Cement Heart

by Beth Ehemann

  “Hell yeah.” Brody laughed. “He’s been out on the ice for half an hour already. He’s pumped.”

  “Sweet.” Knowing that Mike was out on the ice already, clearly trying to get a head start on what would surely be the ass-kicking of a lifetime had adrenaline flooding my body and speeding through my veins. “Let’s go.” I ignored my sore legs and jumped up, heading for the locker room to change.

  Brody hustled down the tunnel trying to keep up with me as I practically jogged to the ice. Mike was out there shooting against Louie, who was manning the goal for him.

  “You ready, pretty boy?” I called out as I skated over to them.

  Big Mike smiled confidently and nodded. “Hell yeah. Louie is sticking around to watch. You wanna have one goalie and play with half the rink, or you wanna use both guys and play full?”

  “We’re old and my legs are killing me. Let’s play half.”

  “Sounds good.” Mike whistled to Louie and skated over to let him know we wouldn’t need him.

  In my initial hurry out to the ice, I’d dropped my bag on the bench. I skated over to it and pulled a hot pink tutu out, hanging it on a hook on the inside of the boards. “See this?” I yelled, pointing at the tutu. “This is what we’re playing for, or playing against.”

  Mike skated over, stopping just a few feet from me. “It’ll look great on you.” He winked arrogantly.

  “Hey!” Brody called out from the goalie box. “Let’s get this show on the road. We’re having dinner at Sophia’s tonight, and Kacie’ll kill me if I’m late.”

  “I’m ready.” I skated out to the center, right behind Mike. “Any specific rules?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing I can think of. First guy to score three goals on Murphy wins. Play your ass off. Think that about covers it, yeah?”

  “Sounds good.” I held my fist up in the air and Mike punched it.

  Game on.

  Since we no longer needed Louie to play goalie for us, we gave him the job of dropping the puck. He skated over to center ice and Big Mike and I took our positions. Louie held the puck up in the air for two seconds and dropped it between us. Our sticks crashed together as we each tried to smack the puck out of the middle and off to the side, where we could gain control of it. I pushed the puck between Mike’s legs and out the other side.

  “Shit!” he yelled as I skated around him quickly and took control of the puck. I handled the puck out and around the goal, putting some distance in between Big Mike and myself. I looped around the other side, and before Mike could get in between me and the goal, I flicked my wrist and sent a snapshot toward the goal.

  Blocked.

  Fuck you, Murphy!

  He passed the puck to Louie, who carried it back to the middle where we started all over again.

  “You got lucky. It won’t happen again,” Mike grumbled around his mouth guard as his eyes shimmered with determination.

  “Watch me.” I tried to sound just as confident, but I wasn’t a dummy. I was the enforcer. My main job during every game was to beat the crap out of any guy that hurt one of our guys and then sit in the penalty box. Scoring was not expected from me, and my puck handling wasn’t near as strong as Mike’s, so my cocky attitude had to make up for what I lacked in skills.

  Louie dropped the puck, but Mike was right. He was faster off the draw than I was that time as he pulled the puck back toward himself and skated toward Brody. I did my best to catch up and get in between them, but Mike was quick. He weaved his stick left and right and when he had an open shot, he took it. The puck flashed like lightning over the ice. I followed it with my eyes and watched as Brody dropped to his knees to block it, but it bounced off the left post and crossed over the red line.

  Son of a bitch!

  I hung my head as Big Mike’s hands flew up in the air in celebration.

  “Nice shot,” I congratulated as we met in the middle again.

  “Thank you. Wanna just concede now and save yourself any more humiliation?” He laughed.

  “Fuck that. Let’s go.” I crouched down again, impatiently waiting for Louie to drop his arm.

