*
The symptoms don’t abate while the Oilers play a homestand. They don’t abate when they play a short trip, nor when they return. Mike is more than expecting the meeting that comes two months after his concussion. It’s in Mulligan’s office and not the GM’s, which he guesses is to make him feel more comfortable. It’d maybe work if Mulligan wasn’t so…Mulligan.
It’s too cramped for who’s there: team doctor, Mulligan, trainers, the aforementioned GM Donahue. Mulligan tells him they’re not getting rid of him, sounding almost gentle, for him at least, before they lay it out: they can’t keep saying ‘complications’. The media’s speculating, the team’s antsy, and they’re so hard up against the cap that Mike’s paltry cap hit makes a difference. Either he agrees to go on long term injured reserve so they’ve got some extra room to breathe before the trade deadline, or he retires, but he’s not staying on the active roster.
It isn’t much of a choice, not really, even though he knows he’s through: he lets them put him on LTIR, he lets them all flash him concerned, sympathetic looks, he gets the fuck out of there because he doesn’t want to be anywhere near the ice if he can’t get on it.
He texts Liam to tell him to entertain himself with Morris or Rogers that night, because Mike’s got medical shit to deal with, and it’s true enough. He wishes he could disappear into the bottom of a bottle right now, but he’s not actually out to make himself worse, whatever anyone thinks, so that unfortunately rules alcohol out.
Rules out TV and reading and any of the music he actually likes. Rules out taking it out on a punching bag or doing anything more strenuous than a fast walk. Rules out his entire fucking life, basically, except Liam, and he can’t deal with Liam right now either, not when Liam’s still practically brimming with hope, fucking hurt Bambi eyes every time Mike so much as winces, running around trying to make himself useful and just knocking things out of place. He’s trying, but Mike doesn’t have the energy to humor him right now.
Mike’s thirty-two, old enough to be steadily declining even in full health. The symptoms that were supposed to go away in a week, maybe two, they’re still holding fast. He’s not fucking delusional, he knows he’s done, he knows this is it. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care if they put him on LTIR just to cater to his ego, he’s going to take it, because if he retires, then he goes home, and he gives up, and this becomes just another city he played in, just another city he left. And he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to leave. A stay of execution will suit him just fine. It’ll have to.
Chapter 16
Another month passes, and nothing really changes. They keep shuffling him from doctor to doctor, trying to manage symptoms, but nothing seems to work. They send him to neurologists, psychiatrists, a sports therapist. Try to send him to a psychologist, but he flat out refuses. ‘It’s all in your head’ is technically true, considering his fucking brain, but that’s what the neurologists and the psychiatrists are for. Talking shit over isn’t going to fucking help, or he’d be in perfect health by now.
Liam’s still trying to help, making shit worse every time he does. He’s looking less hopeful, hell, Liam’s down, his mood and his output. Mike can’t watch the games, but he can manage the radio in half hour spurts, he knows Liam’s playing messed up. Playing messed up and coddling Mike like he’ll miraculously recover with the help of some chicken soup and an extra blanket, like Mike’s got a fucking cold or something.
It’s bad enough to be aching, flat on his back with a pain he can’t hit back, to be told he’s never going to play again, maybe never going to get past this, but Liam makes him feel helpless, and Mike won’t be helpless, not for anyone.
Liam lets himself in without bothering to call ahead when Mike’s facing another migraine head on. He can tell when it’s coming, objects throbbing before his eyes and his skin tight. Liam’s been sleeping over at Mike’s as often as not for over a year, but this isn’t his apartment, and Mike isn’t his invalid sweetheart. Mike’s kept him from seeing the worst of it, but he can feel it coming on in waves.
“What are you doing here?” Mike asks. Doesn’t look up from where he’s got his head between his hands, like putting enough pressure on his temples will help stave it off. Nothing will, he knows that by now, but he does it anyway.
“We got back today,” Liam says, dropping his bag on the in the front hall with a dull thud, where he always drops it even though Mike’s told him to use the laundry room if he’s so insistent on leaving his shit on the floor. It’s not loud, but the sound shoots through Mike like a physical blow.
