Chapter Text
The game on this particular, blustery November evening began perfectly normally – or, normal for Ilya, which in this case meant a tidy two points in the first period alone.
But it ended, infuriatingly, with Ilya strapped to a gurney and being wheeled out of the building against his will.
“I said I am fine,” Ilya said through gritted teeth.
“I don’t care,” Harris said cheerfully, patting him absentmindedly on the arm.
One of the team’s medical staff, a pleasant but unyielding woman named Andrea, rolled her eyes at Harris, saying, “Harris, you shouldn’t even be down here. It’s hardly a situation that calls for comms.”
“Maybe not,” Harris grinned, “but one that I think calls for a friend.” He reached one hand out to pinch Ilya’s cheek. Ilya dearly wanted to slap his hand away – as it were, his shoulders were currently completely immobilized, so he had to settle for snapping his teeth at Harris’s outstretched fingers. Harris let out a shocked yelp that turned into a laugh.
“You’re too happy about this,” Ilya grumbled. “You’d think you don’t want your own team to win.”
“Of course I do.” Harris sounded exasperated. “But I have been telling you for months that you have been running yourself ragged and that you need to rest and take care of yourself or you would – what’s that?” he said in an exaggerated voice, tilting his head, “that’s right, injure yourself.”
“Well then you were wrong,” Ilya said grouchily. “I did not injure myself. I was injured by big, stupid St. Louis wingman. Idiot man too dumb to see puck and hit me instead.”
“Ilya,” Harris huffed.
“Or maybe is not that he is stupid, but vengeful –”
“Vengeful?” Harris repeated incredulously. “First, when did you start speaking like a gothic novel, and second, why would Fischer be mad at you? He’s a new recruit. You’ve never even played against him.”
“Because he is very ugly,” Ilya said, as if he was explaining something incredibly obvious, ignoring Harris’s snort, “and I am hot. And to add insult to injury, he also has to live in St. Louis.”
“Right,” Harris said drily, keeping pace with the moving gurney. “And he’s just desperately jealous of you getting to live in the bustling center of culture that is the city of Ottawa…?”
“Ah,” Ilya warned. “We do not speak bad of Ottawa. It is why I have nice, shiny Canadian passport and do not have to rot away in a Russian prison for corrupting, impure heathens.”
“Plus two Stanley Cup rings.”
“Eh,” Ilya said casually, “that was not so much Ottawa’s gift to me, but my gift to Ottawa.”
This earned him a light smack on the back of the head, to which Andrea loudly chimed in, “Harris, I’m begging you to remember that Ilya is a patient right now!”
“I barely touched him,” Harris said, though upon receiving a withering glare, blushed and hurried to add, “sorry, Andrea, won’t happen again.”
“Yes, Harris,” Ilya said, adopting a grave tone. “I am very sick and injured, and you are annoying me. Go away.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “Like you said, you’re fine.”
“He is not fine, he’s likely dislocated his shoulder and he might have even torn –”
“I have torn nothing,” Ilya said, waving his hand dismissively. “I would feel much worse and be much meaner to Harris if I had torn something.”
“Well, sorry to say you’ve still earned yourself a luxury ambulance ride over to the hospital,” Andrea said firmly. “They need to rule out a tear or a rotator cuff injury. I’ve stabilized it for now, but you need an MRI before we’ll know what comes next.”
“I do not want an ambulance,” Ilya huffed. “Is embarrassing.” He could hear how whiny and stubborn he was being, but, wallowing in his disappointment, felt powerless to stop it.
He did, however, feel a twinge of guilt for Andrea and resolved in the back of his mind to send her one of his nice bottles of vodka as an apology gift. She was heartier than most of the grown men on his team, being one of the few people in his orbit that did not want to water down a 50–dollar glass of vodka with cranberry juice. The last time he’d seen that happen, he had snatched the glass right out of Bood’s hand and promptly locked the rest of the bottle away from “you fragile Canadian toddlers.”
“You’re getting the ambulance, so stop complaining or I’ll tell the whole team you were acting like a baby.”
Perhaps she didn’t need his pity. Ilya’s mouth twitched with a poorly suppressed smile; he thought he’d add a box of chocolates onto the gift for Andrea’s girlfriend.
Brady, a newer member of the medical team and a man of few words, had been contently ignoring them thus far, but now called out, “headed out, now. Harris, you’ll have to stay here.”
