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Jackie Pike was having one of those rare, blessed weeks where she experienced true peace.
All three of her demons were finally old enough to sleep away from home, and Hayden's parents, down by the coast, had offered to celebrate by taking them in for two entire weeks.
They didn't start school again until January fifth, a blessed Thursday, meaning Jackie didn't have to feel bad about them skipping to take advantage of the weekend. And if they were back on the fifteenth in time for school the following Monday, that basically meant they'd only miss a single week.
And considering her kids had immune systems of steel from exposure to at least twenty people at all times and their collective habits of gleefully eating dirt every time she turned away, they could afford a few days out of class.
At least, that's what Hayden had said. She didn't think she was supposed to listen to him, but she wasn't supposed to get pregnant in college either, so the children were a six-hour flight away, in Parksville.
Thankfully, Hayden's parents had been nice enough to go through the hell of picking them up, and would stay for a week after they dropped them back off.
So: Jackie had two entire, blessed weeks to herself.
It was only her, her husband, and their big empty house, now that it wasn't full to the brim with people. Basically heaven, really.
And sure, she was anxious about being away from the kids for so long, but she’d also cried from pure relief the first day when she got home from work and didn't have to leave the couch once before Hayden called her saying he was bringing dinner.
So really, she was taking her wins, experiencing quiet, reaching enlightenment.
She even got off work early on Friday and had the time to drive down to Boston to watch her husband's game and maybe make it into a weekend getaway for the two of them.
She was in the booth by seven thirty, splurging on a ridiculously overpriced hotdog and screaming her lungs out in a Metros’ jersey, cheering for her two favorite boys down on the ice. Her shoulders were relaxed for the first time since Ruby was born, and she was swearing like an adult.
Of course, this couldn’t last.
Shane hit the ice in the first ten minutes of the second period, and Jackie’s heart dropped heavily into her ankles. Then, he didn’t get back up, and she could practically feel her blood pressure spike. She thought, a bit hysterically, that her pharmacy internship wasn’t doing her nerves any good, because she wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating the red ice around him.
Thankfully, parenting three young kids outfitted her with a reaction time of about two milliseconds and the ability to navigate towards the center of the chaos in half that.
Jackie was out of the booth and by the rink before she even knew what she was doing, and the only thing she could hear was her husband’s voice yelling at some nameless player he’d tackled while the refs tried to get him off the poor guy. By the time they’d managed that, the coaches were faced with the crisis of telling him he couldn’t just walk out with Hollander, and she sprang into action.
“I’m going with him,” she called, already forcing some poor kid on the bench to wrangle their coach. She didn’t particularly care if she was speaking to herself. It was said. “My car’s parked outside, just— Hayden can take that after the game or something.”
Her head felt like it was full of cotton, like she couldn’t quite hear or see right. It was like floating, in a nauseating, mind-numbing way.
Still, she dutifully followed the rookie, then the EMTs, then the nurses, handing her paperwork and asking her who she was and telling her where to sit and dragging the heavy double doors of the ambulance shut, and—
“You’re his health proxy?” Someone cut in, looking at her with pitying eyes and a pitying voice for the thousandth time, asking her the same question she’d been asked in front of every door to the rink, the ambulance, the hospital, the waiting room, driving her insane.
Barely hearing herself, she droned the speech she’d crammed into her notes app sometime between the first weird look from the EMTs and arriving at the hospital. “His primary can’t be here. I’m Jackie Pike, the alternate agent. I can alert his family.”
The nurse pursed her lips, looking sorry for her. Jackie was feeling kind of sorry for herself.
“Right, well, he’s going into surgery just now… shattered collarbone, bruised ribs. We’re worried about it affecting adjacent nerves. The good news is we did a CT scan, and there doesn’t seem to be any damage to his brain, head, or neck, so he’s able to have surgery right now. We expect to update you in a couple of hours.”
“Thank you,” she grunted. Her voice came out hoarse and shaky; she didn’t think a hockey injury had ever scared her this badly. The nurse just smiled and nodded before rushing away.
For a single, selfish moment, Jackie felt like her knees might buckle under her. Her husband should be here, not her. She should be behind the booth, eating her overpriced food and watching live hockey for the first time in months.
