Portraits of Ice Men

Ah! What if I’m far from home?
Oh brother, I will hear you call!
What if I lose it all?
Oh sister, I will help you out!
Oh, if they sky comes falling down, for you,
There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do…

"Remember this, Patrice," his father cried, holding his head in shaking hands and speaking into his ear. "Remember this moment for the rest of your life, my boy," he whispered, kissing the side of his face.
He freed himself from his father's grasp and hoisted his arm around his shoulders, pulling him close over the boards that separated them.
"My little prince! My prince!" His mother cried as he enveloped her into their hug and kissed her hair, his Oakley visor pushing her Team Canada toque off of her head, slipping off and disappearing behind the bench. His parents were dressed in head to foot in Canada's red, his father even donning a BERGERON 37 Nike jersey over his Tommy Hilfiger cable knit sweater.
"Bergy," someone called from behind him. "We gotta get a picture, man."
It was Sid, giving him that toothy grin and blushing, still flushed from scoring the Golden Goal.
"Oh yeah, bud," Patrice laughed, looking over his shoulder. He shrugged his gloves off into his parents' waiting hands, crowded between the three of them in their private moment.
"Never forget this," his father commanded in French, not composed enough to make eye contact with him as he bowed his head and teared. "Assisting the game-winning goal..." He shook his head, still in disbelief.
"Give us this, too," his mother whispered, nodding to his helmet. Patrice threw Sid a glance over his shoulder again to check if he still had his and couldn't help but smile again. He couldn't help it. It was almost like throwing up; he couldn't control it. It would start way down low in his belly--when he'd think about that Golden Goal, scored less than ten minutes ago, when he'd visualize splitting the D and drawing Patches to the left of the crease and hitting Sid to the right with a saucer--and it would just rise up through his chest and throat and then all the sudden he'd be laughing and grinning like a fool.
"Come now, Patrice," his mother urged, reaching for the helmet. Startled and letting his smile fold for a fraction of a second, he bowed and let his mother collect the cool black plastic helmet from his sweat-soaked hair.
"Go!" She laughed, pushing him away from the boards. "Go celebrate!"
Patrice lurched again, his smile so powerful as he coasted toward Sid that he felt himself bend at the waist. His fellow forward patiently waited for him at the blue line with a massive Canadian flag draped around his shoulders, gloveless and helmetless like he.
Patrice had never really pictured the Olympics like this. He flew to Vancouver with a pulled groin and had been instructed by Babcock that he'd probably only be clearing the boards for defensive zone faceoffs. Either way, Patrice was happy to contribute. Skating caused him a great deal of pain, no matter the injections, but he could take faceoffs day in and day out.
But it just so happened that he clicked with Sid, and clicked in a way that no other forward did. He clicked so well with him that Babcock moved Sid to wing and let Patrice take faceoffs. Clicked so well that the two of them won Gold.
The crowd in the Canadian Centre was still raging, and music thumped through the speakers as the medals were engraved somewhere in the depths of the arena.
Patrice felt his heart react to the music as his stomach squeezed again, and his mouth split in a smile.
Stride, stride, toe drag, loop, pull back, pass...
Goal
And now the Gold.
"You and me, brother," Sid laughed, embracing Patrice for what felt like the millionth time. "You and me."

Hey Brother, there’s an endless road to rediscover,
Hey sister, know the water’s sweet but blood is thicker.
Oh, if the sky comes falling down, for you,
There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do…

It was completely dark out in Vancouver, but he and Sid followed the music into the Canadian Molson House just a few hundred feet from their room in the Olympic Village.
When they opened the doors and climbed the few steps to enter the bar, the patriotic patrons roared their praise and trumpets blared Avicii and lights flickered and they were clapped on their backs and their heads and they were hugged from every direction and they were grabbed and kissed by men and women alike and as they tipped their head back to scream with them beer and champagne were poured down their throats and they hugged each other and cried and jumped up and down and it was so loud, but all they could do was smile that involuntary smile and wail "GO CANADA GO! GO CANADA GO!" until their throats went numb and pump their fists in the air all night, until Claude Julien grabbed them by the backs of their necks and tossed them into their beds, set each of their alarms for an hour nap and raised them with the hair of the dog in the morning—a beer for each of them, making sure all of their bags were packed and all they had to do was sleep on the plane back to New York.

But two years later, everything would change.

Hey brother, do you still believe in one another?
Hey sister, do you still believe in love I wonder?
Oh, if they sky comes falling down, for you,
There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do…

