### CHAPTER 14 - HELP
I hear banging first, loud and far away like it's coming through water, then voices layered on top of each other, then hands on my shoulders, warm through my hoodie, and I don't open my eyes because if I don't open my eyes it's not real, and if it's not real I'm not on the floor of my dorm room with pills scattered on the carpet like tiny white moons and Roman sitting across from me like I'm a bomb that might go off if he moves too fast or breathes too loud.
"Viktor." That's Maya, close, I can smell her shampoo, something fruity and clean and familiar from all those early mornings at the rink when she's still half asleep, and her voice is higher than normal, tight at the edges like she's holding it together with both hands. "Viktor, can you hear me? Can you squeeze my hand?"
I try to nod and my head is heavy, too heavy, like someone filled my skull with wet sand while I wasn't looking, and the pills are working now, everything is slow and warm and far away, muffled like I'm underwater at the bottom of a deep pool looking up at light that won't reach me.
Someone else is here, I know her voice even through the cotton in my ears, Coach Dubois, low and steady and in charge the way she is on the ice when someone falls hard. "How many did he take? Did anyone see?"
Roman answers and his voice shakes in a way I've never heard it shake before, not when he's yelling at refs, not when he's tired after a triple overtime practice, a real shake that cracks in the middle. "I don't know. Three? Four? The bottle's in Russian. It's on the floor by his hand."
"Call campus security," Coach says, and I can hear her moving, her shoes on the thin carpet, her phone already out. "Tell them we need the nurse. Now. Tell them possible overdose, student, conscious but altered."
The word overdose hangs in the air above me and I want to say no, that's not what it is, that's not what I meant, but my tongue won't work, it's thick and heavy and useless in my mouth, stuck to the roof.
Hands pick up the bottle, hands pick up my phone, hands turn me gently onto my side, and I feel the rough carpet against my cheek and I smell dust and laundry detergent and the faint metallic smell of my own sweat.
"Don't let him fall asleep," Maya says, and her hand is on my arm, squeezing hard enough to leave marks, her nails digging in just a little. "Viktor, stay with me. Open your eyes. Come on, partner, open your eyes for me. You don't get to check out on me."
I try, my eyelids won't work right, they flutter and stick and finally open a crack, and I see Roman's face upside down above me, blurry at the edges like a bad photo, and he looks scared, and I've never seen Roman scared, not on the ice when he's getting hit into the boards, not ever, and his eyes are red around the rims like he's been rubbing them hard with the heels of his hands.
"Hey," he says, quiet, just for me, his voice cracking right down the middle and dropping low. "You're okay. You're okay, man. Help's coming. Just stay with me, okay? Just keep looking at me."
I want to tell him I'm not okay, I want to tell him I'm a traitor, I want to tell him Papa told everyone back home I ran away and now half my team hates me and I can hear Papa's voice in my head saying predatel on loop so loud I can't breathe around it, but I can't get the words out because my tongue is thick and my throat is closed.
The door bangs open again and more people come in, shoes squeaking on the tile, radios crackling, and a woman in a navy blue uniform kneels next to me on the floor, and she has kind eyes and short dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, campus nurse, I remember her from orientation week when she talked about flu shots.
"Viktor? I'm Nurse Patel. Can you tell me what you took? Can you hear me?" Her voice is calm, practiced, like she's done this a hundred times.
I shake my head, or I think I do, my neck won't really move, it feels like it's made of concrete and rust.
She picks up the white bottle from the floor where it rolled under my bed and reads the label and frowns a little, just a crease between her eyebrows. "These are expired. Do you know how many you took? One? Two?"
Roman answers for me because I can't, his voice still shaking. "Three. I think three. I counted three on the floor but there might be more under something."
She nods and she doesn't yell and she doesn't look mad or disappointed or disgusted, just professional and calm, and that somehow makes my chest hurt worse, makes shame burn hot behind my ribs. "Okay. We're going to take you to health services. Just to monitor you for a few hours, check your heart. Can you stand for me? Can you try?"
I can't, my legs won't work, they feel like they belong to someone else, like they're not attached to my body anymore, like they're made of lead, and Roman and Maya each put an arm under mine and lift, and my bad ankle screams when it takes weight, a sharp hot pain shooting up my calf to my knee, and I don't care because everything is far away and soft at the edges like I'm wrapped in thick wool.
They walk me down the hall, half carrying me, and people stare, students coming back from class with backpacks, a girl with a laundry basket stopping to watch with her mouth open, a guy from the floor below pulling out his phone like he's going to film, and I want to disappear into the floor, I want the tiles to open up and swallow me whole, because shame burns hot in my chest even through the numb, shame that they see me like this, broken and carried and pathetic.
The health center is across campus and the January air is cold on my face and it helps clear my head a little, just a fraction, and they put me in a wheelchair that is cold through my jeans and hard against my back, and Nurse Patel pushes, and Roman walks next to me the whole way with his hand on my shoulder, warm and steady through my hoodie, and he doesn't let go, not once, not when we cross the street, not when we go over the bumpy bricks by the library, his thumb rubs a small circle, unconscious, steady.
