Page 52

TWENTY-SIX

TANNER

“Acute appendicitis, we’re lucky we caught it, could have been very dangerous.”

“Appendicitis?”

The doctor nodded, his eyes flicking between me and Millie’s mom.

“Yes, we’ve sedated her for now to bring her pain levels and heart rate down, and surgery is scheduled for first thing.”

Kirsty muttered something I didn’t catch, though it was likely along the lines of everything I was also thinking.

Like, how is my girlfriend about to go into surgery while pregnant with our baby?

And, what would I have done if I’d lost her?

It only made me feel marginally better that the doctor had assured us she would have always needed surgery to remove it, even if Millie had cut things a little fine.

I knew I should have made her go to the doctor when her pain started. God damn Shepherd and his stupid sequestering .

Rubbing my fingers over my brow was all I could do to stop the tears of relief bursting out in front of Millie’s mom and this very professional, kind of stern looking doctor in front of me.

I needed to keep my shit together. Not to mention we were in the middle of a corridor where several other very professional medical looking people were hurrying back and forth.

Didn’t seem to matter that it was almost eleven p.m.

I glanced back through the small window in the door to Millie’s hospital room where she was sleeping soundly, albeit wired up to the max on painkillers, sedatives and body monitors. As was the bump.

“How’s the baby?”

“He’s totally fine, sleeping soundly.” The doctor grinned while my face froze at his words.

Oh my god.

“ He ?”

Kirsty let out a loud gasp, and I had to cough away the lump in my throat. I tried to anyway but it didn’t work, my next words came out a garbled mess.

“It’s a boy, we’re having a son?”

“You are.” The doctor peered at his clipboard, “sorry, I didn’t realize you hadn’t found out.”

I glanced down at Kirsty’s hand gripping my forearm.

“We were supposed to have our twenty-week scan tomorrow. We were going to find out.”

“You still can have a scan when Millie is out of the woods, but we had our neo-natal surgeon on hand, and she checked her over. There’s nothing to worry about.

Strong little thing, ten fingers and ten toes from what we can tell,” he chuckled.

Guess it was a doctor joke because he was the only one laughing.

“Heart rate was a little elevated but that’s to be expected. ”

“Strong?” I asked, wiping my cheeks dry.

“Yes, takes after his mother. Your um… girlfriend … has a very high pain threshold, Mr Simpson. I’m surprised she made it as long as she did. Not many people would have.”

I think that was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn’t.

“Unfortunately, her pain threshold is equal to her stubbornness.” I sighed, and next to me Kirsty laughed.

“Well, she’s in the right place now, and she’ll be able to go home in a couple of days. We’ll take good care of her.”

“Thank you.” I replied, and another wave of relief crashed over me as I stared at Millie again.

“If you’d like, the nurse can bring some extra blankets if you wanted to stay.”

“Thank you, yes, that would be great. I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s okay.” I answered.

It was pointless going anywhere, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not while Millie was here. But even if I could have slept there’s no way I’d be leaving her now.

“No problem.” He replied, and made a move to step away before deciding against it. “I…uh… I should tell you, I’ve been a Lions fan since I was a boy. You’ve done us proud this season, I hope you get to lift the trophy.”

“Thanks, doc.” I smiled at him as best I could, though I wasn’t feeling particularly smiley right now. “I appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll go and get your blankets organized. ”

The pair of us stayed where we were, watching him walk off.

Kirsty turned to me, “I guess telling you to go home and get some rest will fall on deaf ears.”

I nodded, “Yup. I’m staying right here until she’s out of surgery. If I need to sleep I’ll use the couch in her room.”

“Thought as much.” She replied, “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine. Matty and Josh both had their appendix out as kids, it’s pretty simple.”

“Yeah, me too. But I’m staying put. So if you wanted to go home and get some sleep, I’ll call you if anything happens. Doug will probably be worried about you.”

She didn’t reply, instead her eyes dropped down to the cleats I was still wearing and back up to the grass-stained pants, and shirt.

“Holiday will bring me some clean clothes.”

I hadn’t asked her to, but I knew she’d wouldn’t be far away. She’d followed me out to the ambulance as we stretchered Millie, and the paramedics had told her which hospital.

“And is she going to bring you some food too? You must be starving.”

