Chapter Text
Despite all the time it took them to enter the hospital, once they actually got in it took them little to no time to navigate throughout the all too familiar maze of the hospital. During the walk to the room Tyler couldn't help himself and thought about the last time he was here in person- last night. During the visit his grandpa wasn't in the best of shape, yet he was in a great mood- talking about tomorrow's game and how he hoped to see his grandson lifting that Cup above his head tomorrow. They even talked about how weird it was as a family to root against The Leafs this year, despite it being a very long time since the last time the team was in the finals. So, when it was time for Tyler to leave and get back to a team related commitment, he felt great and energized. And he wouldn't have imagined in a million years that it would be his grandpa's last day on earth.
When they turned around the corner, to the hall of said room, they spotted their family outside of the room. With his last steps towards his family Tyler took a big breath and braced himself. He glossed over the different family members until he met the most important one- his grandmother. Usually, she was a short petit woman with short hair and a kind face. However now she looked totally different with a disheveled hair and dry tear-tracks down her face.
When Tyler got directly in front of her, she was quick to raise her face from the instanced place she was staring at. He could feel water gathering in his eyes as he was looking at her eyes, yet he still hadn't cried. He didn't want to be confronted about it so he tried to distract them with some words. However, with his blank mind he had nothing. He stood there silently until he was saved by his grandma, when she suddenly got out of her chair. As his grandmother was at the fine age where family members tended to help you out Tyler and several other family members tried to help her. However, she turned down any offer and got up on her own. Once she was standing up she got right back into her previous activity- staring soulfully into his watery eyes until she wrapped him into a tight hug. The hug took Tyler a step closer to lose it completely, yet he still hung up by a thread, barely.
He broke down once his grandma started running her hand through his hair, a motion she later on passed to her daughter. The embrace itself made him go back in time for when he was small and so loved that he really let himself go. He shut everything around him and just focused on the two of them. Eventually the tears subsided, aside a stray tear every odd moment. He allowed himself three extra moments filled with deep breaths with his face buried in a warm shoulder. However, he still had the real world to face. He raised his head and couldn't help but feel embarrassed and weak when the soft question of "Are you okay?" left her lips.
He shrugged the question off and just focused on being normal. For some reason his hackles were up and he didn't feel fully comfortable with his family for them to see his real pain. There shouldn’t have been a reason for this, because he did love them and was close to most of them. But the idea of them seeing how hurt he was right now, how vulnerable he was, especially with them knowing the full weight of his loss, scared the hell out of him. That was part of the reason why he searched for an "out", anything that would make this awful nightmare end quicker.
The "out" came once he caught the eye of Luke, Brendon's oldest son, who was three years older than Tyler. Tyler and him were always really close, especially with the both of them being the oldest brother to two sisters, and that's why it didn't surprise Tyler in the slightest that one glance spurred Luke into action.
"With everything that happened we wanted to wait for you. Grandpa is still in the room if you want to see him. And we could take you to the rest if you…"
Luke stopped midway through the sentence, after seeing the face Tyler pulled. Tyler prepared himself mentally, prior to the start of the playoffs, to the fact that his grandfather was probably going to die. It still hurt him, but in the depth of his heart he was kind of ready for this. And under any other circumstances he even would have been happy that he helped his grandpa's spirit in the last moments and weeks of his life.
However, this was not like the situation he prepared himself for. He was not ready for the added four bodies. He was not ready for the fact that it was his parents, it was his sisters. He just wasn't ready for this. And in a blink of an eye he was expected to deal with this and do the responsible right thing. All of a sudden, he felt suffocated and needed to have a few moments of his own. He got those moments by announcing he was getting coffee for himself. He hightailed out of there before anyone got the chance to volunteer themselves to tag along.
On his journey to the cafeteria, that was also too familiar, he realized how he did truly need coffee. He played in a fucking game seven of the Stanley fucking Cup and won the game for them. And lifted that Cup above his head, and from there he went directly to the hospital to deal with this fiasco. So a coffee at that moment sounded like the best thing in the world. He got himself a cup, sat at an empty table and started drinking with a blank expression on his face.
With the little piece and quiet that the cafeteria provided him, he was able to calm down enough to decide that he had to see the whole family. He didn't really know what to do or say once he'd be in any of those rooms, yet he had to do it. Especially with his immediate family he felt the need to see them. Mostly because he knew himself, and he had to get the conformation that indeed they were no longer among the living. With a plan in mind, he was ready to go back there.