He then threw open the door to the back parking lot without even a look back in their direction. Ilya couldn’t help but swear; winter had arrived early and viciously this year. The icy wind whipped ruthlessly around him, sending his matted, sweaty curls into a frenzy.
“It is not enough that I dislocate my shoulder?” Ilya gasped. “I must freeze to death, too?”
Harris had stopped at the doorway, both arms coming up to wrap around himself. He called out to Ilya from a safe distance, “Svetlana already called, she’s going to meet you at the hospital and bring you home. And so help me god, Ilya, rest. Recover. Your A’s have got the team, just –” he hesitated, toying with a level of sincerity he knew Ilya hated, “focus on taking care of yourself, for once.”
“I take care of myself perfectly fine,” Ilya said through chattering teeth, but he doubted Harris could hear him over the wind and, anyways, the door had already swung shut.
Ilya had never given much thought to the ambulance that was a legally-required fixture at all NHL games, and regarded it with great distaste now. Ignorant to his feelings, the ambulance team swarmed him, their hands moving over him in a whir.
After a few initial, “how are you feeling, can you close your fist for me, are you experiencing any pain,” the medics reverted to speaking over and across him. Ilya didn’t mind – they might as well have been speaking another language for all he understood. Ilya, as a matter of steeling his patience as well as attending to the deep desire to distract himself from the cold, focused steadily on reading a poster on the side of the vehicle describing the warning signs of sepsis.
“...suspected anterior shoulder dislocation –”
“– high energy fall, hand was outstretched…”
“Motor function is present…”
The rumble of static was his first clue that something was amiss, but Ilya’s mind was halfway through the SEPSIS acronym – ‘P’ is for passing no urine – so he missed the start of the message.
“...female patient, unresponsive and not breathing. CPR is in progress, AED unknown. Paramedic Service, please respond.”
Ilya had never been one for ballet. He’d given it his best try, a few times, in the hopes of pleasing his mother, but in the end, he was too restless. After getting told off one too many times for kicking the seat in front of him, his mother took him by the hand after the closing curtain, saying, when you’re older, Ilyushechka, we will try again. That day never came. But he thought now that what he was witnessing had some strange resemblance to a dance; the people in front of him straightened like marionettes on a string, then, with just a passing breath, they launched into movement.
Andrea and Brady took one look at each other, and Ilya heard Brady say, “the AED,” before they both sprinted back inside.
The remaining paramedics, it seemed to Ilya, wove around each other in perfect rhythm. One was slinging a kit around his shoulders, while another pulled a heavy–looking backpack out of the back of the ambulance. A third disappeared into the truck momentarily and returned with a carrier labeled ‘Airway bag.’
They headed determinedly in the direction of the building, and for a moment Ilya had the wild thought that they were just going to leave him out there, forgotten, before he heard,
“You’re on cover here!”
And then they were gone.
A man – the last man, the only paramedic not rushed to whatever emergency was happening inside – was already positioned behind Ilya’s head and, without wasting another second, started pulling him back inside.
“Sir, I’m taking you back inside for now. Sorry about this.”
“What’s happening?”
“There is an emergency inside the stadium,” the paramedic explained, his voice steady. “An older woman in the stands… it’s a critical incident that has to be attended to before an injured shoulder.” They crossed the threshold back inside, to Ilya’s relief. His face felt uncomfortably numb. He was pulled several meters into the corridor, then into a side room – a rarely-used, nearly empty office – before the gurney was parked and he heard it lock into place.
The paramedic circled around, finally coming into view. Ilya noticed first the sight of a red–tipped nose. Ilya’s eyes tracked up his face to a set of brown eyes. They were shiny, whipped into near-tears by the wind, but Ilya thought they seemed remarkably warm. Ilya found, suddenly, that he was very grateful he was at least in a seated position in the stretcher, propped up instead of lying flat like a helpless fish.
“I am sorry, sir – we’ll get you on your way as soon as we can, but –”
“No,” Ilya interrupted. He chastised himself internally, forcing himself to soften his tone. The last thing he needed was a hockey blog claiming they’d overheard him berating an Ottawa city first responder. “I mean, of course. I am fine, I keep telling them this. Heart attack must come first, any idiot would know this.”
“It’s a suspected cardiac arrest, actually,” the man corrected him, seemingly on impulse. Then he snapped his mouth shut, looking embarrassed. Ilya liked the way the golden skin of his cheeks – covered with an intriguing smattering of freckles – turned faintly pink. He wondered what else he could do to this man to brighten his cheeks; he needed something to entertain himself.
“What?” Ilya asked.