In the exam room they make me sit on a paper-covered bed that crinkles loud under me every time I shift, and they take my blood pressure and the cuff squeezes tight around my arm until my fingers tingle and go numb, and they shine a bright pen light in my eyes that makes me flinch and turn away, and they ask me questions, what day is it, what year is it, who is the prime minister of Canada, what school do you go to, what did you take, and I get most of them wrong or I answer too slow because my brain is slow and thick like syrup in winter, and I feel stupid and small and like a child.
"Viktor," Nurse Patel says, sitting on the little rolling stool in front of me so we're eye level, her knees almost touching mine, her hands folded calm in her lap. "I need you to be honest with me. Did you take those pills because you wanted to hurt yourself? Did you want to die today?"
I look at the floor, at my taped ankle, at my hands twisting in my lap, at the scuffed white linoleum with the black marks on it, anywhere but her kind eyes that see too much.
"No," I whisper, and my voice is rough like I've been screaming for hours, like my throat is full of gravel and glass. "I wanted the noise to stop."
"What noise?" she asks, gentle, not pushing, just waiting.
My dad yelling in the kitchen in Saint Petersburg after he drank the whole bottle. Kirill's laugh through the locker room door when he locked me in the equipment room at fifteen. The whole team. Predatel. Traitor. The word echoing in my head on loop so loud I couldn't hear my own thoughts anymore. The message from Dima saying more than half hate me now, the kids I grew up with, the boys I shared ice with since I was nine. The screenshot of Papa's message in the parents' chat saying I stole money and ripped up my federation letter and abandoned my country. The fear that if I stop skating I'll get sent home and if I get sent home he'll be waiting.
"Everything," I say, because I don't have better words in English or in Russian, and my eyes fill hot and I blink hard and fast and stare at the ceiling tiles so I don't cry in front of her.
She nods like she understands, like she's heard it a hundred times before from other kids sitting on this same paper bed with their hands shaking. "I'm going to keep you here for a few hours to monitor your heart. The pills you took are old and you took more than the prescribed dose. That can be dangerous, it can slow your heart rate too much, it can lower your blood pressure. Do you understand?"
I nod because my throat is too tight to speak around the lump in it that feels like a stone.
"After that, I want you to talk to someone. A counselor here on campus. Not because you're in trouble. Because you're carrying a lot alone, and you shouldn't have to carry it by yourself anymore. Okay?"
I nod again, and I stare at my hands because if I look at her I might actually cry and I don't cry in front of people, I haven't since I was a kid.
She leaves and the door clicks shut soft behind her, and Maya comes in and sits on the bed next to me, close enough that our shoulders touch, and she doesn't say anything at first, she just sits and breathes with me, and I can smell her fruity shampoo and the faint smell of coffee on her jacket from this morning.
"You scared the shit out of me," she says finally, quiet, her voice thick like she's been crying or trying not to, and she wipes at her eyes quick with her sleeve. "You know that, right? I find you on the floor and I thought—" She stops and swallows. "Don't do that again."
"Sorry," I say, automatic, the word I've said my whole life to make things smaller.
"Don't be sorry. Be here." She bumps my shoulder gently with hers, careful like I'm fragile and might break. "You're an idiot, you know that? A complete and total idiot. My idiot partner."
I almost smile and it hurts my face, my cheeks feel stiff and unused. "Yeah."
"Good. As long as we're clear." She squeezes my hand once, hard, her fingers cold. "Don't do that again, Viktor. I need someone to skate with at six a.m. who doesn't complain about my music."
Roman is in the doorway, he has been there the whole time leaning against the frame with his arms crossed tight across his chest like he's holding himself together with sheer force, and he steps in now, his sneakers squeaking on the floor.
"Can I—" He stops and looks at Maya, his jaw working, his eyes red. "Can I talk to him alone for a minute? Please?"
Maya stands and squeezes my hand again, then my shoulder. "I'll be right outside in the waiting room. Text if you need me. Or yell. I'll hear you. I'll come running."
She leaves and the door closes soft behind her, and Roman sits in the chair Nurse Patel left and he leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and he looks tired in a way I've never seen, his eyes red around the edges, his hair messed up like he's been running his hands through it over and over.
"You could have died," he says, no hello, no how are you, just that, blunt and raw and shaking. "Do you get that? Do you understand that?"
"I didn't," I say, because it's true and it's all I have to offer him, and my voice sounds small in the big room.
"That's not the point." His voice cracks right down the middle and he looks away at the wall, at the poster about flu shots. "I walk in and you're on the floor with pills everywhere and you tell me to mind my business. That's not— Viktor, that's not okay. That's not ever okay."
"I know," I whisper, and I pick at the frayed tape on my ankle because I can't look at his face when he looks like that.
"Do you?" He looks up at me and his eyes are red and wet and angry, but not at me, I realize, at the situation, at himself. "Because I've lived with you for three weeks and I know you don't sleep and I know you don't eat enough and I know you skate until you can't walk and I thought that was just you being you, intense, focused, Russian super-athlete who doesn't need anyone. I didn't know you were—" He stops and swallows hard, his throat working. "I didn't know you were hurting like that. I didn't see it."