No one should be here. They should all be back at the rink, her watching her boys kick ass and them having the time of their lives doing it. She felt like she was gonna be sick.
She collapsed on one of the waiting room chairs and cried hysterically for ten minutes. She was just glad that whatever waiting room they’d shoved her in was empty. God, if the stress didn’t kill her, the embarrassment would have.
Jackie loved her stupid fucking boys more than anything, and she missed her family like her bone marrow: a swelling, pulsating hurt. Everything ached, and she had nothing to do but open her phone and text as many people as she knew in Shane’s life that loved him, which basically translated to everyone in Shane’s life.
She called Yuna first, because they both knew David never picked up the phone, but Shane’s mom always took exactly three rings on her personal number.
Jackie took every one of those to calm her breathing and get herself together.
This Jackie, right here, right now, needed people to be able to rely on her.
Yuna picked up with a light, airy, “Hello?”
She sounded like she was in the middle of a laugh, like she’d been caught smiling. Jackie’s heart twisted. Still, she took a breath and kept it together.
“Hi, Mrs. Hollander,” she squeaked. Way too high-pitched, dammit. She cleared her throat, tried again. “I’m Jackie Pike, Shane’s friend? My husband, Hayden Pike, plays on the Voyageurs with him.”
On the other line, Yuna snorted kindly like Jackie was being ridiculous. “I know who you are, honey. Did you guys need anything?”
It hit her, all at once, that Shane’s parents didn’t know at all. The one game they hadn’t tuned into— the one time Jackie was tasked with being the one watching over them. It was completely unfair.
“I, uh. Yes. I’m at the Massachusetts General Hospital right now. Shane got banged up pretty bad during today’s game,” she swallowed. “Hayden and I are his medical proxies.”
On the other side of the line, she was pretty sure she heard glass break. She tilted her head and blinked back tears. Being a parent had made her emotional. Or maybe it was the age or the marriage. Maybe it was that she loved Shane like a brother and he was telling his mom he was in the Emergency Room, needing surgery.
Someone gasped on the other line. It felt like a thousand years later, and she remembered how she’d felt when Jade had slammed her head into a corner so hard she’d bled all over her face. It only needed three stitches, but Jackie had felt like she was dying the whole time.
“He doesn’t have any neurological damage,” she rushed, remembering herself. “Their main concern is a broken collarbone. He’s in surgery right now, should be out in a couple of hours, and I’ll keep you updated the whole time.”
She didn’t say anything about possible nerve damage around the area, or how close the fracture was to his lungs, or how much she knew about morphine and anaesthesia from University. That part would be important when they got to it; there was no use worrying about it. That was Jackie’s burden alone.
There was gasping on the other side of the line again, and now, she easily recognized it as crying. She sat in silence, wishing there was anything else she could offer.
Finally, she heard some shifting, rushed whispers, and a new voice was on the line.
“Thank you,” David sighed. “We’re currently in California, but we’ll book the earliest flight we can. Please take care of him until then?”
“Of course,” she said, immediately.
They both knew there was nothing she could do.
Texting Hayden was next. She wondered if the game was over yet. She was pretty sure that it was, but she’d lost track of time. She couldn’t be sure. He had been there— he saw better than she did.
She sighed again, ran her hands over her phone screen, and thought about absolutely everyone who would need to know. Thankfully, most of them were already on the rink. For how easy Shane was to fall in love with, his circle had never been too big.
She was lucky to be one of the few who’d gotten close. Really, aside from blood family, there was only her, Hayden, and Boston Lily, whoever she was.
Just like that, the thought came crashing down on her. No one, absolutely nobody, had met Boston Lily. Only his closer friends even vaguely knew about her, and not one of them had ever seen her, much less talked to her.
Her heart dropped. No one would know to tell her.
It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.
She remembered it: one of the WAGs, a new girl, having an absolute mental break about her boyfriend’s injury. Apparently, they’d been childhood friends who’d only just started dating. Nobody had called her. The poor girl found out via tabloids or Twitter or something equally as dehumanizing, and she’d absolutely crumbled. It had been hard to watch.
