by Jenni Wilder
Oh God. This was more than just getting the wind knocked out of him.
“Come on,” Kennedy said and pulled at my hand. “Excuse us. Excuse us,” she said as we shuffled down the row to get to the stairs. People murmured and shifted in their seats to let us pass. Once we made it to the aisle, we quickly descended the stairs with Brody on our heels. The seats Lincoln had gotten us were in the lower level, so it didn’t take long for us to be rink side. We paused at the bottom of the steps, and I pushed against the glass that held me back from running to my man’s side. I was desperate to see anything that would tell me he was okay.
It seemed like it had been forever since he went down, but Lincoln’s teammates started to slowly back away, and I could see the stretcher had been lowered to the ice and he was sitting up on it.
Someone had removed his helmet, and relief coursed through me when I saw he was awake and alert. His left arm was wrapped up in a brown stretchy band, and it was splinted against his chest. The oxygen mask on his face concerned me, but I had been imagining the worst, so seeing him awake sent a wave of relief through me.
Players for both teams began tapping the blades of their sticks on the ice in respect as the paramedics and the team trainer pushed the stretcher with Lincoln on it toward the door in the sideboards. Deacon stayed by Lincoln’s side until they reached the edge of the ice. He backed away, and Lincoln gave him a thumbs-up and then held it up for everyone in the arena to see. The fans applauded as Lincoln disappeared off the ice.
“Come on!” Kennedy yelled and pulled on my hand. We ran around the edge of the rink with Brody following us until we couldn’t go any farther. A wall of Plexiglas stopped us from following down the hallway where Lincoln had been taken. Although there were arena employees on the other side watching the game that had resumed, they weren’t paying any attention to us.
Kennedy banged on the Plexiglas, and when a startled, overweight, middle-aged security guard turned to look at us, she held her all-access pass up to the glass. The security guard shook his head and cracked the door open enough so we could hear him.
“That might say all-access, sweetheart, but you still can’t come through here. Staff only.” He started closing the door, but I threw my hand up to stop him.
“Please, sir. The man they just took off the ice is my boyfriend. I need to know if he’s all right.”
His eyes raked over me. “Yeah, right, princess. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that?”
His offhanded use of Lincoln’s nickname for me made my skin crawl and my blood boil. I pushed on the door with both hands, forcing it open enough to wedge my body through so I could scream at the man. “Listen here! You let us through! Now!”
The security guard grabbed my arm, and his eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. Clearly he got off on the miniscule amount of power he’d been given when they assigned him to watch this door.
“No. You listen here—” the asshole security guard started to say as he gave me a little shake.
Instantly Brody was at my side. “Unhand her. Immediately.” Brody had pushed his way through the Plexiglas door to help me. He was dressed all in black and loomed over us, showing the pathetic security guard what real power looked like.
The man released my arm immediately as his jaw gaped. Kennedy pulled me back behind Brody as another security guard appeared next to the first one.
“Is there a problem here?” he asked, looking at Brody’s bulging muscles, sizing him up.
Kennedy peeked out from behind our wall of muscles and held out her pass. “He won’t let us through.”
The second security guard took one look at the pass and pushed his coworker to the side. “Kevin. You idiot! What is wrong with you? Let them through.”
I wanted to hug the second security guard, but Kennedy was already running down the hallway where Lincoln had been taken. “Thank you!” I shouted back as Brody and I darted after my friend.
We made it to the visitor’s locker room, only to find it empty. There was no one in the medical office, nor was anyone in the coach’s office. They must have decided to immediately load him in the ambulance to take him to the hospital.
Fear returned. He must have been hurt badly enough to need immediate medical care. “What do we do?” I asked Kennedy, hoping she would magically have a solution.
She shook her head in defeat. “We’re just going to have to wait.”
Just then, Blackhawks players and staff swarmed into the locker room, all looking downhearted and defeated. Clearly, they had lost the game. The season was over. Most of them ignored Brody, Kennedy, and me, but when Deacon walked in, I ran up to him.
“Deacon! Deacon, tell me he’s okay,” I demanded as I pulled on his jersey. The equipment manager took his stick and gloves, and Deacon pulled his helmet off. He was drenched in sweat, but I didn’t care.
“Jillian, I’m sorry. I don’t know anything. Let’s find someone who does.” He looked around the room, but I pulled on his jersey again.
“But he was talking, right? He was conscious.”
“Yeah, but he said he couldn’t breathe.”
My eyes went wide with fear, and Kennedy gasped. Deacon must have realized he wasn’t helping the situation.
“He’ll be all right. I’m sure.” He looked around the room again. “Yang!” he shouted, and a small Asian man turned to look at us. “Where’s the doc?”
The man eyed Kennedy, Brody, and me, and it was clear he was wondering who we were.
“What’s up with Monaghan?” Deacon asked.
A hush fell over the room, and everyone turned to hear this man’s answer. “Doc went with the ambulance. Pretty sure Monaghan’s got a broken arm. Possibly some broken ribs.”
Okay. That didn’t sound too bad. “Why couldn’t he breathe?” I asked, not caring if I wasn’t supposed to be here. I needed to know.