Ilya was actually asking more about why the paramedic seemed self-conscious at correcting him, but the man took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling and said, “a heart attack and a cardiac arrest aren’t the same.”
“It is not?” Ilya was side-tracked now, surprised.
“A heart attack is a circulation thing – a blockage, usually – but cardiac arrest is when your heart stops. A heart attack can lead to cardiac arrest, but not necessarily.”
The tops of his ears had gone red as he was speaking, visible through the strands of black hair tucked behind them. Ilya wasn’t sure why, but he found he liked that very much.
“Thank you for explaining,” Ilya said, hoping it came off as sincere. He wanted to put him at ease, and was rewarded with a short, grateful glance his way. “And either way, do not worry about me. The doctors have me all wrapped up, like a Christmas ham,” the man laughed, and Ilya couldn’t help but smile at him, “I will keep for many hours.”
The paramedic looked relieved, saying, “I appreciate your understanding, sir.”
“Sir?” Ilya frowned. “What is with this, sir?”
“What do you mean? It’s – it’s polite.”
“It makes me sound like ancient, rickety old man,” Ilya said. “You call me Ilya, yes?”
“Ilya,” he nodded, like he was rolling his name around in his mouth. “Sure.”
“And you?”
“Sorry?” His nose – still a lovely shade of pink – crinkled slightly, and his eyes narrowed in Ilya’s direction as though he was vaguely suspicious of his intentions.
“Your name,” Ilya said slowly. “God, how rude are people to you normally?”
The paramedic laughed, then he covered his mouth with his hand like he was shocked by his own impropriety.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, shaking his head. Then he hurried to add, “but it’s not their fault, usually. If we’re showing up, most of the time it’s because something has gone very badly wrong. People aren’t in the right state of mind.”
“Still, is no excuse to be rude,” Ilya said, conveniently ignoring that he’d been rude to Andrea not ten minutes ago. But that didn’t matter, because he wanted to see the pretty paramedic smile again. “So, then – your name?”
“Right,” he responded, “Shane. It’s – my name is Shane.”
“Shane,” Ilya’s mouth curled into a smile. “It is very nice to meet you,” his eyes tracked down to the label sewn on his front jacket, S. Hollander. “Shane Hollander, paramedic.”
Shane opened his mouth to respond, but before he could there was another crackle against his shoulder. He turned away, going back into the hall while murmuring into the receiver.
“So,” Shane returned to Ilya after a couple minutes. He looked a little strained, and something else, too, though Ilya couldn’t quite place it. Sheepish, maybe. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to hang tight for a little bit.”
Ilya’s heart clenched involuntarily. “The woman? Is she – ?”
“Yes, but don’t – it’s alright,” Shane explained. “My colleagues have got her, and they’re on their way down. But they’re going to have to take her in the ambulance, meaning they’re going to need to send another one down for you. And we’re stretched a little thin tonight, and as you’re stable –”
“Is ok.” Ilya said, and he found, to his own surprise, that he meant it. “I can wait. I am in no rush.”
Shane smiled again and Ilya felt – well, like this strange feeling of satisfaction, like a voice whispering in his head, there it is.
“You might as well sit down,” Ilya nodded to the sad, peeling office chair behind him, “since you and I are about to spend some time together.” A thought struck him, “unless you have to leave with your team?”
Shane wavered for a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, before saying, “No, I’m staying,” he shrugged in a way that Ilya thought was meant to look nonchalant, if not for the fact that he was holding himself so stiffly Ilya was surprised he didn’t hear his joints creak. “We can’t just leave you alone, so I’ll stay to get you handed off to the next team.”
“Very kind of you.” There was a flicker of something in Ilya’s chest.
“Just doing my job.”
“So, Shane Hollander,” Ilya said, “are you going to sit?”
“I think just Shane is fine,” he chuckled nervously, dragging the chair over and dropping into it.
“Just Shane, hm? You are famous enough to go by one name?” Ilya teased lightly. “You are like Prince? Madonna?”
“No, no obviously not,” Shane sputtered, wonderfully flustered now. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Is okay, just Shane, it is good – I like to know when I am in the presence of very important people,” he delighted in watching Shane roll his eyes and huff loudly. “You are best paramedic, in Canada, I bet. Other paramedics whisper when they see you coming.”
“Would you stop, that’s not at all what I meant, and you know it –”
Ilya was grinning now. His father used to snap at him, you just love pushing people’s buttons, and – whatever faults his father had – Ilya could not deny this.
