Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
“Love you too.”
Once my coach and teammates leave my room, heading for the bus that’s waiting for them outside the hospital, I let out a big exhale and swallow hard against the urge to cry.
Being strong for them, when it feels like my entire world has been flipped upside down, is no easy feat.
Finn notices me fighting and shakes his head, giving me permission to let it all go. As emotion pours out, he steps away from my dad and my sister and takes a seat on the edge of my bed. His fingers rub gently at mine as I gasp at the void of the room, trying to take a breath deep enough to actually breathe.
“That was hard,” I whisper to him shakily. With his free hand, he strokes my hair, tucking it behind my ear as it falls into the wetness of my eyes.
“You did good,” he says. “But you don’t have to be strong, you know? It’s okay to be upset right now.”
“Yeah, Scottie,” Wren says and comes to sit on the other side of my bed. She takes my other hand in hers. “You’re allowed to cry, scream, be mad.”
I shrug, an unavoidable embarrassment making my cheeks heat when I can’t make myself stop shaking. Finn reaches up to wipe the tears away from my face with his hand again and places a soft kiss to the apple of my cheek.
My dad stands at the foot of my bed, holding both of my bare feet in his hands, and I can’t feel a damn thing.
I yank my hands away from Finn and Wren, scrubbing them over my face as I try not to panic. Surely this is just temporary. I’ll start to get feeling back soon, and then it’ll be a lot of rehab and other hard things, but I’ll get better. Everything will get better.
Finn’s phone pings with a text notification and I nod for him to check it when he looks at me in question. He reads it quickly, a sad smile curling the corner of his mouth. “It’s Julia,” he says. “They made it back to New York.”
“Good.” Julia, Ace, and Blake were all at the hospital Friday evening and all day Saturday, but they had to fly back home today. Julia was going to try to delay it, but I told her they needed to get back and not miss any classes.
I’m dealing with a setback, but I’ll be back soon enough. And I don’t want to be in college by myself because everyone else was too worried about me and flunked out.
“She says she’ll try to call you later.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Do you want anything from downstairs, honey?” my dad asks, digging in his pocket for his visitor’s badge to put it back on. He’s worked a lot of hard hours in his life, been a knight in blue-collar armor dealing with our mom, but I’ve never seen him looking like this. His hair is disheveled and sticking out everywhere, and the rims of his eyes are red with tears and fatigue. I know getting the phone call that I’d been injured while hundreds of miles away was probably the hardest thing he’s ever had to hear.
So, I don’t blame him when he offers up excuses to take breaks like this one.
“Good morning, Scottie,” Dr. Stewart, the lead doctor on my case, greets with a friendly smile, surprising us as he steps through the door. I wasn’t expecting that we’d hear from him until later today. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Hopeful,” I say with a smile as Finn takes my hand. “I can’t feel anything yet, but I’m trying to trust the process, you know?” I mean it as a joke, having used humor with Dr. Stewart as a coping mechanism since my arrival. But his mouth doesn’t curve upward like I’d expect, and the line of his jaw is rigid. It’s an immediate hit to my swagger, and Finn’s thumb stops moving on the back of my hand.
“Scottie, we need to discuss what lies ahead,” he says, and the vibe of the room turns ominous.
I glance at my dad and back to the doctor, and Wren wraps an arm around my shoulders in support.
“Is everything okay? Have you gotten results back?”
All day Saturday, I was in and out of my hospital room for testing. X-rays and MRIs and CT scans and a whole bunch of other random exams were performed to give my medical team a more thorough view of my injury. I don’t know what gave me the notion that everything would check out fine eventually, but right now, Dr. Stewart is scaring me that I might have been way off base.
“I have good news and bad news,” he answers, turning on the light board and putting one of my images on it to show me. “This is an MRI of your spine, Scottie. And if you look right here at your lumbar vertebrae, you can see where your spinal injury is located between L2 to L4.”