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Shane never even sees it coming.

One second he’s gliding backwards through the neutral zone, eyes on the puck, stick angled just right to receive the pass, mouth open in some chirped comment he’s about to toss toward Ilya across the ice.

Next, there’s just impact.

A body slams into him from the blind side, all speed and mass and bad luck. Shoulder to chest, elbow riding high, exactly the kind of hit the league will slow down and argue about for days. Shane’s stick flies one way, his helmet snaps back, and then his skates are gone from under him.

His head hits the ice with a sound Ilya feels more than hears, an awful, hollow crack that vibrates up through his blades and into his bones.

It’s quiet for a heartbeat.

Then chaos. The crowd roars. Someone blows the whistle. A siren blares. Hayden’s gloves hit the ice with a slap as he launches himself at the guy who threw the hit, fists already swinging.

Ilya doesn’t see any of it.

His entire world has shrunk to the shape on the ice.

Shane is on his back, sprawled, limbs at wrong angles. His helmet has spun halfway around; the chin strap digs into his jaw. His stick is several feet away. His chest—

His chest is not moving.

For a split second Ilya’s mind refuses to register it. Of course he’s breathing. People breathe. That’s what they do. The rise and fall must just be…too small to see.He skates closer. The white of the ice dazzles his eyes, makes everything too bright, too sharp.

There’s blood.

It pools at the back of Shane’s head where it meets the ice, a dark, crawling halo seeping out from under the rim of the helmet. A thin line of it snakes down, runs along his neck, disappears into his collar. More bright red bubbles at the corner of his mouth where his lips are parted, catching on his lower lip, streaking onto his chin.

“Shane,” Ilya says.

His voice doesn’t sound like his. It comes out high and too thin, shredded at the edges.

He digs his blades in and stops so hard that ice dust sprays over Shane’s jersey. He drops to one knee without feeling the impact.

“Hollander. Shany, hey. Hey.”

No response.

Shane’s eyes are half open, unfocused, staring at nothing. His lashes are clumped with melting snow. His mouth hangs slack, lips already going a little blue at the edges.

His chest does not move.

The boards, the crowd, the siren, everything drops away. There’s only the horrible stillness of the body in front of him and the ringing in his ears.

“Don’t move him!” a referee is shouting, skidding in. “Rozanov, back up. Medics are coming. Don’t touch him.”

“Fuck off,” Ilya snaps automatically, but his hand, hovering over Shane’s chest, doesn’t dare make contact. He’s suddenly terrified that if he touches him, if he presses down even a little, he’ll discover there’s nothing to press for.

He leans closer, inside his own visor. He can hear his own breathing, harsh and panicked, fogging the plastic. He can’t hear Shane’s.

“Shane,” he whispers, two inches from his face. “Breathe, Hollander. Come on. In, out. You know how.”

No answer. No movement. Just the eerie way his tongue is lying too far back in his mouth, like something is blocking the way.

The trainers and medics are on the ice now, klaxons on their vests, kit bags slamming down. Someone kneels opposite him, gloved hands already reaching for Shane’s helmet.

“Rozanov, you need to move,” the head medic says, breath puffing in little white clouds. “We’ve got to get to his airway.”

“He’s not… he’s not breathing,” Ilya hears himself say. “He’s not… he’s not…”

“We see that.” Her tone is clipped, focused. She presses two fingers hard against the side of Shane’s neck. Her eyes narrow. “I’ve got a weak carotid. No chest rise. Get the bag. Collar on. Now.”

Another medic reaches for Ilya’s shoulders.

“Sir, you have to back up…”

The hand on his jersey is a spark to dry tinder.

He jerks away, twisting, teeth bared. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Rozanov…”

“In the way?” Ilya spits, voice skyrocketing into something wild. He can feel the cameras on him, the weight of twenty thousand people watching, the red light glowing on the nearest broadcast lens. He does not care. “He is… not… some fucking…” His English falters, his brain slamming hard into Russian. “On moy…”

He sucks in a shuddering breath, yanks the words back into English.

“He’s my boyfriend,” he snarls, and the word tears out of him like it’s been waiting for this exact horrible moment. “My fucking boyfriend. Let me see. Let me…”

The syllables hang in the cold air, heavy as pucks, heavier than anything the scoreboard can carry.

Boyfriend.

For a heartbeat, the world stops.

Hayden has his fist cocked back, jersey in his hand, mid-punch. He freezes. The guy he’s hitting stops struggling. The refs, the coaches, the players on the bench… faces turn one by one like a stadium full of sunflowers tracking the same sudden light.

High in the stands, a wave of shocked noise surges and breaks.

“Did he say…”
“Boyfriend?”
“Hollander…?”
“Oh my God…”

It’s all a dull roar in the distance.

Here, on the ice, the only sound that matters is the one that isn’t happening: Shane still not breathing.

The medic who tried to pull him back is staring at him, startled.

“I don’t care what he is to you,” she says, kinder than she has any right to be at this moment. “Right now he is my patient. If you want him to live, you will get out of my fucking way and let me work.”

The words hit like a stick across his shins.

He rocks back onto his heels, dragging himself a half-meter away, enough for them to reach. He doesn’t go further. His knees stay on the ice. He feels glued there.

They cut the chin strap. The helmet comes off in a careful, practiced movement, dragging a mat of dark, blood-wet hair with it. More red wells up from the gash at the back of his skull, trickling across the ice like paint.

The collar goes on. Two hands tilt his head back, fingers opening his jaw. Another medic kneels at his side, squeezing a bag-valve mask over his face and forcing air into his lungs.

His chest rises artificially, then falls.

They do it again. And again.

“Still no chest rise on his own?” someone asks.

“Nothing,” the woman at his neck grits. “Carotid’s fading, I’m losing it. Starting compressions. AED now.”

She moves her fingers from his neck to the center of his sternum and starts pushing, hard and fast.

“Count out loud,” someone says.

“One, two, three, four…”

Shane’s body jolts with each press. His head, now collared, stays mostly in place, but his arms move a little with the force, hands twitching uselessly on the ice.

Ilya’s stomach heaves. He can’t look away.

“That’s his heart,” he hears himself say, distant. “You’re breaking his heart.”

“That’s the point,” the medic snaps without looking up. “We’re trying to make it remember its job.”

Another tech slaps two large adhesive pads onto Shane’s bare, bruising chest, one high on the right side, one low on the left.

The AED starts its calm, robotic voice: “Analyzing heart rhythm. Do not touch the patient.”

The compressions stop. The whole arena holds its breath with the machine.

“Shock advised,” the device says.

“Charging,” the tech calls. “Two hundred joules. Clear.”

“Clear,” the others echo, lifting their hands.

Currents run everywhere in the building, through microphones, lights, cameras, but this is the only one that matters.

The shock makes Shane’s body arch off the ice, back taut, muscles contracting in a grotesque mimicry of life. Ilya hears the tiny, horrible animal sound that squeezes out of his own throat.

The AED hums again.

“Analyzing. Do not touch the patient.”

The little green line on the portable monitor jitters, flattens, jitters again.

“Come on, Shane,” Ilya whispers, fingers digging into the ice at his knees. “Come on, baby. Don’t be lazy now. You never shut up, why quiet now? Breathe. Beat.”

“Rhythm detected,” the tech says, incredulous. “Sinus. We’ve got something.”

The lead medic’s shoulders drop a fraction.

“Carotid’s back,” she confirms, pressing her fingers to his neck again. “Weak, but it’s there. Bag him. Keep compressions if his pressure drops.”

The bag over his face starts moving again. Squeeze, release. Squeeze, release. His chest rises and falls, still not under his own power.

Time warps. Ilya’s breath fogs his visor in short, sharp bursts.

The stretcher is on the ice now, the bright orange backboard strapped on top. They log-roll him carefully, sliding the board underneath with practiced hands, keeping his neck still in the collar.

His arm flops into Ilya’s space for a second, glove brushing his knee.

He catches it like a reflex.

His glove closes around Shane’s, sticky with melting ice and blood.

“Rozanov,” the team doctor barks as they start to lift, “you can ride in the ambulance, but you do not get in their way. You hear me?”

“They’ll only take family,” one of the paramedics starts.

“He is my family,” Ilya bites out, voice gone hoarse and raw. “You want to argue with me now, while cameras watching? While I am emotional and say crazy Russian shit on live TV?”

The paramedic glances up at the nearest broadcast rig, at the sea of faces, then at the limp hand locked in Ilya’s.

“Fine,” she says shortly. “You don’t touch anything in the rig unless I tell you. You don’t unbuckle yourself. You keep talking to him. That’s your job. Got it?”

“Yes,” Ilya says, and in that moment he would agree to cut off his own arm if it meant he stayed.

They start moving.

The stretcher glides over the ice like some cruel parody of a power play. The crowd finds its voice again, a broken, scattered roar: “Shane! Shane!” “We love you, Hollander!” “Don’t die!” Someone, somewhere, yells, “We love you too, Ilya!”

He barely hears them. His entire world has shrunk to the hand in his and the way Shane’s fingers do not squeeze back.

As they hit the rubber mats in the tunnel, the sounds of the rink muffle, replaced with the harsh bark of orders, the squeak of wheels, the echo of their steps on concrete.

“Intubate en route?” someone asks.

“If he’s still not breathing spontaneously by the time we’re in, yes,” the medic says grimly. “Get ready.”

They load the stretcher into the waiting ambulance. The interior smells like antiseptic and old fear. The lights are too bright, too white.

“Sit there,” the paramedic tells Ilya, pointing to a fold-down seat by Shane’s shoulder. “Seatbelt on. Don’t touch the equipment.”

He obeys. The belt clicks around his hips. His hands are shaking.

He doesn’t let go of Shane’s glove.

Up close, the damage is worse. Without the distortion of the visor and the distance of the ice, he can see everything: the purple swell already beginning where his skull met the rink, the smear of blood at his hairline, the thin red trickle at his ear. His lips are parted under the clear mask, tongue slack, no breath fogging the plastic.

“Shane,” Ilya says. The word cracks. “Shane, it’s me. I’m here. You did very dramatic thing, da? Whole arena, cameras, everything. Very extra. Now it’s over. You can wake up.”

The ambulance lurches into motion. The siren wails to life, rattling in his teeth.

The medic leans over Shane’s face, watching the monitor, the bag.

“Still no effort,” she mutters. “Okay. I’m not fighting this the whole way. Let’s tube him.”

She glances at Ilya. “You might want to look away.”

He doesn’t.

He watches as they remove the mask and tilt Shane’s head, as a blade slides into his mouth and lifts, as a long, slick tube disappears past his tongue and into his throat. He watches Shane’s body jerk a little, reflexes firing even though there’s no awareness behind his eyes, no protest in his hands.

He holds on to his glove until his own fingers ache.

Someone inflates a cuff. Someone connects the tube to the ventilator. The machine starts its rhythm: whoosh, click, whoosh. Shane’s chest rises and falls in a mechanical pattern, alien and wrong.

“Tube’s in,” the medic says. “Good chest rise. Secure it.”

A strip of white tape goes across Shane’s cheek and upper lip, pinning the tube in place. The blood at the corner of his mouth smears under it.

Ilya’s stomach churns.

He leans in anyway.

“You breathe with robot now,” he whispers, voice shaking. “Very fancy. Very NHL of you. But you don’t get to outsource forever, you understand? You take job back soon.”

The medic glances at him, something soft in her eyes.

“Keep talking,” she says quietly. “He might be able to hear you.”

“What do I say?” he asks, helpless.

“Whatever you’d want him to hear if…” She stops herself before she finishes the sentence. “Just talk.”

His throat closes.

He thinks of all the things he’s never said in English. All the things he hid behind chirps and pressure and the safe distance of rivalry. He thinks of Moscow, of Russian spilling out of him like confession and Shane laughing, not understanding.

He presses his forehead gently to Shane’s shoulder, careful not to jostle any lines.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay. I will talk.”

The siren screams. The city blurs past unseen behind thin metal walls.

Ilya wraps both of his hands around Shane’s, bloody glove and trembling fingers and all, and starts to speak.

When they finally hit the hospital, they hit it with full scream.

The ambulance doors bang open, cold night air knifing in. A wall of white light waits on the ramp, automatic doors, fluorescent glare, blue scrubs moving fast.

“Out of the way, please,” someone says, and then they’re rolling. The stretcher rattles over thresholds, sirens dying as they cross into the emergency bay and the harsh buzz of hospital noise takes over.

“Male, mid-twenties, blunt chest trauma, commotio cordis, arrest on ice,” the medic rattles off as they charge down the corridor. “CPR initiated immediately, shocked once, intubated on scene. Responsive to fluids en route. No spontaneous respirations yet. Scalp laceration, unknown cardiac history prior to arrest.”

It’s like listening to commentary in another language. The only words that stick in Ilya’s mind are arrest and no spontaneous.

He jogs alongside the stretcher as far as he can, helmet gone, gear still on from neck to shins. His jersey clings cold and damp to his back. They’d made him ditch the skates at the arena (“you are not bringing blades into my rig, are you insane?”) and shoved some his sneakers into his hands. He’s wearing them now, laces trailing, tape still wrapped around his socks.

“Sir, you have to stay here,” a nurse tells him as they swing into a resus bay. Her hand lands on his chest protector; the plastic creaks. “You can’t come into the trauma room.”

“I was with him,” he blurts. “On ice. In ambulance. I...”

“Are you family?” she asks, already half-turned back to the organized chaos behind her.

The word hits like a slap.

He opens his mouth. Closes it again. Boyfriend feels stupid on his tongue in this echoing, indifferent corridor, under this white ceiling. It feels like something fragile he shouldn’t hold out in a place full of sharp edges.

“I…” His voice dries up. “No. I am…not.”

“Then you need to wait in the relatives’ area,” she says briskly, and before he can decide whether he regrets the answer, the door swings shut in his face.

For a second he just stands there, staring at his own reflection in the narrow glass panel, visor imprint still red on his forehead, hair plastered to his skull, shoulders bulking out his jersey.

He hears Shane only in scraps now: “Tube’s in.” “Pressure’s dropping.” “Get ICU on standby.” “Watch his stats.”

Someone calls for a portable monitor. A ventilator alarm chirps, then quiets.

He presses his palm flat against the door, fingers splayed over his own mirrored chest.

Then a security guard clears his throat, pointed, and jerks his chin toward a sign down the hall.

