Intercepting Daisy

by Julie Brannagh

  He should send some kind of thank-you note to the builder for the heated floors in his condo, which kept him from freezing to death. He managed to pull himself off of the tile floor, crawl into his bedroom, and grab his cell phone out of his pants pocket. He hit Contacts and stared at a number. His parents were in Texas. Dialing 911 might be a slight overreaction. He knew he needed a little help right now though. There was only one person in the Seattle area who wasn’t going to flip out at a six sixteen AM phone call, and Grant touched the phone receiver icon by his name.

  “Talk to me,” Tom Reed said as he answered his cell phone.

  “It’s Parker.”

  “I know that. Your face popped up on my screen. What’s up? You don’t sound good.”

  “I’ve been throwing up since two o’clock or so this morning.”

  “And you’re alone in your condo,” Tom said. “Let me get the team doc on the phone. He’ll want to come over and take a look at you. I’d bring you some juice and stuff myself, but I don’t want my kids to get this. Want me to grab some stuff at the store and leave it with your building’s concierge?”

  “I can handle it,” Grant said, which was a lie. If he could handle it, he wouldn’t have been calling another person before seven AM. “Actually . . . I feel like shit.”

  “I’ll bet,” Tom said. “Get your ass back into bed, and I’ll have someone over there as soon as possible. And if you need me to go get you some juice or Gatorade or some damn thing, call me back.”

  “Hey, Reed,” Grant said.

  “What?”

  “Are you busy this afternoon?”

  “Hell no. What’s up?”

  “Will you go to Children’s and visit with a few of the kids? They’ll be disappointed.”

  Most of Grant’s teammates visited the local children’s hospital on Tuesdays, their day off. He’d called the nurses and made a special arrangement to stop by after practice and before he was supposed to see Daisy. Grant hadn’t been able to make it last Tuesday, having spent the day at the practice facility with his coach and the Sharks’ general manager.

  Tom Reed was going to be out for two weeks with broken ribs. As a result, Grant was now the Sharks’ starting quarterback. He’d been studying for and working toward this day for several years, but he was rattled. Grant wasn’t Tom. He wondered what was going to happen when the Sharks fans figured that one out too. He’d do his best every time he stepped onto a football field, but he wasn’t going to be the lightning-bolt-for-an-arm thriller the fan base had been watching for over a decade now.

  Getting the starting job was a vote of confidence from the Sharks’ front office, but they had already talked about wanting him to spend more time with Reed this season. It wasn’t that Grant didn’t know the playbook, and he could drop back and throw a perfect spiral. But he knew the coaches were hoping that Tom’s All-Pro personality might rub off a little on the introverted and more cautious Grant.

  Grant hoped so too.

  “Just when I thought you were a selfish bastard, you go and say something like this,” Tom joked. “I’ll be there. And take it easy. Call if you need anything else.”

  “I’ll do that. Thanks for visiting the kids.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  Tom hung up his phone. Grant knew he was probably dehydrated. He also knew he had some Gatorade in the refrigerator, but he wasn’t sure he could stand up long enough to go and get it.

  His phone rang again. He hit Answer.

  “Hey, Parker. Reed called me. I’m on my way over. Can you walk to your front door to let me in?” the team doctor said.

  “I’ll crawl if I have to. I feel like I got hit by a truck. I don’t get it. I had a flu shot.”

  “Sometimes the shot doesn’t cover every strain of flu,” the doctor said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t worry; you’re going to live.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Mike.”

  Two hours later, Dr. Mike drove Grant to the emergency room of Evergreen Hospital. Grant wasn’t overly fond of hospital stays as a rule, but he was willing to try almost anything by now. According to the doctor, he needed IV fluids and something to bring his fever down. On his way out the door, he’d jammed his cell phone and the charger into his pocket with his wallet. He needed to text Daisy, since he wasn’t going to be able to make their date.

  What if she was as sick as he was?

  LYING IN BED, Daisy heard her cell phone chirp with a new text message. It was probably Catherine wondering if she was still among the living. She reached out to grab the phone.

  It was Grant Parker. Tell me you’re not sick too.