He finished his coffee, got four more cups to the rest of the family, and headed back.
+++
He didn't spend much time with his grandfather. Most of the things that he wanted to say he already told him face to face. Yet he still had a few things left on his mind, so he tried to focus on the present and talk, and not on what was lurking next. Eventually he got out of that room sad yet whole in some sense.
Once outside he didn’t let himself spare much time. Quickly he asked Luke to lead the way to where his family was located. The road itself wasn't familiar to him in any way, especially after Luke told him that they were headed towards the hospital's morgue. Tyler let himself pay half a brain to where they were going and focused more on his raging mind. As they continued walking through the hallways they started to encounter less and less people, until they were the only two people walking those half-lit pass ways. Tyler knew that they arrived at last once Luke stopped abruptly in front of a grey double-door entrance.
"We were told that you could take as long as you'd like. But afterwards they want to speak to you about your burial options and other bureaucratic stuff".
Tyler wasn't really one hundred percent there in order to register what he was told. That's why he didn't panic as he should have about the prospect of conducting and arranging a funeral for five people. What he was unsettled about was the fact that he was about to enter a place full of dead people, a room full of dead people that also had four special dead bodies.
he stalled in front of the doors and tried to mentally prepare himself to face the situation. As an athlete you get used to doing that before all sorts of situation, and he had gotten fairly good at that as his career went along. However, he never had to prepare himself to this kind of situation and didn't even know how to start wrapping his head around it. He must have stood there too long because Luke stepped up once again and told him "Hey, I know it's tough but you're strong. You can do it and we are right here behind you".
It did the trick because Tyler finally was ready to step inside the room. But he knew that he wanted to be there alone, not with Luke waiting outside the door for him. He asked his cousin to leave, in the most cowardly way, while his back was turned away from him. As the door closed behind him, he heard the muffled "Of course". Then he was the only living person in the room.
The morgue probably had more than one room, especially after considering the size of the hospital. Yet, this room was big enough on its own. It was parted into two unofficial parts. The smaller part with a table filled with overflown files, medical tray that held various medical tools, and a metal bed under surgical lights. He didn't need a medical degree to understand what that part was for. And as unwelcomed images popped in his mind, he transferred his focus onto the other part of the room. That part took the majority of the confined space. It was a wall-wide metal box filled with metal square shaped doors which presumably held various other bodies. He didn't need to guess in which cubicle his family was held- in the middle were four beds filled with bodies.
As he got closer to the beds he focused more and more on the white sheet they were fully covered with. He gently checked the notes attached to their toes and knew their order. They were laid by the order of births- his dad on the far left and his sister Cassidy on the far right. After getting that out of the way he scanned the room one last time. In the scan he was able to spot a metal chair that was located in the corner. He fetched it quickly and sat two meters in front of the beds, right in front of the blank space between his mom and Candance.
Once he settled in, he knew that it was expected of him to start talking. It didn't matter what he would talk about because the important part was that he did talk and used this opportunity. Yet, he didn't have anything to say. He just sat there, like a loser, for what seemed like an eternity in complete silence. The only difference from when he sat down was that now he started feeling the cold, as the freezing air conditioner worked, on top of everything.
What broke his silence was the articulated sentence of "I just won the Stanley Cup".
Along with the statement came a border-line insane laugh. And the manic laugh sat loose something in him and he just followed it with another statement of "I just won the Stanley Cup, I lost my grandfather, and for the cherry on top, there was a car accident that killed all of you guys while I was too busy playing a fucking hockey game".
With the fantastic start of an amazing speech, he started to talk to each and every one of them. He still sat on the chair, and didn't really look at them aside quick glances here and there. However, after he finished with the individual eulogies and the collective final words, he rose from the chair and tentatively started to rise the sheets off their faces, so he could see them one last time. To some of them he wished he hadn't touched the sheet, because he was pretty sure that those images would haunt him for the rest of his life.
+++
He stepped out of the morgue physically and emotionally drenched. He was done with this day, this reality, and the only thing that he craved in that moment was a warm bed to sleep the day off. Yet, he knew that his commitments weren't done, he had to talk to whomever that would be about the burial options.
