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The call comes at 4:17 in the afternoon.
Shane remembers that detail later because it feels obscene that something capable of splitting a life in half could happen at 4:17 pm on a random Tuesday. It isn’t even a dramatic time. It isn’t midnight. It isn’t even dawn. It’s an hour usually reserved for emails and reheated coffee and midday practice. It fits neatly into a calendar square. It looks harmless.
Up until 4:16, the day is aggressively mundane.
He’s sitting at his kitchen table in socked feet, one leg hooked around the rung of the chair. The window is cracked open just slightly. He just finished answering Jackie's texts about dinner next week. There’s a faint draft that keeps lifting the corner of a receipt on the table. His laptop hums and Anya is sleeping soundly right at his feet. A podcast is playing quietly in the background, something that he isn’t fully listening to. He's doing bureaucratic stuff for the summer camp, planning classes and answering emails about how the camp was going to go this year.
He is thinking about dinner.
He is thinking about texting Ilya to remind him to stretch properly because his shoulder had been bothering him after last week’s game.
He is thinking about nothing important at all.
It's 4:16pm on a Tuesday and Shane is thinking the shape of the evening is already decided.
Ilya will come home from practice tired. He'll shower and they'll eat dinner on the couch and Ilya will wash the dishes while Shane dries them. They'll get into bed and Shane will get to fall asleep to the sound of his boyfriend's heartbeat. Like usual. Like always.
Then his phone rings. It's an unknown number.
He lets it ring once. Twice.
His first thought is irritation. Probably a spam call or an insurance offer, some automated voice about extending his car warranty. He watches the screen light up and dims again with each vibration.
He almost doesn’t answer, almost lets it go to voicemail
He thinks about that later— about the version of himself who shrugs and lets it ring, about the alternate timeline where the call comes back five minutes later. Or ten. Or not at all.
On the third ring, he answers.
“Hello?”
“Is this Shane Hollander?”
The woman's voice is calm. Not rushed, not familiar in the way telemarketers are. It's measured in a way that feels rehearsed, trained to transmit a false sense of security.
“Yes.”
“I'm calling from St. Catherine’s Hospital. We have you listed as the emergency contact for Mr. Ilya Rozanov.”
The words don’t land all at once. They arrive in pieces. They taste bitter on his tongue and hit his chest like a bullet. Anya must sense the way his heartbeat speeds up because she immediately gets up and sits impossibly still next to him.
He remembers the day they filled that out. They’d been sitting on the couch, half-laughing about how adult it felt to update their paperwork. “Guess you’re stuck with me,” Ilya had said lightly, bumping his shoulder against Shane’s.
It had felt symbolic, but safe. The kind of symbolism that they assume would never be tested. Because they were in love and young and would never get hurt to the point where an emergency contact would be necessary.
“Yes,” Shane says again, quieter now.
“There’s been an accident involving the Centaurs’ team bus. Mr. Rozanov was transported by ambulance. He’s currently in surgery.”
The word presses into him. Ilya's never had surgery before, that’s the first thing that crosses his mind. They talked about it once way too late at night when neither of them was tired, too hyped up on adrenaline and love. Shane told him he had surgery on his shoulder when he was twelve and his tonsils taken out when he was fifteen. Ilya admitted he had never had surgery, that he was kind of scared of being put under.
Shane momentarily wonders if Ilya was conscious enough to be scared at the time.
“He’s stable at this time,” the voice continues, professional and steady. “But we advise you to come as soon as possible.”
It’s meant to calm him. He knows that. Stable means he's still breathing. Stable means his heart is still beating and pumping blood through his body.
Stable does not mean unharmed. That's why the second part of the sentence exists. He's stable but he could not be very soon. He's stable but we're not sure it'll last. He's stable but he can die.
Shane thanks them. It comes out automatically, detached from the rest of him and the call ends with a soft click.
He stands there for a second after the call ends, the phone still pressed to his ear long after the line has gone dead.
The kitchen looks exactly the same.
The window is still cracked. The draft still lifts the corner of the receipt. His laptop screen glows softly with an unanswered email about lesson schedules. The podcast continues murmuring something inconsequential into the room.
Nothing has shifted. That feels impossible. Because Shane feels like his heart was just ripped out of his chest and is now laying spread open on an operating room table twenty minutes across town.
Anya nudges against his knee, whining softly. She must hear it — the way his breathing has changed, the way something in the room has tightened.
He lowers the phone slowly. The laptop clock reads 4:18 p.m.
A minute ago, he knew the shape of the evening and now the shape is gone, blown up and distorted in a way Shane never imagined.
It’s Tuesday.
He waits for the panic, the suffocation that will take over and make it so Shane can no longer breathe, that makes it so he'll collapse in his kitchen from a broken heart.
It doesn’t come. Instead of the panic, something colder slides into place— a clarity so sharp it feels artificial.
Okay. He needs to go to the hospital. He needs someone to watch Anya. He needs—
His brain begins listing tasks up in a row like files.
