Page 38 of Payback On The Ice

Here, it's the one drill where nobody can pretend I'm not there. You can't freeze a guy out when he's got the puck on his stick.

So I go get it.

First rep, I beat Okoye to it and spin off him and get a backhand on Dane that he kicks out. Second rep, Gunnar gets it, and I lift his stick and take it right off his blade and he says something about my mother that's honestly pretty creative. Third rep, I come out clean, all alone, and I put it high glove and Dane's hand comes up and takes it out of the air like it owes him money.

"Again," Halvorsen yells from the blue line. "Last one. Make it count."

Doug dumps a new puck into the corner.

I'm first there. Gunnar's on my back. I can feel him the whole way in, his stick across my hips, his weight leaning on me. I get the puck on my forehand against the boards and kick it to my skate and back to my stick, and I'm turning out of the corner toward the net, toward Dane, toward the slot⁠—

Gunnar's stick comes up.

I see it go up out of the corner of my eye. Both hands. Shaft flat. I've thrown a hundred cross-checks in my life and I know what one looks like from the inside, the half second before, when you decide.

It hits me right under the numbers. On the back, low, where the shoulder pads stop.

I go down. Face first. My visor hits the ice. The puck slides away somewhere.

And I'm getting up. I'm already getting up, on my hands and knees, because you get up, that's what you do. And then somebody's skate is on my stick, and somebody's on my back, and somebody else lands on top of him, and there's that sound a scrum makes, bodies and grunting and somebody laughing. I'm on the bottom. My chest is on the ice.

A knee comes down on my side.

Maybe it's not even on purpose. Just a big guy coming down on top of a pile, the way big guys do. But the knee comes down right on my ribs, right on the left side, with somebody's whole weight behind it, and something in there goes.

I can't breathe.

I'm not being dramatic. I literally can't. The air goes out of me and doesn't come back. I open my mouth and nothing happens. There's a white light behind my eyes.

And through the gap between two bodies, through the cage of my visor, I can see Dane.

He's right there. Three strides away. In his crease, standing up, his mask on, his stick in his hand. He can see me. I know he can see me, because he's looking right at me, at my face on the ice.

He doesn't move.

He just stands there. He's as still as he is between shots, watching, waiting for something to happen that he can stop.

It goes on forever. It's probably four seconds.

Then the pile comes off me all at once, guys getting yanked up by the back of their jerseys and tossed aside. Wes Abernathy has come all the way from the far blue line. He's pulling people off me like they weigh nothing, and he's yelling. I've never heard Wes yell.

"Get off him! Get off—Gunnar, get the fuck OFF⁠—"

The weight goes away. Air comes back in, a little. It hurts so much going in I almost throw up in my helmet.

"Theo." Wes is down on one knee next to me. He's got his hand on my shoulder, not pushing, just holding. "Theo. Look at me. Can you breathe?"

"Yeah," I say. It comes out like a squeak.

"Don't get up."

"I'm good."

"Don't get up⁠—"

I get up. On my knees. Then on my skates. I'm bent over at the waist with my stick across my thighs, and I'm breathing in little sips, because big ones feel like getting stabbed.

"What the hell was that?" Halvorsen's coming down from the blue line. "Who was on top?"