"We're baaack!" Connie announced, a bottle of champagne in each hand.
Portman looked back and forth between her and Adam, raising a curious eyebrow at the Ring Pop rings and beach towels tied around their shoulders. Not moving from his spot on the sofa, he shook his head.
"Is there a reason that you two look like you escaped from the short bus, or is that just the new thing?"
"We're the Bad Idea Duo, thank you very much." Connie laughed, setting her shopping bags down on the counter.
"Fitting."
"Jerk."
"It's an extremely selective organization." Adam informed him, working his hardest to keep a straight face. "There are only two members in the entire world."
"No shit." Portman shrugged. "It's a duo. If there were more, it wouldn't be a duo anymore."
And...now that fucker is smarter than I am.
CTE.
It's hitting closer to home every day.
"Well, it's a duo for now."
"Okay."
"I mean, technically speaking, I have one more beach towel in my car..." Adam continued, smiling.
.
Portman sat back, laughing at the very absurdity of Adam being nice to him.
.
Twenty three years, and the closest Adam had ever come to including him in anything was one time junior year, when Crawford made a joke about Lauren Bauer being a slut. Portman had gotten to make a joke about hotdogs and hallways, which made all of the boys in the nice polo shirts laugh. Even Adam laughed, which seemed ironic coming from a guy who insisted that anything other than missionary with the lights out was for homos.
Not that Portman had heard about those things from anyone on the team, of course...
.
"I'm good. I'll leave that duo to you two special kids."
"Are you sure? We wouldn't mind adding some muscle to this dream team."
"Why couldn't you have been this nice to me a couple decades ago?"
Adam cocked his head to the side, confused.
"I...was always nice to you. Right?"
"Yeah." Portman shrugged. "Something like that."
"What? I mean, I was, wasn't I?"
"Heh, let's just say that I don't think it's a coincidence you married some chick who left Winnetka for boarding school."
"What's that supposed to mean?" He asked, his brow furrowed with concern.
.
Portman was the one who was a jerk.
Not him. Everybody agreed he was nice. The people at work. His neighbors. The other people in the skybox at Minnesota games. His brother.
He held doors and sent out Christmas newsletters and had good table manners...or at least, he had good table manners back when he could still use a fork and knife at the same time.
Now he had good table manners by the standards of a toddler with cerebral palsy.
.
"Nothin'."
"What?"
"I'm just sayin'. You're a rich kid. You do rich kid shit. You hang out with other people who do rich kid shit."
"I'm sorry."
"It's cool." Portman laughed. "You're still a fag, though."
"And you still look like Helen Keller dressed you during her Slayer phase."
"Can a deaf person go through a Metal phase?" Portman asked, now pondering this important question for himself.
I mean, I guess the vibrations ARE pretty sweet...
"I don't know." Adam shrugged. "I have a bunch of like, Patagonia and Arc'tryx in my closet, and I'm sure as hell not going to be climbing any mountains."
'Good point. I'd watch the shit out of you trying, though."
"I'd watch the shit out of me trying to climb the stairs."
"Nah. That'd just be sad." Portman pointed out, doing his best to shake away the hint of schadenfreude that suggested such a thing would actually be pretty good entertainment. "But a mountain? That'd be so sad it's hilarious."
Heh. Guess I see why HR got onto me last week.
Maybe that next sensitivity training video will stick.
April, 2001
Walking back into her dorm room, it seemed to Julie as if time back in New Hampshire had stopped. Like everything had been in suspended animation for four days, simply awaiting her return.
A pair of sweatpants lay crumpled on the floor, just as she'd left them when she got dressed to head to the airport. Beside them, a pair of sneakers, and beside those, a copy of Cosmo, still flipped open to '78 Sizzling Sex Tips'...at least 46 of which had sounded like exceptionally bad ideas when she last read them.
Nothing had changed.
The world was still exactly as she'd left it.
"How's he doing?" Ashley asked, barely looking up from her Art History assignment.
Julie shrugged.
That too was exactly as she'd left it.
Sadly.
"They weren't kidding. He's definitely a quadriplegic."
"For real?"
Ashley set her book to the side, somehow surprised at this news.
It wasn't like she knew him or anything, but still.
"Yeah."
"Crap. I'm sorry."
Unsure of what else could really be said, Julie began to tidy up the mess she'd left in her haste, folding her sweatpants and sorting through her duffel to see what should be laundered. As she went to her closet to fetch a hanger, she went ahead and grabbed her purse as well, looking down at her cellphone.
1 New Voicemail
"Hey. This is Adam." The familiar voice began, still a bit weak from everything that had happened. "I had one of the nurses dial your number for me. Anyway, I just wanted to call and make sure that you made it back alright. It was really nice to see you-I felt bad that you had to fly out here on short notice and everything, but it really meant a lot. Anyway, thank you again for everything, and I hope that I didn't disrupt too many of your plans for the week. When you get a chance, you might let me know you made it back okay. Or not. I know that you're busy. Just know that I really appreciated everything."