  The black flash of the puck was barely in front me for a millisecond before I was swinging at it, trying to gain control, but once again, Big Mike was too fast. He swatted the puck off toward Brody this time, and we were in a full-on sprint to see who would get to it first. Mike beat me to it by no more than two seconds, and rather than swipe at it and steal it from him, I did what I know how to do. Lowering my shoulder, I crashed into Mike as hard as I could, sending him flying backward and landing on his ass. As his brain registered that this wasn’t just some cordial hockey game, but a game of pride, he glared at me and scrambled to his feet. I hooked the puck and skated backward just a little bit to put space between us again. My handling wasn’t good enough to get close to Brody and try and fake him out. I needed to shoot from as far away as I could and hope that Brody would make a mistake. I wound up and shot it as hard as I could.

  Blocked.

  “Damn it!” I yelled out loud this time as my head hung low again, and I slowly made my way back to the center of the rink.

  “Wow, Finkle.” Big Mike was already there as I skated up. “Didn’t know we were going all out like that. Thought this was just a friendly little one on one.”

  “I go hard every game, no matter who I’m playing. Wanna quit?” I was pissed, embarrassed. This match was my idea, and I was losing miserably.

  He scoffed, “Hell no I’m not quitting.”

  We got into position again, and just like the three times before, my body shook as I stared at the ice, waiting to jump on the puck. My heart was racing, but not like it raced in a normal game. There was way more at stake here than just the humiliation of parading around in a pink tutu for a week. I didn’t want to look like a loser in front of Louie or Brody, and I didn’t want Big Mike to see me as weak.

  I was so lost in my head thinking about what could go wrong if I lost that I nearly missed the puck drop. Big Mike easily gained control of it that time, but it gave me a chance to skate a little ahead of him and try to block his attempt at a close shot. Mike’s eyes bore into mine as he moved the puck back and forth, weaving closer and closer to the goal. His top half went left, but I knew that was a ploy, so I went right. Sure enough, he ended up taking a shot from his right hip. It flew over my stick and, thankfully, bounced off Brody’s glove. Before Brody could pick it up and slide it back to Louie, I caught it with my stick and moved back toward the middle of the ice. Out of nowhere, Mike came barreling at me. As he snuck an arm around me to try and steal the puck, his elbow collided hard with my bottom lip, jolting my head backward. Bright white stars dotted my vision as Mike skated away with the puck, going head-to-head with Brody once again.

  Score.

  I looked down at my practice jersey, which had a long line of dark red blood down the front of it. Slipping my glove off, I lifted my hand to my mouth and wiped my lip as the taste of blood coated my tongue.

  “Shit. I’m sorry, Finkle,” Big Mike said sincerely, a concerned look on his face. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “No problem, baby!” I whooped. “It’s all part of the game. Let’s go.”

  Mike was up two to nothing, but no fucking way was I going to let him shut me out completely. The next goal was mine. Period. It felt like it took the puck ten whole minutes to fall from Louie’s hand to the ice, but once it did, Mike and I were a mess of sticks and limbs. I got control this time, and I would fight like hell to keep it.

  I skated around in full control of the puck as Mike camped out in front of Brody, waiting for me to make my move. It was hard enough to get through Mike, but getting through Brody at the same time would be tough. I kept skating close to Mike and then pulling back, hoping to draw him out farther onto the ice where I could skate around behind him and battle it out with Brody alone. After three circles in, Mike finally took the bait and skated out toward me, but my plan backfired. Instead of skating a
round him, he was able to reach in and poke the puck away from me, out the other side. I skated past it and he cut in behind and took control once again. That was it.

  He was gonna score again.

  He was gonna win.

  I used every drop of adrenaline in my body and skated toward him like a freight train, determined to get that puck back before he got to Brody. He glided effortlessly along the ice, his eyes set on Brody and the goal, not even paying attention to me. Coming in from behind, I pulled my shoulder in tight and rammed into Big Mike as hard as I could. His body went flying toward the boards, abandoning the puck completely. I took control of it and in one swift motion, smacked it as hard as I could toward Brody, who barely had time to make a move for it.

  Score.

  I threw my hands up in the air and cheered in celebration as loud as I could.

  “Finally!” I roared, my voice echoing through the empty arena. I turned immediately to heckle Brody, but he was frozen, staring past me. I turned around, following his eyes, and there was Mike, lying in a heap on the ice.