I shrugged, ignoring the rumble in my stomach. “Yeah, I’ll ask her to do that.”

Kirsty shook her head, but with one of those looks that only moms got where you knew they thought you were crazy, but were also kind of impressed too.

“I’m going to go back to the apartment and change, but I’ll be back with proper food and some of Millie’s things. I need to check on the boys and your parents.” She said eventually, before her hand cupped my cheek. “You’re a good boy, Tanner. I’m glad Millie found you.”

“Me too.” I croaked out. “Me too.”

“And I’m going to have a grandson.”

For the first time since I’d sprinted off the field during the fifth inning, I smiled. A huge, broad smile that stretched from ear to ear. I was having a son. A baby boy.

“Yes ma’am. You are. Brady.”

Her hand gently patted my cheek. “Millie’s dad would have liked you.”

I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t have any words. It was possibly one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to me, and I was in far too much of a fragile state to come up with anything more eloquent than “thank you.”

With a final smile and an “I’ll be back,” (though disappointingly not in an Arnie voice), Kirsty walked off down the corridor and disappeared around the corner to the elevators.

Removing my cleats, I waited until the corridor was quiet again before I eased open Millie’s door and crept in, though I knew there’s no way she would wake up. Whatever sedatives she’d been given had been very effective.

I could do with them myself.

Pulling the chair up to the bed, I dropped down in it with a heavy sigh and for the thousandth time in the last ten minutes alone I thanked my lucky stars.

She looked so peaceful - her lips moving ever-so slightly with each inhale, her dark hair fanned around the pillow – that only the small pink Band-Aid on her forehead was evidence of the past two chaos-filled hours.

Chaos and a little terror, all now soundtracked by the slow and steady beep beep beep of the heart monitor.

As always, whenever I made it to third base I’d searched for her, only this time when I found her, I watched as she crumbled to the ground. I’d always read about people saying their future flashed before their eyes and never truly understood what that meant until tonight.

That’s exactly what had happened – a glimpse of a life without Millie, and I knew it was a life I never wanted to experience.

I glanced up as the door opened expecting the nurse, but it was someone better.

“God, it’s like Fort Knox in here, they nearly didn’t let me up.” Holiday said, as she rushed in, dropped a bag on the floor and pulled me into a hug. “How is she?”

I eased out of her grip, “She’s okay, she has acute appendicitis. Surgery is scheduled for the morning.”

“Oh my god, ouch .” She winced. “remember when we had ours? That was so painful.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, I brought you clean clothes. Figured you’d be staying. You won tonight by the way. The Lions are three games up now.”

I stared at my sister and the firing of information.

Holy shit. Three games, we just had one more to win. Jupiter Reeves prediction might very well come true. The Lions would win the World Series in five games.

More surprisingly, even though I was dressed in my baseball pants and shirt, I’d completely forgotten I’d been playing baseball a couple of hours ago.

“That’s awesome.” I replied, looking around for my phone before realizing I had nothing with me. Everything had been left at Yankee Stadium. “Shit, can you message one of the boys and ask him to get all my stuff from the lockers. My phone is there… my wallet…”

“Sure.” She said, plucking hers from her purse, and shooting off a text at lightning speed, probably to Lux. “Also, everyone’s talking about how you ran off the field.”

I grimaced. Yeah, I was going to get into shit for that. But right now it wasn’t a problem I cared too much about, and hopefully Penn Shepherd could find a little humanity in him to understand why.

Then find a little bit more when he found out I wouldn’t be making it back for tomorrow’s game, because my ass was staying right here.

“Check this out.”

I took Holiday’s phone, open on TikTok to see a video of me sprinting off the field, vaulting onto the roof of the dugout and into the executive seats where Millie had fainted.

I hadn’t even noticed Jupiter had hit a home run, or the noise of the crowds cheering him on. Everything had silenced around me.

And because of Jupiter’s home run, no one had realized what was happening until I’d failed to pass home plate on my way to reaching Millie. I just remembered silence - something I thought had been borne from my anxiety watching the medics place her on stretcher, but I’d been wrong.

The stadium was silent.

The Yankees on the field were all staring in the direction I’d run, all my teammates had come out of the dugout and were peering over its roof to figure out what was happening.

But I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything except Millie, laying unconscious as the medic inserted a drip in her arm.