He grabs his phone and dials his mom, presses the numbers with the kind of practiced ease that he's known by heart since he was nine. The podcast is still droning on and Anya's whining gets louder. Shane mindlessly pets her head as he stares at a dent on the table and waits for his mom to pick up.
It rings twice before she answers, cheerful and unsuspecting. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“There’s been an accident.” His voice surprises him. It’s steady, flat, almost too polite. “Can you come watch Anya?”
A pause on the other end. “What? Shane, what happened? Are you—”
“Ilya. The team bus. I don't know.” He swallows. The words feel clinical in his mouth. “He’s in surgery. I need to go to St. Catherine’s.”
The silence shifts and changes shape. His mother’s voice loses its softness.
“I’m on my way,” she says immediately. “Ten minutes. Are you okay?”
He considers the question and doesn't answer. “I’ll text you when I know more.” And then he hangs up.
He doesn’t cry. He kneels down in front of Anya instead, cupping her face in his hands like she’s the one who needs reassurance.
“I’ll be back,” he murmurs. “Okay? It's going to be okay."
His voice doesn’t shake. It feels so wrong.
He grabs his keys, wallet. His phone and phone charger. He moves through the apartment with eerie precision, shutting off the stove even though nothing is cooking, closing his laptop, grabbing a hoodie without really looking at it. He packs a bag because Ilya will need his things. He hates hospitals, hates the sterile environment, he’ll want to be comfortable. He grabs a pair of pajamas and a change of clothes for both of them. He grabs both of their toothbrushes from the holder and a pair of slippers.
His mom takes less than ten minutes and he opens the door before she knocks. She takes one look at his face and her own falls, but he doesn’t give her time to say anything. He steps aside and lets her in.
“She’s been fed. There’s food in the container by the sink. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“Shane—”
“I’ll call you,” he says, already stepping backward into the hallway.
He doesn’t hug her. He doesn’t trust himself to.
The drive feels unreal. The sky is beginning to turn the soft blue of early evening. The traffic is heavier now, commuters heading home, people thinking about dinner, parents picking their kids up from school.
He merges onto the main road and keeps his hands at ten and two like he’s in back in driver’s ed.
His heart is beating too fast, but his mind is unnervingly calm. He moves onto the next item on his list.
Okay. He needs to call Svetlana.
She answers on the first ring. “Hollander! My favorite—”
“Ilya’s hurt,” he says.
He hears his own voice and it sounds like someone else’s. Almost detached. He feels sort of sick.
“What?”
“The Centaurs’ bus. They’re at St. Catherine’s. He’s in surgery.”
There’s a sharp inhale on the other end. “Is he—”
“They said he’s stable.”
The word sounds hollow now.
“I’m driving there,” he continues.
“I’m coming,” she says immediately. There's no hesitation in her voice. Shane knew there wouldn't be.
“Okay.”
“Shane—”
“I’m fine,” he says automatically.
He hangs up before she can challenge that. He keeps driving, stays below the speed limit. He stops at red lights. He uses his blinker. He lets a pedestrian cross. The normalcy of it all feels grotesque.
His mind keeps replaying one sentence.
He’s currently in surgery.
He imagines bright lights, gloved hands, machines breathing for him.
He remembers that late night conversation — both of them too awake, too restless. “I don’t like the idea of it,” he’d said quietly, holding Shane close. “What if you don’t wake up?”
Shane had laughed then, had reached over and kissed him. “You wake up. That’s the point.”
Now the memory feels like a splinter.
He wonders if Ilya was conscious in the ambulance. He wonders if he was scared. He wonders if he asked for him.
The hospital comes into view and Shane pulls into the parking structure with the same calm precision he’s used the entire drive. He parks between two SUVs and turns off the engine.
And for a moment, he just sits there. The silence inside the car is thick.
His hands are still gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. He looks down at them. They’re surprisingly steady.
Shane knows the calmness is a front, a coping mechanism. He's aware it hasn't hit yet and when it does it's going to be violent.
He opens the car door, duffel bag over his shoulder and locks it like he's done a million times.
The sliding doors open with a mechanical hush that feels far too gentle for the kind of violence that brought him here.
Inside, the hospital lobby glows under fluorescent lights that make everything look flat and dull. The air smells faintly of disinfectant and something metallic underneath, like the smell that always lingers in places where blood has been recently cleaned. It makes his nose itch.
Shane approaches the front desk like he’s walking into a meeting he scheduled himself. His posture is straight, his breathing is controlled, his voice, when he asks for the ICU waiting area, sounds almost conversational.
The woman behind the desk gives him directions with professional sympathy. He nods, thanks her, turns.
Each step down the hallway echoes more than it should.
He notices absurd details— a crooked sign on the wall, a hand sanitizer dispenser blinking low battery, a scuff mark near the baseboard. His brain latches onto these things because they are manageable. They are solid. They do not involve the image forming at the edge of his thoughts — a bus tipping, glass shattering, bodies thrown.
The ICU waiting area comes into view before he’s ready for it.
The first thing he sees is Hayes.