Sid sat in his seat in first class on the Air Canada 747 flight to Sochi, picking at the back of his laminate casing on his international mobile phone as members of Team Canada filed into the jumbo jet and stowed away their belongings.
In front of him sat a very lively PK Subban with big black and red Beats headphones pulled down and around his neck, chatting and laughing excitedly with Carey Price, who always shocked Sid as much smaller than he ever remembered him, dwarfed now by the wrap around neck pillow he was sporting, of course, a bright red.
'Tis the season, Sid thought to himself. O, Canada...
Across the aisle sat John Tavares, lazily skimming through his phone and occasionally thumbing a text or two, his long legs outstretched and his dark wash jeans moving side to side as his feet, crossed at the ankles with ease and already undressed from their pointed dress shoes, moved back and forth absentmindedly. Sid saw the pod next to him was still empty, and after making two complete rounds of the upstairs deck of the plane which encompassed the entire first class and all of Team Canada, and if he had the roster memorized correctly--which he was sure he did--either Duncan Keith or Patrice Bergeron would be sitting with Tavares.
Sid prayed he'd be sitting with Duncs.
It had been over a year and a half since he and Patrice had spoken more than a few words to one another, save for an awkward phone call Sid swears Bergy made only to be nice following the Olympic Training Camp in Calgary, during which Sid stuck with his fellow birds and Bergy stuck with his fellow bears.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the seat, forcing the bill of his baseball hat to shadow his face as he remembered with great embarrassment the exchange.
It was the only time Sid had ever called him back. He figured it had to do with Sochi and he also figured by now he'd have to grow a pair since they were on Team Canada together again, and since they were--at least, Sid hoped--they could still be friends.
"Hello?" Patrice had answered, any trace of his Quebecois accent completely gone after seven seasons spent happily in Boston.
"Hey bud, just returning your call..." Sid had begun awkwardly, coughing and simultaneously hoping he wouldn't hurl with nerves. And just like that, Bergy acted like everything was cool again.
To his credit though, Patrice never flipped shit like he could've. Sid remembered the day he told him; how he had knocked on his apartment door knowing she wouldn't be around, confessing, apologizing profusely, and Patrice asking him politely yet curtly to leave. Like leave; go back to Pittsburgh.
"Sup brother," Sid presently heard a low voice chuckle.
"Oh, hey man," he heard Tavares' even lower, slower voice respond. He heard the clap of hands in greeting and knew with a nervous heart palpitation Keith would not be his plane partner.
He opened one eye and peered out from underneath his baseball cap to see Duncan Keith loading his shoulder bag into the overhead compartment and toss a couple of magazines, his Kindle, and his passport into the side pocket of his first class seat.
"Fuck," Sid swore, now knowing for certain that Patrice was his pod partner. The seats were individualized, but the plane was set up in such a way that you sat in pairs. He pushed his hat away from his forehead, fastening it around his head to where it should be. He examined the pod in which his seat sat, and realized there was a great plastic hood he could draw over the headrest when he reclined his seat, giving him darkness and shelter, separating him from his fellow brother of the North, his Vancouver partner in crime, his best friend who's fiancée he'd confessed to falling in love with.
"What's up, bud?" Patrice asked, giving the back of Sid's head a playful push as the greatest hockey player of the generation whirled back around to the face the aisle, startled.
"Hey, Patrice," Sid stumbled, his heart rate accelerating as his hand automatically lifted to his hat, awkwardly.
"Flight from Boston was a bitch," the Bruin mumbled, digging through his Burberry brown leather shoulder bag. He produced a pair of Bose headphones, a ziploc bag of raw almonds, and then lifted his head with a furrowed brow. "Did we get our Team Canada sweatsuits yet?" He asked, taking a gander around at his fellow cabin and future teammates. He pulled his black Red Sox snap back away from his head by the bill and scratched his forehead with the inside of its flat brim, yawning.
Like the rest of Team Canada, he was probably eagerly awaiting take off so they could strip and redress in matching athletic apparel, much more suitable for flying.
"Not yet," Sid confirmed. "Julien said he'd hand them out after take off so we can lounge." Sid took the moment to give Patrice the once-over as he nodded to a few other teammates in greeting. He looked well. The last he saw him was two months ago at the Garden when the Penguins had fallen 3-2 in overtime. They spoke the occasional few words of courtesy on the ice--whenever Patrice took him out he always apologized--and vice versa, of course--and after when they were freshly showered and dressed they had crossed paths briefly in the bowels of the arena, but it was just a friendly "good game," a half hug, and a "see ya in Sochi!" Sid had spent the remainder of the night imagining what Patrice’s post-game celebrations may have been like. Was Jamie at the game? Did they go out to dinner with friends? Had she come to watch? Did she, he didn’t know… could she have maybe wanted to see him? They hadn’t ever spoken face to face since, but, she left him a voicemail he kept for almost a year in his phone, a reminder to himself that he did do the right thing for everyone, even though it sucked the most for him.
Today, Patrice stood before him in black jeans, a thin black v-neck and a winter quilted Barbour jacket, complemented with a patterned scarf and a scruff of a beard, topped with a cap.
"Sick," Bergy nodded, smiling as he went back to rummaging through his bag. He finally produced a newspaper, folded in half and tired from travel. He tossed the items over Sid's lap and onto his window seat and stored his carryon in the overhead bin.
Once secured in his seat, a flight attendant offered to bring him a beverage and he politely albeit enthusiastically asked for an entire bottle of water. Picking up on her Quebecois accent, he even did so in smooth French, which only made Sid wonder if he was truly more romantic than him in part because of the fluent desirious tongue he could produce.
"I hate flying," Patrice mumbled switching back to English and sitting back in his big first class seat, messing with his jeans, pulling them down between his legs and squirming to create more space in them. Sid gave a nervous laugh and a nodding of understanding, knowing the dehydration flight caused was always somewhat problematic for athletes.
The flight attendant returned with a plastic cup of water and a bottle of Fiji Water and Patrice sighed happily, thanking her with a "ah, merci beaucoup," and high eyebrows of appreciation.
"Want some?" He offered, holding the cup out towards Sid.
"Oh, naw, I'm good, thanks."
"You sure?"
"Positive; all yours, man," Sid chuckled. And with that, the centerman cracked open the bottle of water and drained half of it. He tipped his head back and shuffled some ice into his mouth.
Sid took his preoccupation as a chance to make everything less awkward.
"So how is everything?" He asked, trying to act cool. He figured he’d give Patrice the opportunity to talk about whatever he wanted to talk about. If he wanted to dive right into Jamie and his family life, he could, and Sid would respond as he should, as a friend. If he wanted to keep in strictly business, Sid could handle that, as well. He fingered the silver buckle of his seat belt nervously.
"Great, yeah," Patrice began, drumming his pointer finger against his cup of ice. "No injuries for me so far, winning record, the new guys are great; we had that kid that came with Loui Eriksson from Dallas--Reilly, Reilly Smith. Unbelievable," he smiled, gesturing with the water bottle. "Moved up through the ranks in weeks with that second concussion Lou got--"
"--Jesus that was a game," Sid sighed in disgust, figuring sticking to work might be better anyway and crossing his arms and shaking his head.
"That was a shit show," Bergy confirmed, pointing at Sid in agreement with his ice cup and chuckling. "I still don't really understand..." he made a shrug like he had given up trying to, much like the rest of them.
"Brooksie didn't say much about it, to be honest," Sid offered, knowing Patrice was too polite to ask but still just as curious to know.
"Yeah same here dude, Thorty wasn't very forthcoming about it at all. Said he just lost his head, I dunno," Patrice agreed, shrugging as he took another gulp of water. "He's all about that enforcer stuff," he added, making a face. "I don't really know about it anymore, y'know?"
"Yeah, I think the game is really moving away from that," Sid agreed, sitting further back in his chair, loosening up again. "The NHL is doing away with this Broad Street Bully image."
"Yeah, the Big Bad Bruins and stuff; the game is really changing," Patrice agreed. "Thanks in part to that guy," he said softly, leaning towards Sid and pointing across the aisle. In front of Tavares and Keith, whose chatter had ceased as Keith flipped through a SkyMall magazine and Tavares had his earbuds in, sat Mike Babcock, with an additional seat to himself for his mounds of paper work, magazines folded in half and peppered with sticky notes and highlights, and binders of numbers. All on them.
"Seriously," Sid agreed, chuckling. "I love playing for The Cock."
"He's the man," Bergy agreed again, sitting back in his seat with a sigh. He loosed the top of his Fiji water again. "You sure you don't want some?" He offered one last time.
"Nah man, I'm good," Sid promised. "Crush it."
And Patrice did.

