The Queen of It All

::Toews leaves game after hit::

@MarkLazerus: No update on Toews’ status expected tonight. #Blackhawks


Things Jonathan Toews was aware of: he was at the hospital, his head hurt, and he hadn’t just woken up. In fact, it seemed that he hadn’t been unconscious at all. This was worrying.

He also knew that his name was Jonathan Toews and he was 28. It was equally worrying that the people here seemed to be relieved by that.

In between some poking and prodding and testing and a lot of not-at-all reassuring smiles from the medical staff, he gathered that he’d gone headfirst into boards early in the third period. He asked about the score of the game, and the doctor rolled her eyes. She said she thought the Stars had won, but she wasn’t completely sure of that.

Jonny said, “The Stars?” and from the look on her face it wasn’t the first time he’d asked, and it also wasn’t the first time when he asked what today's date was.

So, it appeared he was experiencing some memory loss. Well—okay. All things considered, he didn’t physically feel that bad. He would’ve been cautiously optimistic if he’d been able to remember the game, or what exactly their fucking roster was right now, or really anything at all since last year. Maybe everyone else had gotten traded over the summer. After last season that felt a little too possible, so he didn’t ask.

It wasn’t just a blank going back to last spring. For instance, he remembered his last birthday. And while he didn’t remember the very end of last season, he remembered enough bits and pieces of the painful run-up to it that he was almost glad he didn’t.

An unknown amount of time passed, leaving Jonny with an edgy sensation of having missed something. He remembered about the amnesia now, so maybe it was paranoia. He couldn’t see a clock anywhere, and he didn’t have anything on him besides the hospital gown he didn’t recall putting on.

Then the door opened, and Q entered the room. So he was still here.

“How’re you feeling?” Q asked.

“They said we lost,” said Jonny.

“Hah!” Q exclaimed. “Well, they’d be wrong about that. We got ‘em good in overtime. But look,” he continued, quieting down, “I’ve been talking to Harper, I guess they’re keeping you here overnight? Said you’ve been having some memory issues.”

“Yeah.” Jonny wondered if Dr Harper had been in to see him at some point. He must have. He needed someone in here writing down a play-by-play of the evening.

“Well, you’ll be in good hands here!” said Q. Jonny felt a sudden surge of resentment at his overtly jovial presence. He’d lost time, Jonny told himself. He was back to feeling like he’d been feeling last April, all the tensions and bickering and losing, losing, losing still raw, and quite likely everything was as cheerful as you please in the Blackhawks locker room these days.

“Just so you know, I might not remember this conversation,” Jonny told him, and watched Q’s good cheer slip a bit. That didn’t really feel any better. So he pasted on a smile and tried to be reassuring, because it was this February and not last April and maybe he’d wake up tomorrow and he’d remember getting over it again. Probably not, but he could hope.

Q turned to go, then stopped. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” he said, hand on the doorknob. “Madeline’s coming back a day early. I’m sure she’s worried.” He gave a little nod and went out.

Madeline? thought Jonny. Who the fuck is Madeline?



Things Madeline Toews—nee Becker—was doing at 6:43pm on February 17th: 1) wondering if she’d left the car unlocked; 2) lying very still on the floor between the guest bed and the window; 3) wishing the guest bedroom floor was carpeted.

She’d gotten the call during her layover in Denver. The second call, that is, where she’d been asked whether she’d be home by 3pm or whether Jonathan ought to stay with someone else for the night. She’d said she’d be home.

The first call had happened yesterday, when she was eating dinner with several other girls at an Olive Garden near the campus. She didn’t really remember what she’d said to that.

Anyway, Jonny had been delivered promptly at 3, taken one blank look at her and gone straight to bed. It was about the best Madeline could have expected under the circumstances. She’d gotten the whole rundown from one of the team doctors on the phone, and Jonny was having memory issues. Maybe he didn’t remember the med school / direction-in-life / precipitate flight thing at all.

Christ, thought Madeline, he’d better remember it. She didn’t want to go through that whole explanation again.

But she wasn’t really looking forward to finding out just what Jonny did recall, and when she’d heard stirrings from the master bedroom, she’d retreated here. She knew she wouldn’t be spotted easily, because this was where they’d misplaced Keith’s kid in September.

