Chapter Text
MONTREAL
OCTOBER 2031
Before he blacks out, he knows this time is different. This is the one – the end. The career-ending injury he couldn’t plan for in lists or timelines. There’s a fiery-hot ringing in his ears and an icicle-sharp shudder in his ribs and his left ankle feels like a tube sock filled with ground beef and shrapnel. There’s blood, he sees it, not sure from where. It’s hard to keep his eyes open. The arena lights snap-crackle-pop white and red behind his eyelids. He hears a voice, frantic. “Shane. Shane.” A hand holds his. Warm.
“Okay,” he tries to say. He’s not sure if it comes out right, or at all. “I’m okay.”
He wants to ask something, tries to force the words to his lips. “Good, good, keep talking,” someone encourages. A medic. He’s on the backboard now; he’s been here before. The weightless feeling is comforting.
He tries again, remembers what he wanted to ask. Urgent. Things depend on it. He can’t hear his own voice. White lights, red lights. Eyes closed but everything is fireworks. “Did we win?”
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His ankle no longer hurts because his ankle no longer exists, as far as his brain is concerned. Completely numb – his whole leg, really – he sees it, suspended from a harness and braced in spindly metal, bandaged and plastered in fresh-as-snow white, but it doesn’t feel connected to his body. It’s like looking at a sculpture of a leg, someone else’s leg. Just, a random leg.
He’s still a bit loopy. An IV line curls out of his arm and an oximeter pinches the index finger of his right hand. Bandages surround his scalp in a warm hug. His throat is sore and gravelly. Apparently there had been a breathing tube; he doesn’t remember.
A doctor, or nurse, someone in scrubs, had been there as he woke from a viscous fog of sleep and morphine. He understood, somewhat, what had happened. A fall on the ice. Surgery; he’d been unconscious. Not sure how long. Since then, there’s been an MRI, a CT, and – what was the other one? An EEG. That one was fun, the little metal discs on his head, cold and alien, like something out of an X Squad film.
They asked him a battery of questions. Had him fill out a worksheet where he drew a clock, identified little cartoon illustrations of a tiger and a duck. The doctor asked him to name as many words as he could that begin with the letter B. Button. Burger. Blazer. Bulldog. Boring. The doctor read him a string of numbers, asked him to repeat it backwards.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“What city?”
“Montreal.”
“What month is it?”
“October.”
“Good. Who is the Prime Minister?”
“Stephen Harper.”
The doctor paused to write something down, then continued with more questions.
He wants to know where his parents are. Just waiting on the doctor’s okay for a visit, the nurse assures. He could picture his mom, worried, pacing. Making a plan for LTIR. And his dad. Probably distracting himself, reading an article about stock prices, or something. Taking his mom’s hand, now and then, and telling her to be still. Reminding her to breathe.
So he waits. Dozes off; or maybe sleeps all night. He’s not sure. He wakes up to the room unchanged. His senses are dull with drugs, or exhaustion, or both; the fluorescent lights that would normally make him tense up from their buzzing brightness, instead emit a shadowy soft glow that makes things seem greyscale. His tongue is thick in his mouth, dry.
There’s no clock in the room. No window. The walls are white, pillow is white, the sheets are white, his leg is cast in white. He feels like he’s inside a paper airplane that could tip into a tailspin at the slightest breeze.
When the door finally swings open, it isn’t his parents who walk into the room.
Something rises in Shane’s throat, fear cloaked in anger. Ilya fucking Rozanov. He strides in like he owns the place, like he belongs there, wearing this infuriating certainty – same as when they had hooked up, once. Same as when they had faced off only hours before.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Shane whispers urgently. “You can’t be here.” The soft beeps of the heart monitor grow closer together, broadcasting his panic.
“It’s okay,” Rozanov says curtly. “Shh. Doctor is coming.”
“Seriously—”
“I am glad you are alive,” Rozanov interrupts. “I was worried.”
“Why were you worried?”
He shrugs. “Was very bad fall. Do you remember?” He settles into a chair that’s tucked in the corner. He sits there, hunched forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped against his chin as though in prayer.
“I—” Shane pauses. “I’m not sure.”
“Metros left wing flipped you onto the ice. New guy. Giraud.”
“Giraud—who? One of mine?”
Rozanov swallows. There’s something off-kilter about him that Shane can’t place. Besides the fact that he’s here; Rozanov is here. Panic beats in Shane’s chest. No one can know.