How long have I know you, brother?
Hundreds of lives, thousands of years.
How many miles have we wandered?
Under the sky, chasing our fears…

Sid slung his shoulder bag onto his twin bed, pressed up against the wall of the bathroom and let his head fall back and rest on his enormous shoulders in a kind of post-travel sigh of relief.
“Everyone keeps bitching about these rooms, y’know? I don’t think they’re so bad,” Patrice reasoned from behind him, his usual chipper self.
Sid turned around to his Olympic roommate, a faint smile on his face. Patrice had taken the bed underneath the small window which overlooked the Athlete’s Village, rimmed by a few mountains that had nothing on the Vancouver natural skyline from four years ago. His rolling suitcase stood at the foot of his bed, and he lay back in the small twin size frame, holding his Team Canada duffel to his stomach, his all black leather Nike Airforce 1 hightops up on his comforter. Sid noticed the white rims and logos were worn, not brand new.
“Anyone can sleep anywhere if they’re tired enough,” he chuckled, somewhat agreeing. “It’s certainly a step up from that closet thing you had in Vancouver.”
“What, my cubby? I fucking loved my cubby, man,” Patrice laughed, pushing his brown leather duffel off of his stomach and rolling around on his dorm bed.
“I know you did,” Sid laughed, flopping on his own.
“I could slide my little cubby doors shut and it’d be so dark and quiet,” Patrice remembered in a sigh, now laying on his stomach with his hands stuffed up under his single pillow. His back heaved in a deep, relaxed breath. Sid smiled as he recalled the first night in their room in Vancouver; they shared a three bedroom dorm with Duncan Keith, and Patrice had opted to take the weird, raised bed that was built into the wall. When he shut himself in there for an early night as Duncs and Sid played ping pong into the wee hours of the morning, they were nervous that maybe the Bruin had suffocated himself in the cubby, only to find that he was a heavy sleeper. Now, it was something the three of them looked back on and laughed at.
Presently, Sid was waiting for an opportunity to thank him for calling him and asking to be roommates again, even if it was out of pity and over a long lost friendship. Sid had a few true friends in this world, and Patrice had definitely been one of them. It was unfortunate the way things were between them now, but, Sid supposed he only had himself to blame for that.
“Hey—” Sid began, wanting to apologize again, wanting them to go back to being friends again, not just teammates. Wanting to really know what he thought of him, if he really forgave him and could forget it, wanting to know if he could ask about Jamie and how she was doing or if it’d be too weird. Wanting to tell Patrice he had moved on, really. Not that he never thought about Jamie anymore—no one had to know that—but that he had had a thing with someone else, that Jamie wasn’t the only one he thought of anymore… Or that since Sid had discovered that he didn’t (or was it shouldn’t?) love anything other than a freshly sharpened pair of skates or a new clear roll of tape, but, y’know… he’d buried any feelings he had had for Jamie since. He wanted to know if Patrice believed him. He wanted to know if Patrice really hated him or not.
Patrice’s phone rang, vibrating somewhere between his body and bed and the centerman moaned, fishing for it.
“Hey, one second,” he said, answering the phone in English.
“Oh, okay,” Sid heard the female voice on the other end. He flushed and sat up, busying himself with his suitcase right away.
“I’ll be right back, bud,” Patrice said, standing, holding the phone to his sweatshirt.
“Yeah, sure thing man,” Sid nodded, not looking up from his suitcase.