Wyatt is sitting hunched forward in one of the molded plastic chairs, elbows braced on his knees, fingers knotted together so tightly his knuckles have gone pale. There’s a strip of gauze wrapped around his forehead, a faint bloom of red seeping through at one edge. His hair is still matted with dried blood in places that the nurses didn’t quite reach.
Boodram is pacing near the vending machines with restless energy, one arm secured in a sling across his chest. There’s a deep scrape along his cheekbone, still raw and angry, and his jaw is clenched so tightly it looks like it might crack.
Luca Haas is leaning against the wall, crutches under both his arms, with his ankle wrapped thickly in white bandaging. His expression isn’t pain exactly — it’s more distant, like he hasn’t fully returned to the room yet.
Troy is sitting with a brace strapped around his wrist and Harris is crouching in front of him, hands wrapped around Troy’s uninjured one, forehead pressed against their joined knuckles. Harris’s shoulders are shaking in small, controlled tremors that he is clearly fighting to keep quiet.
Coach Wiebe stands near the far wall, arms folded across his chest so tightly it seems defensive rather than authoritative. His glasses are slightly crooked on his nose. There’s a scrape along his jaw and a tear at the sleeve of his jacket. He looks older than he did this morning.
There's a woman Shane doesn't remember the name of speaking in low, measured tones into her phone. Her blouse is wrinkled and her voice is steady. “We’ll release a statement once we have more information,” she murmurs, gaze flicking up to Shane as he enters.
They all look up at the same time and the shift in the room is palpable.
The conversations stop mid-breath. Boodram's pacing stops so abruptly it's almost funny. Harris straightens slightly but doesn’t let go of Troy’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline.
Shane registers their injuries in a slow sweep of his eyes— gauze, slings, bandages. None of them look catastrophic. None of them look like the word surgery and stable.
His heart lurches anyway and he steps fully into the room, hiking the bag over his shoulder.
For a moment, no one speaks.
Then Wyatt stands, too quickly, his knees almost buckling before he catches himself.
“Shane.”
There's an apology in his voice. And something else — guilt, maybe relief. Definitely fear.
“They said he’s stable,” Shane says immediately.
His voice is controlled in a way that feels detached from his body. It doesn’t waver. It doesn’t crack. It almost sounds like he’s repeating information from a meeting.
Coach Wiebe nods. “He is. They moved fast.”
Shane looks at them again, slower this time.
“You’re all okay?” he asks.
It’s an absurd question, because clearly they’re not okay. But they are upright. They are conscious and breathing.
Zane huffs out a breath that might be a laugh if it had any humor in it. “Yeah. Couple of stitches. Shoulder," He motions to his slinged arm, "Luca’s ankle’s probably broken.” He gestures vaguely toward Luca. “Nothing like—”
He stops himself. The silence that follows is heavy.
Shane feels the room pressing inward and the air in his lungs escaping him.
“What happened?” he asks.
The question sounds steady. His own voice sounds foreign in his ears.
For a moment, no one answers. It’s Coach Wiebe who steps forward slightly, like he’s getting ready to hold Shane from collapsing.
“It was a freak accident,” he says. “We had the green light. We were halfway through the intersection when a truck ran the red.”
He says it like he’s recounting footage. Like he’s watched it in his head ten times already.
“The driver didn’t even slow down,” Wyatt adds quietly. “Just—” He makes a sharp, slicing motion with his hand. “Straight through.” His voice breaks.
Shane’s mind reconstructs the scene without permission.
The bus entering the intersection. The team seated, maybe half-listening to music, maybe scrolling on their phones. The sudden shape of a truck where there shouldn’t have been one.
“And Ilya?” Shane asks.
The name feels fragile in his mouth.
There's a silence, like none of them wants to answer him. Boodram is the one that does it.
“He was standing.” The words hang there.
“He got up,” Luca says, voice still distant, eyes focusing somewhere behind Shane's head. “We were all sitting. He stood in the aisle.”
“Why?” Shane asks, though some part of him already knows.
Wyatt swallows and lets out a hollow laugh. “He was giving us a pep talk.”
There’s something almost disbelieving in his tone, like he can’t reconcile that detail with what followed.
“About last week,” Troy adds quietly. “About not letting it get in our heads.”
Zane shakes his head once, like he’s trying to clear it.
Shane can see it too clearly.
Ilya in the narrow aisle, tall and animated, one hand gripping the top of a seat, the other gesturing as he speaks, his voice carrying over the hum of the engine.
Wyatt’s hands tremble slightly as he continues. “And then the truck hit.”
The room feels smaller.
“The bus spun,” Coach Wiebe says, voice steady but tight. “We tipped onto the side.”
Shane imagines the shift in gravity. The world tilting violently, the bodies thrown against seatbelts, against windows, against each other.
Ilya standing up, not wearing a seatbelt, being thrown around like a ragdoll.
“He didn’t have anything to brace against,” Zane says softly. “He just—” He gestures forward helplessly.
There’s no need to finish the sentence.
Shane feels something inside his chest constrict sharply.
Of course he was standing.
Of course Ilya was upright when the world went sideways.
“He blocked part of the aisle when we tipped,” Coach Wiebe adds after a moment. “Kept a couple of them from getting thrown further. Could’ve been worse.” The statement is meant to comfort Shane.
