The Hockey Star and the Ice Princess (Complete)

Ch. 40 - Heartbreak

**** ONE MONTH LATER ****

The end of January in Minnesota was so cold this year that a lot of activities were being cancelled due to the extremely low wind chill factor. You could get frostbite from being outside for just a few minutes. Unfortunately for Rachel the Winter Olympics were only a month away and missing practice was a luxury she couldn't afford. There was too much to do.

She pulled her car up at the rink and bundled up with a hat and gloves and scarf before opening the door and rushing towards the entrance as the sting of the cold air pricked her cheeks.

She pulled open the heavy glass door as she entered the rink and the all too familiar smells of Zamboni fuel, the chemical scent of artificial ice, the plastic smell of the warm rubber-coated flooring and musky dressing rooms hit her nose. She went into the rink and coach wasn't there yet so she got her duffel bag out of her locker and put on her ice skates and locked everything else back up inside it.

She did her stretches before skating out onto the ice and doing a couple laps to warm up. The coach still wasn't there yet and she looked at her cell phone. He was 10 minutes late.

"Maybe he's testing me again," she said, with a laugh. Coach was always trying to keep her on her toes and she never knew what he was going to do to make practice more interesting.

She decided to start her practice without him just like she knew he would expect. She started working on bending her back and stretching it as much as she could before working on her haircutter spin and the layback spin with a biellman. They were perfect now and she had recorded herself with her phone and watched it back and it looked exactly how she wanted it to.

She started slow, skating around the rink and doing her double lutz, triple salchows, and then working her way up to her triple lutz and quadruple lutz, taking breaks in the middle to get a drink and massage her muscles to prevent cramping just like coach had taught her.

When the entire 3 hour lesson had gone by without a word from coach she decided to go up to his office and see if he was in there and if this was another test. If not she would leave him a note telling him what a slacker he was. He would get a kick out of that.

She didn't knock on the door to his office because she was so comfortable with him that it would almost be weird to knock. She pushed open the door to the dusty office with brown carpeting and wood paneling, with walls covered in old skating photos, newspaper clippings and glass displays with all his trophies.

When she went around the boxes that were piled up full of old ice skating magazines, skating footage and used leotards, skates and tights she got to his metal desk that had the black leather chairs in front.

He wasn't sitting behind his desk. She decided to leave him a note giving him a hard time for being a slacker but as she got closer and started to go behind his desk she saw an arm stretched out on the carpet. She came around the desk and saw Coach Sumners on the floor and his face was pale and his eyes were glazed over. She sat down on the floor next to him and felt for a pulse on his neck and his skin was cold.

She wanted to bust out crying but she grabbed the phone on his desk with her shaking hands and dialed 911.

"911 What's your emergency?"

"My skating coach is on the floor and he's not breathing. I don't feel a pulse and he feels cold," she said with a trembling voice, as she started sobbing. "Please hurry! He's in the offices upstairs that overlook the ice skating rink."

"Ok. Ma'am we're sending paramedics right now. In the meantime I need you to start CPR. Put me on speakerphone and sit the phone down and do what I say."