Je t'aime, tu sais?

"Mrs. Bergeron. It really seems as if we cannot convey to you just how discombobulated Patrice is feeling right now," the doctor said, sternly.
Jamie's right hand flew to her left. She thumbed Krista's engagement ring around her finger nervously. She had completely forgotten she was wearing them.
She chewed on her bottom lip and looked up at the emergency room doctor.
"But, what if--"
"Really, ma'am. Introducing any new stimuli would really be overwhelming for him..." He wisely held off on telling her that her husband very well may not recognize her yet to prevent any further emotional damage.
"But he's been awake for over an hour and you're just telling us now?" Krista asked, fairly upset.
The two had been at the hospital for two and a half hours. Patrice had come to almost immediately after his nose was reset, but hadn't been anywhere near coherent since a little over an hour ago.
The doctor remembered the incoherent groaning, the immediate attempt to get his hands to his stomach to indicate his nausea, the initial struggle against the ropes that bound him to the stretcher, the rolling, blank eyes and the jumping chest. He remembered the little whine that escaped the back of his throat when they had deemed it safe enough via another round of muscle relaxants and a CT scan to remove his helmet.
The ER doctor had seen head trauma like this before. It did not bode well to allow family members to witness their loved ones in a child-like state. It didn't make the family feel better, and he knew it wouldn't make proud men like Patrice Bergeron feel any less vulnerable when he awoke and dealt with the blow and their own emotional repercussions, as well as their family's and loved ones'.
The doctor knew who he was and the dignity with which he carried himself.
The doctor knew he was in for a long road of recovery on which this tiny, beautiful girl standing in front of him would have to be his rock.
And he would have to let her.
"Surely doctor he's improved in the past hour," Jamie prodded.
"We have seen some improvements--"
"What improvements, really, we haven't been told anything," she pleaded. She stood before him in her white jeans and an oversized Bruins sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose her tiny little hands with her pretending pledges of promise to her non-official semi-conscious "husband." Her Burberry scarf wound its way around her neck nervously. She virtually hadn't stopped twisting it since she and Krista took their seats in the waiting room.
"He really can only process things in French. His answers involve blinking and finger taps. Now is really not the most appropriate time, Mrs. Bergeron. I promise someone will be sent for you as soon as we deem it permissible." He wouldn't tell her about how he'd been mumbling parts of her name, Mr. Marchand's name, or vomiting. Nor that he thought that he was in the Bruins medical room instead of the ER. Now was not the time, like he said.
Krista decided that the man wasn't going to budge.
Jamie sniffed and Krista looped her own sweat shirt clad arm around hers.
"Let's go get some dinner, alright?" She asked softly. "Thank you for keeping us up-to-date," she told the doctor, turning Jamie away from him and steering her towards the automatic doors that connected the ER unit to the rest of Mass General. Neither of them knew if Krista had intended her comment to be sarcastic or not, and that was the beauty of her poise. Not even the doctor himself knew.
"Fighting would be futile, hun," Krista said after a few moments of silence through which they stepped in tandem. She held onto Jamie's arm between them with one hand and wrapped her other around the fragile girl's shoulders, pulling her close. She bumped her head against hers.
"The only one that needs to fight right now is your boy," she whispered, giving Jamie's bicep and squeeze. "And by God we all know he preservers, so, I like our chances."

March looked up at him with eyes that, for the first time in their lives, didn't have any idea of what to say. His lips remained sealed, no quick quip or chirp at the ready to strike and then retreat between his teeth.
"I dunno, man," he breathed, too lost in thought to even bring his shoulders to shrug. In an effort to show some kind of response though, he showed Ferry the palms of his hands. "Do you think I should?" He asked.
"I dunno, I mean--I'm not sure..." the other alternate captain sighed, dropping his chin to his chest and running his hand through his wet hair. The game had just finished and they had won. The boys had finished up their pressers and were about to hit the gym or the showers. Many opted for the showers, their energy--even after the win--zapped with the somber attitude of the locker room.
Where was their compass?
How was he?
Was he awake yet?
They hadn't even played any tunes.
"I mean, I have to go, I gotta get Krista," Andy reasoned as Marchy slipped out of his tight spandex and wrapped a towel around his waist, nodding to the showers. Ferry turned with him.