Instead, it lands like a weight. If he hadn’t been standing. If he had stayed in his seat. If he hadn’t been trying to be a good captain in that exact second.
The thoughts slide in quietly and begin to root.
“Was he conscious?” Shane asks and the question feels like stepping onto thin ice.
Wyatt nods slowly. “Yeah. For a minute. In the ambulance.”
Shane’s breath catches and he he’s only capable of nodding.
“He kept asking about us,” Wyatt continues.
That does it and something in Shane’s composure fractures just slightly.
He looks down at his hands. They are still steady. That unsettles him more than shaking would. The weight of the duffel bag is heavy on his shoulder.
“Did he seem scared?” he asks.
There’s a pause.
Zane shakes his head. “No. Just… focused. Like he was trying to stay awake.”
Of course he was.
Shane feels a surge of something that isn’t quite grief and isn’t quite anger but exists somewhere between the two — a sharp, electric guilt.
If he had texted him five minutes earlier. If practice had ended sooner. If the truck driver had looked up.
If. If. If. If.
He hates how quickly his brain searches for alternative timelines.
The room hums with low hospital noise — distant monitors, muffled footsteps in the hallway, the faint whir of ventilation.
Ilya is somewhere behind double doors under surgical lights.
Shane becomes acutely aware of how calm he feels.
His heartbeat is elevated but contained, his breathing is even, his voice is steady.
It feels like his body has sealed off the panic and stored it somewhere inaccessible, like a dam holding back something violent.
He knows, with a strange certainty, that it won’t hold forever. It's filled with cracks, it's only a matter of time.
Coach Wiebe steps closer. “They moved fast,” he says again, as if repetition will solidify it into truth. “He’s strong.”
Shane nods numbly.
He thinks of Ilya standing in that aisle and swallows.
He does not let himself imagine the rest.
The hours do not move in any recognizable direction. They don’t pass, it just seems like they accumulate. Seconds on top of minutes on top of hours.
At some point, someone brings paper cups of water. At some point, a nurse checks vitals on Zane’s arm and tells Luca he’ll need imaging in the morning. At some point, the woman whose name Shane can't remember leaves to “coordinate messaging,” her voice low and composed as she steps into the hallway.
Time folds into itself. And Shane just sits there.
He doesn’t remember choosing the chair, but he’s in it now, elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped between them. His posture is controlled, and he counts his breaths.
In, out. In, out. In, out.
People cry around him. Not hysterically, but in that quiet, restrained way that somehow feels worse.
Harris eventually stands and presses his face into Troy’s shoulder while Troy strokes his hair awkwardly with his uninjured hand. Zane stops pacing and sinks into a chair with a grimace, pressing his good hand over his eyes. Wyatt’s hands shake less now, but his jaw never unclenches.
Coach Wiebe makes phone calls in the hallway. “Yes. No fatalities. Yes. We’re still waiting on surgery.”
The word fatalities echoes in Shane’s head long after it’s spoken.
Svetlana arrives a couple hours later.
He sees her before she sees him. She moves quickly through the hallway, scanning faces, her hair pulled back messily like she left in a rush. There’s no makeup on her face and her jacket is mismatched to the weather. She scans the waiting room in a single, sweeping motion, eyes moving too quickly over bodies and bandages until they land on him.
For half a second, she just stands there. Then she crosses the room.
“Where is he?” she asks.
Her voice isn’t loud. It’s controlled in the same way Shane’s is.
“Still in surgery,” Shane says.
He hears himself, catches the robotic evenness of his voice.
She nods, once, like she expected that answer.
Then she sits beside him.
The chairs are too close together, and their shoulders end up pressing together. He can feel the heat of her through his sleeve. The waiting room hums around them and Shane can't make himself care.
Svetlana reaches for his hand without looking at him. It’s instinctive.
He lets her take it. Her grip is tight, almost painful.
For a long time, they don’t speak.
At some point, Shane becomes aware that Svetlana is crying. Not in the way people cry in movies. Not with shaking shoulders or gasping breaths.
It’s quieter than that. The tears simply start falling and they slide down her face steadily, one after another, without interruption. Her breathing remains level. Her posture barely shifts. She doesn’t even wipe them away at first. They track along her jaw and disappear into the collar of her shirt, darkening the fabric slightly.
It is the most restrained form of devastation he’s ever seen. He watches the tears fall with a strange, detached awareness. He should feel bad. He does.
He thinks, this is the part where I should break. This is the part where my chest should cave in. The man I love is under surgical lights and I am sitting upright like I’m waiting for a delayed flight.
But nothing moves. His chest doesn’t collapse. His throat doesn’t close.
There is a pressure building somewhere deep in his chest— something violent — but it is held together for the time being.
He squeezes her hand once.
She inhales slowly, shakily.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
He turns his head toward her.
“For what?” he almost asks, but the question feels unnecessary.
Sorry that he was standing. Sorry that the truck didn’t stop. Sorry he got hurt. Sorry that he might die. Sorry that the last thing I said to him wasn’t I love you.
