The Three C's

-Maggie-
We landed in Chicago and went to our hotel, since Beau was still recovering from his broken wrist and was my usual roommate; I was being assigned with someone different each road trip. When I walked towards the door, I opened it to already see Kris inside, we just looked at each other and I sighed.

‘…This isn’t awkward or anything…’ I thought, because we were at least trying to become friends, but it still hurt when I saw him sometimes.

“I ya, I guess we’re roommates,” he said and I nodded my head and placed my stuff next to the closet bed, Kris always liked to sleep on the bed by the window, “Is this going to be all right?”

“It’ll be fine,” I said and he looked at me and nodded his head, but there was something about his face, it looked like he was in pain, “You all right?” I asked and he looked at me.

“I’ll be fine, just having some pain,” he said and I nodded my head.

“You should have Doc look at it,” I said and Kris sighed and nodded his head, “Come on, we need to head back downstairs to get to the rink.”

“Yeah, you excited to be playing outdoors again?” he asked and I giggled and nodded my head, “What is this- You’re second?”

“Yup, first one was against the Caps,” I said and he nodded his head, because of the lockout last season, we didn’t have any Winter Classic, there were even no All Star games, and with the Olympics this year, the All Star games were held off until next year.

The boys and I were scheduled to practice from noon to four at the rink, and that’s what we did. From noon to two, it was full practice, but from two to four, our friends and family that were in town to see this game, we allowed to come onto the ice and skate with us. Nick was in town with his friend Eric, who was a winger for the Pittsburgh hockey team, and Emma with Troy were here.

I gushed when Emma walked over carrying Troy, who was in a cute little Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. My little tiger was over a year old now and I loved being around him. For his birthday, we threw a party for him at my home and of course my team showed up getting the little one year old different hockey things. I of course, got him his first pair of skates.

“Did you bring them?” I asked and Emma giggled and nodded her head, she handed me my nephew and placed the bag that was hanging from her shoulder on the ground and pulled out the two tiny skates. She placed them on his little feet and I turned around and headed back onto the ice.

I placed Troy on the ice and then grabbed his hands and pulled him up, having him ‘skate’ with me. He would laugh and then bounce his legs as if he was enjoying it. The guys smiled at the sight of me bonding with my nephew, who every day looked more and more like Mike.

After the two hour family and friend skate, we headed back to the hotel to eat some food and relax. I had walked into the room and saw that Kris was already in bed; I looked down at my watch and saw that it was only after seven, I hadn’t realized that he was that tired. I quietly closed the door, I wasn’t tired, so I didn’t want to be in the room making noise if he wanted to sleep. I was heading down the hall, not really knowing where I was walking to when I heard my name and turned around to see Niskanen.

“Frisky Nisky, what’s up?!” I giggled and he came up to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

“Where are you off to?” he chuckled.

“Your room.”

“Oh? And what are we going to do?” he asked, a sly smirk on his face and he wiggled his eyebrows, I giggled and rolled my eyes.

“Watch the Notebook-“

“Sorry, Geno’s room is across the hall though,” he said and I let out a laugh.

“Kris is sleeping and I don’t want to wake him up, so I’ll be following you,” I said and he chuckled.

“I was just gunna join Nealer and watch TV,” he said and I shrugged my shoulders and nodded my head, “We have a lot of shows to catch up on.”

“Oh, I know the feeling,” I giggled and Matt smirked and lead me to his room, where he opened the door and I saw James. His back was to me and he was only in pajama shorts, I smiled and ran at him, jumping on his back and laughing when he lost his balance and we crashed into the bed.

“What the- Maggie!” he yelled as he threw me off of him and pinned me down on the bed, I giggled and he scoffed and stood up, “Not funny-“

“I’m clearly laughing,” I said and Matt walked into the room and laughed, “So is he!”

“Fuck you- Both of you!” he said and I giggled and got comfortable on James’ bed while Matt set up the TV. The shows weren’t on now, so Matt had to hook up his laptop to the TV and stream the shows from the internet. James looked at me and scoffed, “Comfy?”

“Yup,” I giggled and he climbed into the bed next to me and laid on his side, “So what are we watching?”

“How I met your mother,” Matt said and I let out a laugh and nodded my head.