“You have to leave,” Shane hisses.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rozanov says softly. “We wait for doctor now, huh?”
Shane presses his head back into the pillow. He’s too tired to make sense of any of it. The heart monitor slows back to its steady metronome.
“Okay,” Shane agrees, exhaling. “We wait.”
And they do. It’s silent but not. White noise in the white room. A heart monitor, an air conditioner, the PA: Dr. Jayaram to Cardiology. Shane inspects Rozanov where he sits, statue-still. He can’t place a finger on it. It’s like the guy’s outline, once angular and harsh, has been redrawn by a watercolourist. This is a watercolour illustration of Ilya Rozanov, soft and translucent, like a Beatrix Potter storybook. Man, these are some good drugs.
A knock on the door, and a woman enters. She’s tall and serious and honestly reminds Shane more of Rozanov than Rozanov does right now. Her jaw is set grimly. She’s accompanied by a shorter, greying man and a woman with hair swept back into a crisp ballerina’s bun. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hollander,” she says with a Québécois lilt. “My name is Dr. Anne Thibault and I am Chief of Neurosurgery. I’ve brought my colleagues Dr. Ismail from Occupational Therapy and Dr. Tremblay from Psychiatry to consult.”
“Okay.” Shane nods, blinking. “Sorry—when are my parents coming?”
Rozanov pipes up from the corner, “They are on their way. It’s okay.”
“Okay,” Shane repeats. “Yeah. Okay.” He doesn’t have it in him to wonder for too long why Rozanov knows his parents’ whereabouts. He doesn’t even care anymore that they’re together, in a room, in front of people. The illogic is so dream-like, in this white white room. He can’t feel his left leg. His parents are on their way. Just roll with it.
Dr. Thibault clears her throat. “Mr. Hollander, you have suffered a blunt-force traumatic brain injury which triggered an ischemic event.”
“Ischemic—?”
“You’ve experienced a small stroke,” Dr. Tremblay clarifies. He has a comforting voice. Warm. It makes Shane think of his dad.
“A stroke.” What the fuck. A stroke at nineteen? His rookie season has barely even started. “Am I—will I be able to play hockey?”
Dr. Ismail tilts her head. “Well, the leg might be a bit of a barrier to that, for now.”
Dr. Thibault, clearly, does not appreciate her colleague’s sense of humour. She shakes her head. “We conducted a craniotomy to stem the bleeding and repair the damaged blood vessel. We kept you in a medically-induced coma for seventy-two hours to monitor the swelling in your brain.”
Dr. Tremblay chimes in now. “The stroke occurred in a part of your brain called the temporal lobe.” Shane nods as though he understands; he doesn’t. The doctor continues, “Though the affected vessel was only on the surface cortical tissue, the subsequent bleeding and swelling may have affected an interior structure, called the amygdala.”
Dr. Thibault looks at Rozanov then, in the corner, then down at her clipboard. She offers the clipboard to Shane.
He takes it, eyebrows weaving together as he looks over the black-and-white scan. “This is my brain, I guess?”
“Ouais. Do you see the small dark area near the centre right?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s quite small. Here—” She leans over and points with the back of her pen.
“Okay, yeah.” Shane tries not to flinch as Rozanov unfurls from the chair and strides closer, leaning over his bedside to look.
“This is the location of the stroke. Very close to the part of the brain that stores long-term memory.”
Beside him, Shane feels Rozanov tense up. “It is damaged?” Rozanov asks quietly. His voice is tight.
Dr. Thibault shakes her head. “It is our conclusion, Mr. Hollander, that you are experiencing a condition called retrograde amnesia.”
“Amnesia—like, forgetting things?” He tries to sit forward, can’t, because of his leg. He digs his elbows into the bed, frustrated. “Because I remember everything fine. Before I got hit—Boston had the puck, and—”
“Mr. Hollander, when you awoke after surgery, you completed a series of assessments. You answered several questions and responded to some cognitive tests. May I ask you those questions again?”
“Sure—”
“What month is it?”
“October.”
“And what year?”
“2010.” He’s sure of it, but he can tell by the way Dr. Thibault and Dr. Tremblay and Dr. Ismail and even fucking Rozanov are looking at him, that he shouldn’t be sure of it. He’s failed the test.