This was, of course, rank cowardice. Madeline had never considered herself lacking in bravery, but marriage to Jonathan Toews had thus far been an opportunity for discovering exciting new ways to be a coward. And she just needed a minute. Maybe seven minutes.

There were footsteps in the hallway, and then the door swung open. Instead of closing again, the footsteps creaked into the room. Madeline tried to sink further into the floor.

From a slightly awkward angle she watched Jonny walk straight to the window and stop almost at her feet, staring out at the view. It wasn’t the good view. The guest bedroom just got the building next door.

There was no way he wasn’t going to spot her eventually. “Ahem,” said Madeline.

He jumped. Not merely in the sense of 'started,' but he actually sprang into the air an inch or two, and landed a bit back and facing the wall above her head. Then he looked down.

“Hi, Jonny,” sighed Madeline. It was the first time this scenario had occurred, but lots of other dumb shit had and it was really par for the course. “I wasn’t expecting you to come in here.”

“I wanted to check out the view,” he said.

“There is no view.” Madeline sat up and combed her fingers through her hair. “Hey. So. I’m thawing some of the chicken. And I’m, uh.” She took a breath. “I’m sorry about Tuesday, okay?” There. That was good, let bygones by bygones, and also she’d gotten the apology in first this time, so she won.

Jonny blinked down at her. “Tuesday?”

“When I, you know, left.”

“Oh,” he said, “I get it,” and it was a disturbing amount of emphasis for him. “But what I don’t get now is why you came back.”

“Someone needed to be here,” said Madeline. It was an inadequate justification for cancelling that interview. She hadn’t even contacted them, just no-showed her way out of the running. “It’s just one interview,” she muttered. “Not that big a deal to come back today instead of tomorrow.”

“Interview?” echoed Jonny blankly.

Shit, maybe he really didn’t remember. Madeline scrambled to her feet. She was going to have to explain the whole damn thing all over again. “Do you even remember about the whole MCAT thing?”

“The what?” said Jonny.

“Fuck,” said Madeline. “You don’t.”

“Madeline, I—” Jonny paused a moment. “Madeline,” he said again, in a considering sort of way that sent an unexplained chill down her spine. “I didn’t even remember your name.”

That wasn’t a chill; that was getting stabbed in the back with an ice pick. “My name?” Madeline repeated, higher-pitched than she’d expected. “You didn’t remember me? I thought—they didn’t say it was like that! What, don’t you remember any of the last year?” Surely that wasn’t the case. Madeline hadn’t gotten that sort of impression from the doctor at all.

“Well, I—remember some of it. Lots of last spring. Not as much after that.”

And here she’d thought last spring had been all about her. No such thing. Hadn’t even warranted a permanent entry in the memory.

“Sorry,” said Jonny. He always did. He usually won.

“It’s not your fault.” Madeline swallowed. She wondered what he’d thought when he’d first walked in, and when he’d found her in here. Probably he’d wondered why she was so young. Whether there was some mistake. Someone should’ve fucking warned her.

“I’ll probably remember eventually,” Jonny said. “I’ve remembered some stuff already.”

“Right. Okay.” She had to start marinating the chicken. She brushed past Jonny, heading for the kitchen, and he trailed after.

“It’s just,” he said, and paused again. “Just, what happened on Tuesday? I think I have something wrong.”

Madeline gave him a suspicious look. What a weird-ass thing to say, and she wondered whether he wasn’t starting to remember something just now.

“Well, here’s what happened,” she said. “On Wednesday morning I left for two interviews at medical schools in California. I told you about it on Tuesday, which, yes, was stupid, and we had an argument about it. So, did you have it wrong?”

“I—maybe.” He eyed her warily. “And that was all?”

“No, of course it wasn’t,” Madeline snapped. She swung open the cabinet door and put the marinade ingredients on the counter, smack, smack, good thing she hadn’t gotten those nice glass containers.

Where to even start explaining this? Madeline hadn’t been able to explain it back in March, which was probably a good sign there was something seriously wrong with the whole thing.

“I don’t think you like me very much,” said Madeline.

“No, that can’t be right,” Jonny protested, but he sounded like his heart wasn’t in it. He’d already figured out something was wrong. He must’ve heard something from someone else, and Madeline would give a lot to know who. Then she could stab them to death with one of the kitchen knives, which were much better quality than the spice containers and would do the job nicely.