I’ve shared my life with you, brother,
Since I recall, you’ve been my friend.
You say we’re not like the others,
Still we must die, all things must end.

Sid picked his visor up off the ice, lifting his head to watch Patrice slowly slide to a stop a few feet in front of him, face down, arms held tightly around the sides of his helmet as if for further protection.
They sighed and laid in silence for a few minutes.
“Fuck me stupid,” Jonathon Toews groaned, sliding between them soon thereafter and halting by Sid’s shoulder on his knees, his head slumped back and propped up by his shoulder pads.
“I can’t, I just can’t…” panted Drew Doughty, dropping to his knees and laying back, his helmet on the back of Patrice’s legs, swaddled in shin pads and clear tape.
“How are they so good?” Patrick Sharp complained, laying on his back, gazing up at the rafters with a far away look in his eyes. He had been the first to lose.
“And in pads!” Jonny pointed out. “Didja see ‘em, Sharpy? They’re in full gear!”
“Alright, Johnny, alright. It’s alright,” the Blackhawk veteran cooed, placating his home team captain with a few pats to his knee. The men around them chuckled.
“It’s fucking craziness,” Jon muttered to himself, still upset.
“Not everyone can be good at everything, Tazer,” Sharpy reminded him, laughing. “Right Sid?” He asked, pushing his head back on the ice and looking at Sid upside down, a shit eating grin on his face. He was obviously referring to his “Best Hockey Player in the World” status.
“Oh shut up, you’re one of Chicago’s 50 Most Beautiful Chicagoans,” Sid teased back, shoving him with his Reebok Ribcor.
“Right, and we got two Selke winners, a Norris winner…” Sharpy listed off, pointing to each player in turn. “… a fucking beauty queen…” he chuckled, striking a pose laid flat on the ice. “…and a two time? Is it a two time Hart Trophy winner.”
“Three time…” Sid sighed, defeated, raising himself to one knee as the guys all chuckled.
“Oh, that’s right. Tell me again, what’s it like to be good at everything? My little captain here doesn’t know,” Patrick laughed, giving Jon’s knee a teasing push.
Still laughing, Sid swatted Sharpy one last time with his stick and kicked off to go watch Cory Perry and Ryan Getzlaf whip the rest of the team’s ass in ping pong in the locker room pre-morning skate and try to find out how they did it.
Because Sharpy was right, Sid hated not being the best at something.

Some kind of trouble is coming,
Don’t know when, don’t know what.
I will stand by you brother,
‘Til the daylight comes or I’m dead and gone…

“Hey,” Sid tried, a little tentatively.
“-ey,” Patrice coughed, bringing a hand to cover his mouth as he swallowed a boat load of spinach covered in strawberry vinaigrette and goat cheese that he had just shoveled in hungrily. He did so, a bit strained, and looked up to meet’s Sid’s eyes. “Hey!” He said, breaking out into a smile.
That was the thing about Patrice, he was always smiling, always happy.
Except for when Sid saw him with that first concussion.
Except for when Sid told him he loved his now-fiancée…

He remembered sitting on Patrice’s white leather couch after declining water and a bite to eat. Patrice had eased himself back into the oversized armchair that sat cattycorner to the couch, his back to the rest of his apartment. Sid knew Jamie wasn’t at home, but he had still found his eyes wandering around Bergy’s place looking for traces of her. She had been tutoring in French, Portuguese and English to help generate the income her father had stopped providing her with when he found out that she had dropped out of school to take care of Patrice. It was a burden Sid had sworn secrecy to bear, one that he had promised not to share with him and cause him more stress at her wishing. He would do anything for her, but it had only gotten harder and harder. She refused to let him lend her money, she refused any of his help, actually, except for advise with Patrice and his recovery from his concussion. The problem was, that was part of the whole problem; Sid couldn’t lie to Patrice, but he couldn’t stay around and watch this woman he had fallen desperately in love with struggle to keep her head up, struggle to keep this man that was not him happy and loved and well… It was hard to take care of himself and rehab his own concussion when he didn’t have her to help him. He had become insanely jealous, to the point where he had to remove himself from the situation.
“Hey man, we gotta talk, I uh, I need to tell you something,” he had started, leaning forward with his elbows on his jean clad knees. He had pulled the bill of his black Reebok ball cap down and sighed heavily, not knowing what was going to happen next.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, really,” he had said, lifting his gaze to meet Patrice’s puzzled one. He still wasn’t allowed to leave his house or exercise, even mildly. He had been clad in heather grey sweatpants and a thin, well-worn Red Sox World Series t-shirt. Sid even remembered the smell of the pot roast cooking behind him on the breakfast bar. He hadn’t had much of a stomach for stewed beef since.
“I, uh,” he had stammered, his cheeks glowing and the back of his neck sweating. He took a deep breath. “As it turns out, uh, I’m in love with Jamie.”

There had been silence.