“But why are you here?” Mike snaps, presses harder like he can contain what’s coming. He can’t. He knows that by now. “Who said I wanted you here?”
“Are you feeling okay?” Liam asks, voice close now. “Do you want me to get you something?”
“I want you to stop getting underfoot all the fucking time,” Mike says, quiet, just because anything more would hurt too much to be worth it. “You make a shitty nurse. You’re a fucking fetus, go play with your little friends and go away.”
Liam’s quiet for an uncharacteristically long time. “You want your painkillers?” he asks finally.
“I want you to catch a clue for once,” Mike snaps. “Jesus, do you need me to make it clearer? Do you want me to speak in little words so you can understand?”
“Fine,” Liam says, short. “Be miserable, whatever. I don’t care.”
His voice breaks in the middle. He sounds like a child, because he is one. He may not be a teenager anymore, but he’s close enough — playing house, playing nursemaid, playing pretty little trophy. He’s up for restricted free agency this year, and he’s good enough to get something worthwhile instead of playing with a bunch of has-beens and could-have-beens, running around fetching and carrying and getting underfoot of a veteran who can’t even watch a hockey game anymore, let alone play one, the only person in the world who believes that Mike’s ever getting back onto the ice.
Liam’s got something Mike’s never had, that Rogers doesn’t have, that little Morris doesn’t have. He’s got the spark that means he could be a star in the right situation. With the right line, the right coaching, he could blow the fuck up. He doesn’t see it, maybe, but there’s no way in hell that management doesn’t, that other teams’ management doesn’t. Liam’s going to have the market running hot, vying for him, if he doesn’t fuck it up and re-sign with Edmonton, who can hardly afford the least he deserves, and he would, just to be where Rogers is, where Morris is. Where Mike is.
The kid’s in love with him, Mike won’t tell himself otherwise. It’s clear enough by the way he’s still sticking around even though Mike’s made it more than clear by now that he’s far from a prize. The kid’s in love with him, and he’d let that love drive his career into the dirt. Let Mike drag him down right with him, if need be, let Mike anchor him underwater. Mike isn’t going to let him do that. He’s fucked up enough things without adding fucking Liam over to his list of sins.
When Liam calls the next day, tentatively asking if he can come over after practice, like he’s ever asked permission for anything in his life, Mike swallows around a stone in his throat, says, “Yeah, we probably need to talk anyway.”
He’s a fucking cliche, and he’s not proud of it.
*
Mike gathers Liam’s shit up in a self-loathing fueled burst of energy. He thought it’d fill a box, maybe, but it’s fucking everywhere. Liam’s shirts mixed in with Mike’s because he likes to steal Mike’s shirts and leave his own, and Mike likes his shirts on Liam too much to protest. His games beside Mike’s console, sports and racing and some RPG he’d been obsessed with for the past month, butt right in front of the TV, when Mike couldn’t even focus on it from across the room.
His food in Mike’s kitchen; sugary cereal that rots his teeth and makes Mike gag, his whole wheat bread, his shit beers, his kale. Mike prefers spinach, but he makes both anyway because Liam has a strange aversion to spinac
h but not kale, against all logic. Bananas for his smoothies, the iPod he’s been trying to find for a week now under one of Mike’s books he’d picked up and then promptly abandoned the second Mike had to retire for bed at nine like he’s eighty-two, not thirty-two. His fruity shampoo in the shower and his underwear on Mike’s bathroom floor. It isn’t a box it fills: Mike has to use two duffel bags, and even then he’s not sure he got everything.
When Liam comes over he knocks — a sign that the world has ended — and when Mike lets him in, his eyes catch on the bags right away.
“We need to talk,” Mike says. It’s probably redundant by now. The bags on the floor make shit pretty clear.
Liam swallows. Mike watches the bob of his Adam’s apple, the way he licks his lips unconsciously, that nervous tic that Mike’s always been helpless in the face of. “If you’re ending this, just fucking say so,” Liam says, all bravado.
