Portraits of Ice Men

After promising him repeatedly she wouldn't let go, he finally trusted her enough to allow her to lower him backwards onto the couch.
Holding his hands as tightly as she could--as she had assured him she would--she helped ease him back into the white leather cushions. They sighed as he gently dropped into them, air escaping through its seams under his heavy body as if knowingly burdened under his great weight and the gravitas of the entire situation.
Sidney Crosby would be out for months with a jaw on the mend.
His eyes were clamped shut, his mouth stuffed with gauze so it hung open and immobilized so that the stitches that ran down the front of his bottom lip and chin wouldn't stretch and bleed, and through the matted cotton, she could hear a whimper.
His hands limply remained outstretched even though her fingers had long left his as soon as he touched down, as if he was afraid to complete any sudden movement.
"Sid?" She asked, tentatively.
He gave her a small whine, his eyes still shut. It was high in pitch like a worried puppy, and it occupied the back of his throat, tensing the soft tissue there that was tired of tasting the copper of blood. She could tell he wanted to shake his head in some sort of disbelief or shame but he was too afraid to do that, too.
"Aw. Sid..." she said, awkwardly, shifting in her smooth, dark gray dress pants, circulating some blood around her ankles, swollen from the burden of helping him out of the Land Rover and into his house in heels. Their relationship was so professional, she wasn't entirely sure of how to empathize appropriately.
"I ooh high," he croaked, unable to close his lips to form the proper sounds to articulate his statement. In the laziest fit of annoyance, he pulled his hands across his chest, hooking his tired fingers on opposite shoulders, his elbows meeting over his stomach.
He swam in a double XL Penguins shirt, what the doctor insisted the nurses dressed him in so whoever was taking care of him could pull it over his head without aggravating any of his periodontal reconstruction.
She dreaded the moment when she'd have to put him to bed and mummify his face, gently wrapping gauze from the bottom of the jaw, up around his ears, the top of his head, and back down again. She'd have to pull the wet, heavy gauze from between his molars and jam in new ones.
Well, would it be her?
Who was taking care of him? She wondered.
She shuddered, thinking who else would it be?
" 'You're so high'?" She clarified.
He nodded, his eyes still clamped shut. It was a lot harder to read someone when their mouth was prohibited from displaying any emotion, but Brianna figured by the knotted twist to his brow that he did not think his medicinal joyride was funny.
Bri chuckled to herself, happy that he had at least eased some of her tension, whether consciously or not.
She bent before him on one knee and helped to guide his hands to his sides. As soon as they hit the cool material of the couch, they collapsed, lifelessly, as if he'd given up.
"Alright now, alright," she said, softly. "You're home now, let's relax." She leaned forward, careful not to put any weight on the couch to shift his body and either startle or harm him. She claimed his Penguins baseball cap, gently pushing the bill up away from his dark, greasy curls.
"Oh high..." he croaked again, angrily, slumping down in the sofa and resting his head back against the strong leather. A smile tugged at Bri's lips at his inability to form the letter "s". "I oh high," he said again, this time beginning to cry.
When she called the noise that Sidney Crosby made 'crying' it was really because she had no better word for it. It wasn't like he was producing tears or anything, yet his chest would jump with unsteady breathing and his words would come out in sobs as if his cheeks were wet. This 'crying' was a side of Sid Bri had only ever seen one other time, and that was this morning. It made her anxious. Her hair stood on end and it made her want to coddle him because of the sheer pathetic-ness of it. Call it some maternal instinct... It was a Sid she had never heard before, and a Sid she now knew she never wanted to hear again. It was a Sid actually no one could ever say they had heard before, save for the doctors that gently spoke to him before they knocked him out or when they brought him to. The doctors that are sworn to patient safety and confidentiality.
Bri, though, had only signed a stack of papers that said she wouldn't provide any soft of insider information about her client to outside parties. It said nothing about not anonymously sharing with the world about how human the face of the NHL really was. How scared he really was; how almost childlike he really was, all alone and in pain.
And he wasn't hiding it from her.
Don't get off thinking you're different, Bri, she said to herself sternly, taking a moment to bow her head and check her emotions. You're on your period and this poor man is in excruciating pain. You've come to know him over the course of four or five months, you're his personal secretary, it's only natural you want to swaddle him and make him feel better... nothing more...
Her inner dialogue was stopped by the gentle push of fingers in her hair. They were dumb with pain medication, so the outreach wasn't as romantic as it sounded and Bri quickly dismissed it as Sid continuing to search for some sort comfort she obviously was doing a subpar job at giving him.
What was she supposed to do?
Sighing heavily, she stood in front of him but crouched so she didn't have to speak too loudly. She placed the tips of her fingers gingerly on the tops of his sweat pant clad knees which carelessly lay open in an ungentlemanly stupor she knew conscious Sid would whole-heartedly disapprove of.
"Sid, can we try and walk again? I'd like to get you into the family room..." She said, motioning down the hall, away from the formal living room which they presently occupied, and into the more livable family room in which she often found him lounging, stretching or eating whole boxes of instant oatmeal while he watched TV, obviously. In those times he would always look over his shoulder from his position on one of the couches with a pleasant surprise at her arrival, and as she hauled grocery bags onto the smooth granite countertop, he'd give her a wave with his spoon, his mouth full of oatmeal, and choke a sing-songy "He-ey!" out.
