I hustle over to Aiden and drop to a knee beside him, wrapping him up in a hug. “Hi, Aiden, honey. How are you?”
He shrugs away from my hug. “Mom! It’s the new season! It’s not on Netflix yet. Coach Trent bought it on Amazon Prime so I could watch it.”
I laugh. “Well, things can’t bethatbad ifNinjagois more important than hugs from your mother.”
“Coach Trent calls it distraction therapy. If I’m watching my favorite show, I’m not thinking about how bad it hurts.”
Jamie smiles down at me. “You’ve got quite a trooper here, Elyse. He’s amazing.”
I hate that I have butterflies at the way he smiles at me. “Thank you for getting him here.” I glance at Aiden, enthralled in the show, wincing now and then as he shifts. “And for buying that episode for him.”
He shrugs. “I bought the whole season, actually. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be here, considering how full it is, so…no sense him running out of something to watch.” He hands me a clipboard. “You need to fill this out. I would have, but I don’t know most of the information, and you said you’d be here soon. I think it’s probably going to be a bit of a wait.”
There’s an empty seat on the other side of Jamie, so I take it—I don’t want to make Aiden move until I have to. “Yeah, well, seeing the guy with the bloody hand and the pregnant ladies, I’d say you’re right.”
He gestures at a guy who’s probably a high school senior, sitting across the room with his foot propped up on his backpack, his head in his girlfriend’s lap. “I think he broke his ankle or something, and there’s another guy in here with a concussion so bad he legitimately thinks he’s Captain America.”
“Oh my.”
I fill out the necessary paperwork, turn it into the clerk, and sit back down.
Jamie’s eyes fix on mine. “I hate that this happened on my watch,” he says.
I shrug. “Was there anything you could have done to prevent it?”
He shakes his head. “No, not really. It was just an accident, you know? He went to catch a long toss, went up, caught it, and just landed wrong.” He reaches out and ruffles Aiden’s hair. “Still made the catch, though.”
I roll my eyes. “Wow, I’msuperglad he still made the catch that injured him.”
Jamie rolls his eyes back at me. “It’s a guy thing. Right, Aiden?”
“Right, Coach.” He holds out his fist, and they bump their knuckles together.
My heart thumps—is it melting or doing flips? I’m not sure. They bump knuckles, now?
Jamie and I lapse into casual chitchat—we talk about students, and college, and how Aiden’s team won their first game last week handily, outscoring the other team 44-7; Aiden was the superstar of that game, scoring all but one of the touchdowns. I may or may not have taken several hundred photos.
It’s the kind of conversation that never really ends, just morphs easily from one topic to another, and all the while Aiden watchesNinjago.
Finally, after an hour and a half wait, Aiden is called back. They bring a wheelchair for him; he pauses the show and hands the phone back to Jamie, but Jamie just shakes his head.
“Hold on to it, bud. You’ll need it—hospital time sucks.”
“What’s hospital time?” Aiden asks, trying to act manly and unaffected.
“Well, time just seems to go slower in the hospital than anywhere else in the world, and nurses always tell you it’ll just be a few minutes, which always turns out to be hours.”
“Oh. So it always takes this long in the hospital?” Aiden asks.
Jamie chuckles. “Unfortunately, yeah.”
“Then I hope I never have to come back.”
“All right, you guys,” the nurse says. “Time to head back.” She smiles at the three of us. “Mom and Dad, are you both coming?”
“Oh, I’m not his dad,” Jamie says, his expression carefully blank. “I’ll wait out here.”
“Jamie, you don’t have to stay.” Why is my heart hammering so hard, and why is it so difficult to swallow?