Jackie, who was only in her twenties and had been born nosy, had the memory etched into her brain forever. She was only slightly embarrassed to admit that, after that, it had become her personal mission to know how to contact every single one of the girls, new and old, secret or not.
So basically, Jackie was a fucking snoop and a gossip, and she’d gotten Boston Lily’s number right after Shane’s denials of such a person’s existence started to really wear thin, stored behind a lock in her notes app. The one on the shitty phone she refused to upgrade until it crashed or, like, exploded.
Now, she felt like the most resourceful woman alive for keeping the shitty thing despite Hayden always insisting to let him buy her a new one.
She’d had the number for two years now but had never reached out. Shane kept saying she wasn't ready, he wasn't that serious about her, they weren't there yet. He was begging her not to pry.
Jackie possessed a bare minimum of respect and decency. She never reached out. She let Shane pretend no one noticed that the girl even existed at all.
She bit her lip, staring at the number. Her eyes were stinging at the sight of it, the screen burning her retinas.
She breathed in, stuttered through the exhale, copied the number, and pressed call. Whoever Boston Lily was, she’d clearly already seen Twitter because she picked up on the first ring and didn’t make a sound.
That was okay, considering how Jackie was practically buzzing out of her skin.
“Hi, I’m Jackie Pike. You know, Hayden Pike’s wife? He plays for the Metros with Shane; they’re, like, attached at the hip. I don’t know if you saw, but Shane, he— he got banged up pretty badly in tonight’s game, and we’re his health proxies.”
Pausing, she heard, quietly, like it was not a conscious action, a little gasp from whoever was on the other side of the phone line. For the second time that night, she could’ve sworn it was crying. This was not the kind of news you wanted to give over the phone. This was not the kind of news you wanted to receive, period.
Jackie barrelled on.
“We’re at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and I know you two are super private, but I’m sitting here in the waiting room, and I’m alone, and you just mean so much to him, so I thought you’d wanna know and—” She sucked in a breath, forced herself to spit it out and shut up: “Come if you can? I promise I’ll keep it hush-hush.”
For a second, the other side of the line was so silent she was half-convinced whoever it was had hung up on her. She shifted uncomfortably, wondering if she’d overstepped, if she was creating a closeness that had never been there. If, somewhere in the secretive spaces between Montreal and Boston, she’d done something irreparable.
Then: “I can’t.”
It was a man’s voice.
It was suddenly extremely easy to understand why no one knew about Lily. Jackie, phone pressed against her cheek, felt all at once like she’d been hired to tell people they were banning puppies or canceling summer. She was pretty sure she was having some kind of episode at this point.
“Sure you can,” she refuted, plowing resolutely forward and stubbornly ignoring any of the questions that were crowding at the edges of her brain. “Yuna and David won’t be here before tomorrow, and if you really mind, I can fend off Hayden for at least an hour.”
Whoever the man was, he was fully crying now. Loud, like he had finally started to process and he didn’t care that he had an audience. “You don’t understand. Shane— he will hate me.”
God, Jackie was going to murder someone.
“He’s obsessed with you!” She shot back immediately. “Shane doesn’t just do things like this. He’s an all in kind of guy.”
“Is secret,” he insisted, but it was weaker than before.
She softened. “Listen, you don’t have to. I’m just saying, if you wanted to show up, I’d sit with you.”
She counted twenty-six slow seconds before he spoke again, voice clipped like he was dragging the words out from the back edge of his throat before he could swallow them back down. Or maybe like he was swallowing back everything else he wanted to say.
“Okay.”
The line went silent.
Twenty minutes later—she knew this because she spent every one of them staring at her phone screen, watching time pass—Ilya Rozanov walked through the doors, looking like he couldn’t decide if he was going to pass out, or hit someone, or cry.
Jackie, despite having spent the last decade being a loyal Montreal fan and hearing nothing but vitriol about the guy from her beloved husband, liked him instantly. He was see-through.
She rushed over to him immediately, opened her arms, reaching out— only to stop about half a foot away. She didn’t know Rozanov like that, didn’t know if he’d enjoy the contact or find her weird. She shifted, looking up at him, arms hovering awkwardly in the air between them as she tried to find the words.