“2011?” he offers. His heart beats faster. Distantly, he hears: Dr. Jayaram to Cardiology.
“I understand this may be very difficult for you, Mr. Hollander. We have spoken with Mr. Rozanov and our counselling department, and believe it is best to inform you transparently, that the year is presently two-thousand and thirty-one.”
Shane chokes out a laugh. “Well that makes no sense. That’s like, twenty years from now.”
Dr. Tremblay and Dr. Ismail exchange glances. Dr. Tremblay speaks first. “My department is going to set you up with a counsellor to help you—adjust.”
“Adjust?”
Rozanov is still staring at the brain scan, his jaw set firmly. “Dr. Thibault, how long is this expected to last?” he asks.
Dr. Thibault shakes her head. “I can’t know for certain.”
“But you did MRI, yes?” Rozanov’s voice grows louder.
“It is my belief that the damage is superficial. The episode was small and concentrated in the cortical tissue. The surgery was successful with no complications. The patient has retained his motor, speech, and core cognitive functions.”
Now Dr. Ismail speaks, clearing her throat. She seems young for a doctor. “We believe that with counselling, cognitive and physical therapy, the support of loved ones, and time to heal, Mr. Hollander will recover his memory.”
“But how long will it be?” Rozanov is pleading now, panicked.
Finally, the bewilderment, the anger-fear, claws out of Shane, primal, uncomprehending fury. “Why do you care, Rozanov? Why the fuck are you even here?”
A shadow crosses Rozanov’s eyes, and the white white room feels darker. “I just do, Shane. I just care, and I am here.”
To be called by his first name by this man, and so tenderly. This one-night stand fraught with fear and curiosity and excitement and secrecy. Shane searches Rozanov’s face, and he realizes. The watercolouriness, the soft edges – it’s age. Creases at his eyes and the corners of his lips. Wisps of grey in his hair. Around his neck, a gold cross, and a ring.
Shane breathes out shakily. “Is it—is it really 2031?”
Rozanov nods. “Yes,” he whispers.
“Are we, like, dating now?”
Rozanov laughs, and the laugh reaches his eyes, and it’s nice. “You could say that, yes.”
“Okay.” Shane can hear his mother’s steady voice in his head: What’s the plan? “Okay,” he repeats, louder. He looks up at the three doctors, who are watching them as though sharing a bucket of popcorn between them. “What happens now?”
The doctors enumerate a multi-week schedule of appointments: counselling, cognitive testing, x-rays on his ankle (a clean break – twelve to sixteen weeks, Dr. Ismail informs), occupational therapy, physical therapy, nutrition, check-ups, check-ins, and strict instructions to stay away from screens and get as much rest as he can.
Dr. Ismail is the last to leave. She turns around at the door, addressing them brightly. “You know, I’m a really big fan.” Then she’s gone, and it’s just them.
Silence, for a beat. Shane laughs uncomfortably. This is all a dream, or a prank, or something. 2031—that would make him like, forty. No way. And dating Rozanov? Publicly? Somehow, even more preposterous than leaping twenty years into the future. He laughs again, for real now, and says what he’s thinking.
“This is ridiculous.”
Rozanov laughs at that, too, and now they’re both laughing, and it’s too much because Shane’s ribs hurt and his head hurts and his leg is starting to hurt now, too. It’s back! His leg exists again. That is good, maybe. Maybe not. It hurts. Everything hurts.
“Okay, okay, shhh,” Rozanov says, catching his breath. “You are in pain. I get the nurse. And I’ll see if your parents are here.”
“Thanks, Rozanov,” Shane says. “I really want to see them.”
“I’m sure.” He moves toward the door, then pauses. “Can I ask you a favour?”
“I guess so.”
Rozanov’s gaze darts to the floor, then back to Shane’s eyes. His brow softens. “Could you call me Ilya?”
“Yeah. Yes, sure.” Shane nods his head against the pillow. “Ilya. Sure.”
Ilya holds his gaze for a moment longer, nods, bites his lip. “Okay, I go now. Get some rest.”
When Nurse Persaud arrives a few minutes later, she brings with her a plastic bag. “Personal effects,” she explains, handing it to Shane. “They had to remove any metal for the MRI.”
Shane inspects the bag while she adjusts his IV drip. The relief is almost instant, and his leg goes back to feeling numb and foreign. Least weird thing going on right now, honestly.
Inside the bag is a thin gold ring.