Presently, he opened his eyes and gave her a look that could kill before he rolled them up and clamped them shut again, crying.
"Wh--? Sid..." She said, unsure of how to react. "I just... I don't want you bleeding on the couch or the carpet... Plus you'll be more comfortable in there with the sofa..."
"I on ha any anly," he cried, without any tears. She could read the frustration that moved up and down his limps like an electrical current without an outlet. Every once and a while he'd flex a calf or take hold of one of his thumbs or tense a bicep, his eyes pulled shut, his poor mouth propped open, and his head laying to one side.
" 'You don't' what?" She asked, bending to sit on her heels in front of him.
"On ha any anly," he repeated, the great expanse of his chest rising and falling rapidly.
"Okay, okay," she soothed, taking one of his forearms, still unsure of what he was trying to tell her and why he was getting so worked up. "Okay, it's okay..." She held his muscular arm in one hand and gently stroked the top of it with her other, trying to calm him. His fingers immediately wrapped around her thumb, too afraid to let her go.
She didn't want him trying to talk anymore for fear of his tongue hitting the roof of his mouth and causing damage to his repairs. Because a mouth is naturally wet, to heal any part of the inside of it was a dangerous process. He had to keep the roof of his mouth as dry as he could, so there was no gauze over it. His stitches were in the open, and his molars were propped open with rolls of medical cotton to absorb any saliva and prevent him from closing his jaw and adding pressure to the top of his mouth.
"Err no ere..." he cried, and this time Bri could hear the hurt in his voice. She rose to sit next to him on the couch, taking his hand in hers and using her other to gently caress his bicep furthest away from her. "Err no ere..." he whispered again, taking a shaky breath and this time, letting tears fall.

She stood in the kitchen sniffing and dabbed at her eyes again with a folded paper towel. Glancing over her shoulder, she checked on Sidney.
He lay on the wet-sand colored couch in the family room on his back, his eyes glazed over with medication as the pattern of lights emitting from the TV danced all over his face in the darkened room. His chest slowly rose and fell, his hands clumsily piled on top of it, unresponsive to whatever the TV was attempting to get him to emote.
Turning away from him again, she checked her Michael Khors watch. It was funny to think that this massive, rose gold contraption was the first thing she bought with her first paycheck. It was funny to think that because she helped this man get through his daily routines that she had the beautiful piece of equipment tied around her wrist to begin with.
His mother won't be here for another 12 hours... she thought, still kind of unsure of how to handle the entire situation.
She knew, because she booked the ticket.
She knew, because when he awoke from surgery this afternoon, she had to be the one to tell him that his mother couldn't get here sooner.
She knew, because she was the one he sobbed to on the white leather couch about not having a family here to sit in the living room with merely a few hours ago.
Bri was his personal secretary; had been for the past five months. She was pretty damn good at it, too, if you asked her. Not many people ever got to, though, because like her client, she was perpetually busy. Just never with her own things.
She supposed that was the nature of the beast though, working for Sidney Crosby, but, honestly, she was Type A so she liked the control. So was he. But, more often than not, they did things her way, because at anything off the ice, like maintaining a schedule, being places on time, and speaking and acting in the appropriate ways, he severely lacked in comparison to her.
What she knew nothing about though, however, was being a doctor.
Or worse yet, being a mother.
She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image that made her stomach bubble with an unprofessional giddiness when she remembered finally moving him into the living room and cradling his head in her lap. His eyes had been still painfully shut and his chest was still jumping, his arms were still lifelessly held up before him, lazily bent at the elbow and wrists. Although... he had started to settle down when she sat with him and forced his arms to lay across his chest and continuously tucked swirls of his dark curls behind his ear with a never ending circular motion of her wrist, her long nails just tracing the abused cheek by his hairline.
"I'll be your family, Sid. I'm here," she had whispered, placing her other hand on his chest to quiet its heaving.
Try and remember this man is dealing with serious trauma, she remembered the doctor instructing her. His face was reconfigured with a puck, he's lost several teeth, and we had to break ground into his skull yesterday and insert metal plates along his lower jaw bone. He's going to be hurting...
So she wasn't too far out of line with her compassion, was she?
Ugh, she thought. Holding him like that was too unprofessional. His mother's coming, she can coddle him... You're going to get inappropriately attached...
"Ree..."
Bri snapped her head up and over her shoulder.
On the couch, Sid was curling his toes and bringing his knees up towards his stomach, his hands disappearing behind his momentous legs, rubbing at what appeared to be his belly.
"Oh fuck," she whispered, throwing her phone away from the top of her purse and pulling out hundreds of little white paper bags, looking for the one labeled 'Antiemetic'.
"Sid?" She called to him from the kitchen, worried.
"Ree-ee..." he cried, wriggling on the couch, unable to say much more than his best go at her name.
Rooting through his prescriptions, she quickly found the bag and tore it open, running alongside the sand colored tile until her toes found the carpet of the living room. She had discarded her heels a long time ago.