Patrice had given a faint laugh, for lack of not knowing what else to do, Sid had expected.
“What?” He had then asked.
“I’ve fallen in love with Jamie,” Sid had said, sitting up and making to try and explain himself as the world whirred around him. He remembered feeling as if he had been concussed yet again.
“This some kind of… what, some kind of joke?” Bergy had asked, giving a breathless laugh, the sound of worry whooshing from his lungs.
“I’m in love with her,” Sid had muttered.
“Stop saying that,” Bergy had replied, the smile completely fallen from his face.
“I’m sorry man,” he had responded, mournfully, as if he could take it all back and continue to lie to his friend, to one of his best friends, and to himself. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I just… we’ve spent so much time together and we’ve become such good friends and I would do anything for her—anything, I just—I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t plan it, I didn’t hope for it; man, I dunno. I didn’t even want it to happen, it just happened—I just. I can’t. I can’t see her anymore. I can’t answer the phone when she calls anymore, I can’t—”
“I think you should stop,” he vaguely remembered Patrice saying. He vaguely remembered him bent forward, holding his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees. He had looked impossibly small, like Sid had felt.
But he didn’t say anything else and Sid had come to hate silence, he had heard so much of it lately as Jamie would leave him to spend time with Patrice. Silence constantly reminded him that he was suffering from post concussion syndrome. Silence constantly reminded him that he was utterly and entirely alone.
“I see her every day man, every day. And God, I love it, I love it, but I can’t take it. I can’t take it. She loves you man,” he had said so softly he could barely admit it to himself. He knew it, but it had hurt to say. “She’s doing it all for you. Everything.”
He had defeated himself.
“I mean Jesus, she’s probably only my friend because I can tell her what to expect once you’d been absolutely wrecked,” he had scoffed, gesturing to Patrice and referencing their battles with the syndrome that only made concussions that much more lethal, that much more terminal.
“Sid…” Patrice had breathed, holding his face up with his hands but still looking at the hardwood between his knees.
“Shit man, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean…” Sid had huffed, leaning forward into his own hands and sliding his hat off. He hadn’t meant to insult Patrice’s injury; that was not his intent. He pulled at his hair angrily, causing himself only a smidgeon of the pain his confession was.
“No,” Patrice had said, absolutely calmly.
The long silence that followed had almost killed Sid, but he waited as best he could, watching Patrice bore holes into the floor, his head propped up with one hand under his cheek. He remembered watching his eyelashes as he blinked and how he realized how much they strikingly resembled the black spikiness of the hair on his head, and he remembered not understanding exactly why Jamie loved this man so much more than anyone else in the world, but knowing how.
“No,” Patrice had repeated, lifting his eyes to meet Sid’s. “You can love whomever you want to, Sid, but you don’t get to make false accusations of the premise of Jamie’s friendship.”
Sid hadn’t known what to say, apart from the chorus he had echoed the entire confession.
“I didn’t mean to,” he tried, his voice deflated.
“No,” Patrice let his gaze fall back to the floor and shook his head. “No.”
After what felt like an eternity, Sid finally took a breath and tried to start again.
“I can’t lie to you, man,” he had said. “I really love he—”
“Don’t.”
“Okay,” he breathed, respectfully, having a feeling his words were hurting him as much as they were himself. “But I really do. And so I’m gonna go, I’m going back to Pittsburgh.” Sid hadn’t expected Patrice to have known, but he had meant immediately. A jet had been waiting for him at the Hanscom Municipal Airport; he didn’t have the balls to hang around. “I can’t lie to you, I wanted to be honest with you. I’m going because it’s not right; it wasn’t right for me to come here and let this happen. I fought it man, I really did. I tried really hard to fight it, but I can’t anymore. And I can only fight so many goddamn battles at a time!” He had ended raising his voice, frustrated with having to fight the syndrome, having to fight fatigue, having to fight the press, having to fight his love, having to fight his lonliness, having to fight the nagging voice in the back of his head that reminded him that this is what he wished upon himself with every birthday since he could remember.
You wished for nothing but hockey for the rest of your life. Well, sleep in your bed, now that you’ve made it.
There had been more silence.
And then, Patrice had exhibited the very finest of all of the perfect qualities that he had. He asked a question that Sid would never forget, a question that proved the moral backbone of the man, a question that showed Sid why Jamie Delacour had picked him instead of anybody else.
“What about Jamie? You’re just going to leave her? Not talk to her?”
What about Jamie, he had asked. Of all the things for Patrice to be mad at him for, out of all the accusations he could adopt against Sid—for taking advantage of his hospitality, for attempting to steal the love of his life—he had chosen to reprimand him for walking out on a friendship.
At first, Sid had thought that that comment had meant that his friendship with Jamie had actually meant a lot to her, and he remembered with a sickening feeling in his gut what that quick wriggle of hope wrung round his stomach had felt like; but, then, he figured that if that was his first thought instead of something like Wow, I am a shitty friend to her or look at this friendship here, man to man, that I’ve messed up, then his priorities weren’t straight and he needed to go. Pronto.
“I have to,” Sid had said, rising. “I don’t know what else to do.”