I keep picking at the tape because my hands need something to do so they don't shake. "Nobody knows. Nobody is supposed to know."
"Tell me," he says, quiet but firm, not a request, an anchor. "Tell me what happened today. The real thing, not the bullshit version."
So I do. My voice shakes at first, then steadies as I go. I tell him about Kirill's message, the word predatel, the screenshot. I tell him about Papa going to the rink drunk and telling the whole club I'm a traitor, telling the parents I stole money and ripped up my federation letter and said I hated Russia. I tell him about Dima saying more than half the team hates me now, the kids I grew up with, the boys I shared ice with since I was nine years old. I tell him about the panic and the noise in my head getting so loud I couldn't breathe around it, and about the pills I brought from home in that little zip pocket because Mama made me pack them just in case, and how I took three because one wasn't making it stop and I just wanted quiet.
He listens the whole time, he doesn't interrupt, he doesn't look away, he doesn't check his phone, he just watches my face like he's memorizing every word, his hands clasped tight between his knees until his knuckles go white.
When I'm done he's quiet for a long time, so long I can hear the clock ticking on the wall and the muffled voices of nurses in the hallway and the beep of a machine somewhere.
"My dad left when I was twelve," he says finally, his voice low, looking down at his hands, at the scars across his knuckles from hockey fights. "Just walked out one morning before school. No note, no fight, no warning, just gone. My mom told everyone he got a job in Alberta in the oil fields, made good money. He didn't. He just didn't want us anymore. Didn't want the kid who cried when he lost games. For two years I thought if I was better at hockey, if I scored more goals, if I was the best on every single team, he'd come back and see and he'd be proud."
He looks up at me, and his eyes are wet and honest. "He didn't. He never even called on my birthday. Not once in six years."
I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything, I just sit with it, with him, in the quiet room that smells like antiseptic and old coffee.
"I'm not going anywhere," he says, looking right at me, steady and sure. "Even if you tell me to mind my business a hundred times. Even if you hate me tomorrow. I'm your roommate. That means something to me. You get that? You're stuck with me."
My throat closes up, not panic, something else, something warm and painful and terrifying all at once, like a muscle I haven't used in years stretching.
"Okay," I whisper, because it's all I can get out past the lump.
He reaches out across the space between us, hesitates in the air for a second like he's not sure I'll let him, then puts his big warm hand on my knee, just for a second, just a quick press, steady and grounding and real. "Okay," he repeats, softer, like a promise.
Nurse Patel comes back in with her clipboard, and she smiles a little when she sees us, sees his hand on my knee. "Your vitals are stable. You're lucky, Viktor. Those pills were old but taking three at once could have slowed your heart too much, especially with your low body weight and how little you eat and how much you train. You need to throw the rest away when you get back to your dorm, all of them, flush them."
I nod because my voice still won't work right.
"I've booked you an appointment with counseling services for tomorrow at 10 a.m.," she says, looking at me over her glasses, kind but firm, no room for argument. "It's not optional if you want to keep your university housing, and it's also not punishment. It's help. It's support. Do you understand the difference?"
I nod again, and this time I mean it, I feel it.
She looks at Roman. "You staying with him tonight? Making sure he's not alone?"
Roman looks at me, not her, asking without words, giving me the choice, giving me control. "If he wants me to."
I think about going back to the room alone, about the pills on the floor that aren't there anymore, about the quiet that gets too loud when I'm by myself, and my chest feels tight at the thought of being alone tonight with my own head.
"Yeah," I say, my voice small in the big room. "Stay."
Roman nods once, sure and solid. "I'll stay. All night."
Maya drives us back in her old Honda that smells like old coffee and vanilla air freshener and has a crack in the windshield shaped like a spiderweb, and she doesn't play music, she just drives with both hands on the wheel at ten and two like her driving instructor taught her, and Roman sits in the back seat with me, and his shoulder touches mine the whole ride, warm and solid through our jackets, and he doesn't move away, not once, not even when we go around corners and I lean into him without meaning to.
In the room the pills are gone and the floor is clean and someone, probably Maya while we were at the health center, picked up my clothes and folded them neatly on my bed and put my skates back in my bag and zipped it closed, and the white bottle is gone too, thrown away somewhere I won't find it.
I sit on my bed and Roman sits on his and we don't turn the lights on, the room is dark except for the orange streetlight coming through the blinds in stripes across the floor and across our beds.
"Viktor?" he says into the dark after a while, his voice quiet and careful.
"Yeah?" I answer, staring at the ceiling I know by heart now.
"You're not a traitor."
I close my eyes and a tear slides down my cheek hot and fast and I let it fall onto my pillow because I am too tired to wipe it away, too tired to pretend I'm not crying.
"Thanks," I whisper, and my voice breaks in the middle of the word like thin ice.
He doesn't answer, he just breathes, slow and even, in and out, a steady rhythm I can follow.
I fall asleep to the sound of him breathing across the room, and for the first time since I left Saint Petersburg with a bag tied shut with a shoelace and Mama crying in the kitchen, the noise in my head is finally, blessedly quiet.