With an evident reluctance he made himself desert the comfortable empty hallway and go back to the bustling hallway with the rest of his family. It took him a bit of navigation to get to a familiar area of the hospital, after all he wasn't really there to take in the way to the morgue, but he managed. While he walked in the familiar hallways, he started to form a plan for the rest of the evening. There wasn't much to the plan, but he did want to start execute it. In the targeted floor he entered the men's restrooms first.
Thankfully, the room was empty and he was able to occupy a stall before he could second guess himself. Inside the stall he leaned on a clean looking wall and got his phone out of his pocket. The phone was off even before the game started, yet he couldn't help but stare at it with a horrified look. He felt like he wouldn't be able to deal with all the "congratulations" texts and the unanswered phone calls he undoubtedly had. He still felt that way as he waited for it to turn back on. He tried to mentally block the noise as much possible in the first two minutes as his phone kind of exploded from catching up to everything, but afterwards he just entered his text messages' app.
The first thing that gathered his attention were all the marked chats with unread messages. However, he powered through and tried to find the specific contact he searched for. Luckily for him the chat was fairly at the top so he clicked on that. As he entered the chat their texts' history opened up and the last unread texts from after the game caught his eye.
-You played amazing!!! I can't believe you scored the game winning goal in OT!!! My boyfriend is so talented.
-I wish I was by your side right now. I miss you so much.
-You want to talk later? I'm celebrating with some friends so we could talk late.
After reading the last text that Emily left, he felt more at ease with sending her a 'Can we talk in about an hour? I have some things left to do but I want to talk to you before I sleep'.
Just him sending Emily that text was enough to elevate his spirit to the needed level to master the courage to get back out there and have an adult conversation about the next move.
+++
The hour they got to his grandparents' house was such a late hour that it was debatable whether it was still considered night. On the drive from the hospital all the adrenaline and playoff's induced pain killers were fading from his body. So, by the time he entered the house his end-of-playoff's body was screaming at him to get into a bed and sleep for a thousand years. He said a quick 'good night' to his grandma and walked towards his preferred guest room at their house. His grandma was the best grandmother in the world and already made the bed beforehand, and saving him the hassle.
The soft bed practically lulled him right into drowsiness in mere seconds. However, he didn't want to sleep right away. He knew that he needed to talk to Emily. The realistic side of his mind knew that she was probably deep in her sleep and he was better off to speak to her in the morning, after a good night sleep. Yet, the selfish part of his mind wanted to talk to her right now. The honest part of his mind knew that tonight he would talk to her without any filters that would undoubtedly rise in the morning.
It was two against one, so he decided to call her that night.
As he listened to the seemingly never-ending line, waiting for Emily to pick up, he thought once again about how unnatural this relationship with Emily was. How he shouldn't feel that way about someone he met little over two months ago. How there shouldn't be anything between them after that first meeting.
They met on the final days of the regular season. The team finished all of their games, and secured the elicit playoff spot. Coach gave them the day off so they'd rest before the upcoming two months. Tyler's day started like any other off day. He walked the dogs, made brunch and mainly just stayed in his house chilling.
Yet, it took a turn for the worse once he woken up by a phone call from his nap. He took the call with grogginess and only really woken up when he realized it was his mom. She wanted to update him on grandpa's condition. Apparently, he had a setback and is now at the hospital. The thing that stuck with the most was the fact that it didn't look so good.
Following the call he needed a few minutes to get past all the confusion and just process the news. When he finished processing, the anger came pretty quickly and settled deep in his bones. He was aware that his grandpa's health wasn't in the best shape, yet he hadn't expected to hear this news. What hadn't helped his anger was the fact that he was living in Dallas and the rest of his family was located in Canada. Every time he would get news, of any kind, about a variant family member or childhood friend he would get irritated to be reminded of this fact. But now, this close to the start of the playoffs he knew that there wouldn't be that much opportunities for him to visit his grandpa in what would probably be his last moments on earth.
Those polarizing emotions made him feel restless. Plus, his brain went into overdrive and started playing hypothetical scenarios filled with all the things that could go wrong in the near future. By the first scenario he already wanted to shut his brain off. However, he didn't know how and was stuck inside his brain. As time passed, he felt sicker and sicker. And hour or so later he decided to turn to the only method he knew was for sure affective- alcohol.
He wasn't proud of that plan, it reminded him too many of his Boston's days. Yet, he knew that he would do this. The following day they had only an afternoon practice, so there weren't any responsibilities stopping him.
