Page 60 of Bro Code

“You took a hit on the chin. You were out for a few minutes. We’re on the way to the hospital for x-rays and a concussion check. The brace is just to keep everything still until we know your spine is okay. Can you feel your toes?”

Another small panic. Could he? He had no idea what they felt like normally. He’d never thought about them before. How often did a person think about what his toes felt like?

He swallowed. “Uh–”

“Wiggle them for me.”

He did. “Yeah,” he said, his chest collapsing with relief. “Yeah I can.”

“Great.” She sat down and reached over him and he felt her squeezing his left foot. “Can you feel that?”

“Yeah.”

She squeezed the right one. “And that?”

She took him through some more tests – squeeze my hands, follow this light, can you feel this, can you feel that, anything tingling or feeling numb? He answered all of them and she seemed satisfied and noted everything on a tablet. He felt foggy and she said that was normal.

She snapped off the gloves. Brisk, efficient. “I think you’re okay. But we’ll know for sure when we get to the hospital.”

“Where’s Louis?” he said.

A small frown. “Who?”

Riley briefly shut his eyes with embarrassment. No one here was going to know who Louis was. Most of the team didn’t even really know who Louis was. Why was that even the first person he thought about?

Maybe he got hit harder than he realized.

Stars and security lights went by above as they wheeled him through the hospital parking lot and down a corridor to a trauma bay. He was still strapped down with blocks either side of his head and a neck brace on, and could only stare at the ceiling as doctors and nurses cut off his gear and clothes to check him out and make sure he didn’t have any more injuries.

“Wait! There’s a thing,” he said, as they unceremoniously ripped off his hockey pants. “In the shin guard. Like a little piece of paper.”

The nurse bent to find it, and held up Louis’ tiny slip of folded paper between her fingers. “This?”

“Yes!” Riley’s chest flooded with relief. “Can you just…like, put it somewhere for me?”

She set it somewhere nearby – Riley couldn't see where – and they continued destroying his uniform. They even took off his underpants. He felt cold air all over him and tried to look down to see what was happening, but couldn’t. Was he just, like, lying there naked? That was awkward.

He had bruising on his knee, hip, and shoulder where he’d fallen down on the ice, but that was it. The doctor looked him over, ran him through the same tests they had in the ambulance, and then gave him a brief smile and said not to panic, everything was probably fine, but they still had to do the scans to be safe.

They covered him with blankets and whisked him off for scans, and then back to the trauma bay, where they put him behind a curtain, hooked him up to an IV to get some Tylenol into his head, and left him there, strapped down, naked under a blanket, and staring at the ceiling.

The team’s clinician came to check in. It was probably just a mild concussion, he said, but they had to go through the motions. Sit tight. Riley gave him a thumbs up without lifting his arm. He asked a nurse if he could call his parents, and she told him they’d already been called.

“What did they say? Are they okay?”

She didn’t know, and went to find someone who did.

He lay there, listening to the chaos of the emergency room and feeling uncomfortably naked. The pain in his head was fading, and the panic from waking up in the ambulance was fading with it. How long was he gonna have to lie here waiting for them to tell him nothing was wrong?

“Your parents are flying in.” The nurse stuck her head around the curtain. “They’ll be here in the morning.”

“Flying in?” He nearly groaned. That was almost certainly not necessary.

The nurse checked a tablet. “And your equipment manager is here with your personal belongings from your locker. I’ll send him in.” She whipped the curtain shut behind her.

Sighing, he closed his eyes. He heard the curtain open again and when he opened them, Louis’ face appeared above him.

He had an NHL lanyard around his neck and his eyes were wide with anxiety. He leaned over Riley, his face filling Riley’s vision, and for a moment, with the lights behind him and his features coming into focus, he looked like an angel.