Page 137 of Unmanageable

I look at Cash. He’s watching his dad drift back into a peaceful sleep, his thumb starting that slow, rhythmic stroke against my side again.

“We should probably get them out of here before the morning shift starts and the head nurse has a literal aneurysm,” I whisper into his neck.

“Five more minutes,” Cash says. “I just want to remember this.”

“The pizza or the stethoscope?”

“The feeling,” he says, closing his eyes.

***

6:02 AM

Ivy: You’re so in love with him.

39

Finny

I’ve been sitting at the table for twenty minutes, staring at a box of dry cereal and the light coming through the kitchen window. The refrigerator gives a long, low hum, clicks off, and leaves nothing but the sound of my own breathing.

It’s been eight days since we got off the plane.

Everything is back in the boxes where it belongs.

My hockey bags are stacked by the front door. The mail is piled on the counter—mostly bills and promotional flyers from businesses three thousand miles away that don’t know I’ve been gone.

My dad is back at Riverview, sitting in the green armchair by the nurse’s station in a new pair of brown slippers my mom bought him at the mall.

His lungs are clear. The fever’s gone.

When I went to see him yesterday, he called me Bobby twice—which was my grandpa’s name—but he ate three chocolate donuts and didn’t try to leave the floor, so the doctor said the baseline is as stable as it’s ever going to get.

The Reign medical staff cleared me for full contact on Thursday. The season starts in a few weeks. The training camp rosters are printed. My name is on the top line of the depth chart, right where it’s supposed to be.

And I haven’t seen Scottie since Tuesday morning in the lobby at the office.

We haven’t really talked to one another since the world cracked open at the hospital.

I miss her stupid voice.

When Cal and Ivy showed up at St. Elizabeth’s, they walked right into the room and saw us basically cuddling, stripped of any professional boundaries, but no one had said a single word about it.

Because of my dad’s situation—because of the tubes, the green lines rising and falling, and the quiet panic of that night—they just let it be.

Then, once the crisis passed and we got back to the real world, the conversation somehow fell away, the silence swallowing the whole thing before anyone had to explain what we were doing.

I reach into the pocket of my sweatshirt—the one she didn’t steal—and pull out the rubber band. It’s thick and blue, the kind they use to hold flowers together at the supermarket.

Underneath it is the stack.

Our postcards, packed tight against each other like a deck of cards. The edges are soft from being shoved into the glove box, some of them smelling of the pine air freshener we bought, others carrying a faint, greasy ring from where a coffee cup sat on the dashboard while we argued about the navigation.

We never opened the envelope.

I don’t even think about it. I just grab my keys off the counter, pick up my phone, and find her name.

I press dial.