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 be that bad if Ninjago is 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’m super glad 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 watches Ninjago.
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?
He shrugs. “Gotta make sure my buddy is okay.”
“Jamie—” I say, but choke on whatever I was going to say.
“Go. Be with your boy. I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
There’s a lot I’d like to say, but I don’t say any of it. I accompany Aiden to the room they’ve assigned him, and the nurse goes through the process of checking him over, taking his vitals, the usual hospital procedures. Which is, as Jamie predicted, followed by another hour or more of waiting. Aiden is a trooper through the whole thing, staying patient and calm, despite the fact that he’s obviously in a lot of pain. Finally, the doctor comes in and examines Aiden’s ankle.
He orders an X-ray, just to be sure—which means another long wait for someone to take us to the radiology department, get the X-rays, and then another wait for the doctor to look at them and come in and talk to us about the results.
“Good news is, it’s not broken,” the doctor—a young man fresh out of med school—says. “Bad news is, it is a grade one sprain.”
“What’s a sprain?” Aiden asks.
“Well, basically, it means you wrenched the ligaments. You twisted them really hard, and now they’re all messed up.”
“What’s a ligament?”
“Ahh…kind of like a tendon.” He scratches his jawline. “Um, sort of like rubber bands that connect your bones around the joints, where your elbows, ankles, and wrists bend.”
“Oh.” Aiden frowns. “So, do I get a cast?”
The doctor chuckles. “Do you want one?”
Aiden shrugs, grinning. “I mean, kind of? My friend Bryan broke his leg riding his BMX bike last summer and he had a cast and everyone wrote stuff on it and drew on it and stuff, and it was cool. I don’t want a broken ankle ’cause then I’d have to have the cast for like weeks or something.”
“I suppose I can see how that might be a fun side benefit in a bad situation,” the doctor says. “But no, you don’t need a cast. Ice it to reduce swelling, wrap it in an ace bandage, and stay off it. So you will be on crutches for a few days to keep weight off of it, but you’ll be limping around on your own soon.”
“So when can I go back to playing football?”
The doctor bobbles his head side to side. “Well…it’s not something I can sit here and say, oh on this day exactly…” He indicates Aiden’s ankle. “It depends on how you heal. If you ice it, compress it, and stay off it, you could be able to start carefully using it in a week or so. Or, it could take longer, up to two weeks or so. No way to know for certain.”
“So how will I know when I can use it again?”
“When it stops hurting to walk, basically. Use the crutches and keep compression on it for two or three days at least, and then try carefully limping around on it at home, just to test it. If it still hurts to move the ankle, stay off of it some more. Eventually, you’ll be able to use it normally again and you’ll be as good as new. You just have to be smart.”
“Okay.”
“So we can go now?” Aiden asks.
The doctor smiles. “Soon. A nurse will come by and discharge you and get you a pair of crutches.”
“Okay.”
The doctor claps Aiden on the shoulder. “All right, bud, I guess you’re hoping you heal fast and can get back out on the field soon, huh?”
“I hope so. Thank you, Doctor.”
The doctor shakes my hand. “You’ve got a good kid.”
“Don’t I know it,” I say. “Thank you.”
Sending a nurse by with crutches and our discharge papers sounds like it should be quick, but…hospital time, so it’s not. It’s another twenty-five minutes before the nurse even reappears with the crutches and fits them for Aiden, and then fifteen minutes after that before a different nurse comes by with the discharge papers.
By the time we’re headed for the waiting room, we’ve been at the hospital for more than three hours. Aiden is exhausted and cranky and h
ungry, as well as frustrated with the crutches, which are trickier to use than he thought they’d be.
We find Jamie nodding off in the waiting room.
I gently shake his arm. “Jamie.”
He blinks awake, his eyes flicking from me to Aiden and back, and then he sits upright. “Hey. What’s the verdict?”
“It’s a grade one sprain,” Aiden says. “I can’t play football for a week or two.”
Jamie smiles, nods. “About what I expected. I sprained my ankle like that at least half a dozen times over the years I played football. Just ice it, wrap it, and take it easy. You’ll be playing again before you know it.”
“That’s what the doctor said, too.”
