The noise of the crowd was on fire. The tension among the twelve players on the ice was great. I needed to win this game. I needed to win it for my father. Sweat dripped down my face and I tasted the saltiness of it as it dripped down my lip and off my face. The speech that our coach played before every game was running through my head. All that I had built up to came down to these final twenty seconds, we were tied at 0-0, double overtime, no one wanted to go into shoutouts.
The referee signaled that the timeout was over we broke away from our coach and team on the bench. I looked over at my twin sister, Juliette, and she caught my glance, I nodded at her and then looked at my other teammates, each wearing the same expression on their faces. It seemed to say; This is it folks, this is the final run, It’s now or never. The referee blew his whistle, getting impatient, and I turned from my bench and skated towards the faceoff circle on the right side of our defensive zone.
The referee showed the puck and everyone got set, I blocked out the noise of the crowd and focused at the task at hand. I quickly examined the situation; the other team pulled their goalie, so it was six on five in their favor. I just needed to get the puck down on their end and score in twenty seconds, no big deal. The referee blew his whistle and dropped the puck.
Everything happened so quickly, I won the faceoff, tipping the puck behind me to my right wing, Stevie Shea, who shot it back to me as I slipped past two boys from the other team. Regaining the puck, I outskated the other team heading towards their net, only problem, There was one defender left in front of me in between me and the net. 5 seconds left on the clock. I deked the kid and pushed the puck toward the net.
From there everything was a blur, The kid tripped me out of anger, the puck slid across the goal line, the clock ran out, my head smashed on the ice, and everything went black.

Then things got weird. I was suddenly sitting in the backseat of a car, as it drove down a road surrounded by woods. I looked around at the people in the front seat, I did a double take as I noticed that the driver was my father and I was looking at me, sitting in the passenger seat. my head swam, I took a shaky breath and sat back into my seat. Thousands of questions ran through my head. Why was I here? What’s happening? Then I realized where I was right as it happened, I was about to watch my father die. The deer jumped into the street and I screamed at the top of my lungs for my dad to turn the car around. The car swerved and everything became slow motion. The driver’s side slammed right into the deer and sent the car screeching and skidding towards the edge of the bridge, where the car flew right off and tumbled into the river. The next thing I knew I was surrounded by water and I couldn’t breathe…

Then, all of the sudden, I was back to being in the rink, but of course I wasn’t myself again. I looked down towards where my head hit the ice, I wasn’t even in my own body! I was nothing but a ghost in my own lifetime. I blinked twice and looked down, I was wearing a flowing, white dress, something you’d never catch me dead in, but that was exactly what I was, wasn’t I? I looked around, my twin sister, Juliette, who was my mirror image, was sobbing her face in my boyfriend, Ferris’s, shoulder, his eyes crying tears I never thought I’d see him cry before. I looked over to the other side of the rink, the other team was even distraught, some were even crying. The kid who tripped me, even sat in the corner of his bench, enveloped in a state of shock. How bad was I?
I walked over to where the paramedics and my coaches were huddled around, I assumed my body was lying on the ice in the middle of them. There was a gap that I slid into, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, my helmet was cracked in half, they had probably cut it off my head, and my head was lying on the ice, a flow of blood coming from my right ear. They rushed a stretcher over and carefully lifted my body up and on to it. I was rushed quickly out of the rink and into the back of the ambulance, I followed, knowing no one could see me, and I slipped into the back of the ambulance along with the paramedics, Juliette, and Ferris, they appeared to have quickly thrown their skates off and went in socks. Juliette, who was crying reached out and grabbed my hand.

I, once again, left the present scene and traveled back into the the past. This time I sat on the bench watching a game that happened 4 years ago, when Juliette and I were twelve. I watched as I took a check to the boards and completely shattered my arm near the elbow. Young Juliette immediately rushed to side of the young me. I left the bench and walked onto the ice towards the younger versions of me and Juliette. Young Juliette knelt besides me and was saying things of comfort to young me as I screamed and cried of the pain it caused me. The ambulance had soon come and young Juliette took her skates off as they were loading young me onto the stretcher. She walked out with them and climbed into the back of the ambulance, I followed. As they started to move, I watched as young Juliette grabbed the hand of young me.

