Loved Twice by the Hockey Star novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Half

Erik accuses her of crippling his brother and running; she tells him their daughter has leukemia and he's her best donor, and he gets tested that night over his father's objections, until his brother steps off the elevator.

Nobody in the garage breathed.

The goalie found something fascinating about his shoes.

The young winger slowly lowered a stuffed bear into the bus.

Erik stared at me.

"Six," he said.

"She was born July 30th. In Fargo."

I watched him count backward.

I'd done the same math every night for seven years.

"You were pregnant." His voice cracked on it. "On that road. You were pregnant?"

"Six weeks. I was going to tell you on Christmas."

He took a step toward me and stopped.

"You left Nils in a ditch with his leg crushed," he said. "Then you walked out of the hospital and you never called. Not once. Not even to say you were alive."

"I know."

"Do you know what that did to him? To me?"

"I know, Erik."

"Stop saying you know!"

It bounced off the concrete.

A bus driver looked up from his phone.

I didn't defend myself.

I didn't have a defense.

I'd woken up in an ER with stitches in my eyebrow and his father telling me what I'd done.

I'd believed him every day since.

"You can hate me," I said. "Hate me upstairs. She's got leukemia. It came back in October."

His face went gray.

"She needs a stem cell transplant. There's no match in the registry. My half won't take. Something in her blood fights it."

I made myself say the rest.

"Her best chance is a parent. That's you."

He put both hands on top of his head and turned in a full circle.

"Jesus. Jesus Christ, Britta."

The elevator dinged behind us.

Dag came out of it fast for a big man.

"Don't say another word to her," he said. "Not one. Not without a lawyer."

"Dad."

"She's been gone seven years and she shows up with a kid the week before Christmas? Use your head, son. Paternity test first. Then lawyers. Then we talk."

Erik looked at his father.

Then at me.

Then he walked past Dag to the elevator and held the door open with one hand.

"Where do they do the swab?"

Dag said his name the way he used to say it from the stands.

Erik didn't turn around.

I got in the elevator in my socks.

The doors closed on his father's face.

The transplant coordinator was still on the sixth floor at nine at night, which tells you how badly they wanted a donor.

She swabbed the inside of his cheek with a long cotton stick and didn't ask a single question.

She didn't need to.

She'd seen Ingrid's tooth.

Afterward he stood outside room 614 and looked through the glass.

Ingrid was asleep sideways across the bed with my old photo of him under her cheek.

"Is that me?"

"Lake Superior. The summer we met."

"I look like an idiot."

"You were an idiot."

"I still have those shorts."

"Burn them."

He almost laughed.

Then he put his forehead against the glass and didn't.

Ingrid woke up the way she always does, all at once, already talking.

"You came back!"

She pointed at him through the door.

I let him in.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

She shoved her doll at him.

"Can you braid? I don't have hair. But Miss Pickles does."

"I can tape a stick."

"That's not braiding."

"It's similar."

"It's not," Ingrid said. "Mommy, tell him."

"It's not," I said.

He took the doll.

His fingers were too big for it.

He did it anyway, three lumpy strands over and under, his tongue in the corner of his mouth, the way he used to tape his sticks in my kitchen.

Ingrid supervised every pass.

"Too loose."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now it's crooked."

"Like my tooth," he said, and showed her.

She showed him hers.

They both stared.

I had to walk out into the hall.

He came out ten minutes later.

She'd fallen asleep holding his thumb, and he'd had to wiggle free.

"Did she always do that? Fall asleep mid-sentence?"

"Since she was born."

"I do that."

"I remember."

We stood there in the hum of the machines.

"I looked for you," he said. "Seven years. Investigators. A reward. I called every hospital in four states the week she would have been born, if I'd known there was a she."

"I know."

"You keep saying that."

"I saw the tape on your sticks. The B."

He looked down at his hands.

"Every game," he said. "The press calls you the girl on the tape. They think it's for luck."

"Isn't it?"

"It's so you'd see it," he said. "Wherever you were."

I didn't trust my voice.

The elevator dinged at the end of the hall.

The doors opened.

A man stepped out with a hitch in his walk, a beard, and headphones around his neck.

His left leg didn't bend quite right at the knee.

Erik went rigid beside me.

Nils Haugland smiled at me.

"Hello, Britta," he said. "Dad said you'd crawl back."

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