“I’m ending this,” Mike says, and the bravado disappears, Liam’s face going unguarded and hurt. Everything Liam feels gets written across his face, and Mike hates it, because he can’t pretend he doesn’t know when he’s hurt him.
“If this about the nursing thing or whatever,” Liam starts, “I can—”
“This isn’t a debate,” Mike says. “I’m not asking for your input.”
Liam’s face crumples just that little bit more, and Mike looks away so he doesn’t have to see it.
“Your stuff’s here,” Mike says, stating the obvious, because he doesn’t know how to do this, doesn’t know what to say.
“Can’t you tell me what I did?” Liam asks, and that’s the biggest sign he isn’t really an adult yet: he thinks he had to have done something. He thinks that he has to be at fault.
“I’d like my key back too,” Mike says, staring at a spot on the wall, a nick from god knows what. Liam, probably.
“Fuck you,” Liam finally chokes out, and now he’s getting it. It’s for the best he’s angry. Anger cleanses like wildfire. It’s the cleanest thing Mike knows.
He can hear Liam fighting with his keychain, taking too long, shaking hands or blurred vision or whatever the fuck else Mike doesn’t want to think about, that Mike can’t think about.
The key ends up on the floor, the bags over Liam’s shoulders, and Mike finally looks him in the eye. He wishes he hadn’t.
“There’s something wrong with you,” Liam says, choked, and as soft as an admission of love, “There’s something broken.”
Mike swallows, looks down at the key on the floor. “Go home, kid,” he says, finally, and Liam listens to him for once, at least for as long as it takes Mike to lock the door behind him.
*
Mike doesn’t get better.
There are moments he thinks he might: when he goes a week without a migraine, when he can focus his eyes enough to read a couple chapters of a book, when he’s got enough energy that he can go almost an entire day without wanting to curl up on the nearest horizontal surface. Except every time he thinks there’s an improvement he’ll push himself too hard, watch TV, go for a jog, and then he’s in the exact same place he started.
The doctors stop sounding hopeful. The doctors use words like ‘chronic’ and ‘persistent’, they talk about managing symptoms, alleviating them, not erasing them. They talk about the life he’s living like it’s all he has to look forward to. Like it’s the best he’ll get, and there’s no direction but down from now on.
Suddenly Mike figures out why he’s on antidepressants, beyond the fact they’re supposed to help with the exhaustion and the headaches, not that he’s noticed if they have. Understands why he keeps getting nudged towards a therapist. Well, more than nudged: he gets a fucking impromptu intervention from the team doctors, even though he’s no longer their problem, practically begging him to go to a psychologist just to put their minds at ease. He ends up caving to the emotional blackmail, goes to one they recommend. She isn’t horrible and doesn’t run for her life after the first session, just seems to take Mike’s uncommunicative ass as her due, so he guesses she’ll do okay.
Liam calls him a handful of times. It’s usually late at night, game nights and otherwise, when Rogers or Morris probably took him out to drown his sorrows, lost sight of the kid during his self-destructive portion of the evening. Mike doesn’t pick up, not even when it’s three in the morning and he can’t sleep, staring at the ceiling and wishing Liam was letting off heat like a furnace beside him, because it’s a bitter night and Mike won’t be sleeping anyway.
Doesn’t pick up, deletes every text from Liam before looking at it, figuring it’s best to cut off temptation, but he misses the kid. He didn’t realize how many ways Liam had wormed his way into Mike’s life until he finds himself reaching out in the night, making two sandwiches on autopilot, turning the Comedy Network on while doing other things, because Liam liked it in the background, sometimes braying laughter that startled Mike until he realized that Liam had been listening to a stand-up routine with half an ear while Mike made them dinner.