Placing a t-shirt on a hanger, Julie just shook her head and smiled.
Only he could make this sound like such a non-event.
"So are we actually like, wanting to do anything today?" Charlie asked, by now awake and fully dressed.
.
The once empty kitchen had been taken over, bottles of champagne and pastries and bagels all spread across the countertop. Looking out at the buffet, he couldn't help but marvel-he was pretty sure the last time he'd seen that much food in his house was when he and Shannon married in the backyard three years earlier.
.
"I don't know."
Goldberg eyed the spread, similarly impressed.
"Do you all think you picked up enough food?"
"You can't have people starving to death during pre-brunch." Connie pointed out.
"I hear that's a leading cause of death in Minnesota."
"It very much is." Adam agreed solemnly, still dressed in his sailboat cape. "I've heard they're going to start filming those Feed the Children ads here any day now."
Julie shook her head, picturing the rows of two-acre lots and 7,000 sq. ft. colonials back in his neighborhood.
"Please tell me they're going to be using your street for the shooting location."
"Well duh. They're going to feature Mrs. Olmstead next door, and her 400 lb. husband. That way, they can solicit money on two fronts: Food for needy trophy wives, and women's education, so that no other girl ever has to marry a guy who looks like Mr. Olmstead."
"Now that's an important cause." Julie laughed, taking a bite of her bagel.
"It really is." He nodded. "I mean, ever since having Caroline, stuff like that suddenly seems way more important."
Julie and Connie both shook their heads, Julie in particular wishing she had a hockey stick nearby to beat him with.
.
For all of his good qualities, she was pretty sure that a few of his attitudes towards women could have been better left in the 1950's.
.
"Women's education only matters because of Caroline?"
Adam shrugged, reaching over for a muffin as he thought about the fact that he'd gotten to see his daughter a grand total of four times in her first three years of life.
"I mean, before, I figured it took a lot of drunk dads missing a lot of dance recitals to make a Mrs. Olmstead. But now that I have missed a lot of dance recitals, the whole thing seems like, 1000% less funny."
"Such sensitivity..."
"Hey now!" He laughed, fighting the urge to wrap his arm around Julie's waist and start snuggling her right then and there. "I like to think that I'm very civilized. I don't even drag wooly mammoths through the nice parts of the cave anymore."
"I'm sure Laura's very appreciative of that."
"Oh she is. She is. She barely ever threatens to roast me over the fire anymore."
"That's just because she figures a mastodon will eat you soon."
"Considering my ability to run?" He nodded. "That's a pretty safe bet."
May 15, 2001
"So, how's it going on your end?" Julie asked, pacing the halls of her dorm as she tried not to think about how incongruous this all was.
Trying not to think about the fact that she had seriously called someone at spinal rehab to complain about roommate drama.
Maybe next time I can go down to the homeless shelter to complain about prices at the Clinique counter.
"Well," Adam laughed, lying in bed with her on speakerphone as he stared up at the ceiling tiles. "I'm really getting the hang of this whole 'eating with utensils' thing, so yeah, things are going pretty great here."
"Seriously?"
Her eyes widened at the news.
.
She'd heard that he was improving; that he'd regained some feeling in his hands and arms, and that he could control the motorized wheelchair with his wrist.
Still, this was progress.
Glamorous or not, being able to feed oneself was big. Being able to decide how much to eat, or whether to get another drink of water, or how much ketchup to put on fries meant a break from attendants. It meant privacy, and going out with friends, and eating at restaurants without too many stares.
It meant that maybe, just maybe, he'd get to be Adam Banks again someday...at least in some form.
"Of course, he's already him." She scolded herself.
He's always been him. That doesn't change with what he can or can't do.
.
"Yeah."
"That's awesome! I'm so proud of you!"
At the other end of the line, Adam chuckled.
"Heh, clearly I should have paralyzed myself a long time ago. Nobody ever used to get this excited over forks."
"Think of it as one of the perks."
"No kidding!" He agreed, studying a discolored segment of tile that he'd decided either looked like a rabbit pouring a tea kettle or a dragon sitting on the toilet, depending on his mood. "I spent my whole life getting yelled at over only scoring two goals a game, and now everyone congratulates me for spilling macaroni on myself? I'm thinking this was one of my better decisions..."
"To be fair, you were always pretty good at spilling macaroni..."
"Well, yeah. But nobody used to congratulate me on it!"
"Touche." Julie agreed. "It was definitely one of your more under-appreciated talents."
"I know, right? I think everybody deserves praise for ending up covered in scalding cheese. Not just paralyzed people."
"I think that might be your calling in life."
"To raise awareness of how everybody deserves praise for ending up covered in cheese?"