When I returned to the present, they were rushing me into a room in the ICU. Exactly known as the Intensive Care Unit. They hooked me up to all these different machines. I heard a couple of them whispering about how bad this really was, none of them seemed to know what was wrong with me. I slipped through the doorway to my room just as they closed it. I sat in a chair in the corner of the room, even though I knew none of them could see me, I still had an urge to hide myself. Juliette sat in a chair pulled right up next to my bed, she was holding my hand again, the tears had stopped coming but her face was racked with sadness.
Ferris entered the room, he face looked like he had just been to a funeral. Juliette looked up at him and her eyes filled with tears. “What did they say?” She asked.
“It’s not good. Adelaide is in a coma, they can’t do much about it except keep her on life support. The only thing about this coma is that if her right ear doesn’t stop bleeding then she…” Ferris cut short and bit his lip.
“Then she what, Ferris?” Juliette’s voice quavered.
“Then she could die.” Ferris let loosed and cried and Juliette, let go of my body’s hand and embraced him. Juliette comforted him until he stopped crying.
“Ferris, it won’t come to that okay. They say that when people are in comas they can still hear everything we say to them or that is said in the room. If we keep a positive attitude, there’ll be a positive outcome, okay?” Juliette broke away from the hug, “Come on, let’s get changed, we’re still in our equipment.”
Ferris nodded and wiped his eyes. He walked over to the bed and kissed the cheek of my body. Then they both left. As soon as they left a nurse walked in to check the machines that they had hooked up to me, I had gotten up from the corner and walked right up the nurse and looked down at my body. I looked like death. I was pale from losing blood from my ear, not to mention that even after the nurse changed my bandages, was still bleeding.
Just before the nurse was about to leave, she bent over and whispered something in my left ear, “It’s all up to you know, Adelaide, whether you live or die, you control that, you have the reigns. You decided which way you want to go.” Then she left.
I sat back down in my chair in the corner, how do I control something like that? I didn’t even know if it would work, I wasn’t even in my own body anymore, how could something like that be possible? Hadn’t my family been through enough? Why couldn’t I just wake up now and have this be all over? Maybe this was some kind of dream that I conjured up in my mind as I slept. No, this was too real.
After a while of sitting in silence, Juliette and Ferris came back into the room all changed in their normal clothes. There was another big and comfy chair in the corner, and there were extra pillows on top of the cabinets on the left wall. Ferris told Juliette to go ahead and sleep. I figured it must be late at night, since Juliette willingly curled up on the chair and fell right alseep. Ferris took a seat next to the bed and clasped my hand with two of his. He sighed a deep sigh, “How’d we get here, huh?” He questioned aloud.
Another nurse came in to check the machines. She took the bandage off my ear to replace it. “It’s finally stopped bleeding.” She said.
“That’s good, right?” Ferris inquired.
“That’s excellent, let’s hope it stays that way.” She finished changing my bandages, “Pull the cord behind the bed if you need anything.” The nurse walked back into the hallway.
Ferris leaned over, closer to the bed, still holding my hand between his, “I love you Adelaide, please come back to me.” He was silent for a moment, “You’re a fighter, please stay, I know we can get through whatever challenges you face in the future. I know full heartedly that you could get through them yourself, but I still want to be there to help you. Please stay, for me, for Juliette, for your family, and for everyone else that cares about. Just please, stay.”

Then a flash of white filled my vision and I started to spin a whirlwind of white light. It got faster and faster and brighter and brighter until finally it stopped all at once, I found myself in a white room sitting at a table with a man across from me. A man that looked very much like my father. “Dad?” I blinked twice.
“Yes, honey, it’s me.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back, but then I remembered everything that’s going on and I quickly straightened my face out, “What’s going on?”
“This is your crossroads. Everyone reaches them at some point. Yours however, seems to be a matter of life and death. Adelaide, I want you to know that whatever you choose, it is your final decision there is no easy way out of either after you decide. Chose to live and you will live, chose to die and you will die. There is no going back after you make that decision.” He informed me.
I looked around me, everything was white, the only objects that actually had shape and color were myself, my father, and the table and chairs we had sat ourselves at, “Am I in heaven?” I asked.
“Not quite, more like the place in between. If you chose to live, you shall descend back down to Earth, if you chose to die, you shall ascend up into Heaven.” He said.
I knew I had to make a decision, but honestly I didn’t know which one I actually wanted. Death was an easy way out, I knew that but Living was such an adventure, I knew I had a very hard struggle but I was a fighter, I knew that, sometimes it all seemed too much, but with Ferris and Juliette there for me, I felt like i could go through anything and come out invincible.
“Adelaide, one more thing. If you chose to live, there will be a great struggle for you to contend with, it may be enough to break you, although I can’t tell you what it is, I can say that you are capable of getting through it.” My father warned me, “But if you chose to die, you will hurt the lives of many people who cared about you, you will even send some into a deep sadness and have to live in the afterlife watching them suffer a great deal from your loss.”
“I think I’ve decided.” I nodded at my father.
“Very well, the door on the right leads you back to Earth, the door on the left leads you up to Heaven.” He said.
Two doors appeared behind me. I got up and started walking towards them, but turned back remembering one last thing. “Dad?”
“Yes, daughter?”
“You remember the night of the accident?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you forgive me for causing the accident that caused your death?” I asked, knowing this will affect my decision.
“Yes, of course I forgive you darling. It was never your fault.” He said with a smile.
I smiled, turned back towards the doors. I walked towards the one I knew I wanted and pulled it open, exiting through it in the same whirlwind of bright, white light which I had entered in.