FAMILY WAITING ROOM →

Ilya’s throat burns. He turns and walks.

His sneakers squeak on the linoleum. The tape around his socks has started to peel; one loose end slaps his ankle with every step. He can feel sweat drying clammy under his pads, the heavy stink of the game clinging to him, ice, rubber, adrenaline, blood.

His phone buzzes, again and again, in the pocket of his shorts. He doesn’t take it out. The rectangle of weight against his leg is almost comforting.

The waiting room is a rectangle of beige misery: plastic chairs, a vending machine half-lit, a TV bolted to the wall playing some muted cooking show with subtitles. A pile of outdated magazines slumps on a table.

The nurse at the little desk by the door gives him a professional smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Name?” she asks.

He has to clear his throat twice before his voice comes out. “Ilya Rozanov.”

Her eyebrows twitch up. Recognition flickers there, then gets smoothed over by training.

“And your relation to Mr. Hollander?”

He hesitates for half a heartbeat. The last door is still in his head: Are you family? No. The way it closed.

“I am…friend,” he says stiffly.

“Okay.” She writes something on a clipboard. “You can wait here. The doctor will come speak to his family first, and they can share any updates with you. We’re still working on him right now.”

“How is he?” he asks, and the desperation in his own voice embarrasses him. “He is… his heart…”

“I really can’t say more than that,” she cuts in gently. “I’m sorry. Please, have a seat. We’ll let you know when his family arrives.”

Have a seat.

He looks at the chairs, at the TV where someone is chopping onions in close-up, at a poster about flu shots. Then back at the door he came through, behind which people are making decisions about Shane’s body without him.

He sits.

The plastic groans under his weight. His shoulder pads creak when he leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tight his nails dig into his gloves. He feels like he’s still moving, like the stretcher is still rattling under him, like the world is still sliding by too fast. The room hums with the ventilation system. Somewhere down the hall, a PA announces something in French and English. A baby cries. A man coughs.

No one says Hollander.

His phone buzzes against his leg. And again. And again.

He finally drags it out with clumsy fingers.

His teammates. His agent. A mix of numbers he recognizes and ones he doesn’t. The group chat is a stream of messages.

He flips the phone face-down on his knee and stares at the scuffed floor.

Time folds strangely here. Minutes stretch, then snap. The cooking show becomes news, becomes a kids’ cartoon, becomes infomercials. The fluorescent lights never change.

His pads trap heat. He starts to feel light-headed. At some point a volunteer in a vest brings him a paper cup of water; he nods thanks and forgets to drink it.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there when the waiting room door opens.

He doesn’t get up at first. People have come and gone, other families, other crises. He’s learned the rhythm of footsteps, the shuffle of jackets, the way strangers move when their whole world is walking on a gurney somewhere else.

These footsteps are fast. Sharp. The sound of someone running until they hit a wall and have to pretend to walk.

“I’m looking for our son,” a woman’s voice says, breathless and edged in panic. “Shane Hollander. He was brought from the rink…”

Ilya’s head snaps up so fast his neck cracks.

It’s her. Yuna Hollander He’s seen photos. Grainy screenshots from interviews. A framed picture on Shane’s parents’ hallway wall when they FaceTimed at Christmas and he lurked just out of frame, listening to the easy warmth in their voices.

In person, Yuna is smaller than he imagined and somehow bigger. Her hair has escaped whatever clip it was in; black strands fly around her face. Her coat is half-buttoned over a sweater; there’s no makeup on, just raw, red-rimmed eyes.

David is right behind her, tall and solid in a suit that looks like he yanked the jacket on in the car. His tie is crooked. His glasses are slightly fogged.

The nurse springs up. “Mr. and Mrs. Hollander? Yes. If you’ll have a seat, the doctor will be out as soon as…”

“We don’t want to sit,” Yuna snaps, then catches herself, pressing a shaking hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I just… we got a call that his heart stopped. That they were doing CPR on the ice. We saw…” Her voice breaks around the word. “We saw blood. Is he…is he alive?”

“He’s in the intensive care unit,” the nurse says, voice softening a little. “The doctors are with him. They’ll come speak to you as soon as they can.”

“As soon as they can,” David repeats, like he’s testing the phrase for weaknesses. “Is that code for ‘we don’t know yet’ or ‘we know and you’re trying to phrase it nicely’?”

“I don’t have details, sir,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

They stand there like they don’t know what to do with their bodies if they’re not moving toward their child.

Then Yuna’s gaze sweeps the room. It snags on one splash of color in the beige: white and red and black, the logo loud across a chest that’s heaving under too-heavy pads, gear stiff and wrong in this place.

On his jersey. On him.

Her expression flips from dazed to sharp in an instant.

“You,” she says.

It’s a single syllable, but it lands like she’s thrown something.

Ilya lurches to his feet.

“Mr. Hollander,” he starts, then corrects, throat thick. “Mrs. Hollander. Hi, I…”

“You’re on the other team,” she says, cutting across him. “Rozanov. You play for Boston.”

He nods, suddenly stupidly aware of the way his hair is plastered to his forehead, of the smell of sweat and rink leaking off him in waves. “Yes. I was on the ice when he… when it happened. I came with ambulance. I… ”

Her eyes flash. “It was one of your teammates,” she says. “The hit.”

It’s not a question.

“Yes, Marlow” he says, because there’s no point denying it. “But he… he did not mean…”

“Not mean to?” she repeats, incredulous. “He blindsided Shane when he wasn’t looking. We saw the replay. He came from behind. Your guy’s elbow was up.”

“He had the puck,” Ilya says automatically, because years of conditioning do that, and then wants to bite his own tongue off. “I mean… it’s fast, on ice, it goes wrong sometimes…”

“Hockey,” she snaps. “Oh, good. As long as it’s hockey.”

“Yuna,” David says quietly, touching her arm. “Let him…”

“No,” she shakes him off, anger cracking through the fear like ice giving way. She takes a step toward Ilya, eyes blazing. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your child go down and not get back up? To see his head hit the ice and not move? To hear words like ‘cardiac arrest’ and ‘no breathing’ over the phone while you’re still giving the babysitter instructions?” Her voice wobbles. “We watched them press on his chest on live television. We watched them shock him. We watched him not breathe. And it was your teammate’s number on his back right before he disappeared under all those bodies.”

Ilya feels the words like hits. He’s taken checks that hurt less.

“Yes,” he says, and his own voice startles him. Raw. “Yes, I know. I was right there. I saw his head hit. I saw his chest stop. I heard when they said no pulse.” His stomach churns. “I thought…” The Russian rushes up: ya dumal, chto on uzhe… I thought he was already… He swallows it down. “I thought he was gone.”

Yuna’s eyes flicker. Something like recognition flashes across them, quickly buried.

“I am so sorry,” he adds, the words tumbling out too fast, too small for what they’re trying to carry. “About the hit. About the game. About everything. If I could take it instead, I would. I would…” He swallows again. “He did not mean to hurt him. My teammate. He is… he is a good guy. He went for bad hit, I told him after second period to keep his head down, he was too keyed up, he…” He’s babbling. He clamps his mouth shut.

“You told him,” Yuna repeats slowly. “And he still did it.”

“I did not tell him to break your son,” Ilya bursts out, horrified. “I told him to play smart. This was…stupid. Reckless. He is devastated. He is probably throwing up right now from guilt. But it was not some plan. It was not because he doesn’t like Shane, or because of…” Because of what? Because of the thing that detonated on the ice when Ilya was too hysterical to care who heard?

The world tilted once tonight already. He doesn’t need to kick their axis again. Not here. Not now.

“…because of anything personal,” he finishes lamely.

“Except it is personal,” Yuna says. “Because our son is in there…” She points at the ICU doors like they’ve insulted her. “...and you are out here. And he got hit by someone wearing your colors.” Her gaze flicks over him, from the logo on his chest to the smear of dried blood on his sleeve. “You came with him, but you were on the other side when it mattered.”

He flinches.

“That’s not fair,” David says under his breath, but he doesn’t contradict the facts.

Nothing about this is fair.

“I would never let someone hurt him on purpose,” Ilya says, voice gone small and thin. “I care about him. Very much. I…” He stops himself on the edge of too much. Swallows it. “I don’t expect you to forgive my teammate. Or me. I just…want him to be okay.”

The nurse clears her throat softly.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hollander,” she says, “if you’d like to sit, Dr. Hudson will be out as soon as he can. He’s with your son right now.”

Yuna drags in a breath like she’s been underwater.

“We’ll stand,” she says. Her hands are shaking. “I can’t sit. I’ll combust.”

David nods, one hand hovering at the small of her back.

For a second there’s an awkward triangle of space between them, parents at one point, Ilya at another, the door with its red AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign at the third. All orbiting the same unseen bed.

“Have they told you anything?” David asks suddenly, turning to Ilya. “You came with him. Did they say…”

“No,” Ilya says. The word tastes bitter. “They ask if I am family. I am not. So they say ‘wait.’ That is all.” He gives a small, ugly laugh. “I have been waiting. Very good at it now.”

Something in David’s expression softens, just a fraction.

“So we’re all blind,” he mutters.

They stand like that for what feels like years: Yuna pacing a small, jagged path by the door; David leaning on the counter with both hands; Ilya back in his chair but perched on the edge of it, ready to launch at the first crack of a door.

No one tells him anything.

Doctors in white coats come and go, but none of them say Hollander. Nurses murmur into phones. A porter pushes a bed past the open doorway; Ilya’s heart slams into his throat until he sees it’s empty.

His phone buzzes again.

He glances at it.

New message from an unknown number:

This is Hayden, Shane’s teammate. We’re outside the hospital with the rest. Can’t get in. Text if you know anything. Anything at all.

He types with stiff fingers:

 nothing.  they take him straight to icu. i am not family

He deletes the last four words and sends it anyway.

Yuna is staring at the closed doors like she can bend them by willpower. David pushes his glasses up on his nose and pinches the bridge.

Finally, finally, the doors swing open.

A man in a white coat steps through, pulling off a pair of gloves. Middle-aged, dark circles under his eyes, ID badge clipped crookedly to his pocket: HUDSON, A. – CARDIOLOGY.

He looks like he has had a very long night and that this is the part of it he likes the least.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hollander?” he says.

“Yes,” they both say at once, moving toward him.

Ilya is on his feet too, a step behind, heart in his throat.

Dr. Hudson takes in all three of them with one quick, practiced sweep of his gaze. He clocks the jersey, the pads, the gaunt, wrung-out look on Ilya’s face, then looks back at Shane’s parents as if filing the extra information for later.

“I’m Dr. Hudson,” he says. “I’ve been looking after your son.”

“Is he alive?” Yuna blurts. “Please. Just… start there.” Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides.

“Yes,” Dr. Hudson says immediately. “He is alive.”

The word hits like a mercy.

Yuna’s knees buckle; she catches herself on the counter. David exhales so hard he seems to deflate.

“But,” the doctor continues, voice steady, “he is critically ill.”

Of course there’s a but. It hangs in the air, inevitable.

“He suffered a sudden cardiac arrest on the ice,” Dr. Patel says. “The puck hit him in the chest at an unlucky point in his heart’s electrical cycle. We call it commotio cordis. Your arena medical staff did an excellent job, they recognized the arrest, started CPR immediately, and used an automated defibrillator. They got his heart beating again within about a minute.”

A minute.

It felt like forever.

“He was intubated and ventilated on scene,” Dr. Hudson goes on. “We’ve admitted him directly to the intensive care unit. He remains on a ventilator; we’re supporting his breathing and closely monitoring his heart rhythm and blood pressure. We’ve done an initial CT scan of his head, which doesn’t show any massive bleeding, but given the brief time his brain was without adequate blood flow, we have to watch for new injuries. We’ve started targeted temperature management to help protect his brain.”

“He’s in a coma,” David says, translating. His voice is rough. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“He’s sedated,” Dr. Hudson corrects gently. “We’re keeping him in a medically induced coma for now, to let his organs rest. Over the next twenty-four to seventy-two hours, we’ll gradually reduce the sedation and see how he responds.”

“What does that mean?” Yuna demands. “When you say ‘see how he responds,’ what are you actually…seeing?”

“It means we’ll be looking for purposeful movements,” he says. “Opening his eyes in response to voice, squeezing a hand when asked, moving all his limbs. It may take time. The fact that his heart was restarted quickly and that his initial scan is clean are both good signs, but I can’t give you guarantees yet.”

Hopeful. Not certain.

Every word tonight has a tripwire.

“Can we see him?” David asks, voice low.

“Yes,” Dr. Hudsonl says. “One or two at a time. We have to limit visitors and stimulation, but you are his parents.”

He turns slightly, and his gaze lands on Ilya again. Holds.

“And you are…?” he asks.

“Ilya,” he says. “Rozanov. I came with ambulance. I was with him. On ice. I…” He swallows. “We are…complicated.”

Dr. Hudson’s eyes flick briefly to the logo on his chest, the half-peeled tape on his socks, the bruised, blood-streaked knuckles. Something like recognition passes through them. Arena. Hit. Star forward. The clip he’s going to see on sports news later.

“I appreciate you staying with him,” he says neutrally. “Right now, ICU policy is immediate family only in the room. Once things are more stable, we can talk about making exceptions, but at this stage we have to be strict.”

Not family. The door that word slammed in his face earlier swings shut again, metaphorically this time.

He nods once, jerkily, because if he tries to argue he’s going to say something he can’t take back.

“Can you tell him I am here?” he manages. His voice comes out hoarse. “If he can hear. Just tell him I am not leaving.”

Dr. Hudson’s expression softens a hair.

“I can do that,” he says. Then, to Yuna and David: “If you’ll come with me, I’ll bring you to his room. A nurse will help you gown up.”

They move past Ilya toward the doors.

Yuna stops as she draws level with him. For a second he thinks she’s going to say something cutting, something about hellos and goodbyes and how this might be the only time she ever sees his face in person and what a pity it is it had to be like this.

Instead, she just looks at him. Really looks at him, at the pads he hasn’t managed to take off, at the empty hands, at the way he’s shaking like he’s still on the ice.

“Thank you for going with him,” she says quietly, in a voice scraped raw. “In the ambulance. He shouldn’t have been alone.”

He blinks. It feels like somebody just opened a window in a room he’d been suffocating in.

“I was not going to let him be,” he says. “Alone.” The word tastes like glass.