"Exactly!"
.
Strolling the cinderblock halls, she thought about how much fun he was to talk to.
About how even with everything that was going on in his own life, he could still find ways to make her feel better.
.
He was still the same smart, funny, self-deprecating guy he'd always been.
He was still as determined as ever.
All of the things that mattered-the things that ran a lot deeper and meant a lot more than his ability to dominate on the ice; the things that the newspaper articles never talked about, but were the reasons she loved him-those things hadn't changed.
She thought back to the picture of them on her bulletin board, getting ready to sled down a snow-covered hill on a tray stolen from the cafeteria, and his smile as he wrapped his arms around her.
And she couldn't help but think about how even with all of the limitations he was going to have now, she still missed him.
And not just as a friend.
"Quit being a dumbass." She reminded herself, trying to chase those thoughts from her mind.
.
After all, a quadriplegic certainly wasn't compatible with her dreams.
.
"So. Other than Ashley sexiling you, how's everything going?"
"I mean, other than that, it's fine." She assured him. "But I'm never going to be able to un-see that. Every time I go into our room now, I'm going to think about his back hair. It's like the hair left his head so it could move south for the winter..."
.
Thinking about his own family tree and the amount of hair he'd found in his brush that morning, Adam shuddered at the thought.
Women don't know how lucky they are.
"Just be glad your hair will never betray you like that."
"It was so gross."
"You're speaking to like, every male fear I have here."
"Whatever. Your hair is amazing."
"For now." He reminded her. "Half of the men in my family keep their hair for forever, and get to hang out in the nursing home looking like octogenarian game show hosts. The other half end up like Scott."
"In Scott's case, I'm pretty sure that's just the universe trying to prevent overpopulation. Every year he spent with hair added like, twenty people to the population."
"Well yeah." He agreed. "But he's still doing that. The median quality has just decreased."
"Aren't mimosas supposed to be orange?"
Adam and Connie stood around the kitchen in their beach towel capes, the drinks in their champagne glasses suspiciously lacking in color.
As Russ thought back to their conversations in the car, he couldn't help but think that if anybody's drinks should be heavier on the orange juice, it should probably be Adam's and Connie's; the patterns of substance abuse the one thing clearer than their supposed mimosas.
Adam, meanwhile, held his drink up to the light and eyed it carefully before shrugging.
"Heh, it's sort of orange-ish."
"It's see-through."
"Orange tinted see-through. Which means it's healthy. Sort of like a salad or something."
Julie shook her head.
"So healthy."
"It is." Connie reminded her. "Healthier than a regular salad, really. Because I mean, regular salads are full of fattening dressing and stuff, but this is fat free. It's just like, all fruit."
Adam nodded in agreement as the group began migrating to the living room, the majority of the Ducks already in there discussing something else.
"How have you two ever survived this long?"
Adam looked down at his drink, growing quiet for a moment. He knew that Julie was kidding, but that she also probably...wasn't.
"I honestly have no idea."
"Well, I'm glad you have. I kind of like you. Sometimes."
"I'll take that." He smiled, setting his drink down on the counter.
August 9, 2001
"You'll be such a pimp."
Julie looked down at the storage tubs and duffle bags by her closet, already half-packed for the upcoming school year; filled with gym clothes and sneakers and tight little dresses for wearing out to parties. She looked at the hockey stick leaning against her wall, and the goalie pads nearby. She felt acutely aware of the fact that she would get to be 19. Of the fact that she'd get to be free from her parents in another week; that she'd get to drink too much, and wear dresses that showed too much skin, and dance with cute guys who'd spent the summers backpacking through Europe.
As the breeze floated in through her bedroom window, she could taste the freedom New Hampshire would bring. The thrill of possibility that exists only when you're old enough to do what you want, but young enough that life's doors haven't begun to close.
And she also felt tremendously guilty, because she knew that for the boy at the other end of the phone line, none of that would be happening.
He would be preparing for a very different kind of year.
.
"I know, right?" Adam chuckled. "I mean, what's cooler than like, Stephen Hawking, but dumb?"
"Pretty sure you're not dumb. Also, you're way cuter."
"I don't know." He reminded her. "He's got that like, 'tard face thing going on, and it kind of works."
"Well don't worry. You can be a pretty big 'tard when you put your mind to it."
Sitting back at his apartment in Minnesota, Adam just shook his head.
.
He didn't want to go back to school.
Not like this.
He wanted to be handsome and interesting and capable again. He wanted to dominate on the ice, and pick pretty girls up in his arms...or at least to be able to put on his own pants.
He wanted to be the guy Julie and Laura had fallen in love with.
.
"I honestly don't even have to try at all. It all just comes naturally."
"Well, you're easily the best 'tard I know."
"Yes! Such an honor..." He laughed, trying to shake away his dread.