Beside You

“Mommy?” A pig-tailed, tooth-gapped Madison stood by the kitchen door, looking at her Mom expectantly.

“What’s it, honey?” Linda smiled at her youngest. The house was quiet, but the outside was not. The boys were on their rink, playing, and you could hear it.

“Can you get my skates?” Madison asked almost shyly.

“They’re playing out there, baby girl, you can’t really skate there right now,” Linda reminded her daughter softly. “Do you want to help make cookies instead maybe?”

In true Staal fashion, defiance and determination in her pale brown eyes, Madison raised her little chin and shook her head. “I want to play.”

Linda swallowed, once, twice, peered outside at her boys playing hockey outside through the kitchen window, then looked back at her daughter. Finally she nodded.

Of course, like every other good Canadian child, Madison could skate and she skated well, but she’d never really picked up a hockey stick and played like her brothers. Whenever they got into their boys games, it usually quickly got too rough for the small girl and more often than not, even if her brothers invited her to play, she got hurt. But Linda could tell that cookies or any other substitute activity would not distract her daughter today. And so she went and got Madison’s skates out. They weren’t hockey skates, but it probably didn’t even matter.

Determination was still showing on Madison’s little face as she suited up to brave the cold outside. Linda was surprised to find her daughter’s snowsuit, the boots that she would wear until she got to the rink, her mittens, her wool hat and her scarf all laid out by the front door. The little girl only let her mother help with as little as possible and then she stomped through the snow like a little trooper. If Linda hadn’t been so worried, she probably would have laughed. She had half a mind to call her husband and tell him about this.

Fact was that Madison had never shown much of an interest in hockey, other than watching her brothers and games on TV. She found that figure skating was pretty and hockey interesting just as long as she didn’t have to do it. At 6 years old the little Miss already knew quite well what she wanted and how to get what she wanted.

And right now, she wanted to play hockey. Or learn how to.

“Hi, Maddie!” 10 year old Jared called over to her as soon as he saw his little sister marching from the house to the rink. The game paused.

12 year old Jordan let out a groan, 13-almost-14 year old Marc watched in interest as the first-grader finally reached the rink, her skates slung over her shoulder, dragging what really did appear to be one of their old hockey sticks.

“I want to play,” she declared instead of a greeting, looking at Marc, who, being the oldest since Eric was in Peterborough, was in charge of the bunch.

“You don’t know how to play,” Jordan rolled his eyes, skating away, ready to return to the game they’d already started. “Besides, we’re in the middle of a game.”

“You want to play?” Jared asked, sounding and looking kind of astonished. Madison nodded determinedly. Marc looked thoughtful, but she didn’t wait around, just plopped her little behind in the snow and started to pull off her boots to put on her skates.

“Let me do it,” Marc finally said, taking a knee to tighten the laces. Madison’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. She was a smart kid, having picked one of the really old, short, small sticks, almost appropriate for her size, he realized as he helped her up and picked up the stick, her stick.

“We’ll go slow,” he decided for he and his brothers and waited until his little sister had taken a few strides to get accustomed to the ice. He bit on the inside of his cheek as she sloppily tried to take the puck with her for a few strides, Jared barely stifled a laugh, Jordan didn’t even bother, laughing loudly.

“Here, hold it like this,” Jared offered help, skating over to her, but she only gave him a look.

“I can do it,” she brushed him off and experimented for a while, whilst the boys picked up another puck and played around a little, watching her from the corner of their eyes. She fell twice, but got back up immediately and after just a short while, you could see the Staal in her coming through, when she got better and better at handling the puck.

“I’m ready!” she announced with sparkling eyes and a beaming, tooth-gapped smile. “I want to play with Jared,” she told them, skating over. Jared shrugged, very sure that they would lose anyway, but he loved his sister and he knew that their Mom would skin them alive if they didn’t let her play. He didn’t care to see what punishments she could come up with for mistreating her little angel.

Madison was slower than her brothers, and smaller, and she didn’t have as much skill as them, of course. But for being a first time player, she did well. She even managed to get an easy goal past Marc, easy in the way that he let her, before the first ‘incident’ happened.

Jordan was none too happy that their sister had invaded what they’d always considered ‘their’ space and he was not about to go soft on her just because she was small and a girl. He stole the puck from her whenever he could and pushed her out of the way. And as it happens, he also caught her with his stick eventually, though that hadn’t been on purpose. Madison fell, a first cry of pain escaping her and for a few moments she lay on the ice, her brothers’ hearts sinking. If she was hurt, they were in for it.

Marc couldn’t believe that Jordan had high-sticked their sister, Jared was glaring daggers at his youngest older brother and Jordan was caught in-between caring and not caring. Finally Madison slowly got back to her feet and took a deep breath. She leaned down and picked up her stick, skating over to get the puck and calmly taking off towards the goal, like nothing had happened. The boys breathed a sigh of relief and got back into the game. The next time Madison met Jordan whilst playing the puck, she didn’t hesitate slashing his legs with her own stick. She’d understood the unwritten rules of the outside rink...

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“So, what did you guys do today?” Henry Staal asked the 4 of his 5 kids that were still at home at dinner. Usually work on the sod farm was below 0% in winter, but he’d met up with his brother during the day.

“We played hockey,” Madison declared proudly, beaming happily as she inhaled her food at almost the same speed as her brothers.