She nods once, sharply, like that’s all there is to say about that, and turns to follow the doctor.

The ICU doors hiss closed behind them.

Ilya stands there for a long moment, staring at the seam where they meet.

No one has told him what Shane’s blood pressure is, or how his ECG looks, or whether they had to shock him more than once. No one has said his Glasgow score, or whether his pupils are equal and reactive.

They have told him: alive. Critical. Not family.

It’ll have to be enough.

His pads feel like they’re crushing his ribs now. The adrenaline has worn off, leaving him hollow and shaking. He turns, stumbles back toward his chair, and sinks down. The plastic squeaks.

His phone buzzes in his hand, a text from Hayden, another from his agent, a bunch of notifications from news apps he doesn’t remember installing.

He ignores them all.

He folds forward, elbows on his knees, and stares at the floor.

Behind the doors, Shane is being kept under by drugs and machines, heart coaxed along by drips, lungs filled by a ventilator. Somewhere between his scalp wounds and his Feet, tiny cells are deciding whether they’re going to live or die.

Out here, all Ilya can do is sit in his sweaty pads with his laces untied, hands empty, and wait for someone with a white coat and a chart to decide how much of his own life he’s going to get back.

***

At some point the chair stops being a chair and starts being a trap.

It squeaks every time he shifts, and the sound grates on his nerves, but if he stands up he thinks he might just keep walking until he hits the parking lot and never stops. So he stays.

The ICU doors have swallowed Shane’s parents. The clock above them ticks in ugly little jumps. The second hand keeps moving; nothing else does.

He holds his phone in both hands like it’s a fragile puck he’s not allowed to drop. The screen is black. His reflection stares back at him, smeared eye-black under his eyes, hair collapsed, the faint bruise where his visor bit his forehead.

He looks like he just finished a game.

He feels like he just finished being hit by a truck.

His chest hurts in a way that has nothing to do with pads.

For a while he just breathes in little shallow pulls and stares at the floor tiles until they blur. Then the thoughts start to leak in around the edges, because his brain hates him and loves reruns.

He thinks about all the times he didn’t say it.

The first time: a shitty hotel in Chicago, after an away game that went into double overtime. They were both wired and exhausted, lying on top of the covers, still half in their gear pants, watching some bad movie with the sound down.

Shane had fallen asleep slowly, before they even had sex, like a computer powering down, eyes drooping, mouth doing that soft little pout, sentences getting shorter. At some point his head had slid down Ilya’s shoulder and landed warm and heavy on his chest. His hand had found the hem of Ilya’s hoodie and curled in like it owned it.

Ilya had stared at the water stain on the ceiling and thought oh, fuck in a way that had nothing to do with hockey.

He’d carded his fingers carefully through Shane’s hair, feeling the damp roots, the way he always ran a little hot after games, and the words had bubbled up, stupid and reckless.

I love you.

They’d reached his teeth and stuck there. What came out instead was, “You snore like tractor, Hollander.”

Shane had huffed in his sleep and burrowed closer. “You like it,” he’d mumbled.

And that had been that.

There had been a hundred moments like that. A thousand.

Some random hotel, small balcony on the top floor, late at night, Shane wrapped in a blanket on the floor, cheeks pink from the cold, breath fogging as he laughed at some dumb story about Ilya’s rookie year. Ilya had watched his mouth and thought I love you and said, “You have frost on your stupid eyelashes, you look like idiot Disney princess.”

The morning in Montreal when Shane had made pancakes in his kitchen, batter on his cheek, flipping them one-handed while humming some terrible pop song under his breath. I love you, Ilya had thought, watching the way he burned the first one and laughed it off, and instead he said, “You are terrible cook, but cute, so is okay.”

The airports goodbyes when their flights were out of different gates and Shane had stood there with his bag over his shoulder, eyes soft and bright, and said, “Text me when you land, okay?” Hand hovering like he wanted to touch and didn’t know if he could.

Stay, Ilya had thought. Stay with me. I want to see your stupid face every morning for the rest of my life.

He’d said, “Try not to break leg while I am not there to watch.”

Every time, he’d chosen the joke. The safer thing. The sideways thing. Because rivalry, because distance, because Russia, because what if he said it and Shane looked at him like he’d just confessed to a crime.

He’d thought there would be time.

He squeezes the phone so hard the plastic creaks.

The one time he actually said it, he did it in a language Shane doesn’t speak.

Of course he did.

Moscow, three nights ago. The funeral hall had smelled like lilies and vodka and old wood. His father’s face had been too still in the open coffin before, skin waxy under the makeup someone else had put on him. People he barely remembered had come up to him and said things like “He’s in a better place now” and “He was always proud of you” and “You’re so strong,” and he had wanted to scream.

He’d walked outside instead, into the bitter evening cold, phone already in his hand like a lifeline.

Shane had answered on the second ring, voice soft and sleepy. “Hey. Ilya. You okay?”

Of course he hadn’t been okay. He’d been nothing.

“Talk,” he’d rasped, leaning against the stone wall, knuckles cold. “About anything. Hockey, weather, what you had for dinner. I don’t care.”

Shane had done it without question. Just started talking. About his neighbor’s dog, about some idiot reporter, about a kid at practice who reminded him of Ilya. Jokes, small stories, little warm shapes of sound in Ilya’s ear until the lump in his throat had gotten too big to breathe around.

“Say it in Russian,” Shane had said, when the silence stretched too long. “It’s okay. I don’t have to understand. Just say it. Whatever it is.”

So Ilya had.

He’d tipped his head back, looked up at a sky he couldn’t see for city lights, and let the words pour out.

About his father and all the things he’d wanted from him and never got. About his brother. About fear, of hospitals, of endings, of being left with nothing but empty rooms and trophies, alone, alone, alone, always alone. About Shane, with his ridiculous goodness and his stupid, stubborn patience.

He’d said, quietly and like it hurt, Я тебя люблю. I love you.

He’d said it like prayer. Like surrender. Like taking a slap shot to the chest and not flinching.

On the other end of the line, Shane had gone quiet.

Then he’d let out a soft, wondering little laugh.

“That sounded…intense,” he’d said. “Was that the part where you were telling me off? Or the part where you were calling me an idiot?”

And Ilya, the coward that he is, had laughed too. Had let it slide, let it be misinterpreted, because explaining would mean saying it again, this time in a language Shane could not pretend to mishear.

He rubs his thumb over the edge of his phone now, like he can rub that moment away.

What if that was it? What if that was his one chance to say it clean, and he burned it on being a coward?

His jaw clenches until his teeth hurt.

He’s so fucking angry.

At himself, mostly.

For every time he told himself it was better if they stayed rivals. Less messy. Less dangerous. Career-wise, PR-wise, heart-wise.

For every night at the hotel he used to lay awake listening to Shane’s breathing in the next room and thought maybe we shouldn’t do this, maybe it’s too risky, too complicated, and then went and did it anyway… with half his heart shackled and the other half too chicken to admit it aloud.

For every stupid, selfish calculation: it will hurt less if we don’t name it. It will be easier to walk away if we pretend it’s just…this. Just sex and chirps and whatever we are when no one’s looking.

What a fucking joke.

He presses the heel of his hand hard against his sternum, like he can shove the feeling down.

Just buried his father, and now this.

His mind keeps circling back to it, like a tongue prodding a cracked tooth.

Three days ago he stood at a grave, clods of frozen earth thudding onto a wooden box. He’d felt mostly numb, which had bothered him, like he was failing some test. Everyone had kept saying time heals, as if that was some universal solvent you could pour over anything.

Now his father is in the ground and his boyfriend is in a bed with a machine breathing for him and Ilya feels…too much. Like someone turned all his settings up to maximum and broke the knob off.

He thinks about his father’s face, waxy and still. About the flat line on the monitor the last time he saw him alive. About the words the doctor used.

We did everything we could.

There was no response.

Now it’s we’re hopeful and we’ll see how he responds and he wants to throw up.

It feels personal. Like death has him on some list.

You again. Busy week, huh?

His hands start to shake. He digs his fingernails into his palms through the gloves, hard enough to hurt. It doesn’t help. He wants to cry. The realization hits him in stages.

First: the tightness in his throat, like someone’s thumb is pressed hard into his windpipe.

Then: the burn behind his eyes, the way his vision goes watery at the edges when he blinks.

Then: the swell in his chest, pressure building, like there’s a scream stuck under his ribs that can’t find a way out.

He curls forward, elbows on his knees, head down. To anyone walking past it probably just looks like he’s tired, that particular exhausted athlete slump.

Inside, he’s coming apart at the seams.

He hasn’t really cried since the call from Moscow. A few stupid tears that night on the phone with Shane, maybe; his eyes had burned at the funeral, but nothing had come. Years of practice, of swallowing it back, of men don’t and Russians don’t and you’re stronger than that.

Now, in a shitty hospital hallway with his pads still on and tape unraveling around his ankles, his body seems to have decided it’s done being stoic.

He feels ridiculous. He also feels like if he doesn’t let it out, his chest might actually crack open. He bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, like maybe he can redirect the pain. It doesn’t work.

Memories keep flashing in, uninvited.

Shane laughing, head thrown back, at some dumb chirp. Shane’s hand between his shoulder blades, warm and solid. Shane’s voice over the phone in the dark, saying, “Say it in Russian. I don’t have to understand.”

Shane’s face on the ice: eyes half open, lips blue, blood at his mouth, chest still.

“I am so fucking stupid,” he mutters in Russian, words barely a breath. “Why did I waste so much time? Idiot. Idiot.”

His eyes sting. A hot tear pushes its way out and tracks down his cheek before he can blink it back. He scrubs it away harshly with the heel of his hand. More follow, because apparently that’s how this goes: once the first one escapes, the others rush the gate.

He clamps his teeth together. His face twists. A humiliating, broken little sound rips out of him, half-sob, half-laugh.

Great. Very tough. Very intimidating. NHL star crying in his gear in a hallway. He presses his knuckles to his mouth to smother the noises. His shoulders quake anyway.

A nurse walks by and pretends very politely not to notice.

He drops his hand and lets his head hang, tears dripping onto the scuffed floor between his sneakers. He feels like a kid again, alone in a cold flat in Moscow, sitting on the kitchen floor with his back against the cabinets, trying not to make noise while his father raged in the next room. Back then he’d taught himself to cry without sound, to keep it contained, small. To hide everything important.

It occurs to him, in a foggy sort of way, that hiding hasn’t actually saved him from anything.

Not from losing his father. Not from this hallway. Not from the fact that his heart is currently lying in a bed with a tube in its throat and a bruise the size of a fist over it.

He chokes on another sob.

“I should have told you,” he whispers, not bothering to switch to English this time. “So many times. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything, but at least I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering if you know.”

His voice cracks on the last word.

He squeezes his eyes shut and lets himself cry, finally, silent and shaking, tears hot on his cheeks, shoulders trembling under his pads.

It doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make doors open or machines stop breathing for Shane.

But for the first time since the hit, the pressure in his chest eases by a fraction, like a valve has been cracked open.

He drags in a wet, shuddery breath.

“Just wake up,” he mutters into his hands. “You can be mad, you can yell at me for not saying it sooner, you can break up with me if you want, I don’t care. Just…wake up, Shany. Please.”

The ICU doors stay closed.

The clock keeps ticking.

He wipes his face on the inside of his wrist, smearing salt and whatever’s left of his eye-black.

He feels wrung out and hollow and ten seconds away from starting again.

And for the first time all night, he thinks: When you wake up, I’m telling you. I don’t care if I puke from fear. I am not doing this almost-love bullshit anymore.

If he gets another chance, he’s not wasting it.

If.

The word sits there, ugly and sharp.

He exhales, long and slow, like he can blow it away.

And then he sits up a little straighter, wipes his face one more time, and fixes his burning eyes back on the ICU doors, ready to break again when they open.

***

The clock above the ICU doors crawls toward evening like it’s doing it on purpose just to piss him off.

He doesn’t know what time it is anymore, not really. The light through the high windows went from grey to white to the thin, tired gold of late afternoon. Someone dimmed half the fluorescents. The TV cycled through three different talk shows and is now showing a rerun of some singing competition with the sound off.

Everything feels like filler. Cheap programming between the important parts.

The important part is still happening behind those doors.

Shane’s parents disappear into the ICU in fifteen, twenty-minute shifts. First both of them together, then one at a time when the nurse starts gently suggesting shorter visits. Each time they come back out, they look more like ghosts.

At some point in the late afternoon, a nurse walks over to Ilya with a clipboard.

“Visiting hours for this unit end at eight,” she says, not unkindly. “The ICU is closed overnight to non-essential visitors. You’re welcome to stay in the waiting room if you’d like, but his parents won’t be able to go back in after that either.”

He stares at her.

“So they kick everyone out?” he asks, voice flat. “You just…put him in dark with machines?”

“There’s always staff with him,” she says. “Nurses at the desk, respiratory therapists, doctors on call. He’s not alone.”

He wants to tell her that’s not what alone means.

Instead he nods tightly, because if he starts arguing he’s going to work himself up into something ugly and they’ll boot him out for sure.

The minutes ooze past.

He’s still staring at that clock when the ICU doors finally open again.

Yuna and David step out, walking as if gravity has been turned up just for them.

Yuna’s shoulders are slumped, and she’s clutching her bag so tight the knuckles on her hand are bone white. David looks like he’s aged ten years in the last ten hours. There’s a smear of something at the corner of his eye.

They come toward him out of habit more than intent, like satellites returning to their default orbit.

He’s on his feet before he can stop himself.

“How is he?” he asks, the question worn thin from repetition. “Did he…wake up? Move? Anything?”

Yuna shakes her head once. The motion is small, tight.

“Nothing,” she says, and the word lands like a stone. “They tried lowering the sedation already, just for a bit. He blinked a few times, but…they’re saying it might just be reflex. He didn’t follow commands.” Her voice cracks. “He didn’t squeeze my hand.”

“He grimaced when they suctioned him,” David adds, as if fishing for anything bright in the sludge. “Dr. Hudson says that’s…good. Means there’s some response. But as for…purposeful…” He trails off, shakes his head.

“Nothing,” Yuna says again, like she’s tasting it.

Ilya’s stomach pitches.

“So he is just…” He gropes for the word, feels like a traitor using it. “Sleeping.”

