turned my body so that she could lift the hospital gown that I was wearing. I didn’t remember putting it on. I didn’t remember how I got here, or who drove me.

I had no idea what I might have said last night, and who might have heard it.

Just then, Bella waltzed into the room, sipping from a Starbucks cup.

“Give us a second, sweetie,” the doctor said.

“Oh, I’ve seen it all before,” she said, parking herself against the wall and taking another slug of her coffee.

“Huh,” the doctor said, probing my groin with gloved fingers. “Y’all seem to have more fun in college than I ever did.”

Bella ignored her. “You’re looking better, Graham.”

“How bad was it?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“This will heal up easily,” the doctor said. “But that concussion is going to slow you down for a month or more.”

But that wasn’t what I was asking. “Bella,” I rasped. “What happened here last night?”

She sighed. “You were pretty out of it. And maybe that’s all people will think. That you were out of it.”