Kyle Okposo couldn’t form full sentences. He was incoherent, confused, paranoid. He strained to recognize loved ones. He thought staffers around his bedside were there to hurt him.
Danielle was terrified. Doctors couldn’t provide answers.
Just over 18 months ago, Kyle suffered a concussion in a Buffalo Sabres workout, but the hit felt so ordinary he wouldn’t be diagnosed for days.
Even with that knowledge, medical experts from Buffalo General Hospital’s neurosurgical department, from the Sabres and from the NHL were unable to explain why Kyle had gone through a manic phase, why the lifelong introvert spent three days calling people from his past to tell them off, why he stayed awake for four days straight, why he stopped eating and dwindled to a teenage weight, why he told Danielle he was willing to harm himself simply so he could sleep again.
...
From the darkness — his eyes closed but with his bleary brain refusing to rest — Kyle would awaken from a brief, medically induced sleep and startle.
Your rings! Your rings!
Kyle needed his wife’s hand. Danielle wears three eternity wedding bands. Small, identically cut diamonds are inlaid all the way around.
“When I had no idea what was going on, when my mind was scrambled eggs,” Kyle said, “the only thing that grounded me was feeling her wedding rings on her finger.