“He’s not sleeping,” she snaps, and then immediately flinches, like she’s sorry for taking it out on him. “He’s…whatever this is. And now they’re throwing us out for the night, like we’re visiting a museum instead of…” Her throat works. “Instead of our son.”

“The nurse said we can call any time,” David offers, sounding like he doesn’t quite believe it himself. “They’ll tell us if anything changes. They promised.”

Promises. Hope. All these words they’re handing out like cheap lollipops in a dentist’s office.

“I’m going to grab a coffee before we drive home,” he says, touching Yuna’s elbow. “Do you want…?”

She shakes her head, eyes fixed on some middle distance. “I don’t want anything.”

He hesitates, then nods, squeezes her arm, and heads toward the vending machines and distant smell of burnt beans.

Ilya and Yuna are left in a little eddy of quiet by the waiting room door. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They hang stupidly at his sides.

“I am sorry,” he says finally, because there’s nothing else to say. “That there is no…change.”

She laughs, short and bitter. “It’s not your fault he’s stubborn,” she says. “He never liked doing anything on anyone else’s schedule. Why would regaining consciousness be any different?”

It’s the closest she’s come all day to joking. It hurts worse than outright anger.

“The nurses said visiting hours were over,” he says. “You cannot…stay with him.”

She shakes her head, a jerky motion.

“We can’t. There are other things we need to manage before we come back” she says, and the words sound like they’re scraping her throat on the way out. “Jobs. A house to lock. We can’t…live here.” Her eyes flick to him. “You can’t either.”

“I can try,” he says, half-mad. “Bench is long enough.”

Her mouth twitches, not quite a smile.

“If he could see you right now, he’d probably be yelling at you to go home and shower,” she says softly. “He always hated when he sat in his own gear smell for too long.”

A wet, broken noise escapes Ilya. “He is very rude,” he says. “I will sit in it now out of spite.”

Her eyes shine. “He’d like that,” she says.

The ICU nurse appears in the doorway then, looking apologetic.

“Mrs. Hollander,” she says. “Mr. Hollander. I’m afraid we really do have to close the unit to visitors now. You can absolutely call any time overnight. If there are any significant changes, the doctor on call will reach out to you right away.”

Yuna straightens like she’s been slapped.

“So we just…go?” she asks. “We leave him there and go home and pretend to sleep?”

The nurse’s face does something complicated. “I know it’s hard,” she says. “But he’s very closely monitored. He won’t be alone. Sometimes the best thing you can do is take care of yourselves so you’re strong for him when he needs you.”

It’s the kind of line that probably works on normal people.

Yuna looks like she wants to claw someone.

“Come on,” David says gently, reappearing at her elbow with two coffees and a face like he didn’t want to hear any of that either. “We’ll be back first thing.”

He turns to Ilya.

“Are you going home?” he asks.

“I stay,” Ilya says without hesitation. “They can throw me out, I will sit on curb. Easier for ambulance to run over me next time.”

David huffs out something that might, in a different world, have been a laugh.

“That’s not a good plan,” he says. “But I understand the impulse.”

Yuna looks at Ilya for a long moment. Her eyes are red, but there’s something sharper under the exhaustion now. Interest, maybe. Appraisal.

“You’re going to sit here all night,” she says.

“Yes,” he says simply.

“Why?” she asks. “You’re not allowed in. They don’t tell you anything. Why torture yourself?”

“Because if his heart stops again,” Ilya says, the words coming from somewhere low and raw in him, “I want to be in same building. And because I called him my boyfriend in front of the whole arena. ”

Her face flinches like he slapped her.

She looks away, blinking fast.

“All right,” she says, voice rough. “Suit yourself.”

They go. He watches them walk down the corridor, two figures under too-bright lights, shoulders bent toward each other. At the double doors at the end, Yuna glances back once, quickly, like she’s checking he’s still there.

Then they’re gone.

The hallway feels bigger after that. Emptier.

The ICU doors shut with a soft hydraulic whoosh. The nurse dims the lights another notch. The waiting room TV flicks to some late-night show; the host’s teeth gleam in the muted screen.

Limbo settles in. He pockets his phone, leans back in the chair, and stares at the ICU door like he can burn a hole in it. His skin itches under his pads. His eyes ache. His heart…he doesn’t even know what his heart is doing. Somewhere between pounding and stuttering, tripping over panic and exhaustion.

He must drift at some point, because the next thing he’s aware of is a voice over the hospital PA, cutting through the hum like a siren.

“Code Blue, ICU. Code Blue, ICU.”

His head snaps up. His whole body goes cold.

A few seconds later, the more specific call comes, sharp and horrible.

“Code Blue, bed twelve. Hollander, Shane. Code Blue bed twelve.”

For one heartbeat, he doesn’t understand. The words don’t connect. Then they slam together in his chest.

Code Blue. Shane. Bed twelve.

His body moves before his brain catches up.

He’s on his feet, chair skidding backward with a squeal that makes the nurse at the desk jerk her head up.

“Ilya…” she starts.

He’s already running.

The ICU doors, usually slow and dignified, hiss open under his weight as he shoulders through, ignoring the shouted “Sir, you can’t…!”

The world on the other side is sudden, blinding light and motion.

A cluster of people descends on a room halfway down the corridor. Voices call numbers. A monitor alarm shrieks. He hears the familiar, hated rhythm:

“One, two, three, four…”

Chest compressions.

For a second, all he sees is backs, blue scrubs, white coats, flailing limbs. Then, between shoulders, he catches a flash of a bed, the curve of a tube, a bare chest with leads and an ugly, blossoming bruise.

His vision tunnels. He lunges forward.

A hand clamps around his bicep like a vice.

“Sir, stop,” someone snaps.

He tries to wrench away. “Let me go, that’s…”

“You cannot be down here,” the nurse from the desk says, suddenly in front of him, expression gone from sympathetic to steel. “You’re not allowed in the unit during a code. You’re obstructing emergency care.”

“That’s Shane,” he chokes. “That’s my…” The word tears out of him, raw. “My boyfriend. His heart is… he is…”

“I know who he is,” she says, and there’s something like pity under the professional firmness now. “I also know that if you go in there and get in the way, even for a second, that’s time we’re not using to get his heart back.”

He hears it then, over her shoulder: “Again,” and “Charge to two hundred,” and “Clear!”

The corridor lights smear. His stomach lurches. He surges forward anyway, purely on instinct.

The grip on his arm tightens. Another hand lands on his other shoulder, bigger, heavier. A security guard, broad and solid in a dark uniform, plants himself at his side.

“Sir,” the guard says, low and immovable. “You need to step back.”

“I need to be with him,” Ilya snarls, half-sob, half-growl. His voice cracks. “His heart stopped on ice and I watched from three feet away, I am not standing in hallway now, I am not… ” His words knot. “You cannot shut door in my face again…”

“There is nothing you can do in that room right now,” the nurse says, cutting through the flood of Russian with blunt English. “They’re doing compressions. They’re shocking him. They’re pushing meds. The only thing you’ll do is get hurt or get in the way, and then that’s two patients instead of one. Is that what you want? You want his parents to have to worry about you too?”

The mention of his parents punches through the red haze.

He freezes, breath ragged.

Somewhere behind the cluster of bodies, he hears a doctor shout, “We’ve got a pulse!” and “Keep the epi running,” and the sharp change in the monitor’s shrill flatline to a stuttering, hopeful beep-beep-beep.

His knees go weak.

The guard’s grip shifts, not restraining now so much as supporting, like he knows what a collapsed athlete looks like and doesn’t want to pick one up off the floor. Ilya’s vision blurs. His chest feels like it’s being ripped open from the inside.

He wants to scream. To claw his way down the hallway. To grab the nearest doctor by the collar and shake answers out of them. To punch a wall until his knuckles break. To rip out his own heart and shove it into Shane’s chest: Here. Use mine. Mine seems determined to keep beating through this, might as well make itself useful.

Instead he stands there, muscles trembling, held in place by a nurse half his size and a guard who could probably bench-press him, and shakes.

Footsteps thump behind him.

“We heard about the code…” David’s voice, breathless. “Is it…?”

He and Yuna appear at his shoulder, coats half on, hair wild. They must have still been in the parking lot, not gone home yet after all, orbiting the building like they couldn’t quite bring themselves to leave its gravity.

Yuna takes one look at Ilya’s face, at the cluster of bodies in bed twelve’s doorway, and goes white.

“What happened?” she demands, stepping around him. “What is that? Is that his room? Is that…”

“Code Blue,” the nurse says, instantly gentler with her. “His heart rhythm went unstable again. The team is working on him.”

“You called us,” David says hoarsely, though it’s clearly a question.

“We paged his listed contacts,” she nods. “You can stand here, but you can’t go in until they’re done.”

So they stand, the three of them, side by side in the hallway: parents and boyfriend, equally powerless. Ilya’s fingers curl into fists at his sides. He digs his nails into his palms until crescents of pain bloom there. It is nowhere near enough.

He can hear everything.

“Resume compressions.”
“One, two, three, four…”
“Another milligram epi.”
“Still V-fib. Charge again.”
“Clear!”

Each shock feels like it runs through him too. His own heart stutters in empathy, chest tight.

He wants to tear down the wall between them with his bare hands.

“Come on, Shane,” he mutters under his breath, words spilling in a messy mix of English and Russian. “Come on, Hollander, you drama queen, enough, please. You already did this trick once, we were very impressed. You don’t need encore.”

Yuna’s hand flies to her mouth. Tears spill over silently, tracking down her cheeks. David’s jaw is clenched so tight the muscle jumps.

“Time?” a voice calls from inside the room.

“Four minutes since loss of pulse,” someone answers.

Four minutes.

On the ice, it was less than one. Dr. Hudson had said it like a good thing. Now they’re talking in minutes, and each one feels like a year.

“Come on,” the lead doctor growls, stripped of bedside softness now. “Don’t make me call it, kid. Not tonight.”

The monitor shrills, then suddenly its tone changes. The flat, angry whine stutters into a blipping rhythm.

“I’ve got something,” the tech says, disbelief and relief tangled. “Sinus tach. Pulse is back.”

“Check carotid,” Patel snaps.

“Faint, but it’s there.”

“Okay,” he hears Patel exhale. “Okay. Compressions off. Keep him on the vent. Start a drip. Somebody page the family.”

“We’re right here,” Yuna says, voice shaking, stepping toward the door. “We’re right here.”

“Give us two minutes to stabilize him,” a nurse calls, sticking her head out for a second. Her gaze flicks over all of them, parents, boyfriend, security, and lingers for a heartbeat on Ilya’s wild, wet eyes. “Then you can come in. But not all at once.”

The door swings shut again.

The guard’s hand loosens on Ilya’s shoulder. The nurse at his arm lets go.

He doesn’t move. His hands are still shaking. Inside, they’re hanging more bags, pushing more drugs into the line he’d watched them tape to Shane’s hand. Trying to bully his heart into remembering its job. Again.

Outside, Ilya feels like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin.

The rage has nowhere to go. It just spins in circles inside him, eating its own tail.

He wants to yell at God, at fate, at gravity. At whatever idiot force decided that three days after burying his father he should stand in another hallway listening to someone pound on another chest he loves.

He wants to yell at himself most of all.

For all the time he wasted. For every almost-confession. For the fact that he let a nurse’s question, are you family?, shake him enough that he swallowed the word boyfriend in the first place.

He grips the rail along the wall so hard his knuckles whiten.

“I’m going to kill him,” he mutters, half-hysterical, voice rough. “When he wakes up. For this. For making me listen to this twice.”

“He gets that from you, probably,” Yuna says faintly beside him. “The dramatic timing.”

He barks out a broken laugh that sounds more like a sob.

The ICU doors to the public hall are still propped open. Far down the corridor, a harried-looking young doctor is arguing with someone about beds. A cleaner quietly squeezes past with a mop bucket, eyes down, like codes happen all the time and you just…mop around them.

He wants to claw that normalcy off the walls.

After what might be two minutes or might be twenty, the nurse reappears.

“Okay,” she says, voice soft, kind in a way that makes his throat lurch. “We’ve got him back on a stable rhythm. He’s still critical, but the immediate emergency is over.”

Yuna is already moving forward.

“Parents first,” she says unnecessarily, looking at Ilya with apology in her eyes. “You can come back after we talk to Dr. Hudson again.”

He nods, because arguing right now feels obscene. He steps back, presses himself against the opposite wall as they gown up again, hands shaking so badly David fumbles the tie and the nurse has to help.

They disappear into the room. The door closes.

He’s stopped again. In the hallway. On the wrong side of the line.

He leans his head back against the cold plaster and stares up at the ceiling.

“You better not fucking die,” he says quietly, in Russian, to the blinking lights, to the machines, to whatever is left of Shane that’s listening. “Because if you do, I will never forgive you, and I will be angry at you forever, and that is not the kind of haunting you want, trust me.”

His voice shakes. Tears burn hot again. He drags in a jagged breath, fists the fronts of his hoodie, and holds himself together by the thinnest threads he has left.

On the other side of the wall, his boyfriend’s heart has failed twice in one day.

On this side, his own keeps stubbornly, infuriatingly beating.

He wants to scream.

He doesn’t.

He stands in the corridor and lets the fury and the terror and the grief churn through him, nowhere to go, until the only thing left is the blunt fact that he is still here.

When this door opens, he thinks, jaw set, he is not leaving again. Not until someone physically drags him out of the building or tells him Shane is awake to do it himself.

***

Over the next days, ime blurs into something ugly and uncountable.

Morning, evening, night, none of it means anything. The ICU curtains open, close, open again. Nurses change. Dr. Hudson’s tie is different colors. The coffee in the waiting room is bad in exactly the same way every time.

What doesn’t change is this:

Shane does not wake up.

Not that day, or the day after, or the one after that. Every time they “lighten the sedation” it’s the same: a few more reflex twitches, an eyelid flutter, maybe a grimace at suctioning or a change in blood pressure when someone moves his arm.

But no real opening of eyes. No “Shane, can you hear me?” followed by a squeeze of fingers, or a look that tracks a face, or a stupid croaked joke about how he feels like shit.

He just lies there. Bruised and quiet and mechanically breathing.

The world moves around him.

Yuna and David come in shifts, exhausted and hollow. Nurses murmur. Doctors adjust drips. Security learns Ilya’s face and his habit of pacing like a caged tiger in the hallway.

