In Every Universe

8. Cameron

EIGHT

CAMERON

It took some finagling, but Cameron was granted a maintenance day from practice so he could take Zacky to his MRI follow-up appointment. Coach Hoffman saw their bond in action every night, and he knew—everyone knew—that they were closer than two teammates normally were. He was gracious when Cameron asked him and requested to be updated with how Zacky’s health was coming. Everyone was worried about him. Cameron wasn’t the only one who cared about him, and he was grateful for the communal feeling, especially since they were away from their actual families.

“Mr. Porter,” his doctor greeted, shaking his hand and then looking to Cameron. “Is this your partner?”

“He’s my emergency contact,” Zacky said after a bit of hesitation. It was as good of a title as Cameron could ask for. They sat in a meeting room across a small table from the doctor, who gave Zacky a folder of notes.

“The MRI is showing a severe amount of damage to the hippocampus. In your initial assessments, you reported significant memory loss. Has any of that memory come back to you?”

“No. That same period of time is still wiped out.”

Cameron knew Zacky had a number of memories from that time period, but if Zacky wasn’t going to bring it up, neither would Cameron.

“It’s promising that you can encode new memories. Things would be more complicated if you couldn’t. The bad news is that you may never recover that lost time.”

Under the table, Zacky found Cameron’s hand, and Cameron squeezed.

“Oh” was all that Zacky could get out.

The doctor discussed next steps and monitoring, and Zacky signed a form that would allow his neurologist to work with the team medical staff as he worked toward getting back on the ice.

Zacky didn’t drop Cameron’s hand as they left the appointment and walked to the parking garage. He needed the comfort, and it was nice, getting to be this person for Zacky. His emergency contact. The hand he held when he was scared.

Their car doors thunked closed, and Zacky covered his face with his hands.

“Why is my brain so wrong ?” he asked, voice quiet and anguished.

Cameron put a hand on his thigh. Zacky dropped one of his hands to cover it.

“I want to fix it for you,” Cameron admitted.

“I wish you could.”

“Is there anything I can do differently?”

“You skipped practice to go to the doctor with me. That’s more than I could ask for.”

“Am I really your emergency contact?”

“Yeah, of course,” Zacky said, like it was obvious.

“You’re mine too.” Cameron laughed. They had never talked about it, but it made sense, since they were nearly always in the same place as each other. “Do you want to go get ice cream?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll take you to Mega Scoop. It’s your favorite.”

“I’ve—”

“Never been there. I know. You’re going to love it.”

He waited until he saw the smallest hint of a smile on Zacky’s face before turning the car on and putting his seat belt on. As usual, the car connected to Zacky’s phone by default—the way things should be—and he handed it over to Cameron so Cameron could be his eyes. Slowly, they were going through Zacky’s Spotify playlists as Zacky got familiar with his current taste in music. The influence of being in a locker room every day apparently meant there wasn’t a ton of overlap between what he listened to in this universe and where he came from.

They listened to songs Zacky used to sing at the top of his lungs, turning the volume up and opening the sunroof on nice Dallas days as they drove to and from the arena, and Zacky bopped his head along to the beat.

The ice cream shop was across town from the doctor, so they got through a good chunk of the playlist. And when a slower song came on, and Cameron saw Zacky rest his head on the passenger window, he put his hand back on Zacky’s thigh to remind him that Cameron was still there. Would always be there for him.

The ice cream shop also served a small menu of hot food, so they got hot dogs and fries because Zacky heard Cameron’s stomach rumble and refused to proceed with ice cream until Cameron had real food. “You’re fucking crabby when you’re running off of only sugar. This is a service to myself,” he joked. Every time Zacky did something so deeply the two of them , the hope in Cameron’s chest grew. Zacky was still there. He was still Cameron’s best friend. And in the scope of their lives, what was three lost years? They had forever to make new memories together.

They sat at a table as they ate, discussing the podcasts Zacky had finally relented and started listening to because he was that bored. They were all hockey podcasts—he had a lot to catch up on. He said he’d followed the YellowJackets pretty closely but hadn’t been following the rest of the league. Though he claimed he knew what the Jackets had been up to, there was enough discrepancy that he felt the need to catch up.

Cameron didn’t care. He was talking about hockey with his best friend, which was only one notch below playing hockey with his best friend, his favorite thing in the world.

“You have my permission to eat ice cream now,” Zacky said, their table reduced to wrappers and the little plastic baskets their meals came in.

“Do you trust me to get you your favorite?” Cameron asked as he gathered up their trash. “Because I don’t think you’re going to want it if I tell you what it is first.”

Zacky looked at him skeptically. Still, he nodded. “I trust you.”

Cameron headed to the counter, and Zacky put his hands in the pockets of his light jacket, pulling it closer around him. Instead of getting to spend the few minutes scrolling his phone like he normally would, Zacky people-watched as folks walked past the little shop. Backlit by the glow of the window, Cameron was reminded of how nice his profile was.

“Can I get you something?” the kid working behind the counter asked, impatient, like he had asked more than once.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, giving his order and handing over his card. He put a five in the tip jar as the kid scooped their ice cream.

He got Zacky’s attention back as he brought their ice cream over and set Zacky’s in front of him.

“What is it?”

“Take a bite.” Cameron took a bite of his own chocolate fudge brownie. Normal. Predictable.

Zacky scooped up some of the ice cream and the sauce on top and took a bite.

“That’s fucking good,” he said, going back for a second bite. “What am I tasting?”

Cameron smiled. “Buttered popcorn with caramel sauce.”

“ What ? How did this become my favorite?”

“I ordered it one day, and you took one bite of it and stole it from me. I had to eat your plain vanilla and hot fudge.”

“Like that’s a hardship,” Zacky said through another bite. It hadn’t been a hardship at all.

“I don’t have a problem doing shit that makes you happy.” Zacky blushed, and Cameron remembered that Zacky existed in a headspace where he was very much in love with Cameron. He should probably keep anything that could sound like flirting to a minimum.

Might be difficult with how much the boys made fun of them for flirting with each other when they were…being them.

“You’re right that I never would have picked this,” Zacky said, scooping out the last bite of ice cream and dropping his spoon into his cup. “And I probably would have turned it down if you told me what it was first.”

The pride Cameron felt at being able to chauffeur Zacky directly to his favorite ice cream flavor without having to work through options was a pretty low bar for achievements, given it was something the two of them had already spent the time figuring out together, but he’d take it. To Zacky, there was magic in it, and that was enough for Cameron.

They got home in the late afternoon, and Zacky went to take a nap. Cameron said he’d wake him up for dinner.

Cameron pulled up his group text with Elliott, Shane, and Micah and updated them on Zacky’s status, then sent a message to Coach and to Zacky’s mom, who called him less than a minute after he pressed Send. He read Zacky’s scan results to her and reassured her that yeah, he was missing memories and he was dealing with bad concussion symptoms still, but he otherwise was doing okay.

“Cameron, thank you for being there with him. I’ve got my ticket set for when you’re on the road trip in a couple weeks, and of course his dad and I are worried out of our minds, but we’re grateful you’re there taking care of him. We know you’re doing the best job.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

He promised to have Zacky call her after dinner, and then for the hour he had to waste between then and starting dinner, he googled the best app to print photos through, downloaded it, and started uploading photos from the past three years. He was indiscriminate, and when he finished picking out images, he’d ended up with over three hundred.

Well, they had a lot of ground to cover, and it wasn’t like Cameron could make a PowerPoint.