It’s hard to keep busy enough to distract himself when he can’t do anything that’d actually work, can’t find refuge in alcoholism, adrenaline, or escapism. He ends up cooking. He’d always done it, liked doing it, but he challenges himself now, tries to lose himself in the repetition of chopping vegetables as finely as he can, in trying to figure out the perfect ratio of spice to sauce. Mike’s used to Liam knocking around the kitchen when he cooks, sitting on a counter and kicking his heels against the drawers, or pressing himself up against Mike so he can’t concentrate. Mike’s cooking better without him around. He has that, if nothing else.
Months go by. The Oilers fail to qualify for the playoffs yet again, and Mike hears the same regurgitated bullshit every time he goes in to see a doctor. He would think they were just trying to bleed him dry, except it’s free and management’s probably pulling strings to shove him to the front of the line. He feels guilty if he lets himself think about it, so he tries not to.
The off-season’s coming up, which is relevant only in that it’s when he’s officially going to retire, and when he usually goes home. His doctors, all fifteen thousand of them, are urging him to stay local, and he’s not ready to let go of this city quite yet, he doesn’t think.
When free-agent frenzy comes around, the Oilers can’t afford to pay Liam what he deserves, as tight up against the cap as they are, and the Red Wings snatch him up with an offer sheet. It’s a good deal: fair salary, Cup contending team. Everything that Liam deserves, and everything he would have turned down out of some misguided loyalty, for love.
A week later Mike retires.
He tries not to notice that amidst the slew of texts and calls from former teammates, Liam’s name doesn’t show.
Chapter 17
Mike’s finally getting better.
He’s not getting better in a cure way, not in a ‘soon this will be gone’ way. This will never be gone. This shit will stick with him until the grave. No one uses those words, exactly, or that sentiment, but it’s pretty fucking obvious.
There’s a small chance of it disappearing, growing slimmer as the months pass. That’s what they use, ‘small chance’, and Mike isn’t ready to bet on single digit percentages, that’s not the man he is. So this is it for him.
But he’s getting better. He’s ‘adjusting’. Symptoms are ‘alleviated’. He’s learning a whole bunch of words that completely mask what’s being said, because doctors don’t like to come out and tell you your body’s betrayed you, that no matter what you do, you’ll never be the same.
It doesn’t mean the headaches have stopped, but he can’t count on them like trash collection anymore, which is one good thing. The dizziness has ebbed, unless he pushes himself, does something he’s not supposed to do. He’s practically out of his skin with the things he can’t do. He can’t do fucking anything anymore.
He’s functioning. They like using that word, as if it means jack all other than the fact that he has to live with it, th
at this is his life now and it’s just something he’ll have to get used to. They claim he can be a real boy, most of the time, but they don’t know shit, because they tell him his lack of energy is understandable, but he was a goddamn professional athlete: not having the energy to get out of bed some days means his world has fucking ended.
Mike stays in Edmonton because they tell him to, both the docs and the Oilers brass. His contract’s up, but management’s still fretting over him like he’s theirs, like they’re the ones who broke him. They hired him, and he did his job, and shit happens. They could wash their hands of him with a clean conscience, but they don’t, which is more than he can say about any of the other franchises he’s worked for. Teams tended to stop liking him when he got his hands dirty, the exact fucking thing they hired him to do, and the exact thing they didn’t want blowback from.
Mike goes to his appointments. He goes to whatever the fuck they ask him to, not because he’s expecting some sort of cure — this isn’t the kind of shit they have a cure for — but because he can’t lie to his mom, who calls him almost every day, and he can’t tell her he didn’t go, can’t upset her like that. So he’s a good little boy, and he goes to every fucking thing he has to, even if they never tell him anything he doesn’t know, which is that he needs to get used to this.
He tries to find a therapist he can deal with for more than a few sessions, bounces between so many it makes him dizzy, psychiatry and psychology, men and women, all with that cultivated listening look that puts him on guard every time. He would quit completely — he wants to quit completely — but the team doctors call once in awhile, ‘just to check in’. They always ask him if he’s seeing a therapist, still obviously concerned even though it isn’t their job to be, and he’s beholden enough to them that he keeps going, practically running through Greater Edmonton’s therapy base before he finds someone who doesn’t actively make him defensive, someone who sticks.
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