He’s been allowed in a couple times, supervised, ten minutes at a shot, to “say a few words.” Always with someone hovering, always with parents either on their way in or on their way out, always with an invisible clock ticking loud in his ears.

It isn’t enough. None of it is enough.

On the fifth day, something in him snaps.

It’s late. Visiting hours have technically ended; the ICU is in its strange, dimmed midnight mode. Monitors still beep, ventilators still sigh, but the corridor outside is quieter. The nurse at the desk is filling out paperwork, her attention mostly on the stack in front of her. The security guard is down the hall arguing with someone about a parking ticket.

Yuna and David left half an hour ago, both of them looking like they’d been hollowed out with a spoon. Yuna had paused by Ilya’s chair, squeezed his shoulder once without speaking, then walked away.

He realizes he has a small window. His heart starts pounding in a different rhythm. Not panic this time, something sharper. Determination flavored with fear.

He stands up. His knees protest. He ignores them.

He walks down the corridor, as casual as a man in a hoodie and jeans and haunted eyes can be. At the ICU doors, he doesn’t even hesitate. He hits the sanitizer, rubs it around his fingers like he belongs here, and waits for the sensors to catch him.

The doors hiss open. No one shouts.

The nurses’ station is to the left. Bed twelve, Shane, is to the right, third door down, the window half-frosted with privacy film. Through the clear strip at the top, he can see the faint shape of a monitor. Ilya moves quickly and quietly, the way he’s learned to sneak past defensemen who think they’ve got his lane closed.

A nurse looks up as he passes. Their eyes meet. Her gaze flickers to the empty hallway behind him, to the clock, back to his face. Something in him must convince her, because she just says, very softly, “Ten minutes,” and looks back at her chart.

He could kiss her.

He doesn’t. He all but sprints to Shane’s door instead, opens it just enough to slip inside, and closes it with the quietest click he’s ever managed.

The room is its own universe. Soft light, monitors, the ever-present hiss-click of the ventilator. It smells like antiseptic and plastic and the faint metallic tang of IVs.

And in the bed: Shane.

Same as always, and that’s the problem.

Same bruise over his sternum, yellowing at the edges now but still angry purple in the center. Same tape across his mouth anchoring the tube. Same pale face, lashes dark against his cheeks. There’s more scruff than usual along his jaw; someone’s been shaving him badly every other day and missing a few spots.

His hair is clean, at least. Someone washed the blood out. It flops stupidly over his forehead.

“Hi,” Ilya says, because what else is there to say? His voice sounds too loud in the small room. “It’s me. Again. Surprise.”

He pulls the spare chair up as close to the bed as it will go and drops into it.

There’s a little square of bare skin on Shane’s hand again, between tape and clip. Ilya finds it like a homing pigeon, slides his fingers into that space and curls his hand gently around Shane’s.

Warm. Still. No answering squeeze.

“Well,” he mutters. “You look like shit.”

The machines don’t care. He exhales, long and slow.

“Five days,” he says. “Five fucking days, Hollander. I have watched more daytime television than should be legal. I have learned about seventeen different types of mop from hospital commercials. Do you know how boring you are when you just lie there breathing to a metronome? I would pay good money to hear you chirp me right now. Tell me my shot sucks or that my hair is stupid. Anything.”

His thumb rubs slow circles over the back of Shane’s hand. The skin there is a little dry.

“You are missing such incredible drama out there,” he goes on, because if he stops talking he’s going to start crying again, and he’s tired of sounding like a broken faucet. “Every news channel shows the hit again and again. They slowed it down so much it looks fake. There is argument about whether it was dirty. My teammate is one ‘intent to injure’ away from being burned alive in your city. Social media is insane. Someone made fan edits of me screaming on the ice. Did you know that? They put sad music over it. I look very ugly. I hope you are happy.”

He snorts.

“Also, in case you are wondering, yes, the whole world knows now. About…us.” He gestures vaguely between them, though only one of them is conscious. “My little live TV confession? It made all the shows. My agent is, how you say, having heart attack in ten separate languages? The league put out statement. My PR girl has started smoking again, I guarantee. You don’t even get to see it. Such a waste.”

His voice cracks a little at the last word. He swallows hard. The ventilator sighs. Shane’s chest rises and falls, steady, unnatural.

“I am very angry with you,” he informs the unconscious man on the bed. “Just so you know. You pick now to do this? After everything? After Moscow and my father and…” He waves his free hand, helpless. “You couldn’t just twist ankle like normal hockey player? No, you go, ‘mm, I think I will die on national television for spice.’”

He laughs, short and bitter.

“Twice,” he adds. “You did it twice. On ice and then in here. Twice I listen to people shout ‘no pulse.’ You are show-off even when you’re not awake. It’s disgusting.”

He falls quiet for a moment, watching the small movements he does get: the rise and fall of the sheet over Shane’s chest, the tiny twitch of an eye muscle under his lid, the occasional, random shift of his fingers when the ventilator alarms and a nurse comes in to suction him.

“The thing is,” he says softly, “I keep thinking it should be me. Lying there.”

He lets that sit in the air between them.

“I mean, I already did the funeral,” he goes on, voice hoarse. “I already did the ‘son-at-the-coffin’ thing. I have the…what is word…momentum.” He gives a small, humorless huff. “It would make more narrative sense, you know? The guy with asshole Soviet dad dies of heart problem after funeral? Yes, very on-brand. The golden Canadian with perfect parents and big smile? He’s supposed to be the one sitting in ugly chair by bed, complaining about coffee, not the one with bruise shaped like someone tried to punch his soul.”

His thumb doesn’t stop moving on Shane’s hand. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Instead we get this,” he murmurs. “My father is in ground, you are…here, and I am stuck in hallway like some…extra.”

The memories push at him: his father’s flat chest under the sheet, the finality of dirt hitting wood. The monitor here singing its high, shrill alarm. “No pulse.” “Clear.” “Again.”

He presses his mouth together until it hurts.

“You know what is really fucked up?” he asks, as if Shane is awake and rolling his eyes at him. “All those times I told myself we should not be together, because it was too dangerous, too messy, too big. I sat in that stupid cottage with you, with your cold feet on my legs and your stupid soft hands on my back, and I thought, ‘no, this is too much. He is too much. We are too much. It will hurt when it ends. Maybe I should end it now, quietly, before it gets worse.’” He snorts, louder. “Like some genius. Like I am protecting myself from future pain.”

His eyes burn.

“You know what hurts more than anything?” he asks quietly. “Sitting here, in this room, and thinking about all the times I almost told you I love you and shut my mouth instead.”

He stares at Shane’s face, at the faint stubble, the slightly parted lips around the tube.

“I did it once,” he says. “Once. Properly. In Russian. You remember? Moscow. Outside funeral home. You told me, ‘Say it in Russian, I don’t have to know.’ So I said it. I said я тебя люблю like it was ripping out part of my lungs. And you…” He exhales shakily. “You laughed. You thought I was yelling at you. You said, ‘Was that the part where you were calling me an idiot?’ And I let you think it. Because I was scared.”

He shakes his head.

“I am so fucking stupid,” he mutters in Russian. “  hid it like that was going to keep me safe. Now look where we are. You’re the one who can’t answer back, and I am sitting here monologuing like tragic ex-wife in bad movie.”

Silence, except for the machines.

He leans closer, lowering his voice like he’s sharing a secret.

“Do you know what I thought, when they shoved me out of the trauma room the first time?” he asks. “When they asked if I am family and I said no like idiot? I thought, ‘Maybe this is sign. Maybe this is punishment for thinking I could have this. That I could have you.’”

His throat tightens. He forces the words out anyway.

“As if wanting to love you is some crime, and the universe goes, ‘Ah, no, Rozanov, you flew too close to sun, now we knock his heart out of rhythm and you get to listen.’” He laughs, a choked thing. “Very Greek tragedy. Very poetic. Complete bullshit.”

He sits back a little, runs his free hand over his face.

“I do not believe in God,” he says. “You know this. But I believe in…patterns. The way things like to line up. My father’s heart failed, now yours decides to do magic tricks. I start to think, maybe I am…the common denominator. Bad luck in skates. Walking curse.”

He looks at Shane again.

“If you were awake, you would call me dramatic,” he says. “You would grab my face in your stupid warm hands and say, ‘Ilya, your father having heart attack and me taking puck to the chest are not some cosmic sign that you suck.’ You would bring up statistics. You would say, ‘That’s not how probability works.’ You would tell me to stop being mean to myself.” His mouth twists. “So I am trying to hear you in my head.”

He taps his temple with their joined hands.

“I can hear you, you know,” he says. “Little ghost voice. ‘Ilya, drink water.’ ‘Ilya, that’s catastrophizing.’ ‘Ilya, please stop comparing yourself to a curse, it’s weird.’ You are very annoying even in my imagination.”

The ventilator hisses. For a second, the monitor beeps faster as a nurse somewhere tweaks a setting; then it settles again.

“I told your parents, by the way,” he adds. “About…us.” He winces. “Not big coming-out speech. No parade. Just…they heard me on the ice, you know? The boyfriend thing. They pretended they did not at first, but you cannot un-hear, I think. So I told them: yes. You are not just some idiot I scream at for fun. You are my idiot.”

His mind flashes back to Yuna’s face, the way anger and grief and something like reluctant understanding had warred there.

“Your mom is still very mad at me,” he says. “At my teammate. At the world. She has full right. But she let me stay. She thanks me for staying with you in ambulance.” His voice softens. “She said he should not have been alone. I wanted to tell her, ‘He hasn’t been alone in two years, because I am there,’ but I did not. No need to traumatize woman more.”

His thumb hasn’t stopped moving.

“Your dad asked why I’m still here if they won’t let me in,” he says. “I told him, ‘Because if his heart stops again, I want to be in same building.’ He did not like that answer, but he…understood, I think. We are forming weird grief club, me and your parents. They go home because of their job, life. I sit in ugly chair and eat the terrible sandwiches Svetlana brings me and pretend I am not falling apart. Very fun club.”

He exhales, long and shaky.

“My point in all of this,” he says, and laughs at himself because he came in here without a point, just a need, “is that I am done hiding. You hear me, Hollander? When you wake up, and you will wake up, because if you die I will be so pissed off you will come back just to yell at me for being mad at corpse, I am telling you. In English. With eye contact. Maybe even without jokes. I love you.” He nods firmly, as if signing a contract. “I am saying it like five times in a row if I have to.”

His eyes sting again.

“Until then,” he adds, voice dropping, “I need you to meet me halfway, okay? I am out here doing all this emotional growth, it’s disgusting. The least you can do is wiggle a toe on purpose or something. Squeeze my hand, just once, so I know there is more than…reflexes in there.”

He squeezes Shane’s fingers gently.

Nothing.

“Of course,” he mutters. “You always were stubborn. Never did anything first time someone asked.”

He sits there a while in silence after that, just…being. The machines keep their steady, alien rhythm. The drip pumps whirr occasionally. The ventilator sighs. He watches every tiny movement like it might be the important one.

At some point a nurse slips in, checks numbers, glances at him, and says nothing. She adjusts a line, writes something on a chart, and leaves.

He licks his lips, leans in a little closer.

“Listen,” he says quietly. “I know they keep telling me ‘he might hear you’ like some Hallmark card. I don’t know if you do. Maybe this all just sounds like underwater noise to you. Maybe you’re off in some weird brain dream, skating without me, cheating on me with Hayden, who knows.” He manages the ghost of a smile. “But in case any part of you can hear anything, I want this on record.”

His fingers tighten around Shane’s.

“I am not going anywhere,” he says, each word deliberate. “Not if this takes days, or weeks, or months. They can make me leave the room. They can make me sit in hallway. They can kick me out of the ICU. But I will stay in this building. In this city. On this stupid planet. I am not…checking out from this.”

He swallows.

“I am all in,” he finishes, barely above a whisper. “You took my heart already. The least you can do is bring yours back online and join me.”

He bends, very carefully, and presses his masked mouth to Shane’s knuckles, feeling the warmth of skin through thin fabric.

“I love you,” he says there, finally, finally in English, voice shaking but clear. “In case…” His voice breaks. He forces it steady. “In case there is some part of you keeping score.”

The monitor keeps beeping. The ventilator keeps breathing.

Shane doesn’t move.

Not in any way a doctor would chart, anyway.

But Ilya chooses to believe, because at this point it’s the only choice that keeps him upright, that somewhere behind those closed eyes, some part of him is listening.

And that when he finally fights his way back up, he’ll know exactly how loved he is and exactly how much of an idiot his boyfriend was for ever thinking they shouldn’t be together.

***

Somehow, they fall into a rhythm that feels nothing like a life.

Sleep in two-hour snatches at home. Shower. Grab whatever food Svet shoves into his hands and forget to eat half of it. Drive to the hospital. Sit. Wait. Watch the door.

Some days he gets ten minutes at Shane’s bedside. Some days fifteen. Some days there’s a new nurse who doesn’t recognize him and tries to shoo him away until Yuna or David materialize and say, quietly, “He’s with us,” and then the shooing stops.

They don’t talk about it, what with us means. They don’t ask what he is to Shane beyond “boyfriend,” and he doesn’t volunteer more than they’re ready to hear. But the understanding plants itself anyway, small and stubborn.

Yuna will sometimes hand him the visitor gown without looking at him directly.

“Your turn,” she’ll say. “David and I are going to get coffee.”

Sometimes, when they cross paths at the bedside, him leaving, them arriving, David will touch his shoulder, just once, a quiet, grounding weight, like you’re allowed to be here.

It’s more mercy than he expected.

Shane is…stable. That’s the new word of the week. The old words - critical, code, arrest - have been swapped out for medicalese that sounds calmer and feels somehow worse.

His heart, with the help of meds, stays in line. His lungs remember their job; the ventilator settings come down, then disappear altogether. One day Ilya comes in and the tube is gone, replaced by a simple cannula at his nose.

“He’s breathing on his own now,” Dr. Patel says, not unkindly. “That’s a big step.”

“Doesn’t look different,” Ilya mutters, because it doesn’t. Same closed eyes. Same slack hands. Same lack of him in the room.

He gets used to the sounds of the ward. The rhythmic hiss of beds inflating and deflating. The beeps that aren’t urgent and the ones that make nurses move faster. The murmurs from other rooms. The soft squeak of rubber soles.