“Shit man, you gonna sit or what?” Carey Price asked, a hunk of steamed chicken dotted with brown rice on his fork. He looked up at the captain from where he sat next to Bergy, both of them glowing in their red Canada gear. He raised an eyebrow.
“We can switch to English if it makes you feel better,” the small goalie chided.
“Sid knows French, eh,” Patrice laughed in his mother tongue, nodding toward Sid while loading up his fork with strawberries and walnuts.
“Oh yeah, I know all the French,” Sid butchered, failing to communicate that he was as fluent as he was pretending to be. The three laughed, and as Sid swung his leg over the bench to join them at their table, he was soon flanked by Tavares and Jeff Carter, who, observing fewer manners than he had, didn’t even bother asking if they could join the French table.
The two centerman popped out their fake teeth, held in shape with a wire that rimmed the inside of their bites, and Carey’s face split in half with a smile.
“Hey, what denture cream do you two toddlers use?” He teased, feigning genuine interest.
“One, shut the fuck up,” Carter replied, tipping his head back to pop a few grapes in his mouth.
“Two, don’t need denture cream when you have the retainer wire,” Tavares said, smugly, holding up two fingers and raising his eyebrows as if the table should be impressed or maybe even jealous.
“And three, I can do this,” Carter said, loading a forkful of spaghetti into his mouth and slurping it through the wide gaps in his teeth with a slick, sucking noise.
The three francophones (or pretend-francophones), traded uneasy glances.
“Don’t act like you’re not impressed,” the King said in Ron Burgandy’s voice, quoting the beloved Anchorman.

I’ve shared my life with you, brother,
Since I recall, you’ve been my friend.
You say we’re not like the others,
Still we must die, all things must end…

