Listen, Pitch (There's No Crying in Baseball 3)

I’d gone home after that.

I hadn’t even stopped to tell my teacher that I was done. I’d just grabbed my lunch kit, jacket, and keys and checked the fuck out.

I’d gotten a call about an hour later checking on me, but I hadn’t answered it.

I’d withdrawn from all of my classes hours later via email and a phone conversation with administration. Then I’d gone to sign my un-enrollment papers when all of my peers were in class.

Like a coward.

This was supposed to be a safe floor. They all knew my fears on this floor—so that had to be as bad as it got, because otherwise they wouldn’t have sent me in here.

And upon closer examination of the man a little more up and personal, I realized that it really was localized to one area of his body—his head.

So, I sat down in the seat that was conveniently beside the bed and turned on the TV.

The first thing that came on was Sports Center, and I immediately changed it.

I hated sports—or more importantly, sports hated me.

I was a klutz, pure and simple.

I couldn’t catch a baseball to save my life. I’d tried playing volleyball in junior high school, only to catch a ball straight to the face when I found I couldn’t move my hands fast enough. The real icing on the cake of you-suck-at-sports was the time I tried to pole vault in track and wound up sitting on my metal-spiked track shoes—before the meet even started.

That’d been the last straw. I wasn’t cut out for sports. Hell, I didn’t even like watching sports.

They sucked, to be honest.

I’d once tried to go to a professional baseball game—the Lumberjacks—but only ended up studying the bearded hotties.

Speaking of beards, my eyes were inadvertently drawn to the beard of the man lying in bed.

It was distinct. The man had a trimmed beard along his cheeks, but on his chin, the beard was long and pointy—like those Viking skull shirts I saw running around so much lately. However, what made it distinctly different from all the other beards out there was the fact that it was slightly curly, and there was a thin white line running down the very left side of his beard—almost like a highlight.

But, that ‘highlight’ started at the very edge of the man’s skin, so it was more than likely not a highlight seeing as the man had been in a coma for going on four days now.

“How’s he doing?”

I looked up to see the doctor—one I didn’t recognize right off the bat—whisk his way in with a nurse on his tail. This one was actually a woman I knew, and one that I would’ve graduated with had I finished school. Her name was Tatiana, and she was a very outspoken woman. I could tell that she wanted to say a million and one things about the doctor’s abrupt entrance but chose not to in deference to liking her job.

“Patient is still on one hundred percent oxygen,” Tatiana said. “His brain swelling hasn’t gone down at all. In fact, we’ve emptied more fluids out of his drain today than we did yesterday.”

I zoned out as I looked at the man.

He looked so big and intimidating. It was hard to believe that a man as large and strong looking as he was needed a machine to breathe for him. Though I could hear it, and see it, it was still rather shocking to hear.

His chest rose and fell rhythmically. Up, down. Up, down.

“Mom’s on her way down as we speak.”

I snorted.

If that were my kid, I would’ve been down four days ago when it happened, but hey, that’s just me.

The doctor looked over at me and winked.

I raised my brow at Tatiana.

She shrugged and continued.

I, on the other hand, looked at the man. He didn’t look like he had an eccentric mother.

In fact, if I were being honest, I’d say it looked like he was raised by wolves.

Or apes. He was very Tarzan like.

“She should be here within the next two days. They’re having to travel from California, and apparently she refuses to take a plane.”

I looked at the ceiling.

“I was also told that this woman’s famous and that we should try not to let our jaws hit the floor when she walks in the room.”

My brow rose.

“Who is it?”

That was both the doctor and I asking it at the same time.

“Apparently,” she said. “It’s Rose Rivera.”

And that was when my jaw hit the floor.

“She’s famous because she’s in porn!” I told them both, flabbergasted.

The doctor looked at me.

“How do you know she’s in porn?”

I shrugged, suddenly blushing profusely. “Doesn’t everyone?”

They both shook their head.

“Well, this isn’t awkward…”

They both left moments later, and I turned my gaze back to the man in the bed.

“I can’t believe your mother is in porn,” I told him. “You poor, poor soul.”