“He told me we should unwrap it and ice it again when we get home, and then wrap it before he goes to bed,” I say. “But I have no idea how to wrap it.”
“Well, luckily for you guys, I have plenty of experience,” Jamie says. “I can show you.”
“You’ve done so much already,” I say.
“I did nothing. I drove him here and sat with him until you got here.” He stands up. “How about this—you head home with Aiden, unwrap his ankle, get some ice on it, and I’ll grab some carryout from José’s and bring it over. One less thing to worry about after a long evening in the hospital.”
“Are you sure? I’m guessing you have other things you could be doing.”
Jamie shakes his head. “Not a thing.”
“As long as you’re sure. I don’t want to put you through any more trouble.”
“It’s no trouble at all, I promise.”
“Okay. Well, then, José’s carryout sounds fantastic.”
“Can we get nachos with extra sour cream?” Aiden says, the prospect of restaurant food exciting him—we rarely eat out during the school year, so getting José’s is a treat for him.
“It’s like you read my mind, buddy!” Jamie says. “That’s EXACTLY what I was going to order.”
Jamie and Aiden chatter excitedly about their favorite food all the way out to the parking lot; I trail behind them, watching Aiden hobble on his crutches, glancing up at Jamie now and then, visibly worshipful of everything Jamie says and does.
And…I totally get it.
Without realizing it, I had parked next to Jamie—he drives an older and well-loved gray F-150, rust eating at the edges of the wheel wells, the bed filled with sports equipment, orange cones, lengths of two-by-four, empty water bottles, an unopened case of water bottles, and an old mountain bike. The passenger seat is piled high with papers and folders and binders and a laptop bag sits half-open in the footwell, and an unzipped gym bag with shorts and T-shirts spilling out sits on the backseat bench, along with more empty water bottles and carryout containers—there’s a hastily cleared spot in the backseat where Aiden had sat on the way here.
He indicates his truck with a rueful grin. “I sort of half live out of this thing. It’s got a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it and it’s still going, and I plan on driving it until it gives out completely. So…it’s kind of a mess.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well, take a look at the inside of my car and see if I’m in any position to judge.”
Meaning, there are LEGOs everywhere, Aiden’s books, my books, dishes from our house from the days when we end up having to eat on the fly, carryout containers, at least three empty Tervis coffee thermoses, a few ceramic coffee mugs, reusable water containers, and did I mention LEGOs?
Jamie takes a look, and then barks a laugh. “Yeah, so you do get it.”
“We live on the run during the school year. I don’t have to drive far, but I have to drive to a lot of different places.”
An awkward silence settles over us, his eyes on mine, my lungs not quite expanding all the way, my heart jittering with uneasy and unfamiliar emotions.
Aiden tags my arm. “Mom? Can we go? These crutches are hurting my armpits.”
I blink, and start. “Wha—? Oh. Yeah, sorry, Aiden. Let’s go. You need to rest.”
“And watch a movie?” he suggests hopefully.
I laugh. “You’re gonna milk this injury for all its worth, aren’t you?” I ruffle his hair.
“Yep,” he admits. “It’s called optimism, Mom.”
I snort. “Opportunism is more like it.”
I help Aiden into the car, stuff his crutches in beside him at an angle, and then circle around to my side.
“Elyse?” I hear Jamie say; I glance at him over the roof of my car. “Can I have your address?”
“I suppose you’d need that to bring food over, huh?” I say, and then tell him my address.
“You want anything specific? Or should I just bring a variety of stuff?”
“Bring whatever you think sounds good, as long as it doesn’t have any onions.”
“No onions. Got it.” He slides into his truck. “See you soon.”
I drive us home, my thoughts on Jamie.
Jamie, in my house.
Jamie, eating at my table.
Jamie, with my son, taking care of him, looking out for him.
Jamie, with those warm brown eyes that seem to see everything I’m thinking and feeling.
11
I get Aiden settled on the couch, the ACE bandage provided by the hospital unwrapped and carefully rewound into a neat coil, a towel and icepack on his ankle. I turn on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and place a boxed set of a cartoon series my parents got him for his birthday last year on the coffee table in front of him.