He shakes his head instead. There is nothing either of them could have done.
The hours bleed together.
Spouses arrive and gather the other men carefully, as if they’re handling fragile glass. Luca leaves on crutches, casting one last look toward Shane that carries an apology. Zane claps him on the shoulder, too hard, as if the pain is grounding. “Text me,” he says, eyes red-rimmed and unsteady.
Wyatt lingers. He stands near the wall like he’s guarding something, like leaving would make it more real. Eventually Lisa grabs his hands and slowly guides him toward the elevators.
The waiting room empties in increments.
By the time it is only Shane and Svetlana left, the fluorescent lights seem harsher and the clock on the wall ticks audibly.
10:43 p.m.
Shane stares at the numbers as if they might rearrange into something that makes sense.
Six hours and twenty-six minutes since 4:17.
He thinks about the receipt lifting in the draft. He thinks about Anya asleep at his feet. He thinks about how certain he was of dinner on the couch, of dishwater and dry towels, of falling asleep to the steady weight of Ilya’s body beside him. Certainty is a dangerous thing. Shane almost wants to laugh.
A nurse appears in the doorway, “Shane Hollander?”
The sound of his name feels like something breaking the surface of water. He stands immediately, pulls Svetlana along with him.
“Yes.”
“He’s out of surgery,” she says gently. “You can come back.”
The words feel distant at first, like they’ve been spoken underwater. He nods once, because nodding is something he can control.
Svetlana’s fingers tighten around his hand. “Go,” she says.
He looks at her. “You should—”
“I’ll come after,” she says softly. Her eyes are still rimmed red, but the tears have stopped. “Go.”
He hesitates just long enough to feel the weight of leaving her there alone, and then he follows the nurse through the double doors.
The walk down the hallway feels impossible.
The nurse speaks as they move, her voice low and professional. She explains that they were able to control the internal bleeding. That there was no spinal involvement. That he’ll be monitored closely overnight for any sign that there might be anything else wrong. That the next twenty-four hours are important.
Shane hears the words but doesn’t absorb them fully. They drift around him like static. What he hears, beneath everything, is: he’s alive.
They stop outside a door and the nurse gestures gently.
Shane steps inside slowly. He vaguely realizes he left the bag with Svetlana.
The room is dimmer than the waiting area. The lights are lowered to something almost intimate. The air is cooler, filtered and quiet. There is the steady, rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor and the soft hiss of oxygen.
And in the center of it is Ilya. He's lying still in the hospital bed, framed by white sheets and pale walls.
For a moment, Shane stands in the doorway.
The sight of him hits in a way nothing else has yet. Shane catalogues his injuries from afar.
There's a bandage wrapped around his head. A collection of bruises darken along his jaw and collarbone, painting his skin a sickly purple color. His skin is pale, sickly and littered with scratches, probably from glass shattering. An IV line is trailing from his arm and he has a nasal cannula on.
His mouth is slightly parted, lashes resting against his cheeks. There’s a cut on his nose. He looks unbearably young, not in age, but in vulnerability.
Shane steps closer slowly, as if approaching something sacred.
He takes him in carefully, closer.
The slope of his nose. The faint crease between his brows that never quite smooths, even in sleep. The way his fingers curl slightly against the blanket, as if still holding onto something.
Shane reaches for his hand. It’s warm and relief moves through him in a quiet, overwhelming wave. The warmth feels like confirmation that whatever almost happened did not finish the job.
“I’m here,” he murmurs, though he isn’t sure whether Ilya can hear him.
He sits down beside the bed, still holding his hand.
His gaze drifts upward again, slower now, tracing familiar territory.
And then he sees it. Or rather, he sees the absence of it.
The hollow at the base of Ilya’s throat is bare.
No gold chain. No crucifix resting against skin. The space looks wrong.
Shane leans forward slightly, heart beginning to thud harder for the first time all evening.
Maybe it’s tucked beneath the gown. Maybe it slipped to the side. It happens all the time. Shane almost laughs at his panic.
Carefully, as gently as he can muster, he shifts the collar of the hospital gown aside, mindful of the wires and tape.
Nothing.
The skin there is empty and where once laid the crucifix are only sick bruises.
The absence hits him harder now than it did in the waiting room, because here, in this dim quiet room, stripped of noise and distraction, that absence of that small constant feels monumental.
Ilya has worn that crucifix every day.
Before games, his fingers brush it once without fail. Before stepping onto the ice. Before interviews. Before anything uncertain.
Shane remembers the way it presses lightly against his own chest when they fall asleep tangled together. The way it sometimes catches against his lips when Shane kisses him too quickly.
Now there is nothing there. And something in Shane finally shifts.
A crack. A thin fissure running through the composure he’s been carrying since he first got the call.
What if he wakes up and reaches for it?
What if he wakes up disoriented, scared, and the first thing he feels is the lack of its weight?
As Shane's breathing picks up and his eyes cloud with tears, a nurse steps in quietly to check the monitor.
“Excuse me,” Shane says, and his voice is softer now, less controlled, and it trambles as Shane asks the question. “He had a necklace a— a crucifix?”