This plan was out of Young Tyler Seguin's playbook that he didn't feel like changing the details much. Just like past nights where he wanted to drink to oblivion, he wanted to be near people and not by himself. The only thing that changed tonight was that he wasn't up for any of his regular places, where people knew him. He searched in google a bar in Dallas where he hadn't been in yet and started to get ready for the night.
He got to the bar just before happy hour, by using uber, so the bar was kind of empty. It worked well for him as he made his way to one of the many vacant stools near the bar. He made himself comfortable in his seat of the next few hours, and looked at all the drinks that the bar had to offer. Before long the bar tender, a somewhat attractive guy in his middle twenties, approached him and asked him what he wanted. He ordered his go-to drink when he is in the mood to get drunk, handed over his credit card with the instruction to keep his tab open, and got started with the program.
As the bar got fuller and louder, he didn't pay attention to his surroundings. He just kept to himself and if someone occasionally wanted to gather his attention he quickly blew them off. The seat beside him remained for the most part empty, until at some point a group of women took that open bar space. He didn't really pay attention to them, only registering basic things about the group such as them ordering shots and pretty much shouting at his ear. He was glad that after a few rounds of that they kind of split and only two of them stayed by the bar.
He knew how to drink and he drank often, so he was able to estimate when he was buzzed and when he was shit faced drunk. Yet, he surprised himself when he accidently spilled his drink over the girl who sat closest to him. The glass itself didn't break, but she was still pretty mad at him. He grabbed the nearest napkins and started to clean, drunkenly, the places that it spilled over. He probably did more mess than help, because pretty quick she told him to stop with his attempts and continued to clean her arm and table from any spilled alcohol. Even though he stopped with the cleaning, he still kept with the apologies like the nice Canadian boy he was taught to be.
Because he wasn't busy with cleaning the mass, he looked at the girl properly for the first time. When the girl finished with all of the cleaning, she finally looked at him as well. Even in this slowed brain he figured out that she obviously recognized who that drunk person who sat next to her all night was, but he tried to act like he didn’t realize that she knew who he was. They stared awkwardly like that for a few more seconds, until either one of them realized that the other won't say anything. The moment snapped when she backed away from the bar, probably to wash her hands.
In the few seconds that he was left alone he contemplated whether he should go away from the bar. He felt like he was drunk, but not drunk like he hoped. Yet, he wasn't in the mood to interact with anyone, and he had the feeling that that girl would talk to him during the night. At the end he decided to stay, and leave if she would start to harass him.
Tyler still think that this was the best drunken decision he ever made.
By the time she came back to her seat he had a new drink in his hand. After that he continued like nothing happened, and the girl did as well. However, now that he paid attention to her, he could feel how every few seconds she drew sneaking glances out of the corner of her eyes. It wouldn't have mattered to him much, he kind of used to people doing this around him, if it weren't distracting him.
It got to the point that once she at last spoke up to him he felt relieved…well until he realized what she told him.
"Why are you acting like the world ended and you're not going to the playoffs?"
Something in the way that she asked that question grabbed his attention. It was genuine, and not gossipy like a lot of other fans would be like. Maybe because it sounded like she really cared, he answered honestly.
"Maybe I'm acting like that because my mom called me and basically told me that my
grandfather is going to die, and I'm stuck here playing in the playoffs".
Her smile died off her face and she started with the standard answering of "I'm so sorry". However, what really amazed him was that she stuck around for the rest of the night. He learned that her name was Emily and she talked to him through all the shit that's happening. They stayed there for a while, only ending the night when it was apparent that it was time for him to go home. Emily was still worried about him, so she took his phone and helped him order the uber drive back to his house. In that same opportunity she also saved her phone number and begged him to shoot her a text when he came home to let her know that he was okay.
It was supposed to be it, just a random night where he loaded a bunch of crap and dark secrets on a stranger. However, in the morning he felt horrible as his sober mind replayed the night and realized how much of an asshole he was. So, he invited her to a dinner at a restaurant as a consolation prize. That dinner accidently was their first date, even though he genuinely offered that dinner without any ulterior motives.
His stroll through memory lane was cut short as the phone call finally got through and he heard the sleep-filled voice of Emily saying "Tyler? Why are you calling this late?"
Before he could second guess himself, he just said "I needed to talk to you tonight, something happened tonight".