Rozanov spoke before she could. “Pike is on his way. Held back to get yelled at by coach. His playing today… not so good. Fighting better than hockey.”
Clearly, the poor man was exhausted, anxious, and slipping on his English. Jackie knew the feeling; it happened when she had to speak French at work after the kids had spent all morning driving her insane.
She was vaguely aware that his tone was meant to be insulting to Hayden, but she was also grateful that he’d thought to inform her. He really didn’t have to. Somehow, it broke the tension, all the same, and she was laughing, slurring over herself almost hysterically.
“Wow, you really are a dick,” she giggled, now fully leaning forward and pulling him into a hug, as close as she could manage while still getting away with politeness, and squeezed. Secretly, she thought they both needed it.
For a second, Rozanov stiffened, and she worried she’d read it all wrong.
Then, all at once, his entire body went slack, melting into her. He kept his arms respectfully on her upper back, not squeezing her too close. Like he was scared.
She hugged him even closer.
At some point, he started shaking, his fingers twitching. “Shane?”
“He's in surgery right now, baby. Shattered collarbone, but no damage to his brain.” She bit her lip, considered selling a truth she wasn't confident on. “He should be okay.”
Rozanov nodded, just barely, hiding against the crook of her neck. He had to hunch his shoulders to manage it. She just hummed, tangled her fingers through his hair and hoped it was comforting.
“Come on,” she cooed, “let's relocate to the chairs. You just played a game, you must be exhausted.”
She wondered how out of it Ilya must have been to just follow her quietly, fold under her like it was natural. It was making her want to rip her skin off.
“Shane’s totally gone for you, you know?” She started, pulling the man in like he was something precious. Distantly, she registered her phone ring; knew in her gut it would be Hayden. “We’ve been wanting to meet you for years. Since the twins were born, I think.”
Ilya’s arm wrapped around her middle. He was clinging to her like he wanted to believe what she was saying. She wondered if he was lonely.
“I'm glad it's finally happening,” she huffed, small and humorless. “I just wish it was under different circumstances… God, Shane is gonna be mortified when he finds out.”
That, finally, got a small snort out of Ilya. He looked up at her with a tiny smirk, and his heart wasn't in it, but it was at least closer to what she'd expected.
Jackie grinned, heartened.
She knew she tended to come off a bit intense. She'd been told so her whole life. Jackie was the type to latch onto people, get close way too quickly, welcome them before they were ready to step forward.
It was, at least partly, why she'd taken to Shane so fast. He was quiet and overly-polite and always looked a little bit anxious, but he was also friendly, and patient, and especially appreciative of her honesty.
And Jackie loved that. She knew how to be blunt— she had every thought at the tip of her tongue at all times, and Shane grinned like it was his favorite thing about her after every comment she made. He was, after the first five minutes of knowing him, the most intense person she'd ever met and took to the family immediately.
Her biggest complaint, really, was how he was always insisting on having to be invited. How he kept talking about being nice, being a good guest, intruding. As if he wouldn't already live with them, if it had been up to her.
Shane was one of her favorite people in the world, and, depressing as it sounded, the day he asked to put her on as her medical proxy was probably the best day of her life. Top ten, if you were counting. If she was being fair.
But Ilya Rozanov was rumored to be all sharp edges, blunt honesty, a mind that wouldn't stop, attitude that just wouldn't quit. He walked into rooms like he owned them and skated like he'd been born on the ice.
It was exactly the kind of thing Shane needed. Ilya Rozanov did not spook easily.
So, strong-headed as ever, she pulled Ilya in by the shoulders, let his breathing even out. They'd been quiet for a while. Jackie made a decision:
“You're family now, yeah?”
Ilya flinched like he'd been shot, pulling away and blinking up at her like she was the crazy one. She didn't need to wonder if he was lonely anymore.
She pursed her lips, hardening her expression to stare him down. She'd never been good at the line between intense and intimidating, and neither were good things in the first place, so she just hoped he would understand.
He smiled, just a little bit, and his eyes were glassy all over again. Jackie swallowed. For some reason, it was making her emotional, the gentleness of it all. She'd exchanged about three words with the man and she already knew she wanted to keep him around.
Ilya nodded. “Family, yes.”
“family, yes.”