Antagonym

Chapter 48

You never realize how much blood stains until you're covered in it.

When you scrap your knee as a child it seems like nothing; it all washes away. Then you have arterial spray coating your forearms like paint and splattered on your neck like a serial killer; that's when you realize there's a red tinge to your hands. That's the thought that preoccupied my mind as I sat in a blue waiting room chair, trying to pick the blood out from under my cuticles which had been wedged in my best friends gushing veins ten minutes ago.

I still couldn't believe what happened. The recording was all over the breaking news on the television. I watched it footage intently the first time. The pool of crimson fluid was at least three feet in diameter. Axel and the St. Cloud center puked on the ice upon seeing the wound, while Zeke passed out. People in the audience screamed and passed out, some of them throwing up too. I was amazed I didn't pass out myself.

It took less than two seconds for doctors from both teams to flood the ice in their black shirts like a wave. The cameras flicked away from my pale face and Seb's body as soon as the camera men realized how graphic it was, instead focusing in one Beck yelling directions at people and pulling his jersey off, throwing it to Elijah. I watched Coach and Axel try and run after the gurney only to be held back, told they couldn't all fit in the ambulance. It was crowded enough with all five of us in the back.

I couldn't watch after that. I didn't want to hear the anchors compare Seb to Clint Malarchuk. The nurses turned the televisions off when them noticed my pained expression and the blood stained jerseys. I didn't even have my phone to call Sebastian's parents even though Axel already had.

"Hydrogen peroxide helps with the blood."

I looked up from my pink fingers to one of the younger nurses with bleach blonde hair and a weak smile. She was holding three pairs of scrubs, offering them to Elijah, Beck and I. We all took them, thanking her and going to change. I hadn't even taken my skates off yet.

When I emerged from the bathroom with my newly dyed jersey, pads, and skates in a black garbage bag, it became too evident that these people knew Sebastian personally. Their worried and sad faces weren't for just anyone; it was for their friend. It didn't surprise me, he interned at this emergency room as part of his training, aiding in surgeries and diagnosing orthopedic injuries.

I couldn't bare the burned of their pity.

Losing Sebastian was the last thing on my mind. At least that's what I tried to convince myself. I didn't want to think about my brother dying. I tried to distract myself by thinking of the game or my classes, but all I could focus on was the strong look masquerading on Sebastian's face as he weakly squeezed my hand. I had never seen him like that; I just hoped he could survive it.

We would walk through fire together and leave with matching burns.

Walk away like patricians.

If I wasn't still crying, I would have laughed at Seb's humor. He was trying to remind me of Christmas to make me forget. I couldn't help but dig deeper; we would walk out of this with our heads healed high, crushing our problems under our feet like the Roman emperors.

I refused to be Nero, playing the harp as my world burned.

I couldn't.

My eyes hadn't dried. Itwas like a constant flow of tears, never stoping. It was a silent cry. My tear ducts were like taps, one stream on either side of my face. My pounding head was leaned against Beck's firm shoulder, our fingers intertwined as his thumb rubbed back and forth in the back of my hand. No one said anything; we were all too worried and frantic to speak.

That was until the automatic sliding doors to the ER opened and in burst Axel, still wearing all of his pads and panting like a madman. All three of us stood up, the entire waiting rooms eyes on us. "Is he okay? What happened?" Axel rushed out while catching his breath.

"Holy shit, did you run here?" I asked, automatically noticing he hand nothing but his Quinnipiac hockey socks on his feet. We were two miles from the rink and it looked like he ran the entire way, sweat covering his forehead.

"Yeah," he huffed out while catching his breath. "I took off my skates as soon as the ambulance left and booked it two miles barefoot. My feet are bleeding but I had to be here from my brother. I just wish Zeke wasn't passed out, because he's going to be beating himself up over not being here." If anything that made me cry even more. Axel and Beck might not have been as close with Zeke, but he and Seb were almost as inseparable as Seb and I. Those were my defense brothers. I threw my arms around Axel and hugged him like my life depended on it. His hand rubbed my back calmly, trying to relax both himself and I.

"They were getting everyone out of the stadium because so many people were getting sick at all the blood, passed out people, and puking around them. There was no way I was waiting for Coach to get his car out of that lot. Last I heard Sylvia was raising hell with her title, trying to get into the guest locker rooms to bringing Elijah a change of clothes with the rest of you. Her and Finn are probably in traffic by now too."

"He's in surgery right now," I told my worried best friend when I pulled away.

"We're hoping for the best. I'm not the surgeon, but from what I could tell we did everything right," Elijah told him. When we were sitting in the waiting room when we first arrived, everyone else was staring at us in our bloodied clothes; me bawling, Beck looking deeply troubled, and Elijah stone faced. Even now he had the ridged stance of a soldier. Seb and him had only hung out once, but he knew what Sebastian meant to us and he didn't want to see his fellow hockey player lose his life like this.

It seemed like the minutes dragged on. My tears might have dried but my mind was still in the same dark place. Sebastian was everything; what was life without my best friend? I didn't want to know but sometimes we have no other choice. The world is cruel like that. It gave you the most beautiful things and let you get used to them. Everything was perfect until suddenly it wasn't. Those beautiful things are ripped away like a punishment. What do we do to deserve these things? It was like a child in timeout, but the isolation was never ending. You never got those beautiful things back.

It felt like the world was ending. What about his parents? His sister? What if they just watched their son and brother get fatally injured on national television? All these thoughts filled my head like a jackhammer, giving me a headache and tiring me out. I couldn't do this. Seb was going to be fine. He'll make it out of surgery with a smile on his face and we'll all laugh about this one day.

Deep down I couldn't shake the feeling that that wasn't true.

So I sat there in silence with my friends, zoning out and eagerly awaiting the news that would change our lives.

My eyes landed on a blonde woman in a fresh pair of scrubs. I knew her. She was the surgeon who had taken the gurney first thing upon our arrival. All three of us eagerly stood up when she approached us, Axel following our lead. Every once of hope in my body was visible in my eyes. The world had stopped all over again, like the past half hour advent even happened. I was still on that bloody ice in a halted state of time. My heart beat sounded in my ears like I was living in a horror movie.

My hand tightened on Beck's forearm, my nails digging into his caramel skin. I didn't mean to hurt him, I was just subconsciously trying to let my stress out. He was too distracted to mind.

But I knew when I saw the sorrowed look on her face what the news was. Her coworker. My roommate; my best friend. The one who was there through two suicide attempts. The man who helped me deal with my darkest demons and I with his homesickness. Sibling, child, medical student, hockey player, jokester; everything good Sebastian ever was, was forever in the past.

My best friend was dead, and there was no one to catch me as I collapsed.

My brother was gone.