“You watched?” Henry smiled at his little girl. “Did you keep score?”

“No, I played,” she corrected him with a big, important shake of her little, reddish blonde head. “And I scored.”

Henry glanced at his wife, who nodded, then his sons, who nodded as well, and then looked back to his daughter. “... you did?” She nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Did you like it?” That was just what he needed, his little girl starting to play hockey like the rest of his bunch.

“No,” Madison shook her head thoughtfully. “But it was fun.” If the bruises she had on her shins were anything to go by, she’d had a lot of fun. “I like watching better.”

A collective sigh of relief went through the family, the parents’ the loudest of all. ‘Thank God’ both Linda and Henry thought.
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“Mommy?” A still tooth-gapped Madison trudged into the kitchen a few days later. She pulled out a chair and climbed on top of it, for a few moments taking interest in Jared’s homework that he was doing on the kitchen table.

“Yes, honey?” Linda asked.

“When is Eric coming back?” Madison asked quietly, placing her arms flat on the table and her chin atop her hands.

Linda went by and kissed her daughter’s head, going back to fixing something for dinner. “A few weeks still, Maddie, I’m sorry.”

“I miss him,” Madison sighed as if the weight of the world were resting on her little shoulders. “I wish he were coming back tomorrow.”

“I’m sure he misses you, too, princess,” Linda smiled sadly, knowing very well that her oldest son was indeed experiencing some homesickness. “Do you want to call him?” Madison barely shrugged, looking so sad and lost it was breaking Linda’s heart.

The little girl perked up, when she heard a key in the front door. All sadness was wiped away in a split second as she jumped off the chair and raced to meet her Dad at the door.

“Daddyyyyyyy!” was the familiar squeal. Linda chuckled when she saw Jared roll his eyes and smiled when Henry appeared in the kitchen door, a wildly giggling Madison slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. It was good to see Henry being able to distract the little girl for a while.

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A very similar squeal was heard, much louder and much longer, just a few days before Christmas, when Madison’s beloved Eric finally returned. He was flying in, which was quicker than driving above 18 hours and thus wasting two perfectly good days of Christmas break.

“EEERRRRIIIICCCCC!”

Madison hadn’t been allowed to go with Henry to the airport to pick Eric up, but you better believe that as soon as she saw the car pull into the driveway from the kitchen window, she sprinted to the front door, throwing it open and ran at Eric with her feet covered by just cotton socks. Usually the first one to complain she was cold, it didn’t seem to matter to her at all now.

Henry hadn’t given Eric a warning in advance, so cannonball-Maddie actually succeeded in taking both herself and her older brother down, smothering him in her little girl’s hug and kisses as they lay in the snow. She was already talking a million miles a minute when Eric finally recovered and swooped his little sister up into his somewhat stronger arms, a giant smile on his face as he just listened to her ramble on and on and on.

For as long as Eric’s Christmas break lasted Maddie rarely left his side. Everyone thought he would get annoyed very quickly, all the other guys did, but surprisingly he didn’t, not much anyway. Instead he gladly listened to everything his little sister had to tell him that had happened while he was gone ‘for forever!’ and was especially interested in hearing about her attempt at playing hockey on the backyard rink, although he’d already heard about it on the phone.

Christmas and the break passed by much too quickly for everybody’s taste and leaving Madison behind this time seemed even worse than the first time, when she didn’t really know what it meant for him to go so far away for so long. The only consolation was that Maddie was going to get her birthday wish and would fly out with their parents to spend a weekend in Peterborough at the end of January.

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By the time Eric and Marc touched down in Thunder Bay it was past midnight and they were exhausted. They were worried beyond belief and that alone was draining. It didn’t get better when they got to the hospital.

What they found there, was a waiting room full of insanely worried, emotional, on-the-brink-of-sleep people. No one had left since they had arrived in the afternoon, save for the Jason’s who had to go home to check on the horses and feed them. A round of tight, tearful hugs were exchanged and then the magic question was asked.

“Anything new?” Eric’s eyes were scared and pained. He didn’t want to ask in fear of getting bad news, but he needed to know at the same time.

“The last we heard was that they are finishing up the surgery,” Henry explained quietly. “That was about an hour ago or so.”

“What... injuries does she have?” Marc asked slowly. He was trying to read in his parents’ faces, trying to get a feel for what type of ‘bad’ this was. He didn’t like what he was seeing.

“Head, ribs and leg at least,” Abby sighed. “She came down with her head first, then the rest. We don’t know anything else yet.”

When every question had been asked at least three times and no new answer had been given after the first time, silence settled back into the waiting area as everyone sat in their seat, following their own thoughts, worries, prayers, wishes...

It was just after one am when a nurse and what appeared to be a doctor came to the group. Most of them immediately rose to their feet, anxious to receive the news.

“Staal family?” the doctor asked.

“I’m Henry Staal, Madison’s father, this is my wife Linda, my sons Marc and Eric and Madison’s best friend Abby with her parents,” Henry introduced everyone. All eyes were on the doctor.

“I’m Doctor Thiessen, I operated on Madison these past hours,” he introduced himself with a small smile that fit the situation.

“How is she?” Linda voiced the question everyone yearned to know.

Doctor Thiessen looked at the worried mother and opened his mouth to give the answer to the question that had been haunting them for many hours yet.