“Just Shane, smartest and prettiest paramedic there ever was,” and now, Ilya knew, he was doing more than pushing his buttons, and he watched carefully, “all the girls must be crazy for you. Desperate for you.”
Shane flushed a deep red now, breathing loudly through his nose and averting his eyes. “Would you fuck off.”
Ilya let out a shout of laughter at the horrified look on Shane’s face, but in the back of his mind he was cataloging Shane’s every micro–expression.
“Sorry – that was so unprofessional, oh my god,” Shane stammered, eyes sliding back to Ilya.
“Is fine, Shane,” Ilya laughed in a would-be casual way. “I get what I ask for. I try to annoy you, and you get annoyed. Is hardly your fault.”
“Why annoy me, then?” Shane challenged him, sounding incredulous.
“Because,” Ilya leaned forward, as much as his current state would allow, and dropped his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. Shane leaned in slightly as well, though in his case it came off more instinctual than intentional. “I thought it would be fun.”
“Fun,” Shane said slowly, “is not usually how people describe me.”
“I don’t know,” Ilya said, letting his eyes roam his face. “I think you might be all kinds of fun.”
Shane blinked.
Ilya thought – well, he thought he knew, but he had (rarely) been wrong before. And, spotting him clenching his fists, Ilya also got the distinct impression that Shane was a bit like a spooked horse, and might bolt at any moment.
“I’m sorry, Shane,” Ilya said, trying to sound chastened. He sat back fully, trying to dispel the tension. “I will behave,” he added, “promise.”
“Why do I feel like your promises don’t count for much?” said Shane. He dropped back into his chair as well, but was still eyeing him with interest.
“Ah, no, Russians always keep their promises,” Ilya said sagely.
“I’ve never heard that before,” Shane said, raising his eyebrows doubtfully.
“How many Russians do you know?”
Shane gaped for a moment, then conceded, “okay, fair enough. None.”
“No, no, Shane,” Ilya admonished. If only he had his arms free so he could wag a finger at him. “You know me, yes?”
“The only thing I know about you is that your name is Ilya,” Shane said.
“And that I am a professional hockey player.”
“Well,” Shane rolled his eyes, “obviously.”
Ilya thrilled at the glimpses of a bratty interior hidden underneath the stiff, professional surface, and wanted to excavate it with great enthusiasm.
“Is that really all you know?” Ilya asked. He was genuinely curious – not if Shane knew his stats or awards; he didn’t care about that. But he’d had a rough and very public landing in Ottawa four years previously. He could still smell the acrid stench of melting plastic that had billowed off the very creepy, but highly inaccurate effigy of himself that was burned by his very own (former) fans outside of TD Garden.
“Well,” Shane shrugged, oblivious to Ilya’s inner monologue, “yeah, kind of. What,” he teased then, “should I be fawning over you, or something? Please, Mr Rozanov, can I get your autograph – is that what you want?”
The words ‘Mr Rozanov’ sent an electric thrill down Ilya’s body. He made a valiant effort to keep himself under control, but he might have shivered.
“You were the one sitting outside the stadium like a little fan boy –”
Ilya felt very satisfied at the renewed round of sputtering out of Shane.
“Fan boy – fuck off, I am working –”
“No need to be embarrassed, if you’re very nice to me I will take a selfie with you.”
“I wasn’t even watching the game – I was busy –”
“Busy? Busy doing what?”
“I – nothing, it doesn’t matter –”
“Tell me.” Ilya modulated his voice slightly. “Please, I would like to know.”
Shane shook his head. “I was studying, okay? Not very exciting, is it?”
“You have to study – what to stay a paramedic or something? Keep yourself fresh?”
“No – I mean, yes, we do – but that’s not what –” Shane took a deep breath, seemingly willing himself to stop tripping over his words. “I’m in med school. Final year.”
“Med school?” Ilya repeated, eyebrows up. “Paramedic Shane Hollander is going to become Doctor Shane Hollander?”
“Yes, or – that’s the plan, anyways.” Shane shrugged and cast his eyes down, but he looked pleased.
“Shane Hollander is genius, yes?”
“What?” Shane looked nonplussed.
“You ride around in ambulance, saving people’s lives, rescuing kittens from trees –”
“The kittens we leave to the firefighters, actually –”
“Then you turn around and go to school –”
“I’m mostly in placement at the hospital, now –”
“And this does not kill you? Two jobs at once?”