  Chapter Ten

  GRANT SPENT THE next day and a half in a hospital bed. He’d had the flu before, but it had been nothing like this. Even his hair hurt. Anything else but Gatorade and water came right back up. The nurse had tried giving him some low-sodium chicken broth last night, which hadn’t worked especially well. The doctor who visited twice a day had already told him he wasn’t playing Sunday afternoon. He’d lost seven pounds and was as weak as a newborn kitten. Worse than the illness was the knowledge that Daisy was sick too. She’d replied to his text, admitting she also had the flu.

  The nurse was a big Sharks fan and had let him keep his smartphone. He clicked on Daisy’s cell number.

  “Hello?” she said. Her voice sounded a little weak. “Grant, is that you?”

  “It sure is,” he said. He settled back against the pillows in his hospital bed. “How are you doing? Do you feel any better?”

  “It’s nice to talk with you.” He could almost see her smile through the phone. “I feel better than I did yesterday. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling a little better.” He pulled in a breath. “Hey. Let’s have dinner next week. What do you think?”

  He was rewarded with the sound of her laughter. “Are you sure? Maybe we should both quit hurling before we have another date.”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. “You pick. El Gaucho or the Space Needle.”

  He could hardly keep his eyes open due to needing yet another nap, but he belatedly remembered that a woman afraid of heights might not be thrilled about having dinner six hundred feet in the air.

  He heard a little snickering laugh from Daisy. He wondered what he could do to make her laugh some more.

  “How about a restaurant on Earth?” she said.

  He laughed out loud. He still felt like shit, but at least she was well enough to make jokes.

  “You’re on,” he said. “I’ll text you.”

  “That’ll be great,” she said. “I hope you’ll feel better soon.”

  “I will,” he said. “Are you flying on Sunday?”

  “I have to see the doctor before they’ll let me go back to work,” she said.

  He tried to make his voice as casual as possible. His heart was banging around in his chest like the drumline at a Sharks game.

  “Perfect. I’m not sure I’ll be playing yet, but how about coming to my game? I’ll leave some suite tickets at Will Call for you and your roommate. If you’re still too sick, don’t worry about it. I’d really like it if you were there, though.” If he got on the field, it would be the biggest day of his life so far, and he wanted her to be a part of it. “If you can’t do it, don’t worry about it.”

  He heard a little gasp. “I’d love to be there. Thank you for asking me.”

  He didn’t want to hang up, but he didn’t want to overstay his welcome, either. Hopefully, he hadn’t scared her off. He fell asleep shortly afterward. He woke up the next morning to see that he must have been texting in his sleep. There was a long string of emojis on his phone’s screen. Maybe he’d fallen asleep with his thumb on the keys or something. Luckily for him, Daisy assured him via text that she found this hilarious.

  He returned from the men’s room to find a square glass vase filled with bright, colorful flowers, a six-pack of Gatorade, and a card. He tore it open.

  “Sorry i
t’s not beer,” she’d written. “Get well soon. Go Sharks! —Daisy”

  Grant loved the flowers, but he loved the note even more. He had a game to get well for, but the thought of another date with Daisy was definitely on his mind too.

  He grabbed his phone and fired off another text to her.

  Thanks for the flowers and the drinks. We’ll get beer soon.

  His QB coach sauntered into the room a minute or so later and parked himself in the recliner next to Grant’s bed. “Hey, Parker.”

  “Hey, Carl. Nice to see you.”

  Grant edged his ass onto the hospital bed while a nurse held the IV pole. The nurse settled the blankets over him once more, fluffed his pillows, and glanced over at the coach.

  “He needs his rest,” she said to Carl.

  “Got it.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I mean it.”

  Carl raised one eyebrow. “I heard you the first time.”

  Despite the fact that Carl had been assured that Grant was no longer contagious because he didn’t have a fever, he wore a paper mask over his nose and mouth and latex gloves.

  “Looks like you have an admirer,” Carl said as Grant propped the little card up where he could see it.

  “Just a friend,” Grant said.

  “Of course she is.” He had braced an electronic tablet on the rolling table next to Grant’s bed and hit Play so Grant could watch yet more game film on the Minutemen.