"I don't have her sister's number; surely she's been called though, yeah?"
"Yeah, I mean, Krista can't stay with her there all night, right?" March asked, kicking the sheet of the shower curtains in individual stalls, testing to see if a teammate was inside. If his kick was met with the flutter of a curtain from the inside, he knew it was occupied. He was looking for two in a row with hopes of keeping Ferry at ease trying to figure out shifts at the hospital with Jamie.
They were going to be there for a few days. If they got in touch with her sister, she could bring some more comfortable clothes for Jamie to change into, or help them to do so, at least.
"She would. She will," Ferry said, referring to his steadfast wife, pulling back an empty curtain.
"Try Dougie," March said, pulling his own curtain back. "Yeah! Dougie has her sister's number for sure."
"Who? Emily?"
The men looked toward the sinks to the young man standing in front of them.
"Yeah," March said.
"I have Emily's number," Adam shrugged.
"Can I have it?" Ferry said, stepping back out of the shower as if going to jog back into the locker room for his phone.
"Sure," he shrugged again.
"Jesus Quaider, when you do that your body ripples--you see that?" March asked, grabbing Ferry's arm and pointing to his abs. "Is that a fuckin' eight pack? Do it again, shrug," Marchy instructed, his finger highlighting the bareness above Adam's towel. "You must do double what Whitesides makes us do--"
"What? Jesus March," Adam blushed, turning away from him and batting his hand away, his upper lip upturned to show his displeasure at the attention.
"What! I'll never know what it's like to have a beautiful, tall body!" The little linesman whined as Adam rolled his eyes and flip flopped away from the two.
"Hey, you." Ferry snapped his fingers in front of Marchy. "Hit the shower, you're coming with me."
"I am?" He said, both excitedly and anxiously.
"Yes, you're comic relief."
"Well," March said, putting his hands on his hips, smugly.
"Shower. Now." Ferry reminded him, shoving him into his stall.

"So, how bad is he?" Emily eventually asked, rifling through drawers in Jamie's tall dresser that stood close to the bathroom door. It was white furnished, matching her beautiful new headboard. Adam had never been in their apartment across the hall before. He hovered by the entrence to Jamie's room, not wanting to intrude.
He loved the smell in the small two-bedroom flat. Girls definitely lived here. The countertops in the kitchen were clean with a light, crisp granite, and there were all sorts of different colored and patterned pillows on their couch.
It was the first time that Emily had even broached the subject that Adam was to drop her off at Mass General for, apart from the fact that when he picked her up at ballet, he told her about the situation. She nodded, and then after a few minutes of collecting her thoughts, dove right into teasing him about how he knew where the ballet studio was.
"Pretty bad," Adam said presently, somberly, crossing his right ankle over his left and folding his arms across his chest.
"Yeah?" Emily asked, standing on her tip toes to look in the top shelf. "Where does this woman keep her goddamn underwear?" She sighed, helplessly.
Adam laughed, blushing wildly. Bergy would probably not like the fact that he had seen Jamie's panties, so he kept his eyes cast low.
"Yeah, but he got hit face-first into boards. Nose was smashed in and everything," he said, trying not to remember in too great of detail Bergy's broken face, the blood, and the bizarre way in which his chest was jumping for air as they slid him off the ice on a stretcher.
Was he awake in there?
Was he scared?
Did it hurt?
Adam grimaced just thinking about it.
"Stop!" She gasped, making Adam jump and look up at her. Emily faced him in her layered dance wear, hair falling out of her bun and her cheeks still rosy from her workout even though her skin was tan for the winter. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were wide. Then, Adam noticed a handful of black, light pink, and tan panties.
He swallowed hard and looked away, hurriedly.
"Perfect Patrice's face?" She asked, the name meant to be more endearing than as a joke. "His face got bashed in?"
"I told you he was in rough shape," Adam reasoned. "Really rough shape..." he sighed, letting his hands fall to his sides and slipping them in his pockets.
Emily's hand flew to cover her mouth.
"Oh my god. Does Jamie know? About his face?" She asked.
"No," Adam said, finitely with a definitive hand gesture. "They seal off the doors when players go down like that. Most of the WAGS know to just go straight to Mass General and pray they don't have to wait in the waiting room too long."
