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Anna thought she had seen it all as a nurse. She had watched new babies be born. She had watched people die. She had seen family drama and tears of sorrow and joy and agony that she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. She had gotten every single possible bodily fluid on her at one point or another. But nothing, nothing, could have prepared her for being Shane Hollander’s nurse.
“He’s the best.” He mumbles as she comes to his bedside, a dopey smile on his face as he melts into his pillows. He’s talking about the man who just left the hospital room, Ilya Rozanov. Anna had been surprised to see him there when she popped into Shane’s room for her rounds.
Like all good Canadians, she’s an avid hockey fan- especially a Montreal Metros fan. She’s followed Shane’s career for years, checking scores on her phone at the nurses station on the nights where she had to work and couldn’t watch the games live. The fact that he had been assigned to her caseload was absolutely unbelievable, but professionalism required for her to be completely neutral. She wouldn’t even be able to tell anybody that she had treated him, and that was a shame.
“It was very thoughtful of him to stop by and check on you. It’s not what people would think your biggest rival would do.” She says lightly, her eyes glancing over his chart. He just got another dose of painkiller, so she knows he should be feeling pretty good at that moment.
She hears Shane snort from the bed. “Yeah, well people also wouldn’t think that we’ve been sleeping together for the past seven years either, but it’s still happening.”
She drops her pen. Holy shit, what????
She has to drum up every single bit of decorum that she possesses within her body to keep her face neutral, even though it doesn’t matter, because when she carefully glances over to him, his eyes are closed. He still has a big, content smile on his face, but she isn’t a hundred percent sure if he’s asleep or not.
“Mr. Hollander, are you awake?” She asks gently, and he hums in response.
“Yep. Just high as a kite. I’ve never done drugs before, not once.” He tells her candidly, cracking one eye open to look up at her. “But this shit is nice.”
She does snort at that comment, it’s one she gets frequently when patients are on the good stuff, and then she remembers the absolute bomb that he just dropped on her. Shane Hollander, captain of the Montreal Metros, has been fucking the captain of the Boston Raiders for seven years. The entirety of their careers within the NHL.
What. The. Fuck.
She clears her throat, trying to get her spinning mind back on track. “How are you feeling? Any pain or nausea?”
“I feel happy.” Shane says with a lovesick sigh, sinking back further into his pillow. “I just asked Ilya to come to my cottage with me this summer once the season is over. I want him to go so bad, but he said he would think about it. I’ve never gotten to spend time alone with him, it’s just been hookups for sooooo long, but I want there to be more.”
He frowns petulantly, his bottom lip stuck out in a pout.
“That’s nice, but how are you feeling physically?” She says with a tight smile, desperately needing to get the conversation back on track. To the best of her knowledge, neither Shane or Rozanov are publically out, which means she’s been told something that absolutely no one else, or very few people, know. Something a sober Shane Hollander likely would not want her to know. She feels terrible, being told things that would otherwise be kept behind lock and key.
As a nurse, Anna is no stranger to seeing affairs first hand. She’s been asked by patients to distract their wives so mistresses could sneak out when they accidentally showed up at the same time. But she’s never, never, had something to this caliber happen. She can practically feel her blood pressure rising from the stress.
”Can I tell you a secret?” Shane mumbles with a happy little giggle, completely ignoring her question.
Please don’t. She thinks to herself, clutching her hands into fists at her side, her discomfort growing by the moment. I don’t need any more of your secrets, Shane Hollander.
He continues on without waiting for her response. “I think I’m in love with him. No, no. I know I’m in love with him.”
Yep. That’s it.
“That’s very nice, Mr. Hollander. I’ll let you get some rest now, please don’t hesitate to push your call button if you need anything.”
“Thank youuuu.” Shane calls as she books it out of the room, her head feeling like it’s about to pop off from the enormous weight that has just been dumped on her shoulders. She goes straight for the bathroom and locks herself inside, her head falling into her hands.
How the hell am I supposed to be normal about this?
She doesn’t know how to process the information that she’s just been given, but she knows one thing: every single word that Shane Hollander just said to her, she is taking to her grave.
___________
When the time comes for Shane to be discharged, he gives her a grateful smile. They’ve weaned him off of the strong pain meds, and she can tell that he is much more lucid than he had been. “Thank you so much, I hope I wasn’t too much of a burden.”
She smiles back, shaking her head. “Not at all, you couldn't be. It’s my job.”
He shrugs with one shoulder, careful to not jostle his broken collarbone. “I just hope I didn’t say anything completely embarrassing, I hardly remember the last twenty four hours.”
Her heart drops to her toes. She isn’t sure which would be better, him remembering all of his confessions to her or not. She figures it’s best that he doesn’t, he doesn’t need the anxiety of accidentally outing himself on his plate right now. Instead, she shakes her head and gives him a bright smile.
“Nope, nothing at all. You have nothing to worry about.”
______________
Sometimes, she’s able to forget the secrets that she knows, and she’s able to live in absolute bliss without them weighing on her. It’s a heavy burden, holding onto information that could make or break people’s lives and not being able to tell another soul. The only people that even know that she met the beloved Shane Hollander are the other nurses and doctors that were on staff the day that he was there, and when they ask her what he was like, all she says is that he was polite, but so out of it that she didn’t really get to speak with him much. She never mentions the fact that Ilya Rozanov had visited, and no one else says anything, which makes her think that his visit was stealthy. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know that he was there, and she keeps that to herself.
So yeah, being able to forget is something she revels in, until something happens and she’s reminded.
Like Ilya Rozanov signing with the Ottawa Centaurs. While the internet goes crazy wondering why such a good player would go to a team that is, for lack of a better term, fucking terrible, Anna thinks, but it’s much closer to Montreal than Boston is.
When a press conference is called and the two darlings of the NHL announce that they’re working together to start a charity, the world scratches their head saying, “But don’t they hate each other?”
Anna knows that they don’t.
And when a video leaks showing Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov in an intimate embrace, completely unaware that their private moment had been recorded, her heart hurts for them. Everyone is shocked by the revelation, throwing out questions like, “Have they been throwing games?” “Is the NHL even going to allow this?” “How long has this been going on?” she pretends to be just as surprised as everyone else.
She doesn’t tell anyone the answers to the questions that everyone's asking, she doesn’t even insinuate that she’s known the secrets all along. They’re not hers to give.
And on the day that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov share a joint Instagram post, gold rings on their fingers, all she can do is smile, happy that they don’t have to hold their secrets anymore.