Hardball by CD Reiss (32)

fifty-seven

Vivian

My phone was in my bag, and I was on the 10 freeway. I couldn’t pull over and get it, and I couldn’t answer at fifty mph, which on the 10 was as close to the speed limit as I’d ever gotten near downtown.

The radio announcers celebrated the Dodgers’ win, giving only the most perfunctory non-news of Dash’s injury. They were waiting to hear, but he’d had the game of his career. I’d seen his single misstep from the waiting room. The strikeout in the third inning had been boxed by two doubles, a home run, and seamless fielding.

Once I took the exit and got near the stadium, traffic slowed down. Since most everyone was exiting, the lanes coming in had been blocked off to make more lanes coming out, and still the lot was locked up. I spun right and went back into Elysian Park, looking for the entrance Dash had taken me through on opening day.

My phone rattled “Take Me out to the Ballgame.”

To hell with this. I pulled over and answered. The sound of sirens and voices came through the speaker.

“Dash?”

“Hey, are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. I—” The signal broke up.

I got out of the car, trying to hear past the cacophony of crickets and the parking lot below. A backup of cars leaving the stadium passed. I’d never known about this exit, and it was still jammed.

“I tried to get there,” I said. “But I’m sorry. I can’t live with myself if you were right. Maybe there’s something to it. Maybe you needed me and I failed you.”

“I—you—listen—nonsense—”

Between the bad signal and the siren, I couldn’t hear—

Siren?

The trees went red then nighttime green again.

The whoop of the ambulance siren came from the phone and from below. The situation explained itself quickly. The exit had been opened for the ambulance, and a few hundred opportunists had tried to use the exit before security had a chance to usher fan cars to the side.

I locked my car, left it on the side of the road, and ran down the hill, between crammed cars, waving at the driver of a Chevy who wasn’t paying attention that, yes, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, holding my hands up in front of a news van, getting caught in the lens of an ESPN camera hanging out of the back of another van, until I was at the front of ambulance.

I ran around to the side and knocked on the driver’s door. “I need to get in!”

The driver ignored me. I looked like a crazy fan, but there were hundreds of cars in the way. He couldn’t speed away from me.

Right.

I texted Dash.

Where?

I ran around and banged on the back of the ambulance. I was sure I was going to get arrested. Not a doubt in my mind I would get hauled away, and the cameras from the two news vans were going to capture it all.

The doors clacked, and I stepped back so they could swing out.

He was shirtless, sitting on the edge of a gurney like a god in a sling.

“Hey, slugger,” I said.

I didn’t know if he could hear me over the sirens and horns and yelling. But he smiled and was suddenly so well-lit he looked flooded with white. I turned to see the source of the light.

The cameras. He hated off-field cameras. Yet there they were, and he was right in front of them in a shirtless, vulnerable position. I wanted to protect him.

I turned around toward the cameras, but the reporters just came at me, barreling past my pathetic attempt to block their lenses. I fell, and from the ground, I turned back to Dash. He was half standing, right arm wrapped to the shoulder, left arm out to put his hand between his face and the lenses.

Or so I thought.

“Back off her,” he shouted, his deep voice working a different sound spectrum than the sirens. “Just step back.”

He was looking right at the cameras. I knew how much that bothered him. I knew he was seeing the parts of himself that shamed him the most. The parts he tried to keep under control.

The trainers tried to get him to lie down, and he shoved the older one away, taking the man’s shirt in his good fist.

Don’t don’t don’t.

Don’t hurt him.

A replay of his episode with his mother, on camera, in front of the world, was about to happen.

“Dash!” I shouted.

I didn’t know if he heard me over the din. Didn’t know if it was my intervention that brought him back to earth, but he stopped.

The conversation between Dash and the trainer was wordless and brief. The trainer nodded. Dash let go, patting the guy’s shoulder. I scrambled to my feet. Grimacing, Dash slid down to the ground and toward me.

“Are you all right?” he asked, left hand out.

“I’m fine.” I took his hand but didn’t use it to steady myself. I was pretty sure he shouldn’t have even been standing.

I turned toward the cameras, shielding my eyes, and when I turned back, his lips were on mine. I took a breath of surprise then put my hands on his cheeks and kissed him back. The skin of the world sloughed off, and he and I were connected at the core, where everything was quiet but for the beating of our hearts.

“I didn’t know what happened,” he said. “I hated that I couldn’t go find you. I saw a life in front of me where I couldn’t love you, and I knew I’d never be happy again.”

I must have squeaked, but I couldn’t hear it. I only felt the sides of my throat stick together and release. In ten words, he’d wiped away all my worry, all my fear, and embraced me for who I was. Even if his career was over that night, he was still with me.

“You need a goddamned doctor,” the old trainer interjected, yanking me out of my reverie. “Get in.”

But Dash wouldn’t listen. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, exploring me with his eyes. There was noise everywhere, questions being shouted at him, unnatural lights blasting his face white on one side.

“This arm’s not going to keep me from fucking you so hard—”

“Stop. Before I blush in front of all these cameras.”

He brought his gaze back to me. “I love you. I’ve never loved another woman. I was waiting for you, and I didn’t even know.”

Angry car horns from far away. The night birds of Elysian park. The whoop of the siren. None were as loud as his words. None came close to shaking my heart the way he just had. I felt grounded and ready to take off for the moon at the same time.

“Can you kiss me before I cry?”

He did, right in front of the news cameras as if he didn’t care anymore. As if I’d taken away a measure of his fear. He held me with one arm, and I pulled away.

“We have to get that arm looked at.” I stepped back.

The space in front of the ambulance had cleared, and fans were leaning out of their windows, hooting and hollering encouragement. I was mentally ready to go back to my car and meet him at the hospital, but Dash pushed me toward the ambulance, and one of the younger trainers grabbed my bicep and pulled me in. The doors slammed shut behind us, and in an instant, I was caught up in the bright lights and sounds.

The trainers pushed him to sit on the gurney, but he was smiling. Even when the trainer pressed his arm and his face contorted in pain, he polished it off with a smile.

“What are you so happy about?” I said, sitting as far out of the way as possible in the crowded ambulance.

“Nothing. Except that you’re all right.”

“I’m fine. I saw the way you fell.”

“Just a flesh wound.” His head twitched, and his brows furrowed as if he’d thought of something. “You saw it? Were you there?”

“I was in Sequoia with a student. She went into diabetic shock in my library.”

“Can’t have that.”

I wanted to hug him but couldn’t. He had three men around him, whispering things I couldn’t understand. His body was so lucrative to so many people and so precious to me. I needed to be there, yet I felt as though I was in the way.

When it got silent and we were only waiting for the space between the stadium and the hospital to fold and disappear, I took my Kindle from my bag.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“I started Reaper’s Weekend. It’s not bad. Guy’s kind of a jerk.”

“Can I see?”

I scooted close to him and handed him the device. A second passed as he glanced at the screen. The room clattered and rocked.

“Read with me,” he said.

I remembered. He read when he was overwhelmed. It calmed him.

In the minutes I’d spent back there in front of the cameras and feeling like an interloper, I hadn’t seen in his eyes what I saw then. He was broken and in pain, yet those things were nothing compared to the panic he held low in his gut. He was worried about his arm, his career, the one thing he’d ever loved.

“Excuse me,” I said to the trainer next to me before I got up.

Crouching under swinging instruments and wires, I crossed to Dash’s left side. I sat next to him as close as I could.

He put the device on his lap, and we read together.