"WAGS?" Emily asked, her hand falling from her mouth as she threw Jamie's panties into the tote she was packing and got back to business packing an overnight bag for her sister. Adam found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He didn't want to tantalize himself any longer imagining if Emily wore similar undergarments.
"Yeah. Wives and girlfriends?"
"There's an acronym?"
"I guess," Adam shrugged, never having put much thought into it.
"That's really..." she said, disappearing into the ensuite master bathroom and disappearing in thought.
"Really what?" Adam asked, curiously, taking a cautious step into Jamie's room, the white carpet feeling soft under his shoes. As he waited for a reply, imagining Emily moving about the bright bathroom, chewing on her lip and looking for something that smelled really good, he looked at Jamie's bed, made with crisp light blue sheets and a patterned quilt. She had a few throw pillows, but not an excessive amount, and he wondered how often his alternate captain slept over. A quick image of Patrice rolling over with Jamie flashed through his mind and he horrified himself, shaking his head to displace the thought.
Pervert, he thought of himself.
He couldn't help it though, she looked so much like Emily, if he could just swap out Patrice...
"I guess the word I'm looking for is 'patronizing'?" Emily asked, stepping out of the bathroom with a handful of a toothbrush, paste, and some face scrub. She held her hands up in question, his elbows bent and propped into her sides. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, thinking about her vocabulary decision.
She shrugged and dumped Jamie's items in the tote.
"Uh, what?"
"Y'know? Like..." she began, picking up the tote and making her way out the bedroom, talking about femininity and the power struggles of the female.
Adam gave Jamie's bed one last glance and wondered what it would be like to sleep with the girl of your dreams every night, like Patrice got to. You'd get to hold her and smell her hair whenever you wanted... he wondered how often couples got to sleep together, like, really sleep together. Would you have sex every day?
Could you?
Would you ever get bored of the other person?
"Adam?"
Adam jumped nervously and exited Jamie's bedroom, following Emily into the kitchen.
"Am I boring you?" She joked, smiling, mischievously, as if she caught him thinking about something else. Which she did.
"What? No," he laughed, blushing madly.
She smirked at him from behind the refrigerator door.
"You could never bore me," he answered, honestly, standing to face her and pushing his hands into his black corduroy pants, a bit of a smirk playing on his lips, too.
"Yeah?" She asked, as if he had made her day and she just might hug him. She even made her eyes big and her bottom lip quiver.
"Yes," he said firmly, nodding, playing along.
"Good," she smiled, leaning back into the fridge.
Adam's heart was hammering but he couldn't knock the stupid grin off of his face. Dougie was right, she was easy to get along with.
"THINK FAST, MCQUAID!" She yelled, jumping back from the stainless steal door and hurling a String Cheese at him.
He yelped and turned, the plastic hitting him on his forearm with a slap as she danced and giggled with laughter.
"Take that!" She sang, pointing at him victoriously after a pirouette. "Boring, HA!"

"Patrice... Patrice can you hear me?"
There was an enormous pressure in his head, thudding along under his forehead, pulsating through some twist of nerves formerly unknown to him threaded behind his eyes.
He took a deep breath.
The inside of his nostrils burned.
There was a moan.
It was him.
"Patrice? Can you squeeze my hand if you can hear me?"
The voice was loud and intrusive. It pierced his ears and he tried in vain to turn his head away from its source but was just... was just too tired...
His fingers were surrounded by a strong cool. His body sang, the electric current pulsating up the branch-like structures of the fibers that wound up and down his arm; as if he could feel the charged adrenaline of fear initiate its sequence in the pads of his fingers and fire through his muscles, spinning out of control as it moved from group to group via his sinews and only caused him an even greater exhaustion once it passed.
The desire to cease to exist once a high has dissipated.
That's all Patrice wanted.
To cease to exist like this.
Before the current could reach somewhere past his rotator cuff and travel upwards, igniting a fire within the folds of his battered brain, the signal dropped somewhere in the dark abyss he felt himself wobbling through.
He tried his best to obey the command, though. He truly did. Trying desperately to retrace the neon pink and blue stream that surged from the cool on his finger tips and traveled, twisting up his forearm, his tricep, his bicep, but then it was gone...
