Page 75 of Delay of Game
“Gags wants to talk,” Zach said firmly, while Gags looked at the ground and couldn’t meet his eye.
Nate blinked at them, surprised. He briefly ran through his conversation with Gags in the hotel room, how determined he was at insisting that he was fine. Clearly Zach had been able to get through to him in a way that Nate hadn’t. That was the thing about Zach—they complemented each other. Or they had. “Yeah, of course.”
“We should probably do this away from the rest of the team,” Zach said, and Gags looked down at his feet, looking like a guilty child.
“Okay,” Nate said, and glanced around. It would be difficult with everyone still going about their postgame routines, particularly since the routines involved the locker room, the main equipment storage and preparation area as the equipment managers rushed to get things put away and cleaned and Carolina’s equipment managers were rushing their boxes out to the bus, some of the warm-up rooms, and even the conference room where the nutritionists provided a postgame meal for anyone who wanted it.
He couldn’t just kick anyoneout; that would be too obvious.
“Follow me,” Nate said, after a pause. He took them to Coach Cote’s office, which was dark and empty. The coaching staff must have been in the video room, going over footage from the game like they didn’t have the entirety of the next day to do it.
When Gags and Zach came in after, Nate took a deep breath and locked the door. He gestured for Gags to take a seat in one of the two chairs that faced Cote’s desk, but after the kid slumped down in it and Zach sat in the other one, Nate had a moment’s sweaty panic wondering wherehewas going to sit. He didn’t want to sit in Coach’s chair, because that would seem like he was taking a position of authority he didn’t actually intend to assume; he didn’t want to sit on the desk because he didn’t want to be too intimidating looming over poor Gags in the seat.
Eventually he settled for pacing around, never staying in one place for too long, which wasn’t an ideal solution at all, but also meant that his leg wouldn’t be jiggling up and down while they talked. Gags was doing the jiggling for him, and Nate felt a momentary rush of sympathy. “Okay. So. Do you guys wanna tell me what’s going on?”
It wasn’t what he was expecting.
Sure, he had noticed that Gags was probably having some issues with anxiety—Nate knew enough to recognizethat. He’d recognized that Gags seemed to drink a little too much when they went out with the team. But he had no idea how much Gags was relying on drinking and how much he was relying on more illegal drugs. It wasn’t like cocaine was uncommon in the league, but most of the guys who did it used it in a social, party kind of situation. Not coming to the rink high. Gags kept insisting that it wasn’t an addiction issue, he could stop whenever he wanted. It was just dealing with the pressure was so fucking hard, he couldn’t handle another way of managing.
Nate didn’t know whether he believed that. They’d heard the same from Bouchard, one of the forwards that had been an alternate captain Bee’s first season with the team. He’d made a lot of promises that he hadn’t been able to keep. And here was Gags, fifteen years younger than Bouchard had been, saying the same words with manic sincerity.
Nate’s stomach sank, the sick feeling that always lurked there lurching back into full nausea. This was so far beyond his pay grade that he didn’t even know how he was going to begin to handle it.
He thought, briefly, of his weekends alone in between the seasons, the reset and recharge. He thought about Gags. He felt sick, again. Just because he had it under better control during the season didn’t make it any different, really, when it came down to it.
But Gags was still talking: “And like, I know I shouldn’t be doing that, but it’s just so fucking hard to come to the rink every day and constantly worrying about my spot on the team and whether I’m playing well and whether they’re going to send me down to the minors and now that we’re in the playoffs and we’re so far into things, it’s like...even worse, somehow, you know—”
“Gags, I knowexactlywhat you’re talking about.”
“How?”Gags demanded. His face, shadowed in the dim light of the room, was twisted up like he was in actual physical pain.
“Not all of it. I mean, like...the anxiety part. The self-doubt. I’ve had to deal with some form of it my entire life, basically? Like since elementary school at least it’s always been like my brain doesn’t shut the fuck up about anything, and if I listen to it, it’s just...it’s hard to keep going when your own brain is constantly telling you what a screwup you are. I used to throw up before games pretty much every time.”
“You did? How do youdealwith it?”
“I just kind of force myself to do it.”
“You’ve just been raw-dogging this fortwenty-seven years?”
“Uh, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that...”
“But like... Singer, you’re the captain. You’re one of the star players. How the fuck did you get here?”
“Like I said. It’s not easy. It fucking sucks sometimes. But I just have to put my head down and deal with it. Butyoudon’t have to do that.”
“No?” Gags asked, voice so dry that you could have scraped your skin on it like sandpaper. He shrugged and flicked shaggy orange bangs away from his eyes. His hair had been growing out into a pretty intense playoff mullet, and it was dampened darker with sweat.
“No,” Nate said. And as he said it, he felt, weirdly, confident about the words coming out of his mouth. “We’re not going to go to Coach about this, like Zach said. At least not right away. I want you to contact the players’ association tonight and see whether we can like. Get you set up with a therapist. You’re gonna cut it out with the substance use during the playoffs. If either Zach or I have ahintthat this is going on, especially at the rink, we aren’t going to give you the benefit of the doubt anymore.”
While he was talking, Gags’s chin set mulishly, but he didn’t argue. Zach, in the chair next to him, nodded in agreement, his arms crossed over his chest. Nate couldn’t tell what was going on in his head. It was weird, being in a situation where even a few months ago, they would have been on the same page and dealing with it together. And they stillwereon the same page, but at a weird distance where he couldn’t actually talk to Zach about how worried he was, about whether Zach thought he had done the right thing.
He couldn’t talk to him about anything.
Somehow, Nate kept going. “I trust that you wanna do the right thing for you and the right thing for the team. So I’m trusting you not to do this. We’re not going to be following you around every second holding your hand. But I want you to make the call tonight, and I want you to start working.Tonight.Do you understand me?”
Nate held out his phone and Gags, begrudgingly, took it. “Yes, Cap.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “Let’s get it handled. Because we have a round to win before the Conference finals, and you’re a big fucking part of that, buddy.”