  “This will come in handy the next time we play them,” Carl said.

  “I’ll be on the field Sunday.” Grant was playing even if he was missing a limb. He wasn’t going to lie there and watch the third-string QB make a mess of things.

  “You can’t stand up and walk across the room. Johnny will handle it.”

  Johnny Freeman was a Heisman Trophy winner runner-up, QB of a national championship college team, and had done nothing so far in the NFL. The Sharks were his third team in three seasons. Everyone had to start somewhere, but the typical response to being traded once and outright released last season would have been I’d better work harder. Johnny relied too much on his natural talents and not enough on learning the Sharks’ playbook. Coach thought he could fix what was wrong, but Grant knew it wasn’t going to happen, and now wasn’t the time to discuss it.

  “No. He’s never taken a snap in a pro game. I’ll be there.”

  “Parker, we can’t take the risk. Johnny will start, and Terrell will back him up as the emergency QB.”

  “I promised Reed,” Grant said.

  “Reed will survive,” Carl muttered, just as the man himself breezed through the door.

  “Talking about me, Coach? Hey, Parker.” Tom Reed moved closer to Grant’s bed and fist-bumped with him. “Got some stuff for you from the kids.”

  “Your kids?”

  “The kids at Children’s.” He reached into a plastic bag and started pulling out pieces of construction paper, which he handed to Grant. “I told them you were sick.”

  The pieces of paper were crayoned drawings. Some were obviously meant to look like him wearing his Sharks uniform and holding a football. Some were stick figures with misshapen letters and numbers. Grant picked one out of a pile that had a heart in the middle of the page. “Get well soon. I love you, Emma,” with Xs and Os for kisses and hugs.

  Maybe the lack of solid food was getting to him. He fought back tears as he looked at the misshapen heart, imperfectly colored but drawn with love. He knew Emma. Someone must have helped her write the card. After she’d had open heart surgery a few weeks ago, she’d played tic-tac-toe with him. Of course, he let her win, and her smile was radiant. She’d also told him she wanted to marry him when she grew up.

  “Are you sure? You might meet someone you like better than me,” he’d said.

  Her amber-brown eyes sparkled. “Nope. I wanted to marry my daddy, but he says I can’t. He has to be my daddy. So I’m going to marry you.”

  Grant had reached out to take her small hand in his and kissed the back of it, being careful not to dislodge the IV needle taped there. “Well, then, I accept.”

  The next time he went to see her, he brought her some flowers, one of his away jerseys for a pretend wedding dress, and one of those rings with a diamond made of hard candy. It was too big for her finger, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  The last time he went to visit Emma, he couldn’t get in to see her. She’d had another surgery and was in quarantine for some reason. He’d left a frilly Sharks hair thing for her with the nurse. He hoped she’d be well enough soon to wear it to one of his games.

  Emma knew there were more surgeries ahead as she got older. Every time he’d seen her, though, she’d been smiling. And she wasn’t scared of what was ahead. She was going to get through it. He could follow her example.

  Despite the fact that he’d spent the past two days puking until there was nothing left, he was getting his ass out of this bed. He wasn’t Tom Reed, but the team needed him. He was running onto the field with Emma’s little drawing folded up in his sock or something. It would bring him luck, and he could tell her about it later.

  He reached out for the button that called the nurse.

  “What’cha need?” Tom Reed said.

  “Food,” Grant said.

  GRANT HAULED HIMSELF out of a hotel bed in Bellevue on Sunday morning. The Sharks spent the night before every home game there. The team had dinner, a meeting or two, and a chapel service before bed check. He knew there were a few guys who sneaked downstairs to the hotel bar to grab a beer before the coaches did everything but tuck them in for the night. Maybe he’d join them when he didn’t feel like he’d been run over by a truck. Still.

  Game day had dawned clear and cold. The clear part was good—it would improve the offense’s grip on the ball. The cold part wasn’t the best; it wasn’t great for any athlete’s muscles, but at least the team wouldn’t have to worry about cramping due to heat-related dehydration.

