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

They’d pulled him off life support.

I looked at my watch, realizing that he’d been breathing on his own for over two hours now.

It was labored, and the breaths rattled in his big, barrel chest, but he was breathing.

His face also looked a little more swollen than it had when I’d gone to sleep.

But overall, he appeared as if he was hanging in there.

God, if you can hear me, please help him. Please watch over him and let him live.

I didn’t know this man. I just realized only seconds before that he’d done me a kindness before I’d even known him, but somehow, I just knew he was a good man.

“I’m going to go,” I whispered, standing up. “Give y’all some time to—”

“Absolutely not,” the big, bearded bear named Hancock grunted. “You’ll stay.”

So that was how I stayed, and listened to stories, all centering on the man in the bed.

“They say how long he’d live?”

I swallowed and shook my head at Hancock’s question. “No.” I hesitated. “Without the machine to breathe for him, he could stop at any moment. If that happens, they won’t attempt any life-saving measures. He’ll slowly die.”

It sounded harsh. Really harsh.

I watched two of the men in my peripheral vision wince.

“You remember that time that Gentry hit that little shithead number twenty-six on the Cardinals last season?” Manuel asked. “And before that little asshole could storm the mound like he’d been intending, Rhys was just there, tripping him and making him fall on his face?”

“I remember when that little hothead got up, he went at Rhys like a man on meth, but Rhys picked his fist up, rammed it straight into the kid’s nose, and dropped him so fast he never saw it coming,” Hancock replied, grinning wildly. “Fuck.”

They all went silent, and I wondered if maybe it was time to leave.

But I didn’t move.

They didn’t either.

Not until four hours later Rhys stopped breathing and we were kicked out.Chapter 7I’m only 20% human. The other 80% is stress and anxiety.

-Rhys’s secret thoughts

Rhys

“You fight, neighbor. You fight hard, and I’ll thank you with a big ol’ hug when you get through.”

Fight?

Fight what?

Then I saw the light.Chapter 8I don’t want Netflix and Chill. I want Amazon Prime and Commitment.

-Henley’s secret thoughts

Henley

I showed up at the hospital, cuddled the babies, and tried not to think about the man that had once been upstairs.

Tried not to think about how my life had changed two nights ago when that man had stopped breathing and had taken one final breath before he’d passed away.

But even the cute little babies with their tiny little hands and soft little bellies, couldn’t make me forget.

“You done already?”

I looked up to find Sessie, the charge nurse for the NICU, staring at me with a smile on her face.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m tired.”

She grinned. “I don’t know how you do this after working all night. I had to work last night for an extra two hours, and I thought I was going to pass out. You do this three days a week after a shift and still manage to function and look pretty the next day.”

I started to chuckle, but my heart wasn’t into it.

“I straighten my hair every day to get rid of the frizz and because it makes me feel like my head is skinnier,” I told her honestly. “As for functioning, I’m not so sure about that. My days off I do nothing but sit on my ass all day.”

Sessie grinned.

“Have a good day, Hen.”

I waved goodbye and swiped my visitor’s pass to get out of the NICU, waving at a few other nurses as I passed.

When I got to the elevators, I got in, not realizing that the one I was on was the one going up, and not down, until I was already on the floor that I’d studiously been avoiding.

Somehow, I couldn’t quite make my feet stay in place to wait for the doors to close, and I found myself walking toward the room that’d been the man’s home for over two weeks.

I stood outside the door and stared at the impeccably made bed, waiting for its next resident.

My heart felt heavy.

God, that poor sister of Rhys’. She was probably devastated right now.

“Henley?”

I turned to find Tatiana standing behind me, watching me with a worried expression.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?” she asked, eyeing me with a practiced eye of a nurse.

I smiled tiredly. “Yeah, I just wanted to come…make sure.”

Her brows furrowed.

“Make sure of what?”

“Make sure that no miracles happened.”

She frowned. Then shrugged.

“Did you know that the power went out in the hospital for an entire hour two nights ago?”

I frowned.

“No,” I hesitated. “What happened?”

She shook her head.

“We don’t know. Power failure is what the power company is calling it. They had to run the generators that whole time.” She paused. “When the power came back up, nothing in that entire room worked. No lights. No outlets. No nothing.”