The nurse nods gently. “It was probably removed before surgery. It must be with his personal belongings.”
“It’s really important to him,” Shane says. He swallows around the growing pressure in his throat. “He gets nervous without it.”
There’s a brief pause — a moment of understanding passing over her face.
“I’ll see if I can have it brought up once he’s fully settled,” she replies.
“Please, he—he needs it." He's aware he sounds desperate, begging for something so insignificant. It feels monumental to him.
The woman looks over Shane and his definitely pitiful form— holding Ilya's hand with tears in his eyes— and nods before placing a soft hand on his shoulder and saying, "I'll go get it."
When she leaves, the room feels smaller and Shane sits back down fully.
He keeps holding Ilya’s hand, threading their fingers together more tightly now, as if anchoring him physically to this bed and to this world.
The monitor continues its steady rhythm and Shane is torn between staring at Ilya to make sure he keeps breathing and staring at the screen to guarantee his heart keeps beating.
He leans forward slowly until his forehead nearly rests against the mattress near Ilya’s arm. He presses their joined hands against his own chest, over his heart. One of his fingers falls on the inside of Ilya’s wrist and he feels his pulse beating steadily under the pads of his fingers, counting them. He makes it to seven-hundred and eighty-four before he loses count.
He waits for the tears to fall. He waits for the dam to break.
But what comes instead is a deep, aching awareness of how close this was to being something else entirely.
Outside the door, there are distant footsteps, a muted conversation, the occasional metallic rattle of a cart being pushed down the hall.
Shane doesn’t move from the chair.
He keeps holding Ilya’s hand, thumb brushing absently over the ridge of his knuckles, tracing patterns he doesn’t consciously register. The skin there is warm and familiar. It feels like the only solid thing in the room.
He keeps looking at the hollow at the base of Ilya’s throat. It bothers him more than it should, he knows that.
He understands procedure. He understands sterile environments and surgical protocol. He understands that metal doesn’t belong near operating tables.But understanding does not quiet the unease, doesn’t make it okay.
The absence feels louder than the machines.
Time stretches. The clock on the wall ticks past midnight and the hallway grows quieter. The fluorescent lighting dims slightly, shifting into that strange after-hours hush where everything feels softer.
At some point, there’s a gentle knock on the door and Shane looks up immediately.
The same nurse steps inside, her expression kind but tired, and in her hand is a clear belongings bag.
“We were able to locate this,” she says softly.
Shane’s breath catches before he can stop it and she hands him the bag.
He ignores the bloodied clothes and Ilya's wallet and phone, his fingers wrapping around the thin gold chain.
The crucifix catches the dim light as he opens it, the metal faintly scuffed in places from years of wear. It looks impossibly small in his palm. It's stained with dried blood, Ilya's blood, and Shane can't take his eyes off of it.
For a second, he just holds it there. The weight of it surprises him. It feels heavier than he remembers.
Ignoring the nurse's presence, he grabs a tissue from the bedside table and wets it with some disinfectant before wiping the cross. The paper comes back a mix of red and brown that makes Shane sick to his stomach. He swallows it down and tries to ignore the way the air now smells of alcohol and the faint metallic smell of blood.
He glances up at the nurse.
“Can I—?” he asks quietly, the question unfinished.
She understands anyway. “As long as it’s not interfering with anything,” she replies. “Gently.”
He nods and his hands shake for the first time all night.
He stands and leans over the bed carefully, mindful of the IV lines, the oxygen tubing and the wires taped to skin. He slides one hand beneath Ilya’s neck, lifting just enough to guide the chain around him.
The skin there is warm as he fastens the clasp with slow, deliberate fingers.
The soft click of it closing feels enormous in the quiet room. He lets the crucifix fall naturally against Ilya’s chest, adjusting it so it rests in its familiar place.
The sight of it there does something to him. It's not relief, not exactly.
But something settles, something that had been slightly off-center slides back into place. He presses his fingertips lightly against the metal, as if sealing it there.
“There,” he murmurs under his breath, not sure whether he’s speaking to Ilya or himself.
The nurse gives him a small nod before slipping back out into the hallway and the room grows quiet again.
A few minutes later, there’s another soft knock.
Svetlana steps inside.
It’s close to one in the morning now. The hallway lights beyond the door are dimmer, the building quieter, and it's definitely past visiting hours. Shane wonders if the nurses took pity in him and Svetlana, and their distraught forms, and turned a blind eye to protocol for them. He doesn't know but he's thankful.
She looks smaller than she did earlier. Her eyes flick immediately to the bed, to Ilya, and then to Shane.
“Ilysha." She whispers and Shane can see she's doing the same thing he did, cataloguing his injuries, watching his chest rise and fall. He doesn't blame her.
She moves to the other side of the bed and takes Ilya’s other hand carefully, her fingers curling around his.
For a while, the three of them exist like that.
Shane on one side and Svetlana on the other. Ilya between them, breathing steadily beneath hospital sheets.
The monitor continues beeping in rhythm. The oxygen hisses softly. Somewhere down the hall, a door closes with a muted click.