A blip it the sonar.
A cool hint of a kiss on a cheek.
"Can you hear me, Patrice? Squeeze," the voice instructed.
He felt a dark green smoke provocatively curl around the back of his ear, causing his hair to bristle.
Where were his fingers?
"Squeeze Patrice," the voice instructed again, rupturing a bubble somewhere in the back of his nose that burned brightly in his sinuses and raced back and forth, trapped beneath his eyes, between his nostrils and his ears. He felt like he was swinging in a hammock, but one that only ever swung one way and never came back.
He just kept swinging right forever, but, then again, he never ended up upside down, either...
His head throbbed with the inconsistency.
His stomach shifted left, somewhere deep within him where a stomach wasn't supposed to be.
He felt sick.
No more... Patrice pleaded, but there was no familiar rumbling in tunnel of his throat, indicative of any kind of sound. His vocal chords didn't vibrate, his Adam's Apple didn't quiver.
"Give it a squeeze if you can hear me, Patrice," the voice said, patiently but still as loud as a day that dipped below freezing.
Stop... he pleaded, becoming hot and frustrated. He wanted to flex his calves and turn his head to the side. He wanted to relieve himself of the impending doom that loomed over him in the form of a too-hot bed sheet--what the fuck was it doing here, anyway? Babs and Delnegro didn't have blankets--but he felt absolutely wasted.
Trashed.
His body thumped with the dull throb of his blood, inching its way through his veins, elevating his thick skin that felt so thin that covered them. They were wide, pronounced, and racing.
He gave a whine, tight and high pitched, riding up through the back of his throat in the tightening of tissue that seemed to seize with his head's pain.
"No, no, don't speak. Squeeze," the man instructed, applying pressure around his fingers.
He just couldn't tell where the fuck they were though, man. Where were his fingers? Couldn't this voice tell he was about the lose it? He felt heavy and stoned, like he had sunk into the Earth. He felt tired, as if the fibers of his muscles has shed under pressure.
His head wailed.
Everything was dark.
He continued to swing right but never fall out of the hammock.
The green smoke kept kissing his ear and where were his damn fingers...
He hadn't felt this overwhelming sense of emotion since he had called his mom from Coach Paiment's office above the rink back in New Brunswick, pushing his thumb into his right temple so hard to distract himself from crying while covering his eyes with his fingers, embarrassed and ashamed in front of his juniors coach, still stiff with the smell from the inside of his gloves.
But he wanted to cry so badly.
Then, and now.
Then, the cold around his fingers was gone.
"Still not responding to physical stimuli," the doctor who was not Babs or Delnegro sighed.
Patrice couldn't know the difference yet.
But wait, Jesus Christ, just... just give him... a second... just give him a second to find his fingers...
And just like that, Patrice slipped back into the unconscious.

"What?!"
Andy's laughter roused her from her sleep. "James... Jamie you gotta see this," he chuckled, gently prodding her with his free arm. She slept propped up on his other shoulder.
Jamie started and then sighed, pushing herself up in her chair, her back stiff and her toes in her right shoe asleep.
"Lookie, lookie!" Emily sang as Jamie rubbed her eyes.
"Oh, my god," she choked out, giggling, once they had regained their sight.
"Oh, come on James, I'm not that ugly," a now buzzcutted Brad said, folding his arms across his chest and giving her a playful look. He stood before her in light grey underarmour sweat pants, a tight black long sleeved shirt hidden underneath some kind of white zip up hoodie. His lips parted in a shit eating grin, unable to contain his smirk.
"Did you just--"
"Shave his head?" Emily helped, rubbing her hand over the top of Brad's head again, loving the feel of his short hair, smoother than velcro.
"Uh, duh," Brad answered, as if it were the only sensible thing to do. He let himself fall back into a chair besides Jamie. From her other side, Andy leaned forward and looked at him, incredulously.
"...where?" He asked in disbelief.
"Ped-Onc," he said, his face breaking into a smile as he pointed toward the ceiling.
"No shit," Andy said, his face breaking into an ear splitting grin. "They let you up where at this hour?" He asked, quickly turning his watch.