He gets used to the way Shane’s parents look at him now: not with blame, not exactly, but with a weary recognition. They share vending machine coffee. He tells them when he’s leaving for the night, because it feels wrong to vanish from their orbit without warning. They text him when they can’t make it in and ask, Could you sit with him for us today?

He always says yes.

Days stack. No change.

Until the day the doctors pull out more chairs.

He’s in his usual place, a plastic one near the unit door, hood up, earbuds in with no music playing, pretending not to stare at the clock, when he hears his name.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hollander?”

Dr. Hudson is there, flanked by another doctor Ilya hasn’t seen before, a woman with pale hair pulled back too tightly and a neurologist’s badge clipped to her white coat.

Yuna and David stand at once. The exhaustion has settled into them so deeply it’s part of their posture now.

“We have a conference room we can use,” the neurologist says gently. “If you’d like to talk privately.”

He expects them to go. To disappear behind some anonymous door and leave him with the same three useless words as always when they come out: He’s the same.

Instead, Yuna says, “No. Here is fine,” and then, almost as an afterthought, but not really, she looks over at Ilya.

“Can he…?” She doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t say can he listen too, please, because he’s been here as much as we have.

Dr. Hudson follows her gaze. His expression shifts almost imperceptibly, from “Yes, yes, the hockey player” to “Okay, this is one of ours”.

“If that’s all right with you,” he says.

Ilya is already on his feet.

“I don’t have to…” he starts, because this is their son, this is their grief, and maybe he doesn’t have the right to be in the circle.

“Yes, you do,” Yuna says, and that’s that.

The doctors drag over a couple more chairs. They sit in a weird little knot just outside the ICU doors: parents, boyfriend, cardiologist, neurologist.

It feels like a team meeting from hell.

“As you know,” Dr. Hudson starts, fingers laced loosely in his lap, “medically, Shane has made significant progress over the last few days.” He ticks the points off, one by one. “His cardiac rhythm has been stable. We’ve been able to wean him off some of the intravenous medications, and we’ve transitioned to oral drugs for his heart. His blood pressure is good. His oxygen levels are normal. He’s breathing spontaneously now and maintaining his own airway.”

It sounds like a list of wins. It should feel that way.

It doesn’t.

Yuna nods, jaw tight. “And yet,” she says.

“And yet,” the neurologist picks up smoothly, “he’s not waking up.”

That word again. Not can’t. Not won’t. Just…not.

“We’ve repeated his imaging,” she says, and pulls a tablet out to show them ghostly scans that mean nothing to anyone not trained to read them. “We see no major structural damage. No large strokes. No swelling that would explain a prolonged comatose state. We’ve done EEG monitoring; his brain is showing activity. There’s some slowing, which we’d expect after a cardiac arrest and sedation, but nothing that screams ‘massive injury.’”

“So why isn’t he…” Yuna begins, then cuts herself off with a helpless gesture.

“Waking up?” the neurologist finishes. “That’s the question.”

Ilya’s hands curl into fists on his thighs. He digs his nails into his palms and feels nothing.

“In some patients,” she continues carefully, “after we’ve treated the acute medical issues, we’re left with what we call a disorder of consciousness that doesn’t have an obvious structural cause.”

“English,” David says roughly. “Please.”

She nods. “He’s physically better. His organs are working. His brain is not profoundly damaged. There’s no clear reason, from what we can see, that he shouldn’t be more awake.” Her eyes are kind, but there’s a helplessness there too. “And yet he’s not moving past this minimal level of responsiveness.”

“So…what?” Yuna’s laugh snaps, brittle. “He’s choosing not to wake up?”

“We don’t think it’s that simple,” the neurologist says quickly. “The mind is complicated. Stress, trauma, psychological factors—they all interact with brain function. Sometimes, in the aftermath of a life-threatening event, a person’s brain essentially…stays in a protective state. It’s not a conscious choice. It’s more like…a circuit that doesn’t flip back.”

“Is his brain working?” Ilya blurts. He doesn’t mean to, but the words leap out. “You say there is activity. That means… what? He is thinking? Dreaming? Is he in there?”

Everyone looks at him. He stares at the neurologist like he’s trying to memorize her face.

“From what we can see, yes,” she says. “He’s not brain-dead. His brain is generating electrical patterns that are compatible with awareness. We see changes in response to stimulation. We believe, on some level, he is processing information.”

“Then why he does not open his eyes?” he demands, voice cracking. “He knows we are here. His parents talk, I talk, nurses talk, why he does not come back?”

“Because he can’t yet,” she says softly. “Not because he won’t.”

It’s meant to be comforting.

It feels like someone just pulled the rug out from under him and then offered it as a blanket.

“We’ll keep working with him,” she adds. “We’ll involve physio and occupational therapy, speech therapy later on. There are medications we can try to gently stimulate his brain. And we know that familiar voices, touch, music, all of that can help.”

“Help what?” Yuna asks, sounding like she already knows the answer and hates it.

“Help nudge him,” the neurologist says. “Out of this state. Back toward full consciousness.”

“And if he doesn’t…nudge?” David says, quiet and grim. “What then?”

“We don’t have enough data yet to make predictions,” she says. “It’s too early for a long-term prognosis. Some patients stay like this for weeks, even months, and then gradually improve. Some…don’t.” She lets that sit there, horrible and real. “Right now, the important thing is that his body is healing. That gives him the best possible chance.”

Best possible chance. Another one of those phrases that means nothing until it’s weighed against what if he doesn’t.

“So you’re saying his body is…fine,” Yuna says slowly, like the word is a language she’s learning for the first time. “But something in his…mind is keeping him…out.”

“His brain has been through a significant trauma,” the neurologist says. “His heart stopped. Twice. That kind of insult can have complex effects. Think of it like…he’s stuck between floors on an elevator. We’re trying to get the doors open.”

It’s a neat metaphor. Ilya wants to punch it in the face.

He doesn’t say anything. His throat is too tight. His hands are shaking again.

“Thank you,” David says hoarsely. “For being honest.”

“We’ll keep you updated,” Dr. Patel adds. “And remember, you being here, talking to him, touching him, that matters. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

He says it looking at all three of them. His gaze lingers on Ilya for half a second longer.

Then they stand, offer a few more empty comforts - call us any time, no such thing as a stupid question - and go.

Silence settles heavy. Yuna stares at the floor for a long moment.

“So,” she says eventually. “His body is getting better. His heart is better. His brain is working. And he’s just…stuck.”

The word feels like a stone in Ilya’s stomach.

“He hates being stuck,” David says softly. “He used to cry at elevators when he was little if they stopped too long between floors.”

That almost gets a smile out of her. Almost.

“Of course he did,” she says. “Drama king.”

Ilya swallows.

“I know how it feels,” he says quietly. “To be trapped.”

They both look at him.

He looks away, ears burning.

“I mean,” he fumbles, “from hockey. Lying on ice, waiting for stretcher. It is…he told me once, after some hit. That the worst part is waiting. Not knowing what’s broken.”

He doesn’t say the other thing: Different hallways, different languages, same helplessness. That his own mind feels jammed between floors most of the time. They let the silence stretch.

Eventually, Yuna sighs.

“I need air,” she mutters. “And coffee that doesn’t taste like mop water. Do you want anything?” she asks Ilya, like they’re colleagues on a bad shift.

He shakes his head. The thought of putting anything in his stomach makes him nauseous.

“We’ll be back in a bit,” David says. His hand lands on Ilya’s shoulder again, brief but steady. “If you…go in, could you…” He swallows. “Just talk to him. Like you do. He always listens to you more than he does to us when he doesn’t want to hear something.”

It’s such an absurdly parental thing to say that it makes something twist in his chest.

“I will,” he says. “I promise.”

They go.

He sits there for a moment, staring at the floor, hearing the neurologist’s words on loop.

No obvious reason. Brain active. Can’t, not won’t.

Something keeping him out.

Stress. Pressure. Trauma.

He thinks about all the weight they’ve piled on Shane in the last year: prodigy, captain, franchise face, perfect son, perfect boyfriend, the one who always holds it together, the one who makes everyone else feel better.

He thinks about the way Shane’s hands would sometimes shake when he thought no one was looking. About the tightness around his eyes after losses. About the way he’d jokingly call himself “fine” in a tone that meant anything but.

He feels like there’s a cold stone lodged under his sternum. He stands up.

The nurse at the desk looks up as he approaches. This one knows him; she’s the one who let him slip in the other night.

“One visitor,” she says, almost automatically. “Ten minutes.”

“I know the rules,” he says. “I just came from team meeting with doctors.”

Her mouth twitches. “We don’t call them that,” she says. “But yeah.”

He manages a ghost of a smile. It dies quickly.

She hands him a gown and a mask. He puts them on with practiced movements and walks down to bed twelve. The room looks the same as it has for days.

Shane, propped slightly on pillows now instead of flat. The ventilator was replaced by a simpler monitor. The bruise over his chest fading at the edges. The IV lines fewer, the machines a little less crowded.

If you just glanced, you’d think he was sleeping.

If you looked too long, you saw it: the wrongness in the stillness.

“Hey,” Ilya says, pulling the chair up. “It’s me again. Your favorite pest.”

He drops into the seat, reaches for Shane’s hand. The cannula at his nose hisses softly.

“You know, doctors say you are fine now,” he says. “Heart is behaving. Lungs are doing their thing. Brain is apparently lit up like Christmas tree. Very attractive scan, they tell me.” He snorts. “And yet, here you are. Still doing your Sleeping Beauty cosplay.”

He squeezes Shane’s fingers gently.

“They say something is keeping you out,” he goes on. “Stress. Pressure. Trauma.” His mouth twists. “As if your whole life has not been those things with extra maple syrup on top.”

He stares at their joined hands.

“I want to scream,” he admits, voice low. “It’s happening more and more. I didn’t used to be like this, you know? I used to swallow everything. Bottle it up. Be a good Russian boy, only cry when drunk and alone.” A rough laugh. “Now they tell me ‘the only thing keeping him from waking is something inside him,’ and all I can think is: of course. Of course this is not simple. Of course it’s some invisible thing we cannot punch.”

His throat tightens.

“I want to punch so many things,” he mutters. “God. Fate. Neurologists. Myself.” He glances at Shane’s face. “You, a little bit. Just enough to wake you up.”

The monitor keeps its steady pace.

He leans forward, elbows on the bed, their joined hands between.

“Do you remember the first time you told me about panic attacks?” he asks, conversational, like they’re on the couch, like Shane isn’t lying in a hospital gown on crisp white sheets. “You were so casual about it. ‘Oh, yeah, sometimes I can’t breathe before games, sometimes I get dizzy, it’s no big deal.’ Like that is not terrifying.”

He rolls his eyes at the memory.

“You looked me in the face and said, ‘I don’t want to be a problem for anyone,’” he goes on. “Like that. Like you being scared was some inconvenience, like a flat tire.”

He squeezes Shane’s hand harder.

“You are not inconvenience,” he says fiercely. “You are…you’re everything. Problem, joy, headache, home. All of it. You being scared is not burden, it just means I hold you tighter, that is all. You hear me? If you’re hiding in there because you think waking up will make you too heavy for us to carry, you are fucking wrong.”

The words rattle in his chest.

He exhales slowly, trying to keep his voice from splintering.

“I know you’re tired,” he says. “I know you’re probably hiding in some weird brain fort, because that’s what you do when things get ugly. You retreat. You apologize. You say ‘I’m fine’ with your eyes screaming.” He huffs. “Trust me, I know. I am part of that team.”

He leans closer, lowering his voice.

“But listen to me, Shane Hollander,” he says, using his full name like a scolding parent. “There is nothing out here that is worse than what your imagination is doing to you in there. Out here there is your annoying Russian boyfriend, and your mom with her snacks, and your dad with his bad jokes, and your team sending memes, and your future dog probably shedding on something important. Out here there is life. Ugly and scary and loud, but…life.”

His thumb strokes over Shane’s knuckles, slow and steady.

“In there, there is just you and whatever you are afraid of,” he whispers. “And you’ve done that already. You’ve spent enough time alone with your fear. It’s boring. Come back and share it with us. We’ll make fun of it. We’ll make it smaller.”

He catches himself. Realizes he’s half-pleading, half-lecturing.

A humorless smile ghosts over his mouth.

“Look at me,” he mutters. “Doing speeches like therapist. I blame you for this. This is your influence.”

He lets his head drop for a second, his forehead almost touching the back of Shane’s hand.

“…visits are starting to feel useless,” he admits, voice muffled. “I come, I talk, I hold your hand, and nothing…changes. You breathe, you don’t wake up. I go home, I stare at ceiling, I come back. It feels like…like tapping on aquarium glass and hoping fish will learn French.”

He lifts his head, eyes burning.

“But then I think…if you can hear, and I stop coming, what does that feel like?” he asks. “You heard me on ice, screaming. You heard me in ambulance. You heard me say I love you in language you don’t even speak. If you hear all that, and then one day it’s just…quiet, because I decided my visits didn’t matter…” He shakes his head. “No. I can’t do that to you. Or to me.”

He draws in a breath that shudders on the way out.

“So I’m going to keep coming,” he says. “Even when it feels pointless. Even when I start running out of stories. I will tell you about the weather. About Svetlana’s terrible driving. About how Hayden is threatening to quit if they make him do one more press conference about ‘how the team is coping’ without you. About how your jersey is everywhere. About how many kids I see in the lobby wearing your number.” His voice softens. “About how much you are missed. That’s my job now.”

He leans in, speaks right by Shane’s ear.

“Your job,” he whispers, “is to figure out whatever switch in your brain is stuck and push it. Punch it. Bite it. I don’t care what you do. Just…come back.”

He sits there a long time after that, just breathing with him, matching his inhales and exhales like he can sync them up.

Nothing dramatic happens. No miraculous flutter of lashes. No gasp of breath. No sudden, tearful, “Illy…?”

Just the steady, infuriatingly normal sound of a healthy young man’s heart on the monitor and the equally infuriating stillness of his closed eyes.

Eventually, the nurse peeks in.

“Time,” she says gently. “His parents will be back soon.”

He nods, numb.

He lays their hands side by side for a second, palm to palm, fingers aligned but not intertwined. His is rougher, more scarred. Shane’s is broader, the knuckles scraped from countless games.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says softly. “Same stupid chair, same stupid speeches. Try not to miss me too much.”

He bends and presses his masked mouth to Shane’s forehead, just at the hairline, where a faint scar from some childhood accident cuts through his hair.

