Fix You

Too many times I questioned if it was morbid I found someone just as lonely as me, that for once someone knew how it felt to lie awake at night wondering if it was even worth being alive. Sometimes it seemed like I had nothing to live for and that life was too hard. When I’d leave the hospital and lock myself in my bedroom, I asked myself how I’d do it, how I’d take my own life. Would I even have the guts to go through with it? And then I remembered you on the other side of Pittsburgh, scared to death and all alone in a hospital bed. I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t leave you like they did. So I only let myself wonder. Imagining myself dead helped sometimes.

When all of this started I didn’t know if Kris knew anything about loss, mostly because I didn’t know how to ask. Has anyone you loved ever died? One minute they’re there, the next they’re gone, never to be seen again. It felt unnatural; too brash. Even though I was nearing 24, I still played pretend sometimes. I pretended our parents were just on a really long vacation. In reality that probably wasn’t too far from the truth. One day we’d get to go where they were, if we were lucky. Maybe when you got older you’d play the same pretend games I did. Or maybe you’d handle the loss infinitely better than I ever had.

Kris came to visit you every day between Christmas and New Years Eve. Sometimes we’d have lunch together, sometimes he’d have other commitments. I still couldn’t understand why he stuck around, why he chose to spend his time with sick children, but every time he left his spirits were just as high as when he’d stroll in, so I figured it didn’t affect him like it did me. It didn’t matter. Those few hours were a distraction, and if I was any better at being honest I’d tell him just how much I appreciated it.

“What are your plans for tonight?” he asked. You had just fallen asleep and I was watching Friends reruns on Nick-at-Nite.

It had completely slipped my mind that it was New Years Eve and someone my age should’ve been getting ready for a party, or at least armed with a few bottles of hefty liquor. I shrugged, signaling I had no plans, and kept my eyes on the television. This was embarrassing.

Kris’s words surprised me: “Me neither.”

“None of your teammates are doing anything?” I questioned. I hadn’t a clue what professional hockey players spent their holidays doing, but I knew they had enough money to do whatever they wanted.

“They are,” Kris confirmed, “but with my concussion I’m supposed to keep quiet.”

I nodded. “Spending holidays alone isn’t too bad.”

That was a lie. Last New Years Eve I spent the night on the couch crying, much like I always did when I was alone for more than a few hours. It was hard enough kicking off another year that’d inevitably be spent alone, but remembering the way Mama would take me to Times Square to watch the ball drop put me over edge. We’d go every year and complain about the cold over styrofoam cups of hot chocolate. Mama gave me a hand-knit scarf for Christmas and sometimes mittens and a hat to match if she had the time. It was things like that I missed the most—things that reminded me of her that I could never push out of my mind. Watching the ball drop fifteen times wasn’t something you just let go of.

“I used to spend them with my best friend,” Kris said quietly, picking at his nails.

“Oh? You don’t anymore?”

He just shook his head, not willing to go into anymore detail. That was fine, I didn’t mind not knowing. His life was probably already public enough without me prying. If my own wasn’t splayed out over the third floor of UPMC I probably wouldn’t talk about it much either.

“Are you staying here tonight?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. The hospital usually lets the kids watch the ball drop together and even if he is sick, AJ is too cool for me around his friends.”

Kris laughed quietly, careful to not be too loud around you. “Well, if we’re both going to be spending it alone, might as well spend it together.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, nor was it a question. With the hospital taking care of you, I had no excuse. All I could do was nod and try to hide the smile that formed. Blushing was new. I hadn’t blushed since high school when Danny Martinelli asked me to prom during sixth period lunch, in front of everyone. When you ask your date to prom, try to do something a little more romantic.

After bickering back and forth on what we should do, Kris decided to have me over to his place for a late dinner. We could drink some wine — which he’d already cleared with his doctor — and could count down to the new year together. I would be home by 12:30 and free to do whatever I pleased. No harm, no foul.

By the time I left the hospital to make myself more presentable, I still wasn’t completely sold on the idea. It’d been years since I hung out with anyone other than you and I still felt funny around Kris. Not because he was a professional hockey player or anything, but because he’d told you he liked me. What if he tried to make a move? God, I hadn’t kissed anyone since my first semester of college. I surely was out of practice when it came to…other things. But I trusted him when he said his intentions were pure. We’d just be two regular people hanging out because it was better than being alone. That part I couldn’t argue with.

Having to raise you meant making sacrifices, and the first thing that went out the door once I inherited a child were my friends. They were too busy being college students to want to hang around me. While they were getting ready for frat parties or writing term papers, I was helping you learn your multiplication tables. They were meeting ungentlemanly guys at bars while I slept on a hospital cot and woke up with a kink in my neck. If I would’ve known life was going to throw me a curveball in the form of a certain Kris Letang I would’ve said screw ‘em, but there were plenty of nights I cried myself to sleep because my phone never rang anymore. I couldn’t blame them for letting go.

Regardless, it was because I had no friends that I stressed even more. What was I supposed to wear? Would it look like I was trying too hard if I put on make-up? Were heels too much or should I stick to a dressy pair of flats? Being a woman was hard, but if what type of shoes to wear was the hardest decision I’d have to make all night, I’d say I was doing ok. I decided to play it cool. No one could draw a conclusion from jeans and a cranberry sweater, right?