For the first time since landing in Russia, Sid smiled.
“No!” Corey screamed, diving over the back of the couches, trying to rescue Sid’s return. He summersaulted across the laps of Drew Doughty and Roberto Luongo and came up red-face and fuming. “NO!” He screamed, throwing the paddle down on the table, his voice screeching.
“Woah, Corey,” Ryan Getlzaf said softly, turning to his ping pong partner. He gave the guys on the couch a worried look as to the mental health of his recreational, NHL and Olympic teammate.
“No!” Corey cried again, pointing at Sid with a maniacal look in his eyes. The members of Team Canada who had gathered to watch—from multiple different sports, mind you—were all giggling, but this was truly the biggest upset to Corey in Sochi yet.
Team Canada really was Winter.
“Calm down bud, we’ll get him next time,” Ryan soothed, nervously patting his linemate’s back. A dynamic duo on the ice had turned into a lethal ping pong backhand off the ice in the Canadian Molson House since the touchdown of their 747 jet last week.
Sid had spent the first week of the Games just watching Ryan and Corey wrack in the wins. Watching, analyzing, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he sat on the back of the couch in his red sweats and just… didn’t think about anything else.
And now, a week later, he got up, volleyed maybe forty times, and then crushed it on
Corey’s backhand side, where he was weakest most.
Sidney Crosby always figured shit like this out.
Just not the other shit.
Not being much of a gloater, he gave Perry and Getzy a nod and put his paddle down to retire to his room. Checking his watch, he figured Patrice was probably already in bed, but whether or not he was already asleep was up for debate.
As Sid made his way down the hall in his Red windbreaker sweatpants, he wondered whether or not he hoped Patrice was still cognizant, and for the first time, he was fairly certain he hoped he was…
Smiling still, he pushed his hands into his pockets and looked forward to seeing his roommate.
He gently eased the door open and noticed a dim light was still on, probably the light they shared on the bedside table between their bunks.
“Sup,” Patrice asked as Sid closed the door behind him. There was very little space between the entrance of their room, only a corner which was walled off for their bathroom and then the small L shape of their actual living space, two beds facing a dresser in which the TV was kept on the top shelf, and their things sat piled in its corners.
Patrice lay in bed, his rainbow Sochi comforters pulled up around the bottom of his ribs, his Team Canada Nike shirt visible as the TV remote rose and fell with his steady, easy breathing. One of his arms lay across his stomach, the other was tucked behind his head, bent at the elbow.
“Beat Perry and Getzlaf,” Sid announced, standing in the little hallway before their little room. He struggled to pull off his hoodie, his broad shoulders posing a challenge.
“No shit eh?” Patrice laughed, watching him bring the material over his head, consider folding it, and then dropping it at the foot of his bed instead.
“Yeah, Perry’s got a weak backhand, especially when he’s trash talking,” Sid laughed, pointing at Patrice with wicked raised eyebrows.
“There we go, there we go,” Patrice chuckled, nodding his approval and giving him that toothy smile before shifting his eyes back to the TV. Bergy also had a knack for watching and learning. Now that they played on the same line in Canada, all they did was gossip on the bench between shifts and deep breathing exercises. Jussi always tries to close you off when you enter the O zone, only way to have a chance to escape Big Z was to turn away from him with the puck—like, actually turn three hundred and sixty degrees and shield the whole damn puck with your body, JVR will blindside you full speed with no discretion in the neutral zone if you’re by the bench when he’s going in for the change; things of that nature. That’s why Babcock loved working with them, he called them the Mad Scientists. They were completely analytical.
Sid splashed some water on his face and wiped it off with the bottom of his shirt. He thumbed some toothpaste onto his toothbrush and reentered the bedroom with a mouth full of suds.
“You wouldn’t believe the shit on Russian TV,” Patrice chuckled, flipping channels and then returning to the previous one with a hoot of enthusiasm. “Oh, wait! Watch this commercial! See if you can guess what it’s for!”
Sid paused his brushing to watch two adults being chased down a mountain by a family of bears after one of the men had peed in the lake the bear cubs were playing in.
“Oddled awder,” Sid gurgled through his toothpaste, tipping his head back and holding the brush off to the side of his mouth.
“Get out of here!” Patrice gasped, sitting up in bed, his hands thrown out in front of him, falling between his legs pathetically. Sid laughed as the logo for the bottled water company flashed on the TV and a woman in Russian advised them to buy it by the palate full. “You’ve seen it before!” Patrice challenged him, shaking the remote at him as Sid made his way back to the bathroom to spit, swearing he hadn’t.
“Nah man, I promise,” Sid laughed, hitting the lights as he took one last look at himself in the mirror and rounding the corner to crawl onto his bed. From a crouching position, he pulled his blankets down and back over himself as he flopped onto his stomach and heaved a tired sigh. Then, in his usual fashion, he untucked his right foot from the blankets and set it on top of his comforter to prevent himself from overheating during the night.
Patrice turned the TV off and tossed the remote between them on the floor with a yawn. He then reached for the light, deciding it was bedtime and knowing Sid would agree. “Latvia tomorrow,” he reminded Sid as Sid turned his head to face him and watched his fellow Canadian rub his eyes with the butts of his hands.
Sid mumbled a “yeah,” but only a breath of air came out.
After a few minutes in the dark, Sid plucked up the courage.
“Hey Bergy?” He asked.
“Hm?” Patrice responded, moving around under his comforter.
“I was kind of… seeing someone else. For a while. Not now, but, y’know. I thought maybe you’d want to know that I’ve moved on,” he said. “And that I’m really sorry for what happened.”
After a few racing heartbeats, Sid held his breath long enough to hear Patrice sigh.
“Yeah?” Patrice asked, and in some way, Sid knew he wasn’t asking for confirmation about being sorry, but rather about the other girl he had been with. That chemistry they’d always had, always worked.
“Yeah,” Sid confirmed.
Another beat.
“Not now though?”
“No,” Sid sighed, rolling around onto his back. “Not now.”
Patrice hadn’t dropped the shades, so the light from the Athlete’s Village poured through their window, illuminating their silhouettes as they breathed deeper than many men, their bodies thick and athletic and tired. In a few minutes, they’d be able to see one another, their eyes having adjusted to the dark. Sid could tell Patrice had let his head fall on his pillow, turned toward Sid. Sid continued to look up at the ceiling, letting his friend think about it all.
“Yeah, I feel like… I feel like, I dunno,” Sid admitted, laughing a bit. “I haven’t met many women who, uh” —he felt a bit awkward— “have really made me want a relationship with them,” he stumbled. “But, when they do, it’s always really bad timing or whatever.” He could feel himself blushing in the dark.
“What do you mean?” Patrice asked, curiously, looking at his fingers, scratching the knuckles on his right hand for a moment, and then redirecting their attention back.
“Well, like Jamie. That wasn’t really someone I should’ve been interested in. And Briana… it sounds really bad,” he cautioned, holding his hands out in the dark as if to brace Patrice.
Patrice barked a laugh, turning his head back to the ceiling. “Try me!”
That made Sid laugh. The challenge was less of a threat and more of a recognition of what had happened in the past, and perhaps some kind of benign acceptance of it. Per usual, Patrice was smiling and laughing. Nothing ever seemed to get him down, even the particularly awkward conversation they were having now. And Sid was ever-thankful for it.
“Sorry man,” he chuckled, holding out an apologetic hand. If both of them reached they could join hands between their beds, but the movement was more of a gesture than anything.
“No, no,” Sid laughed, rubbing his face. “I suppose it doesn’t get much worse than that,” he sighed, referring to how he fell in love with one of his best friend’s now-fiancée. “Doesn’t get much worse than that.”
“What happened with this girl, though?” Bergy asked, rolling onto his side and pulling a knee up to his chest. He rustled as he pushed his hands under the covers and hooked them under his heel for a quad stretch and a soft groan.
“She was my personal assistant,” Sid sighed, letting his hands fall from his face dramatically.
“Oh shit,” Patrice laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Sid sighed, still blushing and noticing a smile come over his face. He hadn’t thought about Bri in a while… ever since Sochi was approaching, he’d given a lot of thought back to Jamie, back to his relationship with Patrice. “She was great, she was great. Really,” he promised his teammate. “A couple months after I hired her I took that slap shot to the face at Nassau from Brooksie and got really fucked up and she spent a lot of time with me in the hospital and in rehab.”
“Yeah? Kind of crossing the professional line there eh?” Patrice asked. “I mean, I dunno. I’ve never had a personal assistant but do they take care of you in times like that?”
Sid remembered the few foggy, medicinal dream-like memories he had post periodontal reconstruction. He remembered her warmth, her voice, how she helped his vertigo by sitting behind him and wrapping her arms across his chest and around his stomach.
No, was the short answer. No they weren’t. But, Sid’s situation was different, like every situation in his fucking life, and he couldn’t expect Patrice to understand that. No one could. Except Geno, really, Geno was good at empathizing, surprisingly…
But Sid had had no one, not even his family could fly in quick enough to help him through surgery. It was one of the darker periods in Sid’s life, and he remembered thinking often of Jamie taking care of Patrice during his concussion…
“Well,” Sid admitted. “I mean, I asked her to… I guess.” Yes, he admitted to himself. I asked her to fill a tremendous void in my life. And she did. Spectacularly well. So well that I fell in love with her and didn’t have to be alone for a while. Just a short while… “And then like, during rehab when I wasn’t on drugs anymore she kind of went back to her normal work and stuff and I just kind of moped around and went to appointments all the time and things went back to normal and I had kind of just wrote the whole thing off on the drugs but then she asked to be transferred and I was kind of like ‘What? For real?’ Like, I didn’t want her to go, she went with me to all my appointments, hung out with me, we cooked a lot, she ate a lot of soup and mashed potatoes with me and, I dunno, we became like, friends and stuff, and when my agent asked her why she said there was a conflict of interest so he had to let her go. She wouldn’t return my texts or calls or anything and I realized I really had feelings for her, y’know? But I uh, I ran into her in the Consol a couple of months later and…” He trailed off, remembering the moment exactly. Bri had fawned over him and mothered him while he had been incapacitated after being hit and the subsequent surgery, going as far as to sleep spooned behind him, run her fingers through his hair, help feed him and groom him, change his dressings, everything, but he had never been capable of reciprocating affection or turning their closeness into intimacy. But, then when he was on the road to recovery, their physical closeness lessened but their friendship strengthened. Months later, when he ran into her, he was completely overtaken by the urge to finally kiss her, once and for all, for real, on the lips.
“Bri?” He had asked, whirling around in his navy suit on the way up to watch the game from the press box.
She had whirled around, her dark brown hair twisting in the cold arena air, a surprised look on her face.
“Sid,” she had confirmed, softly, her eyes big and bright, surprised, even.
“Bri,” he had repeated, stepping toward her, reaching for her urgently before he could determine whether or not she would bolt, and he had grabbed her and she had let him and they had embraced, locking lips gently at first, and then inhaling a shaky breath between them and pushing themselves closer together. His hands had found her face and he stroked her cheek with his thumb as they parted for air.
He had watched her intently as she took a moment to compose herself and then raised her gaze to meet his.
“Hi,” he had breathed, the air whooshing from out between his lips in a smile of sorts.
“Hi,” she had smiled back, blushing and looking down at their bodies between them. “Careful,” she had whispered, snaking her hand between them snuggly and tracing the scar tissue on his upper lip. “Don’t want your stitches opening up now do we?” She had teased, sealing her concern with another kiss.
He spared Bergy the details. “But we ended up staying together for a few more months, but the League prohibited her to continue her work as an assistant if she were dating someone else. I couldn’t ask her to end her career, y’know?”
Bergy laid back on his back and heaved a sigh. “Man, that’s tough.”
“Right? Inopportune yet again,” Sid complained, huffing.
Patrice shifted and Sid felt his eyes. “Did she love you?”
“She did, yeah,” Sid sighed.
“But not enough to leave her career,” he confirmed.
“Naw. I can’t ask that of her.”
“Did you love her?”
Sid nodded, but their split had been bad enough to make him want to throw up, so he had buried it. Like he had buried Jamie. Like he always had buried anything that infringed on his dream, on his duty, on his job, on his life.
Like he could now bury this.
“I’m sorry man,” Patrice said softly, looking back at the ceiling in the dark.
“Me too,” Sid sighed. “And I’m sorry, man,” he said, not needing to refer to Jamie again. “But, I wanted you to know.”
“We’re all good, brother,” Patrice laughed, letting his head fall toward Sid. He extended a fist between their two beds.
“Good,” Sid smiled, knocking his knuckles against his old friends.
“We’ll always be good,” Patrice promised him.
“Especially against Latvia tomorrow,” Sid promised back.