Yang looked at me funny but answered my question. “Might be the broken ribs. They took him to Saint Sebastian’s Hospital to check him out.”
I turned to Brody. “Do you know where that is?”
“No. But we’ll find it,” he answered with certainty, and the three of us ran out of the locker room with Deacon shouting after us.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can!”
“I’ll text you if we hear anything!” Kennedy shouted back as we disappeared down a long hallway to one of the rear exits of the Staples Center.
Even with Brody following the directions on the GPS, it took us forty-five minutes to get to Saint Sebastian’s. Traffic was terrible. I didn’t know if that’s just how life was in LA or if it was because the whole city was celebrating their Kings going to the Stanley Cup finals. Either way, it was hell being in standstill traffic and not knowing or hearing anything about Lincoln. Brody tried to avoid the freeway, but the surface streets were just as bad. Traffic could be terrible in Chicago, but this was ridiculous.
Kennedy and I sat in the back of our black rented Cadillac CTS while Brody drove. She called their parents while I texted Rebecca and Emily before calling Carter.
Finally—finally—we reached the hospital, and the three of us jumped out while a valet parked the car. Kennedy and I swarmed the ER check-in desk.
“My brother is Lincoln Monaghan. We were told he had been brought here.”
The friendly looking dark-skinned woman behind the desk gave us a small smile as she surveyed our hockey attire before cringing slightly. Just that small cringe made my heart drop.
“What is it? Is he okay?” I asked frantically.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I don’t know his status, but whenever a celebrity is brought in, we have to get permission before allowing anyone back.”
“Permission from whom? I’m his sister!”
“Permission from the patient or an agent or management. A coach. The team doctor. Someone responsible for that person.”
“Well, go! Go tell him his sister is here and freaking the fuck out!”
Kennedy waited by the desk as I started pacing the area in front of the check-in desk. I hadn’t spoke up once to identify myself. What if they wouldn’t let me back to see him? What if they only let Kennedy in since she’s family? I tried to tell myself I’d be okay if that was the case. At least she could report back to me.
I walked up to her and surprised her with a hug. “I’m so grateful you’re here. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been with me.”
“That’s what friends are for,” she said as she returned my hug. When she tried to let go of me, I held on to her tighter. I could feel her confusion as I clung to her, but she simply held me and patted my back. “He’ll be okay, Jillian.”
“I know. I know. I just—you don’t know what it means to me to be able to call you my friend. I love you, Kenny.” My emotions began to overwhelm me, but I didn’t want to start crying. I was in love with a hockey player. I couldn’t become an emotional wreck every time he got checked to the ice; otherwise, I’d never stop crying.
“Oh, Jillian. I love you too.” She held me tight now that she understood why I didn’t want to let her go.
“Ladies?” A security guard was standing behind the desk with the lady who had originally helped us.
Great. Another security guard, I thought, but at least this one looked friendly.
“I know you’re upset, but if I could just see some ID real quick, I’ll take you back.”
Oh, thank God.
Brody came to stand behind me as I dug my driver’s license out of my wallet.
“You too, sir,” the security guard said to my bodyguard.
If the situation hadn’t been so stressful, it would have been funny to watch Brody have to answer to someone other than Lincoln. It seemed like most people cowered in his presence and gave him whatever he wanted. Not this guy, though, and I liked that.
“All right,” he said after looking at our IDs. “The three of you have been approved to visit this patient. Follow me.”
He pushed a button on the desk, and the big glass doors to the left slid open, allowing us in. Kennedy and I rushed in followed by Brody, and the security guard met us on the other side.
“Thank you!” I called back to the nice lady behind the desk as we walked away. I saw her smile and nod at me as we quickly followed the security guard down a long corridor.
I tried not to look in the rooms as we passed them, but some of the doors were open, and I couldn’t help but glance in. Patients wearing hospital gowns laid in beds with IVs and monitors attached to them. A man with gauze wrapped around his head and blood on his shirt sat in a chair outside a room, and a little farther down the hallway an older woman hugged two younger girls while they all sobbed and wailed. I felt like an intruder upon their grief, and it made me think of my mother and siblings. I wondered what they had gone through the day my father died and I was burned. Did they have their own moment of bone-crushing grief in the middle of the emergency department?
We finally reached an open area at the end of the hall. There were several triage rooms—basically just beds separated by curtains that could be pulled closed for some privacy. A main desk sat in the middle of the room, but no one was attending it. Doctors, nurses, and technicians buzzed around, popping in and out from behind the curtains and disappearing down the long corridor behind us. Loud coughing and moaning came from one of the rooms.
The long privacy curtain separated us from whoever was coughing in that room, but you could still see in through the foot-wide gap between the bottom of the curtain and the floor.
The Blackhawks’ insignia lying on the floor in a pile of clothes caught my eye, and I immediately ran to that room. I pulled the curtain back and found Lincoln sitting on the edge of the cot in a hospital gown. His left arm, no longer splinted against his chest, lay exposed on a pillow. A visible dent just below his wrist only slightly distracted me from the wires coming out of his other arm and the tubes in his nose. A nurse stood next to him, holding a metal bowl up to his mouth. Lincoln winced and let out a hard, deep cough and spit bright red blood into the bowl.
