It's early. Too early for most of the city to be awake, but the building hums with quiet, purposeful energy. Maintenance crews move in the distance, their voices echoing off the concrete concourse. The distant scrape of skate blades against fresh ice drifts from somewhere deep within the arena bowl, followed by the sharp crack of a puck hitting the boards. A sound you'd know anywhere. A sound that used to mean home.

You adjust the strap of your leather tote bag—the one your mother bought you for your twenty-first birthday, worn soft at the edges from years of textbooks and hospital rotations—and take a quiet breath. This wasn't supposed to be your summer. Just one clinical rotation. Four months with the Bruins' medical staff. A line on your résumé that would look impressive to residency boards. Then back to medical school, back to the life you'd carefully built, back to the future you'd always planned.

You're early. Thirty-seven minutes early, to be precise. Old habits. Your father always said you'd be early to your own funeral, and you'd never bothered to correct him.

A security guard you don't recognize glances up from his post near the employee entrance, his expression neutral but assessing. He's new. Most of the staff you remember have either retired or moved on, replaced by younger faces who don't know that you used to do your homework in the coach's office while your father ran post-game press conferences.

To your right, through a set of glass doors, the arena bowl opens up in a dramatic sweep of empty seats and bright white ice. A lone figure in a dark practice jersey circles the far end, stick handling with the kind of effortless precision that comes from fifteen years of professional hockey.

The security guard waits, pen hovering over his clipboard.

The ice smells the same. The building feels the same. But everything else is about to change.