Puck Block : A Brother’s Best Friend Hockey Romance (Bexley U)

“How could you keep this from me?” Emory’s eyes drive into mine, and although we’re almost the same height, his tone tells me he’s looking down at me.

I chuckle sarcastically. “Do you know how long I’ve refrained from admitting to myself that I love her? Let alone confide in you about it?”

Emory grips me tightly. “I’m talking about her not taking her insulin!”

“Because she trusted me!” I stress. “And I had it under control. She stopped messing with her doses the second I caught on! Do you even want to know why she was messing with them?”

Emory scoffs, and I’m instantly frustrated.

“She was trying to make it to where her levels weren’t stabilized so the doctor wouldn’t give her the okay for an insulin pump.”

“She’s so insecure about it that she’s willing to risk going into DKA again?!”

I shove his hand off my neck even though the movement makes the room tilt. “No, Emory! She found out that your parents were struggling to pay for things. The pump is thousands of dollars. She…” I try to calm down. “She was trying to delay the process until she found a way to pay for it herself.”

Emory’s eyebrows are furrowed with anger, but I refuse to back down now.

“And you can act like I’m not good enough for her, but I know that I am. No one will love her like I do, and no one is more loyal to her than I am, so just fuck off, Emory.” I push past him, and he tries to stop me, but I’m seething. “I even attempted to go to my father to ask for money so I could pay for her pump and future doses—and to save your parents’ house—so tell me again that I can’t take care of her, because the lengths I’m willing to go for her are beyond what you could expect.”

Emory’s mouth slams shut, and I flex my jaw. I pull the IV from my arm and toss it to the ground. Then, I stomp over to her purse and grab it. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you right away about us, but I’m not sorry for loving her. I’m not sorry for keeping her trust and for constantly watching out for her…even if that means keeping something from you and your parents.”

He steps forward. “Where are you going?”

I throw my hands up and raise my voice. “I’m going to find her because she needs her phone to track her sugar levels, and she probably needs her insulin!”

I open the door, but his solemn voice stops me.

“Why her? Why now?”

I peer over my shoulder at my best friend. “How could there be anyone else when she exists?”

My heart aches with the truth, and I turn to go find her.

I step out into the hallway, but I quickly move backward when I’m almost run over by an empty rolling bed. I follow the rushing nurses and glance down the hall.

Emory bumps into me, and I grunt.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

It’s chaos.

A doctor follows the commotion, and an alert comes over the intercom.

“Code blue on floor one. Code blue on floor one.” 

Anxiety rises to the surface.

There’s a flashback tapping me on the shoulder, but I ignore the debilitating memory and run toward the mayhem.

Emory calls after me, and he probably thinks I’m trying to run out of the hospital to avoid another panic attack, but I’m not. The hallway sways, and a wave of nausea almost takes me down. I’m not sure if it’s fear or the concussion, but either way, neither of those things stops me.

“Taytum!” I shout.

Dr. McCathy turns and is shocked to see me. I dump Taytum’s purse out on the ground and look for her insulin. I scatter everything around. I fiddle with her manual glucose monitor, the strips, and even her glucose tablets, but I can’t find her insulin pen. “Where the fuck is it?”

I shake my head. Never mind that.

I enter her phone’s password and search for her last sugar reading.  Doctor McCarthy takes it, and his brow furrows. “When was her last injection?”

“I don’t know. I think she gave herself insulin right before I got hit. So…fuck, I don’t know. An hour ago?”

Dr. McCarthy spouts off a list of instructions to the nurses, but I hear nothing. The blood drains from my face when they lift her lifeless body onto the gurney and rush her down the hallway and behind the swinging doors. I want to follow after them and hover over their shoulders to make sure they’re doing everything they can, but I stay with Dr. McCarthy and tell him everything I can think of that will help.

“Her sugar has been all over the place.” I’m certain he’s already aware, but I add it anyway. “She was messing with her insulin dosing a couple of weeks ago and–”

“Wait, what?” Shock ripples over his face. “What do you mean?”

I try to slow my words. “She’s taking the full doses now, but up until recently, she was spacing them out and not taking as much as she should. Or taking too much.” I shake my head. “She found out how much the pump is, and her parents have been struggling to pay for her insulin, so–”

“Jesus!” Dr. McCarthy starts to walk away. “Okay, that’s helpful. She’s probably in another DKA episode.”

“What? I’m coming with you. I’ll wait outside her room. I don’t care, but I’m not just going to sit here when you have the love of my life in some room while she’s in a possible diabetic coma!”

Dr. McCarthy spins around and grabs my arms. “You have a concussion. You’re shirtless and frantic. I promise you she’s going to be fine. I will fix her.”

He turns, and I know I’m only going to add to the chaos if I fight it and follow him, so I go the opposite direction and meet Emory.

He’s paralyzed with fear. He’s in the same spot I left him in, even with some of our teammates standing around with worried looks on their faces. They likely saw the entire thing.

I bypass them and snap my fingers in front of Emory’s face. “Emory!”

He meets my eyes slowly, and my bare chest is covered with goosebumps.

“Call your parents. Tell them it’s an emergency.”

Theo speaks up. “They’re already on their way because of your concussion.”

Fuck my concussion.

Claire runs over to me from the nurses’ desk. “She’s on floor se–”

“Floor seven,” I finish for her. “The MICU. I know.” It’s the same floor my mother died on. But regardless, I’m going up there.