Svetlana lowers her head after a few minutes.
At first, Shane thinks she’s just resting. Then he notices her lips moving.
It’s subtle, barely perceptible. No sound reaches him, but he recognizes the cadence immediately. The shape of it and the intention behind it.
She’s praying, her fingers tightened around Ilya’s hand as she does, and the sight of it lands somewhere deep inside Shane.
He watches her for longer than he means to. The room feels even quieter now, more suffocating.
He becomes acutely aware of his own stillness, of the way he is standing there with no ritual to perform, no script to follow, no words rising naturally to his tongue.
He stares at the crucifix resting against Ilya’s chest.
The metal catches the light again.
“I don’t know how to pray,” he says finally, whispers it not expecting Svetlana to hear him.
His voice sounds rougher now.
Svetlana lifts her head slightly, confusion in her expression.
“You just talk,” she says gently.
He shakes his head, the movement small but insistent.
“My family wasn’t religious,” he says, the words tumbling out slowly, unevenly. “We didn’t go to church. We didn’t… do any of this. I don’t know what you’re supposed to say. I don’t know if you’re supposed to kneel or bargain or promise something.”
He swallows, feeling his throat tighten.
“I don’t know if there’s a right way. And if there is, I don’t know it.”
He looks at Ilya as he says it. At the bruises
His breathing starts to shift. Not dramatically but enough that he notices the air catching slightly on the way in.
“I don’t know what words would make this better,” he continues, voice unsteady now. “I don’t know what words would make sure he wakes up.”
His grip tightens unconsciously around Ilya’s hand.
“I really fucking wish I knew how to pray.”
The confession feels like something splitting open.
He feels it then — the crack in the dam widening. His vision blurs at the edges and Shane fights like all hell to keep the tears at bay.
“I would do it,” he says, the words coming faster now. “I would learn it. I would memorize whatever I had to. I would say it perfectly if that meant he stays. If that meant he opens his eyes and complains about the lighting in here.” His breathing grows uneven, shallow.
He presses his free hand against his own chest as if trying to steady his heart, and for the first time all night he feels it—not just beating, but straining. It feels like something structural inside him has begun to split, a fault line running straight through his sternum, silent and catastrophic. Each pulse lands wrong, heavy and uneven and painful, like it’s striking against something already cracked.
It hurts in a way that isn’t entirely physical.
He isn’t religious. He has never been. He doesn’t know scripture or the difference between rituals. He has never knelt at a bedside and folded his hands with purpose and begged for someone to listen. Faith has always been something abstract to him, something other people carried quietly. Hockey was his faith, he didn’t need anything else.
But he would learn. God, he would learn it by heart, with the same intensity he learnt how to play.
He would pray until his voice gave out, until his throat went raw and useless. He would kneel on tile floors until his knees bruised and bled. He would stand in churches he’s never stepped foot in and promise away every remaining year of his life if that was the currency required. He would bargain and trade everything he had and didn’t have. He would give up comfort, certainty, sleep—anything, if it meant Ilya opening his eyes. If it meant hearing his voice again, alive.
Shane would kneel at any altar, in any language, to any god, and beg until the skin on his palms split open from being pressed together too tightly.
He just needs someone to tell him how.
“I don’t know how to ask for this,” he admits, voice breaking for the first time. “I don’t know who I’m asking.”
Svetlana reaches across the bed slowly and places her hand over his.
“You don't have to,” she says softly.
He doesn’t know if that’s true.
He only knows that it’s almost one in the morning, that the hospital is hushed and dim, that the man he loves is lying between them hanging in some weird limbo, and that he has never felt so profoundly aware of how fragile everything is.
He bows his head. He doesn’t fold his hands, instead holding one of Ilya's in both of his. He doesn’t close his eyes.
He just sits there, breathing unevenly in the quiet hum of machines, and lets the fear rise fully for the first time.
The hospital after three in the morning does not feel like the same building it was at four in the afternoon.
It feels hollowed out.
Svetlana has fallen asleep without meaning to.
She is still seated on the other side of the bed, still holding Ilya’s hand, but exhaustion has claimed her in the slow, involuntary way grief often does. Her head is tilted forward, cheek nearly brushing the blanket. Her grip hasn’t loosened. Even in sleep, her fingers remain firmly wrapped around him, protective and stubborn. Her breathing is steady now, softer than it was hours ago.
Shane is awake.
He hasn’t allowed himself not to be.
He also hasn’t moved.
He doesn’t think he could even if he wanted to. The chair beneath him has long since gone from uncomfortable to simply irrelevant. His back is killing him and his legs are stiff. His eyes burn from too many hours without blinking enough. But none of it matters.
He is watching Ilya breathe. He has reduced the world to that single act. Everything outside this room — the accident, the truck, the waiting room, the hours that felt like glass lodged in his throat — has receded. There is only the rise and fall of Ilya’s chest, the pulse beneath skin when Shane presses his thumb against his wrist.
At some point, exhaustion drags at him hard enough that his vision blurs slightly at the edges and he closes his eyes just long enough to feel the weight of it — and immediately opens them again, heart jolting violently, as if he’s done something unforgivable.