“I love you,” he says again, because if he says it enough it might fill the room like air. “You’re not stuck alone, okay? We’re stuck with you.”

He straightens, steps away, and leaves the room, the machines, the ghost of his own words behind.

In the hallway, he strips the gown off, tosses it in the bin, and leans his back against the cool wall for a second, eyes closed.

Every visit feels smaller. Less dramatic. Less like anything is happening.

But he keeps coming.

Because the doctors can measure heartbeats and brainwaves and oxygen and meds.

They can’t measure this, the stubborn, ridiculous, relentless presence of a man who’s decided that, insignificant or not, he is not going anywhere.

And if there is anything in the world Ilya Rozanov is good at, it’s being relentless.

***

He doesn’t mean to get drunk that night.

He leaves the hospital because a nurse touches his arm and says, gently but firmly, “Mr. Rozanov. Go home. Please.” And he realizes he’s been sitting in the same chair for two full visiting shifts and his back feels like someone drove a skate blade down his spine.

So he goes.

But he doesn’t go to Shane’s apartment, where the air still smells like his shampoo and there are photos on the fridge and the bed is a crime scene of memory. He doesn’t go to his own condo, where the closets are full of suits and sneakers and the walls echo.

He ends up at some nowhere bar between the hospital and the river, a dim place with sticky tables and a TV showing a game from three seasons ago. The lighting is bad enough that no one looks closely at his face. Or maybe they do and they’re polite enough not to say anything to the famous hockey player who looks like he got hit by something much bigger than a defenseman.

He orders vodka in halting French, because Canada, and the bartender doesn’t even blink, just pours.

It goes down like water.

The second one burns a little. The third barely registers. By the fourth his fingertips are starting to tingle and the tight band around his chest feels looser, which is either good or very, very bad, he’s not sure.

He doesn’t talk. He just sits there, over the fifth, the sixth, the seventh shot, hunched in his hoodie, watching bodies move around him and feeling like he’s behind glass again.

At some point, someone recognizes him. A guy at the other end of the bar squints, whispers to his date, glances at the TV with its footage of his own younger face scoring a goal in a different jersey.

He hears his name, half-formed. “Rozanov, right? Hey, man, how’s…”

Ilya looks at him. Just once.

Whatever is in his eyes sends the guy shrinking back into his seat. He doesn’t ask the question. Good. Because Ilya has no idea how Shane is, beyond not here, and saying that out loud will either make him laugh or howl.

When the room starts to tilt, he pays with crumpled bills that stick to his fingers and staggers out into the cold.

City at night is noisy, cars and bikes and people spilling from bars, laughter scraping along the sidewalks, but it feels muffled tonight. Like someone turned the volume down on everything except the ringing in his own ears.

His breath fogs in front of him. His cheeks sting. The vodka sits hot and sour in his stomach.

He walks without deciding where to go. His body finds the river on instinct.

The bridge looms ahead, all steel bones and lights reflected in the black water. He’s crossed it a hundred times, bus to the rink, car with the team, late-night drives when he couldn’t sleep. The view from the middle is good: city skyline, dark ribbon of water, the sense that you’re standing on something that holds up two sides of a life.

Tonight, it feels like a hinge. He stops halfway across, hands stuffed in his pockets, leaning his hip against the railing. The water moves sluggishly below, cold and heavy. It doesn’t glitter the way it does in summer. It looks like something that would swallow you whole and never burp.

He stares down at it.

The thought comes quiet.

If he doesn’t wake up, I could just…step over.

It sits there, small, neat, almost polite. Not a scream. Not a melodramatic I’ll show them. Just…an option his brain lays on the table, next to go home and call Svet and drink more.

His stomach turns. From the vodka, from the thought, it’s hard to tell.

He imagines it, in scattered flashes.

One leg over the rail, then the other. Hands cold on metal. Breath in his throat. The moment of falling. The brief, weightless gap between up and down. The instant where there is no more waiting, no more if, no more beeping monitors, just air and then water.

He swallows hard.

You’re drunk, his half-sensible brain says. You’re drunk and tired and you haven’t eaten anything but a banana at noon.

So what, the other part snaps back. The one that’s been sitting in hallways and watching doors and listening to words like we don’t know until they’ve dug trenches in his skull. So what if I’m drunk. Drunk people make choices all the time.

His fingers curl around the rail. The metal is freezing under his palms, burning-cold enough to bite through his skin. He thinks about his father’s coffin again, about the way the ropes creaked as they lowered it. 

About Irina, his mother, and all the stories whispered in kitchens afterward, pill bottles and bathtubs and the way adults talk around words like too many and on purpose. Her face swims up in his memory, half-sharp, half-blurry. She’d had his nose, his temper. She smelled like cheap perfume and cigarettes and flour. She’d laughed loudly and cried louder.

He remembers finding the empty packet in the bathroom trash. The silence in the flat. His father’s voice, tight and angry and afraid.

He imagines that packet in his own hands now. The bathroom of his condo. A glass of water, the pills lined up on the counter like a drill.

It makes his chest seize.

For a second, it’s almost seductive. The idea of just…not. No more hallways. No more Code Blues. No more waiting for someone else’s heart to decide if it wants to keep beating.

He could lie down. He could close his eyes. He could follow the script he was handed at twelve, the one that says this is how we exit when it gets too much.

His grip on the rail tightens until his knuckles ache.

He hangs there, breathing hard, eyes burning, caught between the pull of the water and the heavy, stupid gravity of his own body.

A car drives past behind him, headlights sweeping over his back. Someone laughs on the sidewalk, high and bright.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Once, insistent.

Maybe Yuna with a 3 a.m. update about some lab result that means nothing and everything.

He doesn’t look.

He stares down at the water until his vision blurs.

If he jumps and Shane wakes up tomorrow, what then?

The thought slams into him like a check.

If he jumps and Shane wakes up and there’s no one sitting in the ugly plastic chair anymore. No one to make stupid jokes at his bedside, to hold his hand, to say the soft, dumb things that embarrass them both. No one to explain why there’s suddenly a hole where Ilya should be.

Shane waking up to a world with no Ilya in it is somehow worse than Ilya standing in a world with no Shane.

The realization hits him in the gut. He presses his forehead against the cold rail and laughs. It comes out broken and wet, half-sob, half-snort.

“Fuck,” he whispers, voice shredded. “You win, Hollander. Even unconscious, you win. I can’t even kill myself without thinking, ‘Oh, he’s going to be so mad.’”

He stays like that for a long moment, breathing in the smell of river and exhaust, his fingers frozen to the metal.

He thinks about how pissed Shane would be. How his face would crumple, the way it does when he’s trying not to cry, and how his voice would go quiet and sharp: You promised you’d stay. How he’d call him reckless and selfish and an idiot, and he’d be right.

“You’d never forgive me,” he mutters. “I’d have to haunt you out of spite. It would be exhausting for both of us.”

His hands finally loosen. He pushes himself back from the railing, legs unsteady.

The world swims for a second. The bridge, the river, the lights, they all wobble. He leans against the rail until it calms down.

Then he does the least dramatic thing possible.

He turns and walks away.

Not because he’s suddenly fine. Not because the thoughts are gone. They trail him like shadows with teeth. But he walks anyway, one foot in front of the other, down off the bridge and back into the patchwork of streetlights and spilled music and late-night shouting.

His phone buzzes again. He fumbles it out with clumsy fingers.

Svetlana:

if you dont answer in 10 min i will assume you are dead and i will be so offended

He stares at the screen, throat tight, then huffs out a breath that might be a laugh.

not dead,  just stupid

Her reply is quick.

of course u are stupid. i knew that already. come home, Ilya. im on ur couch. i brought soup

He stares at those last two words until they double: on your couch.

There is someone in his apartment. A warm body. A witness. A person who will notice if he doesn’t come back, who will get in his face and yell in Russian and refuse to let him crawl into the dark without a fight.

He hadn’t realized until right now how much he needed that.

1. bridge first. then home

She replies immediately. 

do NOT elaborate on “bridge first” i swear to god ilya

He actually laughs, properly this time, ugly and breathless and real.

relax. just walking.  soup sounds good

He stuffs the phone back in his pocket and keeps moving.

By the time he stumbles into his building and fumbles his keys twice before getting the door open, the vodka has turned into cotton in his mouth and knives in his skull.

Svetlana is, as promised, on his couch. She’s asleep sideways, his hoodie rolled up under her head, empty soup container on the coffee table, the TV playing some late-night infomercial silently in the background.

She startles awake when he closes the door too loud.

“You look like shit,” she says, sitting up, hair a halo of chaos. Then her eyes sharpen, scan his face. “Where were you?”

“Walk,” he says, because he cannot say on the edge aloud, not yet.

She squints at him, but doesn’t push. Instead she gets up, sniffs the air, wrinkles her nose.

“You smell like vodka and river,” she decides. “Very sexy. Go shower before you poison the couch.”

She herds him toward the bathroom with small, insistent hands in the middle of his back. Under different circumstances, he’d complain. A few years back, he would pull her with him and they would probably have sex in the shower. Tonight he just lets himself be pushed.

The shower is too hot and too loud. He stands under it until the world stops spinning quite so aggressively and the smell of smoke and bar fades from his skin.

***

He doesn’t remember getting into bed.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t bother with pajamas. Just collapses face-first onto the mattress, hair damp, towel half on, half off, his body finally overriding his brain with a blunt, exhausted enough.

Sleep grabs him like a chokehold.

And for the first time in days, when his head drops into the dark, it doesn’t land in the hospital hallway.

He’s at the lake.

Not the real one, maybe, he has never been here before. The light is softer here, too golden to be true. The air smells like summer, even though it’s deep night, the kind where the stars feel close enough to touch.

He’s on the dock, legs dangling over the water. The boards are warm under his hands, as if the sun only just went down. His feet make ripples in the black lake.

There’s no tightness in his chest. No hospital wristband digging into his skin. No beeping.

Just crickets, and the soft slap of water, and…

“Illy.”

He turns.

Shane is there.

Not the pale, bruised version in the hospital bed. Not even the exhausted, blue-under-the-eyes version from the last months. This is…him. Whole. Barefoot in shorts and a t-shirt that’s way too thin for the night air, hair a mess, eyes bright.

He looks alive.

He looks like home.

“You’re late,” Shane says, flopping down next to him and bumping their shoulders together. “I’ve been sitting here forever. The bugs were starting to think I abandoned them.”

His voice is teasing, familiar. The exact cadence Ilya could mimic in his sleep. Maybe he is.

Ilya stares at him.

His throat closes. His eyes sting.

“You’re…” He stops. Swallows. Tries again. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Shane snorts. “That’s a weird way to say ‘hello.’”

“You’re in hospital,” Ilya insists, as if arguing will change the scenery. “Your heart…” He presses his fist against his own sternum, feeling the echo. “You are…you’re not…”

Shane’s smile softens.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”

He nudges their knees together.

Ilya’s body knows this shape. This warmth. His muscles unclench without asking his permission.

“I’m tired,” Shane admits, tipping his head back to look at the stars. His profile is all lines Ilya knows better than his own: the curve of his nose, the dip in his upper lip, the slope of his throat. “It’s really loud out there. And bright. And…a lot.”

“Then why am I here?” Ilya asks hoarsely. “And not…there. At the bed. Watching. Like I am supposed to.”

Shane’s mouth crooks.

“Maybe because you’d forget how to breathe if you watched any harder,” he says. “Seriously, Illy, you’re going to give yourself an ulcer.”

“I almost jumped off bridge,” Ilya blurts.

It comes out without thought. The words hang between them, awful and stark.

Shane goes very still.

Slowly, he turns his head.

“What?” he says. No joke this time. Just one small, sharp syllable.

Ilya looks away, out over the water. His own reflection shivers there, fractured.

“I didn’t,” he says quickly. “Okay? I didn’t. But I thought. About it. And pills. Like my mother. Just not being here. If you…” His chest squeezes. “If you didn’t come back.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence.

Then Shane’s hand is on his, warm and solid, fingers slotting between his knuckles.

“Don’t,” Shane says. His voice is…wrong. Thin, like it’s coming from far away. But the tone is unmistakable: that specific mix of exasperation and hurt that he uses when he’s scared. “Don’t say that. Don’t think about it. Don’t even…” He cuts himself off, swallows. “You can’t do that to me.”

“I said I didn’t,” Ilya mutters, feeling suddenly sixteen and stupid. “I stayed. I walked away. I did the…responsible thing.”

“Good,” Shane says, and squeezes his hand hard enough that it hurts. “Keep doing that.”

The pain feels more real than anything else.

“What if you never wake up?” Ilya whispers. “What am I supposed to do then, Shane? Just…keep sitting in hallway forever?”

Shane looks at him for a long moment.

Then he leans in, presses their foreheads together. The contact is light and heavy at once.

“You’re supposed to live,” he says quietly. “You idiot.”

His breath smells like lake air and mint gum. His skin is warm. His voice vibrates against Ilya’s cheekbone.

“Even if I didn’t,” he adds. “You don’t get to bail. That’s not how this works. You don’t get to love me and then follow me out like some…bad movie. You stay. You grieve. You skate. You drink terrible coffee and bitch about your back and adopt three dogs out of spite. That’s the deal.”

Ilya’s eyes burn.

“You sound very sure of this for someone in coma,” he mutters.

Shane huffs a laugh. “Yeah, well. If I waited to only talk to you when I was fully conscious, we’d never have a conversation.”

He pulls back just enough to look him in the eyes.

“Listen,” he says. “I’m…trying. To get back. It’s just…” He gestures vaguely at his own head. “It’s weird in here right now. Everything’s heavy. I keep thinking if I open my eyes it’s going to hurt in ways I can’t…fix. That I’ll disappoint everybody. That I’ll be…less.” His throat works. “So it’s easier to stay here. With you. On the dock. In my head.”

Ilya swallows around the lump in his throat.

“I do not care if you are less,” he says, fierce and automatic. “You can be half, quarter, broken, whatever. I don’t care. I just want you awake.”

Shane’s eyes go soft and wet.

“Yeah,” he says. “See, that’s the problem. You say shit like that and then it’s really hard to justify hiding.”

“Good,” Ilya says.

“Asshole,” Shane counters, but there’s no heat in it.

They sit there like that for a while, forehead to forehead, hands linked, the night humming softly around them.