"There's always someone awake in Ped-Onc," Brad said, a little less full of life. "But Alex sure loved shaving my head, so..." he shrugged, ending the sentence with a bit of a smile.
"Peedonk?" Jamie asked, looking between Brad and Andy with an eyebrow raised, clearly missing something.
"Pediatric Oncology," Emily said, taking a seat in front of her on the carpet of the waiting room, digging through their shared tote. They had been moved to an overnight floor so Patrice could be checked into a private room and they could sit in a less crowded waiting room. Now that it was two thirty in the morning, the hall was quiet apart from them.
Emily emerged from their bag with a carton of coconut water flavored with pineapple and took a swig. She capped it and fished out a ziploc bag full of mini chocolate rice cakes and began to munch on one with a loud crunch.
"Oh," Jamie said, her heart giving a stutter, thinking of the horrendous nature of cancer treatments. "You went up there?" She asked Emily, quickly reminding herself that she was unaware of their mother's current situation.
"They let us up whenever, provided someone's around who'd like to see us," Brad said, nodding.
"We actually stop by unannounced quite often," Andy added. "They're really good about dropping paperwork and just letting us roam the halls a bit."
"The kids really love it; it's awesome," Brad said, smiling that trademark half smile of his.
"You just walked around and let some little boy shave your head?" Jamie asked, her eyes wide.
"Sure, why not? It's just hair," he shrugged, nudging Emily on the floor in front of them and nodding to her coconut water, expectantly. She rolled her eyes at him jokingly and handed it over. It always amazed Jamie how well her sister could sometimes slip into a group of friends.
At the same time, it also amazed her that she could completely wall other people out before she got to know them... Poor Sid.
She thought of him sleeping alone in the dark of Patrice's place. He'd heard of the news, she was sure, but probably had no way of contacting her. She thought of Ped-onc, and how Brad Marchand just made some little boy's night by letting him shave his head at two o'clock in the morning. She thought about cancer.
She missed Patrice...
"That's... so... sweet..." Jamie said, and before she knew it, her eyes were brimming with tears and she was hugging Brad and Andy was hugging her and Emily was up on her knees right in front of Jamie's lap, rubbing her thighs and they were all cooing to her and she hadn't seen Patrice yet and it had been hours and hours of restlessness and no answers and she felt absolutely torn and tattered.
But in that moment, she didn't feel alone.

The next time Jamie awoke to stretch her legs, she saw a familiar looking man and her heart thundered as she leapt to her feet.
But it was not Patrice.
Guill's head quickly turned over his shoulder, meeting her concerned eyes with his tired ones. He nodded toward her and then went back to talking with the doctor. Beside them stood Gerard, who didn't seem to notice Jamie's arousal, his eyes never leaving the doctor's lips, bestowing upon him worrisome news concerning his son.
Jamie quickly gathered her hair and pulled it into a bun on the top of her head as she stepped into her flats, careful to obviate Brad's legs, thrown before him, cascading down in front of the chair as he slept with his head propped up against the back of his chair, mouth wide open shamelessly. She straightened her scarf, rewinding it around her neck and made her way over to the men talking.
"Jamie," Guill sighed, softly, lifting his big arm to pull her into his side. It was a gesture Jamie was all too happy to sink into. Before she knew was she was doing, she leaned in front of him and grabbed Gerard's hand, giving it a squeeze.
His tired eyes left the tiled floor of the hospital, it's ugly sandpaper color, and lifted to meet her.
"Jamie," he smiled with all he could.
"It's alright," she heard herself say.
"I know," he whispered back, diplomatically. "I know it will be," he said even softer, almost too low to hear over Guill and the doctor talking.
Guill seemed to sense his father needed a hug, a good one--or perhaps it was Jamie--because he gently released his grip on her and stepped around her, continuing to talk about CT scans, the danger of brain hemorrhaging, and the deep bruising under Patrice's eyes.
It was talk Gerard and Jamie could hardly bear.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and he wrapped his thick ones around her back and they swayed for a few seconds, each sighing.
"He'll be ok," he told her, his voice round with fear, as if balled in the back of his throat, kept there cautiously.
"He will," she nodded, into his shoulders, her cheeks heavy with tears.
"He'll be fine," Gerard repeated, nodding now, too. "Our little prince. He'll be just fine."