  Grant heaved a sigh of relief. The conditions were almost perfect. He heard his roommate Kevin’s deep voice from the other side of the hotel room. Kevin was the Sharks’ newest running back. He and Grant had done some extra work this week on handoffs and a couple of trick plays the coaches were holding in reserve just in case. The team’s typical starting RB was out with a calf strain. In other words, everyone else was going to have to step up today to match the guy’s production. Grant was pretty sure Kevin had his own set of nerves going, but hunger seemed to have won out, at least at the moment.

  “It’s game day, bro. Let’s get our asses downstairs for breakfast,” Kevin said.

  Grant strolled into the locker room at Sharks Stadium a couple of hours later. He wasn’t 100 percent, but he was going to do his best to convince his coaches he was. The somewhat bland food he’d been surviving on since he had left the hospital helped with the other game day problem: nerves.

  Players dealt with nerves in a variety of ways. Some threw up, either in the locker room bathroom or on the field itself. Some pulled their headphones on and tuned out everyone else until it was time to take the field. Some sat in front of their locker and said their prayers. Grant had spent years on the sidelines holding a clipboard. By the time he was told to get in there, he didn’t have time to get nervous. He relied on the hours of study and practice to get him through. Today, it was all on him, and he hoped the baked chicken breast and brown rice the hotel chef had made for him would stay down. Or in, as the case may be.

  After busting his balls about Overtime Parking, his coaches and teammates had finally backed off the subject. Nobody on the team was interested in a distraction this week. He knew that the PR group had released some additional photos of his visits to Children’s Hospital and put up a short blog post on the Sharks’ website about the kids making cards for him when he wasn’t feeling so well.

  The front office seemed to believe that the publicity (and the resulting media-driven questions about Grant’s private life) would die down after he made his debut as the S
harks’ starting QB. At least they hoped it would happen. If he managed to pull off a win, his private life and reputation would be the last thing anyone would be talking about for the rest of the week.

  Tom Reed sat down in front of his own locker next to Grant’s. He wasn’t playing today, but he’d be listening to the coaches’ instructions to Grant through an earphone.

  “Need a hand with the shirt?” Grant said to him. Getting the long-sleeved T-shirt stamped with the team logo on over the bandaging Reed currently wore might be an interesting feat.

  “I’ll let you know.” Tom glanced over at Grant. “Hey, Parker. Are you sure?” He didn’t have to spell out what he was talking about.

  “I’ll be fine,” Grant said. He reached out to grab the long underwear he wore under his uniform when it was colder than a well digger’s ass on the field. He checked to see that the wristband with the abbreviated list of plays the coaches had scripted was in his stuff too. He knew what they wanted to do and he had a two-way microphone in his helmet, but it never hurt to have a backup.

  “You nervous yet?”

  “What do you think?”

  Tom reached out to bump fists with Grant. “If you didn’t give a shit, you wouldn’t be nervous. Champions are nervous.” He looked at the floor for a few seconds, glanced up, and met Grant’s eyes again. “Get your ass out there and take my job.”

  The locker room was loud with the commotion that ensued when fifty-three guys attempted to get dressed and taped in an hour, but at the moment it came down to two men sitting in front of their lockers, struggling to know what to say to each other.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fuck, yeah.” Tom swallowed hard. “There’s never a good time to walk away. I love this. But I love my wife and my kids more.” He let out a long breath. “I mean it. Go out there and earn it. Make me proud.”

  Grant shuffled his feet a bit. “I’m not you.”

  Damn right he wasn’t. He had the physical attributes, but he didn’t have Tom’s lightning strike of an arm, his exhaustive knowledge of the Sharks’ playbook since the team’s inception, or the balls to tell the offensive coordinator and the head coach he was calling his own goddamn game. Grant was good enough to be a starter, but he wasn’t good enough to succeed a legend. And he wasn’t sure he’d ever be. His game was more about finesse, while Tom’s was about gunslinging and going for broke. Grant preferred to pick defenses apart and take calculated risks. Calculated risks tended to cut down on the number of disastrous interceptions, but they didn’t make football fans jump out of their seats screaming over a seventy-five-yard Hail Mary or the perfect strike to one of the league’s burner-speed wide receivers some dumb-ass defender left wide open in the end zone.