“It’s okay,” said Madeline. “I don’t like you very much either.”

A weird look passed over Jonny’s face at that. “Oh.”

“I don’t mean—oh, god.” Madeline was terrible at this. They’d had at least twenty serious talks about their relationship to date, and as far as Madeline was concerned they just made you say stupid things and worry about saying more stupid things. “I mean, I like you, I just—” Don’t like being married to you? Only that wasn’t strictly true.

Serious talks were just an opportunity for the more diplomatic person (him) to put one over on the less diplomatic person (her). It was unfair.

“I guess I forgot a lot,” Jonny said. He looked tired. The guy had amnesia. Madeline wasn’t sure if he even counted as the same Jonny who’d been completely unreasonable about sixty thousand different things over the past few months. She was going to have to work on her bedside manner.

“We’ll figure it out,” said Madeline with more confidence than she felt. “We just need to—get to know each other. In our new configuration.”

“Right,” said Jonny. He looked at her. He’d liked what he’d seen back in February of last year. Madeline sometimes lay awake at night wondering how much of this she owed to the most flattering blouse of all time.

It had gone beyond the blouse pretty quickly, though. It had gone beyond the whole idea of clothes pretty quickly.

“I mean, you’ll probably remember before too long.” But it was hard not to think about what would happen if he didn’t. There was a little voice in the back of her head going, why don’t you just start over? It was great in the beginning, right? Why don’t you thank your damn lucky stars? And this time she had the advantage of knowing what he liked and what he didn’t.

Early on, they’d resolved their few disagreements by jumping into bed. Madeline didn’t think Jonny’d be up for much jumping just yet.

He leaned back against the kitchen counter. Maybe he was thinking the same thing she was, which was: all about having sex on the kitchen counter. Hopefully not. He looked more nauseous than horny.

“It’s weird,” he said. “There must be so much you know that I don’t right now.”

“I always know a lot of things you don’t,” said Madeline, which sounded more self-aggrandizing than she’d intended. “I mean, like stuff about transgenic tomatoes.”

“I mean about me,” said Jonny.

Yeah, she sure had the advantage. It was too much advantage. It would’ve made it weird.

“I won’t use my knowledge against you,” she told him, and he didn’t look at all reassured. He played with the lid of the candle sitting on the counter. Pumpkin spice. It had been four days since she’d burned it and yet the scent still seemed to linger. Her imagination, probably.

“Look,” Madeline burst out. “You don’t have to stay here. There’s got to be someone in Chicago you can stay with that you actually remember.”

Instead of jumping on it, he suddenly started laughing. “What, I’m back here a couple hours and you’re already kicking me out of my own home?”

“Well, no, of course not,” said Madeline. “I mean, I guess someone can stay here instead, and I can stay somewhere else.” She wasn’t sure where. Dad would let her, of course, but Kara would be pissed about having to share the bedroom again. Maybe Jonny could pay for a hotel room…

Jonny looked at her for a second, then shook his head. “No, I’m supposed to go back to what I was doing before, you know, to help me remember. So that’s here. With you.”

Madeline was abruptly a thousand percent more aware of the space between them. The lack of space, because even in the big kitchen there wasn’t that much room between the island and the refrigerator.

“Oh. Well. Yeah,” she said. It wasn’t like he stopped being attractive just because he didn’t remember. And she was still the same girl from last February.

He was the one who made the first move. He stepped forward, took her chin rather firmly in one hand, and tipped her face up. His lips came down on hers. She was still holding the apple cider vinegar.

It was more exploratory than anything recent. He slid his tongue slowly along her lips and they parted. She tasted him. He tasted the same, and there was no reason for that to be surprising. His other hand came up and tangled in her hair, a gentle pull upwards. Gauging the distance and bending slightly lower.

She was on her tiptoes now, her free hand splayed across his back, and she could feel his short, sharp breaths and her heart rate picking up. Madeline thought, In three seconds I am going to drop the apple cider vinegar. I hope it doesn’t break.

But he pulled back after two. Madeline tightened her grip on the bottle. He stayed close, hands dropping to her waist, and stared down at her, eyes intent and unreadable.

“Did that,” started Madeline, swallowed and restarted, “did that feel familiar?”

“I’m not sure,” said Jonny.

Madeline wasn’t sure either.