I call my parents and update them on what happened with Aiden, and have to spend several minutes calming my mother down, reassuring her that Aiden is fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine.
And then…
I fly into Hurricane Elyse, cleaning the house at literal warp speed—dishes in the dishwasher, counters wiped off, mail and random papers stacked in a corner, Aiden’s LEGOs swept into a pile and scooped into the handcrafted wooden chest Dad and Aiden made together—it’s a four-by-two-foot replica of a LEGO brick, complete with hydraulic piston arms to keep it up and lower it down safely, a project Dad and Aiden did together over this past summer. Once I’ve got our rooms picked up, I run the vacuum over the place and sweep the kitchen and…
Aiden frowns at me as I vacuum the living room. “Mom, it’s Coach Trent coming over, not, like, God.”
“He’s a guest, Aiden, and our house was in bad shape. I want to make a good impression.”
“You never pick up for Aunt Cora.”
“Because she’s basically family,” I tell him.
“Well, I think you’ve already made a pretty good impression on Coach Trent.” Aiden goes back to watching his show once I’m done with the vacuum.
“Oh?” I ask, going for nonchalant and merely curious. “Why’s that?”
“He talked about you a lot on the way to the hospital.”
“What did he say?”
Aiden shrugs. “You know, just…stuff.” He’s a little too dismissive, and his eyes are locked a little too squarely on the TV.
“Aiden.”
He sighs. “He just was like asking questions, and talking about how he likes talking to you.”
“Asking questions? What kind of questions?”
“I dunno. Just…what kind of stuff you like to do, and…I don’t know. Just questions.”
I suppress a groan of irritation. Getting an eight-year-old boy to recount a conversation is like trying to herd cats in a dark room. “If he was asking questions, how do you know I’ve made a good impression?”
“I mean, if he wants to know stuff about you, doesn’t that mean he kind of…likes you? Not likes you likes you, but… you know. Likes you.”
I laugh. “Oh, Aiden.” I ruffle his hair as I put the vacuum away. “You’re cute.”
“Why? What’d I say?”
“Nothing. You just are.” I perch on the arm of the couch beside him. “How’s your ankle?”
He shrugs. “Hurts, and the ice is getting drippy, and it’s cold.”
<
br /> I see headlights approaching our house, and rush into the bathroom: I’ve gotten all sweaty in my cleaning frenzy, so I change my top and rinse my face with cold water and dab it dry…but then I’ve messed up my already messy makeup, so I have to reapply at least my lipstick because I can’t face Jamie without lipstick at least, and I hear his truck door close and my hair is still a frizzy mess, so I yank it out of the updo I had it in and drag a brush through it…
I hear the doorbell, then.
“MOM! Coach Trent is here!” Aiden yells.
“I know, buddy, I heard.”
I grab the ponytail holder, stick it in my teeth, and work my hair into a ponytail as I head for the front door. I’m still gathering my hair back as I open the door. Jamie is on my front porch, two big paper bags in his hands. His eyes lance into me, and then rake down. And I realize, in my haste to get out of my sweaty top, I forgot my bra is leopard print, and the top I changed into is a thin white V-neck, so now my bra is visible. Great.
“Hi,” I breathe.
He blinks, dragging his eyes back up to mine. “Hey.” He lifts one of the paper bags. “I’ve got burritos and chimichangas, two chicken and two beef each.” He lifts the other bag. “In here, we have two orders of nachos and, I quote, ‘a vat of sour cream,’ and a couple of side salads.”
I boggle. “Have you ever had the nachos at José’s?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, why?”
I laugh. “Because an order of nachos there is huge. It’s what most people go there to get. When Cora, Aiden, and I go there we get one order to split.”
Jamie makes a face. “I guess that’s why the girl taking the order asked me three times if I was sure I wanted two orders.”
“I think we’ve got enough food there to feed at least six people,” I say, laughing.
“Well, then, I hope you guys are hungry.”
“I am!” Aiden calls. “Mom—are you gonna let him in or what?”
I blush, embarrassed. “Yeah, good point, kiddo.” I step aside so Jamie can sweep past me—his scent rifles through me—masculine and woodsy.