“It’s tried, a couple times,” Shane said wryly. “I don’t pull as many shifts as I used to, but for a long time it helped. Kept me focused, and there’s so much I learn on the job that I can translate into clinical practice. Plus,” he chuckled, “there’s the money. I really enjoy getting paid so I can pay for rent and groceries.”
“See what I mean? Genius man says he works two very hard jobs on top of each other and somehow it makes him better,” Ilya said. “You make me feel very inadequate.”
“Inadequate, please,” Shane scoffed. “Top scorer in the league, two cup wins in the last four years –”
“Ah hah,” Ilya exclaimed triumphantly. Shane paled when he realized his mistake.
“No, don’t even start –”
“You are a fan,” Ilya said smugly.
“No, I’m not,” Shane blustered. Rolling his eyes at Ilya’s snickering, he repeated, “I’m not. I’ve never been into hockey much, but I just – picked it up, I guess – I’m on this shift a lot –”
“You have been here before?” Ilya asked, surprised for some reason. The idea hadn’t occurred to him, but he pictured it now; Shane, huddled in his ambulance while Ilya skated only feet away, completely oblivious to his existence.
“Yeah,” said Shane. “Especially the last year or so. My co-workers are nice enough to let me have it when –”
“They give you this shift? You beg to come see your hero –?”
“It’s usually a very quiet assignment,” Shane interrupted loudly. “And they know I need to study, so they are very thoughtful and gracious, two things I’m sure you’re very unfamiliar with.”
“Ah, okay, okay,” Ilya said. “I understand.”
Shane gave him a long, suspicious look. “Good, yeah… I’m glad.”
Ilya’s eyes lingered on the constellations of freckles stretched across Shane’s face. Ilya forced himself to take a hard look at what he was doing. It was no secret to himself – or anyone around him, apparently, given the way Harris had been needling him lately – that he had been lonely. He did not want to mess with this kind, pretty man just to soothe his own aches. But, on the other hand…
“If you ever wanted to, ah, see the game from inside instead,” Ilya said casually, “I could make that happen for you.”
Shane didn’t respond, his eyes widening slightly.
“If you want,” Ilya continued, keeping his voice light. “It would be easy.”
“I don’t – that’s nice, thank you…” Shane trailed off for a moment. “But you’re probably going to be out for at least a few weeks, right?”
“Yes, probably,” Ilya admitted. “But – you could see the rest of the team play, yes? They are not me but they are not bad.”
Shane let out a breathless little laugh. His eyes flicked over to Ilya’s.
“I think… if I were to go, I’d wait, if it’s the same to you. Until you’re back on the ice. I’d prefer to see that. To see you.”
Ilya felt dizzy. He hoped his voice sounded steady when he said, “Yes, is fine. Yes.”
“I’m still not a fan,” Shane said, adopting a stern tone.
“No, of course not.”
“It would just be a matter of professional interest. Clinical outcomes of a dislocated shoulder, you know.”
“I understand.”
Shane opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could they were both startled at the abrupt sound of crackling on Shane’s shoulder. Like he was pulled out of a trance, Shane leapt to his feet, bustling out of the room. Ilya heard voices in the hallway, and then Shane shouted, “yeah, down here, thanks guys.”
Their bubble well and truly burst, Ilya resigned himself to the stream of new faces flowing into the room.
“Sir,” the word didn’t have nearly the same effect coming now from a kindly, middle-aged man, “sorry for the disruption. We’re going to get you out of here now.”
There was a flurry of movement, hands blurring and waving over his face. A stern-looking woman was now asking him to rate his pain on a scale of one-to-ten, and before he could even consider the answer, they were on the move. Moments later, Ilya was greeted again but the angry rush of wind against him. Ilya screwed up his eyes in an attempt to keep them from watering.
It was only when safely ensconced in the back of the truck that he thought to look around, waiting for Shane to jump in. But then the door slammed loudly shut behind them.
“Where is the paramedic that was with me, Shane? He’s not here yet.”
“Don’t worry,” the older paramedic said, buckling himself in. “Shane’s team is on their way, they got their patient to the hospital so they’re swinging back around to get him now.”
“He is not coming with us?” Ilya felt something that, ridiculously, felt like a stab of panic.
“Nope,” the man’s lips popped loudly on the ‘p’, “but I promise, you’re in capable hands with us.”
Ilya ground his teeth together, looking away stonily. He would not have guessed, an hour ago, that the most maddening part of the evening would not be his injury.
But he thought, as he tried to console himself, how hard could it be to find Shane Hollander?