“Someone get me a fucking shirt!” I shout.

Three of my teammates rip the shirts off their backs and hand them to me. I grab one, pull the cotton on over my head, and haul Emory over to the elevator. The door closes, and for the first time since being in this hospital, I’m not panicked because of the past.

I’m panicked because I might lose the love of my life.

“What?” Mary-Ann’s hand covers her mouth in shock.

Dr. McCarthy briefly looks at me standing ramrod straight beside Emory and Taytum’s dad. “She’s going to be okay. We’re pumping her full of fluids, and we’ve got her blood sugar leveled with insulin. She’s woken up a couple of times, but she’s drowsy.” He lowers his voice. “But we need to discuss the reason why she’s back in the MICU.”

Taytum’s dad scrutinizes him. “What do you mean?”

Dr. McCarthy looks at me briefly, and I step forward. “Let me.”

He ushers his hand out. “I’ll be over here to give your family some privacy.”

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I’m less on edge than before with the confirmation that Taytum will be okay, but there’s a weight on my shoulders that doesn’t let up when I stare her parents in the face. Jay is the one who taught me hockey. He was the one who took Emory and me to practice, and his encouragement still lingers in the back of my head from time to time. Mary-Ann always made sure I had a warm meal at night, a clean uniform, and enough love to make up for my shitty parent situation.

They’re both going to feel so betrayed.

“A few weeks ago, Taytum almost fainted.”

“Again?” her mom asks.

I nod. “That’s when I found out that her blood sugar was completely out of sync. She admitted that she wasn’t using the right dosage because she found out that you guys were having a hard time affording it. She was trying to screw up her levels so that Dr. McCarthy wouldn’t push the insulin pump yet.”

“Oh my god.”

I keep my gaze locked with Jay, even with Mary-Ann muttering under her breath. His neck is gradually becoming redder with anger, but I’m willing to deal with it for Taytum.

He inhales sharply. “And you didn’t think to tell us?”

“I did. I even threatened it.” I shake my head with frustration. “I thought I had it under control. I even injected her myself with the insulin from time to time. I went to the pharmacy and filled the prescription for her.” My voice begins to shake, and I pinch the bridge of my nose to keep myself grounded.

Mary-Ann starts to cry, and I wince. “You should have told us! How could you not tell us? After everything?”

“Because she trusted me. I wasn’t going to betray her trust.”

“Well, we trusted you!” she interrupts. “You were supposed to be watching out for her. Both of you were!”

Emory remains quiet, and I don’t dare look at him for help. He hates me more than they do at the moment.

“I know. I understand why you’re upset with me.” I shut my eyes for a second to regain my confidence. “But if I have to pick between her trust and yours, I choose hers.”

Both her parents are shocked, and I attempt to stick up for Taytum, because I know they’re probably just as angry at her as they are with me. “I’m sorry, but Taytum was just trying–”

Emory steps forward. “Stop!”

We all turn at his sudden outburst. Emory’s fists flex by his sides, and the veins along his hands stick out further when he bounces his attention in between the three of us. I know what he’s about to say, and it’s only going to add gasoline onto the fire. They’re going to fucking kill me. 

“Taytum would probably be dead if it weren’t for him.” Emory moves his attention to his parents. “How can you be angry with someone who has done nothing but be there for Taytum since the very moment he met her?” He laughs sarcastically. “Did you guys know that Ford researched diabetes for twelve hours straight the day after she was diagnosed? Or that he went to the store and bought us both glucose tablets and a blood sugar monitor in case something happened while she was with us and didn’t have hers?”

I’m dumbfounded that no less than an hour ago, he was threatening my life, but now, he’s sticking up for me.

Emory catches my eye, and although I would never consider him to be a soft guy, the look he gives me is close enough. “He’s even attempted to call his father for money so he can pay for her medicine and save our house.”

A zip of unease rips up my spine. It’s not something I want credit for, especially when it has to do with my father.

Jay and Mary-Ann whip their attention to me. “What?”

“Don’t look at me like I’m a hero,” I add. “Not until Emory tells you the rest.”

“The rest?” Jay asks.

Emory’s hand falls to my shoulder, and I stagger with confusion. “He loves her. He loves her so much that he’s willing to contact the one man he hates more than anything just so he can take care of her.” He pauses. “And us.”

My throat is tight.

Emory sighs. “She loves him too. When she’s in trouble or scared, she turns right to him. And he’s always there. Of course he isn’t going to betray her trust. Why would we want him to?”

They remain quiet, and we all just stand and stare at each other until Dr. McCarthy interjects. “Maybe now would be a good time for you to go get that CT.”

“Oh my god, your concussion!” Mary-Ann covers her mouth with her hands again.

“I’m fine,” I reiterate to the doctor. “I’m not leaving until I see her.”

“Well, then go see her, because you need to get your CT. I’ve seen you sway three times while standing here.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Taytum is going to be okay. DKA is serious, but we’ve caught it in time. We know how to treat it, and you sped up the process by telling me about her missing doses.”

“She never should have missed them in the first place,” I say with guilt.

Jay steps forward and nudges me toward the door. “Go see my daughter, Ford. Emory is right. Your name has always been first out of her mouth when she needs someone, so I’m betting she wants to see you.”

I’d be a fool to question him.

So, I walk off with Dr. McCarthy to lay eyes on my girl.