I know we can’t stop what’s coming,
But I will try, oh how I will try!
Will you fight with me, brother,
One last time, oh, one last fight!

They stood in pairs down in the tunnel to thunderous cheers of GO CANADA, GO, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised in anticipation. Sid felt his eyes glaze over at the white light at the end of the tunnel rimmed in the Sochi rainbows, the cool scent of the ice in the air, ripe for his carving.
The Gold Medal Game.
Theirs for the taking.
“C’mon Bergy, that-a-boy, let’s go,” Claude softly spoke to his wing man as he made his way to the front of the team with the coaching staff and a Tavares on crutches. Patrice stood frozen in the same meditation next to him. The coach hugged his Bruin around the helmet and deposited the smallest of kisses on the black of his centerman’s headgear. “You’re my guy, you’re my guy,” Julien told him.
“I’m your guy, I’m yours,” Patrice promised back, a quiet, coy smile on his lips, still half in pregame meditation.
GO CANADA, GO
GO CANADA, GO
GO CANADA, GO
“Alright boys now there’s a little alchemy involved in tonight’s game,” Babcock called down the tunnel. “This ain’t about our Lord Stanley; this is for something else. This is for something deeper—not bigger, deeper. This is for those frozen ponds you froze your little four year old ass off on. This is for your favorite Tim Horton’s or Christmastime in Quebec. This is for moose jerkey and the first dive of the summer off the dock. This is for our home, this is for our family and our friends. This is for us. Let’s turn this silver into Gold, let’s turn this frozen water into celebratory Molsons with the boys eh?”
They whooped and hollered, leaned forward, and charged, and right before they crashed over the boards in a sea of red, Patrice pawed Sid’s helmet close to his, and the two clunked visors.
Together they fell to the hard ice below to do battle for their country.

Don’t turn away, don’t tell me that we’re not the same,
We face the fire together, brothers till the end.
Don’t run away, our time will come but not today,
I stand beside you brother, with you till the end…

Don’t turn away, don’t tell me that we’re not the same,
We face the fire together, brothers till the end.
Don’t run away, our time will come but not today,
I stand beside you brother, with you till the end.