"Fuck, bucket," she swore, stopping in her tracks and making a B-line for the kitchen again. "Just in case, Sid!" She called back to him over her shoulder. She tore open kitchen cupboards left and right looking for some kind of big tupperware bowl, having the foggiest of an idea of where to find an actual bucket. She reasoned that he couldn't have much to throw up not having been able to eat since the initial incident two days ago. But, she wasn't so worried so much about the clean up...
Perfect. She snatched the tinted green plastic bowl and bounded back to the family room where Sid had one arm wrapped around his massive abdomen and the other thrown over his head in a medicated foggy distress.
"Here, here, you're okay, you're okay," she whispered, unscrewing the cap to the liquid medication with an almost uncontrollable shaking hand. "You can't buff Sid; you can't," she told him as her hand found the back of his neck and attempted to help him sit up.
It was useless.
He was a rock.
"Come on hun; sit up, you'll choke," she said, applying pressure on the back of his thick neck again and not really knowing if she meant that he'd choke on his own vomit or the syrup that was supposed to placate his stomach.
He whined and sat forward and she helped pull his legs off the end of the couch so he could sit up right. She handed him the bowl to keep in his lap, just in case, and climbed onto the couch next to him, holding the dropper up to his lips.
He gave a heavy breath and her heart hammered, wondering if this was it, if he really was going to bring up the empty contents of his stomach, covered in wasted bile and discomfort, not knowing what kind of havoc it would wreck on the inside of his mouth. Would she have to clean his stitches out? Would the acid in his stomach burn his new wounds?
"Honey you can't, don't let yourself," she softly spoke, leaning forward in front of him and gently pushing his forehead back, indirectly lifting his chin. She could see into his throat and she frowned, imagining how dry and achey it must've been, constantly exposed to the air of breathing. He looked like a pathetic chipmunk with his cheeks packed full of gauze, half of the teeth on his bottom jaw punched out, and his top row completely shattered.
"Deep breaths honey," she said, holding onto his forehead, clenching the tiny bottle between her thighs, and guiding the dropper to his gapping mouth with an unsteady hand.
"Ready?"
"Goo," he said, his Adam's apple lurching with his voice. She gently rested the dropper on his tongue, careful to avoid his stitches from where his teeth had sliced his muscle, and released the liquid down his throat.
He swallowed and ignored her hand tipping his head back, shaking his forehead free aggravatedly.
He leaned forward over the bowl and closed his eyes, breathing heavy.
A few moments of silence passed between them, in which Brianna fought between rubbing his back and not, and reminding him again that he really couldn't toss his cookies and not.
"Ree..." he breathed, pleading with her for what she convinced herself was comfort, eyes still closed.
She decided to do both.
"Come on Sid, you can do it," she whispered, rubbing his back as she watched his expression move to a grimace. She knew he'd be clenching his teeth if he could. She knew if anyone had to swallow their own vomit it would be him. She knew that if anyone could convince their abused stomach to settle down and get a day job while he rested, it would be him.
"You can't honey, you just can't," she said, softly, continuing to rub wide circles across the entire expanse of his back. He gave the smallest nod, knowingly.
After a minute or so of labored breathing, he leaned back into the couch, one hand hugging the bowl to the side of his hip, the other fingering its way under his shirt and onto his warm belly. He burped and in a medicated daze, brought his hand up to his mouth to excuse him self, but she awkwardly rushed to prevent its dopey collision with his face. She awkwardly pulled her other hand from behind his back and snaked it down his bicep, holding onto his elbow supportively. She moved her other hand to join, and she gently leaned on his strong shoulder, not quite sure who needed the extra support more.
After a few beats of his strong and steady heart, his other hand finally released the bowl and found its way over to hers.
"Awrigh?" He asked, his eyes still closed as his fingers weaved in between hers, his hot palm pressed on the top of her hand.
She looked up at him as his head rested on the back of the couch, his cheeks shining with the tiniest sheen of sweat and plump with gauze. His hair was a greasy mess and he smelled of surgery and soft chemicals and Novocain.
She wasn't exactly sure if he was checking in on her or rather asking permission to hold her hand.
Stop. She laid into herself, privately. You're job is to be this man's right hand no matter what. He's drugged, he wants comfort; give it to him. Don't feel special, you signed the contract, not him. He didn't pick you, remember. You picked him
And now you're in too deep.
"It's alright," she responded to either.
He sighed, although his face did not represent that of someone who was content, but rather maybe just in a little less of a panic.
He squeezed her hand and she squeezed his fingers back, still watching his face intently.
She wondered if the anti-nausea medication had knocked him out before his fingers twitched and gently dragged her hand up his torso, resting it on his bare, hard stomach, and laying her fingers flat underneath his.
Her breath hitched.
Sid... she whispered to herself.
"Awrigh?" He asked, letting his head tip to the left and rest on top of hers. At first it was just a touch, but then he rubbed his temple into her hair, huffing as if finally ready to settle down again. As if finally unafraid to find sleep.
"Yeah... alright..." she whispered, this time aloud.