Page 67 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

Just...

Empty, and unfamiliar.

***

Setting my overnight bag beside the stairs, I don't move.

I simply stand there. Looking. Remembering. Outside, snow begins falling again. Softly.

Tomorrow morning...

the Frostholm Blizzards will take the ice.

The music will play.

The arena will fill.

The puck will drop.

And for the first time in my professional career...

their captain wouldn't be there.

I rest my good hand lightly against the kitchen counter.

Home had never felt so familiar.

Or so lonely.

Chapter eight

Annette

Empty Rooms

Jamie Walker has been gone for three hours, and I’ve already walked toward his room twice. The first time, I make it all the way to the doorway before I remember.

The second time, I stop halfway down the hall with a blood pressure cuff in one hand and absolutely no reason to be standing there.

Room 312 is empty.

Not abandoned. Hospitals do not leave rooms empty long enough for that. The bed has been stripped. The water pitcher is gone. The chair where Coach sat through most of the week has been pushed back against the wall. Fresh linens wait in a neat stack on the counter for whoever comes next.

It looks exactly like the way a hospital room should look after a patient goes home.

So why does it feel wrong?

“Lose something?”

I turn. Keisha stands behind me with her arms folded over her pale blue scrubs. Her dark eyebrows are raised, and there is a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Completely.”

She looks past me into the empty room. “Because you’ve been staring in there for a full twenty seconds.”