“Lincoln! Jesus Christ!” Kennedy said, from next to me.
He looked up at us and gave me a weak smile. “Hey…”
I rushed to his side—his good side—and lightly cupped his face. “Lincoln! Oh my God! Are you okay?” I sniffled. “Of course you’re not okay. What a stupid question.”
“Shh… shh… ” he whispered as he pulled me close to him with his good arm. I didn’t know where to touch him. I didn’t want to hurt him at all, so I just patted his leg.
Another coughing fit seized him, and he turned away from me to spit in the bowl and then groaned from the pain.
“Baby, why are you coughing up blood?”
He groaned again and let go of me to brace his side. A man with dark hair and olive skin wearing a long white doctor’s coat stepped forward. He had been speaking with the Hawks’ trainer and a man I recognized as the team doctor, but he now focused his attention on Kennedy and me.
“I’m Dr. Dobra. I’m one of the attending physicians here. You’re his sister?” He pointed at Kennedy since it was obvious I wasn’t related to him, considering how we had greeted each other.
Kennedy nodded, and the doctor continued. “When Lincoln was hit, it broke a rib and pushed it into his lung, causing a small tear in the tissue and a partially collapsed lung.”
My friend gasped. “Is he going to need surgery?”
The doctor shook his head. “The CT scan shows a minor laceration. Thankfully, it looks like the rib actually moved back into place after he took the hit, so it’s not causing any further damage. His heart rate and pulse ox are good, but we’d like to monitor him overnight.”
“But what about the collapsed lung?” I asked the doctor without looking away from Lincoln. Knowing he was not critically injured helped ease my fear, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off him.
“Partially collapsed lung,” Dr. Dobra said, correcting me. “He has a minor pneumothorax. Basically, there’s a small amount of air between his lung and the chest wall. Right now we’d like to keep him for observation. If the pneumothorax gets worse, we’ll have to insert a chest tube.”
Lincoln coughed and winced. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“It’s not,” the doctor said seriously. “We’ll keep you overnight, and if it goes away by itself, we won’t have to worry about it.”
“What about his arm?” Kenny asked and the trainer spoke up.
“They’re going to cast it. Our team will look at it better once we get back to Chicago.”
“It’s a minor fracture,” Dr. Dobra said to Lincoln. “It shouldn’t cause you too much trouble as long as it heals well.”
The team doctor whose name I never learned nodded. “I’ve seen players with much worse breaks come back just fine.”
Lincoln nodded while holding the side of his chest with his uninjured arm. The coughing already seemed better, and the nurse set the bowl down to check his IV.
“I need to make some calls,” the team doctor said and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Thanks, Doc. Max.” Lincoln winced again as he spoke.
The doctor nodded and left the room followed by the team’s trainer.
“Can you give him anything for the pain?” I asked the ER doctor.
“Absolutely, but it might make you a little loopy, Lincoln. You have to remember, even though it won’t hurt as much, you still have a serious injury.”
“Just give me the drugs, Doc.”
My poor man must have been in serious pain.
The doctor rattled off a list to the nurse and then excused himself from the room, leaving only Kennedy, Brody, the nurse, and m
e.
“You scared the shit out of us, Lincoln,” Kennedy said and wiped a tear off her cheek. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had been waiting to break down.
“I’m all right.” Lincoln said quickly. I think he was trying not to speak too much. It must have caused him pain.
The nurse returned to his side. “Lincoln, I’m going to need you to lie back on the bed now without moving your arm.” The head of the bed had been raised up so he would be lying at an incline.
“I’m going to text Deacon and call Carter and Mom and Dad,” Kennedy said. “I’m going to be right out there, though. Come get me if anything changes.”
“I’m not”— Lincoln took a sharp shallow breath—“dying, Ken.”
Kennedy ignored her brother and pointed her finger at me. “If anything changes, you come get me.”
When I agreed, she seemed satisfied and left the room through the curtain. I moved to the other side of the bed to help Lincoln sit back properly.
Holding his side, he leaned back against the raised head of the bed and groaned as he settled in. His muscles were tense, and he tried to stifle a coughing fit but was unsuccessful. Groaning in pain, he held the metal bowl up to his lips and spit a small quantity of saliva and blood into it before resting back against the pillows.
“Okay. Good job, Lincoln. I know that hurt, but hopefully that was the worst of it,” the nurse said in an encouraging way. She explained how the pain medicine was self-administering through his IV. If his pain got too great he could just hit a button, and it would give him another dose without allowing him to have too much.
Lincoln immediately hit the button several times, and almost instantly his whole body relaxed. A small smile grew on his face, and his eyelids drooped, although he didn’t fall asleep.
“Wow. That is some good shit.”
I chuckled despite the seriousness of the situation. Lincoln sounded like Cheech and Chong.
My laugh drew his attention to me, and he slowly swung his head toward me. “There’s my sexy girl.” With his good hand he tried to cup my face, but his motor skills were off, and he only managed to grab a chunk of my hair.