Growing up with money, I was immune to the shock most others probably felt upon seeing Kris’s home for the first time. To say it was huge was an understatement — it clearly reflected the multi-million dollars he made per year — but it was somehow humble, like he was almost embarrassed by the size of it. Maybe it was disbelief. Kris wasn’t cocky; I wasn’t sure if that translated into him still being unsure of himself and just where exactly he fit in the universe.

I wrapped my cream-colored peacoat around me tighter as I climbed out of the car. Snow crunched under my feet as I walked to the door. The cold and my nerves proved to be a deadly combination and I almost puked three times before I rang the doorbell.

“Wow,” Kris breathed as he pulled the door open. “You look great.”

I blushed again as he opened the door wider to let me in. The inside of the house was no different from the outside: showy with a touch of insecurity. Most of the walls were bare but there was hockey memorabilia everywhere. There was no point in trying to hide the size of the house and Kris made no attempt to. A large chandelier hung low in the entryway but that’s where the displays of wealth stopped. The rest of the house looked like a twenty-something professional lived there. Even more now that he had a concussion.

“Your house is beautiful.”

He thanked me en route to the kitchen, where he had an assortment of wines at the island. There were two wine glasses already on the table, as well as multiple containers of take-out. I couldn’t help but laugh. I hadn’t been expecting much, but it was safe to say I wasn’t expecting take-out.

“Je suis désolé,” he apologized. “I can’t cook.”

Here was a man that had the money and ability to do anything he could’ve wanted, yet the one thing he couldn’t do was cook. Mama had always let me lurk in the kitchen while she was preparing meals so I’d picked up a thing or two. Living on my own for a few years in college helped, too.

“I could lend you some cookbooks,” I offered. I wasn’t going to tell him cooking was simply following instructions. No need to pour salt in the wound. “My mom had a great collection of French ones.”

Kris smiled. “That’d be great.”

When you get your first girlfriend — or boyfriend, for that matter — I hope you’re more mature. I hope the only reason you offer to lend him or her your cookbooks is because you know one day you’ll have to get them back, and if the relationship goes down the toilet, at least you have that one last meeting to look forward to. It was completely juvenile of me to do, but it made me feel like a teenager for the first time since the accident. We’d both been robbed of normal childhoods; excuse me for trying to make up for lost time.

We made small talk over dinner and a few glasses of wine. Kris told me all about hockey, from the first time he strapped on a pair of skates to winning the Stanley Cup. He told me stories about funny things his teammates did to the rookies and all about Sidney Crosby’s concussion. I told him about growing up in Pittsburgh and the time I went to summer camp and had to go home after contracting a serious case of poison sumac. That prompted another round of anecdotes about injuries and trips to the hospital.

By the time 11-o’clock rolled around, we’d already polished off two bottles of wine and three of the take-out containers. I felt like I’d known Kris forever and we were merely old friends catching up after a long time away from each other.

“There was this one time me and Luc—”

And then he stopped. He’d been in a fit of giggles before then, rattling off names and stories like he’d been waiting forever for someone to tell them to. But it was that one name that sealed him off.

“Kris…”

We’d moved into the living room hours ago. He began scratching at something invisible on the leather couch and his features hardened. “He was my best friend,” he finally spoke after a long silence.

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“It was so stupid, Annie,” he roared. He’d leapt to his feet, pulling at his hair in frustration. “He told me he’d be careful. I warned him, Annie. I told him to be careful because those things were dangerous, and he didn’t listen.”

“Kris—”

“So what’d he go and do?” He laughed cynically, like he couldn’t believe he had the nerve. His eyes were manic. I didn’t know if it was because of all the wine we consumed or he’d kept this pent up, but it was all coming out now. And I knew from experience that once that happened, there was no stopping it. “He went and died on me, Annie. That idiot got himself killed.”

I was speechless. “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, clearly at war with himself. I knew this wasn’t how he wanted me to find out, if he wanted me to find out at all, and he’d be embarrassed once he remembered what he said. But I was in no position to judge. Me, with my thoughts of killing myself and too many nights spent crying myself to sleep. Me, with my dead parents and dying brother. If he thought I didn’t understand loss…

“Why did he have to do that to me? Why’d he have to go and die?”

I didn’t know what to do. I’d been in Kris’s position too many times to count, but the roles had never been reversed. Not this way, at least. Of course there had been nights you cried yourself to sleep in my arms after the accident, but I knew you like the back of my hand. I knew how to help you. No matter how many stories Kris told me about his time in juniors, I was just as clueless as how to talk to him as I was the day I met him.

So I did the only thing I knew how to do: let him cry it out. Kris normally towered over me at 6’0”, but the way his shoulders hunched and every limb in his body was close to giving up erased the difference. As he sobbed into my shoulder, I understood everything perfectly. He hung around because he needed us as much as we needed him. He needed someone to acknowledge his pain and take it away. I didn’t know if I could be that person, but I was sure as hell going to try. After everything he did for us in only a few days, I owed him that much and more.

The clock struck midnight, signaling the arrival of 2012, as I promised him in whispers that we’d navigate the pain together.