After watching How I Met Your Mother for four hours straight, it was time for me to go to my room and go to bed; I was falling asleep on James’ bed. I said night to the boys and headed back to my room, being careful and quiet not to wake Kris up. I grabbed my pajamas and walked into the bathroom to change and then went back into the room and climbed into bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep, the last thing I was seeing were the little red numbers on the clock saying that it was after eleven.

I felt like I was in a heavy sleep, but something told me to wake up, I didn’t know what it was, but I did, my eyes blinked open in the darkness and I looked at the clock to see that it was four in the morning. I looked over towards Kris’ bed to not see him there. I listened to see if he was in the bathroom but I didn’t hear anything. I flicked the light next to the bed on and looked around the room, I didn’t see him. I stood up and walked to the end of the bed and gasped.

“Kris!” I yelled and ran over towards him, he was face down on the ground, I flipped him over and breathed a sigh of relief that he was breathing, but it was very light. I jumped up and ran towards the door, opening and placing the latch in the door so I didn’t lock myself out as I ran down the hallway and started to pound on Doc’s room.

I was breathing heavily, freaking out over the fact that something was wrong with Kris and I didn’t know what. Doc finally answered the door and looked at me confused as he rubbed his eyes, “Maggie, what is it?”

“Kris fell or something- I don’t know, he- You just have to come!” I grabbed Doc’s arm and started to pull him down the hallway, someone’s door opened, but I had passed it and didn’t see what was going on. Doc walked into the room and flicked on the light, he cursed and ran to Kris’ side and checked him over. I stood in the doorway, knowing my eyes were getting watery because I didn’t know what to do to help my teammate. The door was open; I was leaning against it, holding myself.

“What’s going on?” I turned my head and saw a tired Coach.

“Call an ambulance, Dan!” Doc yelled and my eyes widened and Coach saw Kris and pulled out his phone.

“What is it, Doc? What’s wrong with him?” I asked and Doc looked at me.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good,” he said and I ran my fingers through my hair.

Some of the guys must have hears something going on, because sleepy looking bodies peaked their heads out of their rooms to see what the commotion was about. I was standing in the hallway, Coach, Doc and two of the trainers were in the room looking over Kris. I heard my name and turned to see Marc and Sidney walking down the hall in their pajamas.

“What’s going on?” Sidney asked and tried to look in the room. At that moment, the elevator doors opened and EMTs rushed out and I think at that moment, I lost it and started to really cry. Marc hugged me even though he and Sidney didn’t know what was going on, “Maggie?”

“I don’t know, I just woke up because something felt wrong and I saw that Kris wasn’t in bed so I looked and saw him on the ground barely breathing,” I cried and Marc rubbed my back.

After a few minutes the EMTs brought Kris out on the stretcher, more teammates had walked out of their rooms and saw Kris being taken away. Doc and Coach walked out of the room and we looked at them, someone asked what happened.

“They think he had a stroke, but they’re going to do some tests,” Doc said and I looked at him shocked.

“He’s twenty six- Can he have a stroke?” I asked and Doc sighed.

“Anything is possible,” he said and looked at Coach, “Best if you call his um-“

“I got it,” Coach said and he and Doc walked away.

‘…They can say girlfriend, I’m not gunna break…’ I thought as I watched ass Doc and Coach walked down the hall, they were going to change and head over to the hospital to stay with Kris for a while.

“Get some more sleep guys, you need to be up in a few hours for morning skate,” Coach said as he reached his room.

“I can’t sleep- Not after that,” I breathed and looked down, rubbing my arms and wishing that Pat was here.

“Come on Mags,” I heard and looked up to see James, he tucked me under his arm and I wrapped my arms around his waist, laying my head on his chest, “I’ll stay with you.”

I sighed and nodded my head, James pulled me down the hall towards his bedroom, a place I had been only hours before and I climbed into his bed with him. James threw a shirt on before climbing into the bed next to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

“It’ll be all right, Mags- Tanger will be all right,” James said as I snuggled into his side and he tried to get me to fall asleep, but I had a hard time because I was worried about Kris.

‘…I wonder how many games he’ll miss?...’ I thought and then sighed and felt James started to rub my back and I don’t know why, but that started to make me feel sleepy again. The last thing I did was snuggle my face into James’s chest as I started to fall asleep, ‘…Hope he’s all right…’