“I love you, you know,” Shane says at last. It’s almost conversational.

Ilya’s breath catches.

“You don’t get to say that to me in my own dream,” he complains weakly. “That is cheating.”

Shane laughs again, breath warm against his lips.

“Then wake me up,” he murmurs. “And I’ll say it to your face.”

The world tilts.

The dock, the lake, the stars, they all smear like wet paint. Shane’s fingers blur in his, hot and solid and slipping.

“Wait,” Ilya says, panicked, clutching at him. “Wait, don’t…”

“Come find me, Illy,” Shane says, voice already echoing, far and near at once. “I’ll be right where you left me.”

His face dissolves.

The last thing Ilya feels is the press of Shane’s hand squeezing his, hard and sure.

Then he’s falling. Not into water, not into the river, but back into his own body, into the heavy, painful machinery of lungs and heart and hungover brain.

He wakes up in the grey light of early morning, heart hammering, pillow damp under his cheek, fingers curled around nothing.

For a moment, he doesn’t know where he is.

Then he sees his bedroom ceiling. The jacket thrown over the chair. Hears the faint sound of Svetlana snoring on the couch through the half-open door.

He lifts his hand. His hand is still warm when he grabs for the nightstand.

The alarm never went off because he never set it but his phone is lighting up on its own, vibrating in weak little spurts against the wood.

He squints at the screen, eyes gummy, head pounding.

Ten missed calls.Twelve. Fifteen.

All the same number.

Hospital.

His stomach drops so fast he actually sways, half-falling back onto the bed.

For a second he just stares. This is it. This is the call. The one everyone pretends they don’t rehearse in their head every night.

He fumbles the passcode twice before he gets it right. His hands are shaking so badly he nearly drops the phone. The log swims in front of his eyes: 01:42, 01:58, 02:10, 02:23…

He should have been awake. He should have been there. He hits “call back” without thinking, thumb slipping on the screen.

It rings once. Twice. Three times.

His heart pounds so loud it drowns everything else out. He presses the phone harder to his ear, breath held, already bracing for I’m sorry, are you somewhere you can sit down?

On the fourth ring, the line clicks. He hears breathing. A faint rustle. For a moment, nothing else.

His mouth is suddenly dry as dust.

“H-hello?” he manages. “This is Ilya. Rozanov. I… someone called from this…”

Silence stretches.

Then, soft and rough and impossibly familiar:

“…Ilya…?”

His brain stutters.

That voice lives in his bones. In his voicemail, in his rink memories, in his pillow, in his heart. It’s hoarse, scraped raw, but every syllable hits exactly where it always does.

For one long, stupid second, his mind supplies only one conclusion.

Oh. I’m still drunk.

Of course. Of course. He got wasted, almost climbed over a bridge, had a cinematic dream on the dock, and now his guilt-soaked, vodka-pickled brain is really going for it with the full auditory hallucinations.

“Holy shit,” he blurts, half-hysterical. “I am still drunk.”

There’s a confused little huff on the other end of the line.

“I mean,” the voice continues, wobbly, “I hope you’re not? It’s like eight in the morning.”

Ilya squeezes his eyes shut.

“Okay,” he tells the ceiling. “This is mean. Even for me. Even for Russian guilt. This is too much.”

“Ilya.” The voice is more insistent now. Still weak, still frayed at the edges, but sharper. “It’s me.”

He sits up so fast his vision whites out for a second. The room tilts. His head throbs. He presses the heel of his free hand to his eye.

“Yeah, that’s the problem,” he mutters. “You’re you. You’re not supposed to be you. You’re…” He gestures uselessly at the air. “In coma. Not on phone.”

A breathy laugh crackles down the line. It turns into a cough halfway, raw and ugly.

Ilya’s heart nearly explodes.

“Don’t do that,” he snaps automatically. “Don’t… cough. Ever. Bad for…everything.”

“Oh wow,” Shane wheezes when he can speak again. “You still bossy as fuck. That’s comforting.”

Something in his chest lurches.

“Shane,” he says, and this time the name comes out like it belongs to a real person, not a bad dream. “Shane?”

“Yeah,” Shane says quietly. “Hi.”

The “hi” is small but real. It lands right in the center of him and lodges there.

The room suddenly feels too small.

Ilya swings his legs over the side of the bed, feet hitting the floor with a thump. He’s pretty sure he’s only in boxers; he doesn’t care.

“If this is hallucination,” he tells the phone, voice shaking, “I am going to be so pissed when I wake up.”

On the other end, he hears the faintest exhale that is unmistakably a smile.

“I mean, if you’re hallucinating this much detail, that’s impressive,” Shane rasps. “Did your hallucination remember to give me a catheter? Because that’s definitely happening. Ten out of ten realism.”

Ilya’s brain conjures the image too easily: Shane in the bed, tubes, lines, the indignity of plastic where nobody wants plastic.

He chokes, half on a laugh, half on a sob.

“Don’t talk about your dick right now,” he blurts. “I am emotional.”

There’s another broken little huff that wants to be a laugh. It’s followed by a rustle, as if Shane’s shifting and doesn’t quite have the strength for it.

“Okay,” Shane says. “I’ll stick to…PG topics. Like…uh…” He drifts off, sounding suddenly tired. “Actually my brain’s not really PG-capable yet. It’s just static and soup.”

“You…” Ilya’s throat works. Words jam up. He forces them out, one by one. “You called me. From hospital.”

“Yeah,” Shane says, like it’s obvious. “Well. I asked them to call you last night. Apparently you were busy being a disaster.” He pauses. “They tried a bunch of times. The nurse said I could try this morning. So. Hi.”

Something hot pricks at Ilya’s eyes.

“You woke up,” he whispers.

Shane is quiet for a moment.

“Yeah,” he says again, softer. “I guess I did.”

“How?” Ilya demands, as if he can bully a coherent timeline out of someone who just got back from wherever-between-floors his brain was stuck. “When? What… what happened? What is this?”

Shane coughs another rasp of a laugh. He sighs. 

“I don’t…know. Exactly. It’s…weird.”

His voice trails off. Ilya can hear him breathing—real, unassisted breaths, not the mechanical rhythm of a vent—and it makes his own lungs feel wrong.

“I remember…bits,” Shane says slowly. “Lights. Voices. Your voice, my parents…touch, sometimes. Then…last night? Or…whatever. It was dark. Quiet. I was somewhere…else.”

The dock flashes in Ilya’s mind.

He grips the phone tighter.

“Like…a cottage?” he asks, heart banging. “Lake, dock, stars, me being annoying?”

Shane goes very still on the line.

There’s a little crackle of interference. Or maybe that’s just Ilya’s pulse drowning out the world.

“…yeah,” Shane says finally. “Yeah. Exactly like that.” There’s a smile in his voice now, shaky and incredulous. “You were there. Being an idiot. Telling me not to be less. Telling me you didn’t care if I was…broken.”

The words he said on the dock echo back at him, doubled.

Ilya’s skin goes cold and hot all at once.

“I thought that was dream,” he says, faint. “I had it. After bar. After almost…” He swallows the rest. “I woke up and thought ‘okay, that was my brain doing weird grief movie.’”

“Yeah, well,” Shane murmurs. “Turns out my brain was playing the same movie from the other side.”

“I told you to wake me up,” he adds, voice softening. “And you did. You stubborn fucker.”

Ilya laughs, choked and wet.

“This is very creepy,” he informs him. “And if any neurologist ever suggests it is ‘just stress response’ I will fight them.”

“Please don’t beat up my doctors,” Shane says. “I kind of need them. Also, you can’t take the neurologist, she’s like five foot two but I’ve seen her yell at nurses, she would destroy you.”

“I will take her,” Ilya mutters. “Tag team with your mom.”

Shane inhales sharply at that.

“Are they…?” he asks, and that’s the first hint of real fear in his voice. “My parents. Are they…okay?”

“They are…not okay,” Ilya says honestly. “But they are here. They are…alive. Very tired. Very angry at universe. Your mom yelled at flu shot poster yesterday. It was impressive.”

He can hear Shane’s relieved exhale.

“I should’ve…” Shane starts, then stops, as if the thought came too fast to process. “I scared them.”

“You scared everyone,” Ilya says. “It’s your new specialty. Cardiac jump scares.”

“Mm. Hate that,” Shane mumbles. “Gonna put that on my resume. ‘Gives parents heart attacks by having one.’”

His words slur a little at the edges. The effort of talking is catching up with him. Ilya’s hangover sits in his skull like a brick, but the adrenaline is burning most of it away.

“You sound tired,” he says, softer. “I should…stop yelling at you on first day back from death.”

“Please don’t call it that,” Shane groans. “I only died a little bit.”

“You died twice,” Ilya snaps, the word tasting too big in his mouth. “That is…more than enough. No more dying. New rule. I forbid it.”

Shane is quiet. When he speaks again, his voice is smaller.

“I heard you,” he says.

Ilya’s heart stops.

“In here,” Shane clarifies. “Not…on the phone. Before. In the…the hall, I guess. Brain hallway. I heard you. Talking. Yelling. Crying. Telling me you love me in…like, three different languages and then getting mad at yourself for it.” There’s that soft little laugh again, disbelieving and fond. “You really think I didn’t know?”

Ilya’s throat closes.

He tips his head back against the wall, stares blindly at the ceiling.

“I thought you were…asleep,” he manages. “They said you might hear but…they also said you might not. I did not want to put…things…in your head that you couldn’t answer.”

“Joke’s on you,” Shane says, faint smile wrapping around the words. “You put them there anyway. Repeatedly. Very loudly. Kind of hard to ignore.”

His voice roughens.

“When you said…” He hesitates. “When you said you almost… on the bridge. I felt that.” There’s a little shiver in his tone. “Don’t ever do that again. Even thinking about it. Okay? I’m serious, Ilya. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“I didn’t,” Ilya says immediately. “I stayed. I am still here. Very annoyingly alive.”

“Good,” Shane whispers.

There’s a rustle, like someone moving the phone, and a faint voice in the background: a nurse, probably.

He hears Shane murmur something like “Just a minute,” and the nurse answer, patient and amused.

“Apparently I’m not supposed to be hogging the phone,” Shane says, voice a little farther away now. “They want to poke me with things. Vitals. Whatever.”

Ilya swallows the urge to say tell them to fuck off.

“You let them poke you,” he says instead. “They poked you while you were asleep, you might as well enjoy it conscious.”

“Enjoy is a strong word,” Shane mutters. “But yeah.”

There’s another pause.

Then, very quietly:

“Illy?”

“Yeah.”

“Come here,” Shane says. It’s not quite an order, not quite a plea. Something shaky and raw in between. “Please. I…I don’t want to do the waking-up part without you here. I already did the hard bit on my own. I’m kind of done with that.”

His vision blurs for the hundredth time in as many days.

“I am coming,” Ilya says, and the words feel like a vow. “I am already…halfway there, in my head. I just need pants.”

Shane snorts, coughs, groans.

“Yeah, please wear pants,” he says. “ICU’s been through enough.”

“I will be there soon,” Ilya says. “Or, like, as soon as traffic allows. If some car is slow I will ram it, I swear.”

“Maybe don’t commit vehicular manslaughter on the way to visit your boyfriend in the hospital,” Shane suggests. “Bad optics.”

Ilya’s heart kicks at the word boyfriend on his tongue.

“You remember that?” he asks, voice very small. “On ice?”

“Kind of hard to miss being outed to the entire continent,” Shane says dryly. “Even from inside the elevator.”

“Sorry,” Ilya blurts. “I was…panicking. The medics, they were in way.”

“Ilya,” Shane cuts in, gentle. “I’m not mad.”

He pauses.

“Okay,” he amends. “I’m, like, three percent mad we didn’t get to do it on our terms. But mostly I’m just…glad you said it. Even if my heart stopped to make it happen.” He huffs. “Very extra of us.”

Ilya lets out a half-sob, half-laugh that feels like it’s ripping something open and cleaning it at the same time.

“I have to hang up,” Shane says reluctantly. “The nurse is giving me The Look. But…hurry, okay?”

“I will,” Ilya says. He wants to say a hundred more things. He settles on the one that matters. “I love you.”

There’s a beat.

“I know,” Shane whispers. “Me too.”

The line clicks.

Silence floods his ear.

For a second, he just sits there, phone pressed to the side of his head, breathing like he just finished a shift.

Then everything slams back in at once.

He launches off the bed.

“Fuck,” he says, wiping his face with the back of his hand, not even sure when he started crying again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He yanks open drawers, drags on jeans inside out, fixes them, curses, nearly trips over the towel on the floor. A T-shirt, hoodie, whatever socks his hand lands on. He jams his feet into sneakers without untying them, nearly face-planting in the process.

He stumbles out of his bedroom, hair still damp and wild.

Svetlana bolts upright on the couch, blinking blearily. “What the…? Explosion? Fire? Armageddon?”

“He woke up,” Ilya blurts. His voice cracks clean in two. “Shane. He woke up. He called me.”

She stares at him. For once, she doesn’t make a joke. She’s on her feet in a second, crossing the space between them, grabbing his face in both hands.

“Pravda?” she demands. “Really?”

He nods, hard enough to make himself dizzy.

Her eyes go shiny. She kisses his forehead, hard, then pushes him toward the door.

“Go,” she says. “Before you fall over from feelings. I will clean. And cry. And maybe bake disgusting muffins you hate. Go.”

He goes. The air outside bites his cheeks. The city is already moving, people going to work, kids to school. Traffic is a mess. He weaves through it anyway, heart pounding, hands aching from gripping the wheel too tight, every red light an insult.

By the time he barrels into the hospital lobby, he’s half out of breath, half out of his mind.

He takes the stairs two at a time. His chest burns. His hangover protests. His knees threaten mutiny. He doesn’t care.

The ICU doors loom ahead. This time, when he hits the sanitizer and steps up to the sensor, the nurse at the desk is already standing.

She smiles.

“You again,” she says. “Bed twelve is going to think it’s weird if you don’t show up.”

He stares at her, panting.

“He…” His voice gives out. He swallows. Tries again. “He called me.”

Her smile softens.

“I know,” she says. “He asked.”

She hands him a gown and a mask.

His fingers fumble with the ties, but he gets them on.

Then he walks down the corridor to Shane’s room, heart in his throat, every step echoing the last words from the dream and the phone both:

Come find me, Illy. I’ll be right where you left me.