  Lifeless.

  I FELT LIKE I was in a movie. Brody, Louie, and I all skated over to Mike as fast as we could.

  “Mike, you okay?” I heard my own voice, but I didn’t feel like I was talking. “Get up, man.” He didn’t move. He didn’t respond. Pulling his shoulder gently, I tried to roll him over.

  “Stop!” Brody grabbed my arm roughly. “You can’t move him. Louie, go get Pete! And call 911.”

  Louie stood up and tried to skate away so fast his feet kept flying out from under him. Eventually he gained control and skated across the rink to go get Pete, the team trainer.

  I’d heard people talk about a “stomach-sinking” feeling before, but until that moment, I’d never actually experienced it. But they were absolutely right. Inside I felt like I was falling, but in reality I wasn’t moving at all.

  “What happened?” My voice cracked, exposing the sheer panic coursing through my system. “I hit him and then went for the puck. I didn’t even see what happened.”

  “I’m not really sure.” Brody put his fingers on Mike’s neck, checking for a pulse.

  Holy fuck. A Pulse. How can he not have a pulse?

  “I saw you hit him,” he continued, “and then I watched the puck for about half a second before his body sliding across the ice caught my attention. He crashed into the boards pretty hard, Viper. I think he might have been out at that point already.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for my stomach to sink any lower, but it did.

  Just then, Louie and Pete came racing across the ice.

  “What happened?” Pete yelled, sliding to a stop next to Mike. Just like Brody, he checked for a pulse on Mike’s wrist.

  I swallowed hard and took a shaky breath. “I hit him.”

  Brody’s eyes flew up to look at me, but I couldn’t look back at him, so I just stared at Mike, silently begging my friend to wake up, to talk, to move an arm… anything.

  Pete moved around to the other side of him and shined a light in his eyes as we heard the faint sound of a siren getting louder and louder. It felt like an hour later but was probably only seconds before a small team of paramedics slid across the ice as carefully as they could.

  “What happened here?” asked the first guy who got to us.

  “I—”

  “He fell,” Brody interrupted me. “We were playing a game of one on one and he got checked. I think it knocked him out, because when he slid into the boards, he was already pretty limp.”

  “Okay. Move back, please,” he ordered.

  The three of us backed up enough to allow them to circle around Mike and do what they needed to do. He still hadn’t moved. Why the fuck wasn’t he moving? I covered my face with my hands as my head spun.

  Wake up, Mike. Please, wake the fuck up.

  Brody put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in close. “Relax. He’ll be okay.”

  The loud clank of the wheels of a stretcher hitting the ice echoed through the arena and pulled me out of my own head and back to reality. One paramedic was pushing it while another carried a neck brace and a backboard.

  A neck brace.

  A backboard.

  Please, God, don’t let him be paralyzed. Holy fuck. Please.

  They worked quickly but carefully, placing the brace around Mike’s neck and rolling him onto the backboard, where they secured him tightly.

  “On three… one, two, three.” The paramedics worked together to lift him onto the stretcher and made their way across the ice, toward the tunnel.

  Pete turned to the three of us and sighed, running his hands through his hair. “I’m gonna follow the ambulance to the hospital. Does anyone know how to get ahold of his wife?”

  “I’ll call Michelle,” Brody announced before turning to me. “Are you going to the hospital?”

  I bit down hard, clenching my jaw.

  Do. Not. Cry.

  “That’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever asked me,” I snapped and skated ahead of them toward the exit.

  My vision was blurry, everything just slightly out of focus. My mind was racing with the worst scenarios possible, and a permanent lump that I couldn’t swallow was lodged in my throat as I made my way across the ice toward the tunnel. Only one thing was bright and in focus.

  That fucking pink tutu.

  BRODY AND I drove the whole way to the hospital in silence. I stared out the window at nothing in particular, but my peripheral vision kept catching Brody look over at me.

