Once her breathing has leveled, I move her away and rest her on the pillow. I pause the game and hop on my good leg to the bathroom. The ice hasn’t helped my knee and the pain has doubled. Refusing to take any pain pills, I go back to bed and finish the game.
Vickie’s not next to me when I wake up late the next morning. Evan’s there, watching cartoons so loud that it wakes me up. The first thing I feel is the pounding in my knee, and I sigh in defeat. I grab my phone and text the team doctor, asking him to come to my place immediately.
“Hey, bud,” I say to my son.
“Hi, Daddy.” He’s as happy as he’s always been. He jumps on my stomach and straddles me. “Vickie says she found us a knitting class but it doesn’t start until the fall, but she says we can watch videos on YouTube all summer and get a head start.”
“I didn’t know you were so serious about knitting.” I ruffle his hair. I try to imagine Vickie knitting a hat or scarf but can’t picture it. She’s the type of girl who shops for those things, not make them herself, but it will be fun to watch.
“She says she can teach me whatever I want to learn, and if she doesn’t know how, we can learn together.” I can sense the enthusiasm in his voice. He’s never had a woman, other than his grandmas, take an interest in him like this.
“You like Vickie, huh?”
“Yeah. She’s nice and she never gets sick of me.” The guilt comes back from that one failed relationship. That was a defining moment in his life, and I’m the one who allowed this woman to hurt him. “They sent me here to get you. She made breakfast.”
Fifteen minutes later, Evan holds my hand while I limp to the kitchen. I see the worry in Vickie’s eyes when she sees me, and she rushes over and helps me to a chair. She returns seconds later with an icepack. While I ice my knee, she wraps her arms around me from behind and kisses my cheek several times.
“I so don’t love you,” she whispers in my ear.
“You better not. I don’t love you at all. Not even a little bit,” I say back. I turn my head and kiss her lips.
“That’s so gross,” Evan says.
“Where’s Mama?”
Vickie does a dramatic eye roll. “Mama’s boy.”
“You knew that in the beginning, and you still let yourself fall in love with me.”
She bites my cheek and I pretend to groan in pain.
“She’s taking a shower.”
“Evan said something about you making me breakfast. A woman cooking for her man. I can’t think of anything more traditional. Were you by any chance barefoot while you were cooking?”
She swats me in the back of the head. “Bite your tongue.” She leaves and returns minutes later with a delicious omelet.
I finish breakfast right as the doctor arrives, and from the pinched look on his face while he examines my knee, I know the news is not good. He presses on it. I howl and almost climb the wall in pain. When he tries to extend it, I almost curse.
“You’ll need to come with me for an MRI. I’m pretty sure you have a torn meniscus, but I want to be certain.” Vickie covers her mouth with a hand at the news, and my stomach sinks to the ground. The food I just ate sits in my stomach like a bag of stones. Mama wrings her hands, but she knows what that can mean. She’s been an involved mom of two athletes for close to twenty years now. “Don’t worry. There are varying degrees, and with treatment and PT, you will most likely be okay.”
Most likely. Those two words sit with me all the way to the hospital. I wouldn’t let Mama and Vickie come, telling them that I need them to stay with Evan. Vickie argued with me, telling me there was no way in hell she was going to leave me to deal with this alone, but I was adamant. There are some things that a man must do alone, and this is one of them.
I’m a zombie with the doctor. In fact, I don’t say much, I let the team doctor do most of the talking. Coach arrives, and he’s as stoic as ever. He looks like an untamed lion with that long mane of hair, but I keep that to myself. He looks like I feel, like he hasn’t slept all night.
“Where’s the pretty woman who braids your hair?” Coach whispers to me once we have a moment alone. “She looks like the type who’d be here to hold your hand and fuss over you.” That’s the first time in almost a decade of knowing each other that he’s ever asked me a personal question. I didn’t even think he noticed. He often rolls his eyes at the younger players’ antics, but he’s never talked to me about anything that’s not related to the job.
“I wanted to do this alone,” is all I say.
“We already have Wakowski. We don’t need two fools on our team. You can’t decide you want to do it alone now when you’ve already made her a part of this.” He looks like he wants to say more, maybe give me a cautionary tale, but the doctors return, and I get the bad news confirmed.
* * *
“I was thinkingthat I can go with you tomorrow. I’ll need to run home and pack, but as long as I have my laptop, I’ll be okay. I can maybe spend time in Atlanta here and there. In fact, I can probably make my heroine from Birmingham and kill two birds with one stone.” I’ve never seen her like this. She’s in a nervous frenzy. “That way, I can help you. Drive you back and forth and—”
“Can you even drive?” I ask her.
“What kind of question is that? Of course, I can drive.” She runs to the closet and pulls out a bag, stuffing her belongings into them without folding.