He leans forward, pressing his palm flat against Ilya’s chest just for a moment, just to feel it for himself and he exhales.
And then something shifts. It is so small at first that Shane thinks it is his imagination projecting hope onto muscle memory. A subtle tightening of fingers in the hand that he’s holding that could just as easily be involuntary.
He stills completely.
The crease between Ilya’s brows deepens slightly, as though something is tugging him upward through layers of heavy, drugged sleep, and he’s fighting to stay asleep. His mouth shifts faintly and his breathing changes — not faster, but less mechanical, less surrendered. The monitor shows an uptick in his heartbeat.
Shane leans closer without realizing he’s doing it, his entire body narrowing toward that smallest sign of awareness.
“Ilya,” he says, and the name comes out hoarse, like it’s been used too many times already tonight.
There is a long, suspended second where nothing else happens. And then Ilya’s eyelids move.
They don’t flutter theatrically, and they don’t blink open in clean recognition. Instead they drag upward with visible effort. The motion is slow, uneven, like someone lifting something far heavier than it looks. And then Ilya’s eyes open and Shane has never been happier to see those pale blue eyes.
They don’t focus immediately. They drift across the ceiling first, unfixed and distant, pupils wide in the dim light.
Shane feels his own heart begin to pound so hard it borders on painful. It doesn’t feel like breaking this time. He takes it as a victory.
“I’m here,” he says quickly, leaning closer and placing both hands carefully on Ilya’s cheeks. “Hey. I’m here.”
Ilya’s gaze shifts again, more deliberately this time. It passes over the wall, the monitor, the IV line. His jaw tightens faintly as sensation returns. He swallows, throat working against dryness and the lingering fog of anesthesia.
And then his eyes find Shane and they linger.
The recognition doesn’t strike like lightning. It just settles into place, like Ilya is studying and piecing all of their life back together in three seconds.
And when it does settle into place, it is unmistakable.
Shane feels something inside him give way completely. The composure he has been holding since the phone call does not crack — it fully collapses and Shane feels like a putty with its strings cut off. The pressure that has been building behind his ribs all night releases in one overwhelming surge, and he cannot stop the tears that follow. They spill over without restraint, hot and humiliating and unstoppable. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t try to wipe them away.
He rubs his thumbs over Ilya’s cheeks and keeps his pinkies pressed against the side of his neck, as another way to feel his pulse.
Ilya watches him. His brow furrows faintly in concern. He raises a shaky hand— the one not held by Svetlana— and Shane almost scolds him, until he feels it settle on his cheeks and wipe away the tears there.
Ilya inhales carefully, as if testing whether breathing hurts.
When he speaks, his voice is rough with disuse but unmistakably his. “Truck.”
Shane lets out a sound that is half laugh and half sob, something torn straight out of his chest without filtering. He nods too fast, tears slipping freely down his face, and leans his face further into Ilya’s hand.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. A truck. You got hit. You’re in the hospital. You had surgery. You’re okay.”
He repeats the last part because he needs to hear himself say it.
Ilya’s gaze sharpens slightly as comprehension settles in. He shifts faintly against the pillow and immediately winces, a flicker of pain crossing his face. The movement probably pulls at stitches he can’t see yet but can feel.
Shane reacts instantly, leaning closer, setting his forehead against Ilya’s
“Don’t move,” he says, softer now. “It’s okay. Just stay still.”
Ilya breathes through it, jaw clenched briefly before relaxing. He looks back at Shane, thumb rhythmically moving against his cheek. Shane lets himself cry. He watches as Ilya slowly turn his head and looks at Svetlana
“Everyone— ,” He clears his throat, trying to get his voice back to normal. “Is everyone okay?” Ilya asks quietly.
Shane nods once, smiling. "Everyone's fine,” Shane reaches up carefully and brushes his hand through Ilya’s hair, avoiding the bandage. “A little banged up but everyone is okay. They went home.”
Ilya nods and exhales slowly, settling into bed and closing his eyes for a second.
On the other side of the bed, Svetlana shifts in her sleep but doesn’t wake. Her fingers remain wrapped around Ilya’s hand. Shane watches as Ilya squeezes her hand.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he says after a minute, voice trembling, and hands now gripping Ilya’s. The words come out softer than he expects.
Ilya’s expression shifts faintly, and the tired ghost of something that might almost be a smile spreads across his face.
“I’m here,” he says again.
And it is such a simple sentence, but it feels like the final piece sliding back into place inside Shane’s chest.
The fault line remains, the damage is still there, deep and painful. There will be recovery and fear and the long echo of 4:17 p.m. in the back of Shane’s mind for weeks, maybe years.
But in this dim hospital room, under softened lights, with the steady rhythm of a monitor tracking a living heartbeat, Shane feels something inside him settle.
Ilya squeezes his hand and looks at him with so much love in his eyes that Shane doesn’t know what to do with himself.
He decides to press a trembling kiss on Ilya's knuckles.
And, in the quiet dimness of a hospital room at four in the morning, Shane quietly thanks whoever is watching over them.