  Finally, as we pulled into the hospital parking lot, he sighed. “Listen, obviously this whole situation sucks, but let’s not freak out until we know there’s something to freak out about, okay?”

  Too late.

  “Yep,” I answered coldly.

  We walked into the emergency room, and Pete was already there.

  “Hey,” Brody said to him stiffly as we walked up. It was clear none of us wanted to be there. “Any news?”

  Pete grabbed a tissue from a box on the desk and wiped his eyes. My heart sank again.

  Why is he crying? What the fuck is going on?

  “Not really.” He shook his head. “They’re prepping him for surgery right now. Did you call his wife?”

  “Surgery?” Brody panicked. “What kind of surgery?”

  Pete cleared his throat and took a deep breath, looking back and forth between Brody and me. “Apparently he had a seizure and started puking uncontrollably in the ambulance, so they did a CT scan immediately, and he has bleeding around his brain.”

  “Holy shit.” Brody barely got the words out, sounding like he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. My head spun again. I felt like I might pass out, so I hurried over to the nearest chair, where I plopped down and rested my head in my hands. What the fuck happened? Two hours ago, we were heckling each other in the weight room about whose ass was going to look better in the tutu, and now they were rushing him into surgery with bleeding in his brain. I desperately wanted to switch places with him. I had no kids, no family other than Gam, no life. I should have been the one with a bleeding brain on my way into surgery. I looked around for the nearest trash can as my stomach rolled.

  “Where is he?” A panicked voice grabbed my attention. I looked up just as the sliding glass doors were closing behind Michelle. Pete was filling her in on what the doctor had told him as I walked over to them.

  “What the hell happened?” Her eyes filled with tears as she bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

  “We were on the ice, doing what we do, and he slid into the boards,” Brody answered as he stared at the ground, deliberately not looking at me.

  She wiped her eyes with the tissue Pete gave her and shook her head incredulously. “That doesn’t make sense. He’s fallen a million times before. Was he wearing his helmet?”

  Brody nodded and I couldn’t keep quiet anymore.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s my fault. We were playing one on one. The game got
intense and I checked him.”

  Her eyes went from sad to angry faster than I’d ever seen. “You did this?” she hissed through clenched teeth.

  I wanted to tell her it was an accident, that I didn’t mean to hit him that hard, but nothing I could say at that moment would have taken away her anger. To be honest, I wanted her mad. I wanted her to take her fury and hate out on me, so I just nodded.

  “Michelle, it was an accident—”

  The words weren’t even out of Brody’s mouth before the side of my face stung with heat. I never saw her hand coming. She reeled back to hit me again, but Brody wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back. “Michelle! Stop! It was an accident!”

  “You motherfucker!” she screamed at me, flailing like a wild animal in Brody’s arms as tears rolled down her face. “How dare you? How dare you hit him like that? He’s your friend!”

  Brody struggled to hold her back. “He didn’t mean to. We were just playing a game.”

  “Some fucking game it turned out to be, huh?” she continued yelling through her sobs. “You’re standing here just fine, and my husband is in surgery! I hate you. Even when he’s better, I’ll still hate you! You don’t deserve him!” Ouch.

  I couldn’t defend myself against anything she said. She was right, and if Brody had let her loose, I would’ve let her hit me. Over and over. I deserved it.

  A security guard walked up to us. “Is everything okay over here, folks?”

  “Clearly not,” Pete said, “but we’ll keep it down. Sorry.”

  Michelle had finally stopped kicking, but Brody was still holding her. “I’m gonna put you down, okay?” he said softly. “Don’t do that again or they’re gonna kick you out, and you won’t be here when Mike wakes up.”

  She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. Her shoulders bounced up and down and her legs started to give out as she turned toward Brody and wailed into his chest. Once again, he wrapped his arms around her, only this time it was to hold her up.

  I walked quietly to the other side of the waiting room, knowing space for Michelle was the most important thing right now. After a couple hours, Kacie showed up and immediately went over to Michelle. They hugged and cried for a solid three minutes while Brody came over and sat by me.