Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  Cam excused himself after they were done giving the instructions. “I’ll go tell everyone in the waiting room what’s going on,” he said.

  I let myself breathe—really, truly breathe—for the first time in hours once he was gone. He’d stolen my breath from me the moment he’d told me he was going to be my family. Fuck that. Daddy was my family. I didn’t want Cam Fucking Johnson to be my family. I wanted him to stop being so damn nice and let me really be angry at him. But he wouldn’t.

  The nurse removed my IV and helped me to change into some clothes that Dana had picked up from my house earlier. The ones I’d been wearing when they brought me here were spotted with blood from all my cuts. Not really something I wanted to wear out of here. When the nurse was done with me, an orderly helped me ease down onto a wheelchair so he could take me out. Only I didn’t know how I was going to get home. My car was totaled. I didn’t think I could drive, anyway, with the way I was feeling. Probably a bad idea after the pain meds, too.

  He wheeled me to the hospital entrance, and Cam was waiting there for me in the drive, standing beside his enormous truck. I supposed a couple of the guys must have gone to get it while he was with me, since he’d come to the hospital in the ambulance when they’d brought me in.

  He was the last person I wanted to see right now. He’d hardly left my side the whole time I had been in the emergency room, and he just kept taking care of me, making sure I had everything I needed and being so fucking perfect I would have punched him if I didn’t hurt so much everywhere. Punching him would be a colossally bad idea, anyway. He was as hard as cast iron. I’d probably break my hand if I tried it, which wouldn’t feel very good considering I’d already busted some ribs.

  And here he was again, being nice to me. Behaving thoughtfully. Acting completely sensible and rational, and fucking with all the ideas I had in my head about him.

  He opened the passenger-side door and held out a hand to help me from the wheelchair. The last thing in the world I wanted to do right then was take his hand, but with the way my ribs hurt, I didn’t know if I could get up on my own.

  That didn’t stop me from trying.

  The orderly locked the wheels of my chair, and I set my feet down on the concrete sidewalk, trying to get my bearings. I attempted to push myself up, pressing down on the arms of the wheelchair, but it hurt so much I almost started crying.

  Cam moved toward me, taking my left hand in his and putting his other arm around my waist—on the opposite side of the broken ribs—practically lifting me to my feet. “It’ll probably be easier to get you in the truck if you let me pick you up,” he said.

  I blinked and nodded. As painful as it had been simply trying to stand up, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to pull myself up into that monstrosity right now. It would pull on my ribs and stretch my torso, and I just didn’t think I could do it. Not with the way doing something as simple as breathing made it feel like someone was jabbing a fork between my ribs from the inside.

  In no time, he had me up in the air and was placing me gingerly on the seat, always careful of my ribs. “I’m pretty sure it’ll hurt to wear the seat belt, but you’ve got to. Just until we get you home.” Before I could brace myself against the pain of attempting to fasten it myself, Cam had pulled the belt out and reached around me, securing it in place. He barely touched me at all in the process, and when he had it latched, he eased it until it was snug against me. “Too tight?” he asked.

  Yes, I thought to myself, but there was nothing he could do about that. Anything touching my torso right now, anything at all, was too much. I shook my head, biting down on my tongue against the pain.

  He kissed the end of my nose. “I’m sorry,” he said, as though he could read my thoughts. “I’ll get you home as soon as I can. It won’t hurt for too long.”

  He didn’t try to force me to talk on the way there. That was a good thing, since talking would require breathing, and breathing hurt like a son of a bitch. I was doing everything I could to avoid as much of that particular activity as possible.

  “Your friends all worked out some plans to help while you were with the doctors,” he said when we were about halfway to my house. I twisted my head so I could look at him. “Laura and your dad were spearheading it. Most of them left ahead of us so they could get to your house and get things ready.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I was with you. I just know that your dad told me I was welcome to stay with you guys while the team’s in town. So I can be close to you. So I can help you. And he said Buster could stay, too.”

  “Daddy hates dogs.” I don’t know why I said that when what I should have said was something along the lines of, Why the hell are you all making decisions about me and what I need without bothering to consult me? or, I don’t want you to be at my house all the time to help me, and I definitely don’t want you staying there, or, Since when are you and Daddy all buddy-buddy? But I didn’t say any of those things. I only told him that my father hated dogs.

  The pain meds must be affecting me even more than I realized.

  “He’s the one who suggested it. And it was his idea for me to stay there. Not mine.”

  “I don’t know if I want you to stay.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of you being at my house all the time. Especially not once Daddy comes home.”

  “All right.”

  “Damn it, Cam. Are you ever going to argue with me? About anything?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Why?” I hated the pouty sound of my voice. I hated that he could bring this side of me out. I hated that I couldn’t act like a freaking adult, like he was.

  “Because my dad constantly argued with my mom, and worse, when I was a kid, and I know what it did to me. I know what it did to my sisters. I know what it did to my mom.” He turned onto my street. “I’m not going to be that kind of man. I’m not going to do that to you. So if you don’t want me to stay, I won’t, even though I know you need help and I want to be the one to give it to you.”

  “You’re making it impossible for me to be pissed off at you. You know that?” I spun my head around to stare out the window. It was easier to pout and sulk and do all the immature things I wished I would stop doing if I wasn’t looking at him, if I couldn’t see the way he was looking at me.

  “Good,” he replied as he parked in the driveway. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I detected a hint of laughter in his voice. He almost never laughed. At least it seemed that way.

  He’d been right. There were tons of cars lining the street near my house. I didn’t have a clue how many of them must have come here from the hospital. Too many, when all I wanted to do was find a comfortable position somewhere and let the pain meds do their work.

  “Don’t move,” he said, taking his key from the ignition. “I’ll come get you down.”

  Even though he picked me up carefully and set me down with even more tenderness, I couldn’t stop the pained whimper that came from me. He stood there, his hands on my waist and his head bent down to mine, holding me steady while I tried to remember how to breathe.

  “You okay to walk inside?”

  “I will be,” I said. Maybe.

  “All right.” He wasn’t impatient. He didn’t try to rush me. He just stood there for as long as I needed.

  And I needed a long fucking time. Every tiny motion felt impossibly painful. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to do anything for myself. Whether I wanted his help or not, I needed it. I was going to need a lot of it, damn it.

  Frankly, though, I would rather have his help than just about anyone else that was currently inside my house. I knew they all meant well, but it was just too much. With Cam, it was always the perfect amount at exactly the right time.

  Having him around made me feel stable. I don’t know that I’d felt that much in my life. At least not since my mother left. Daddy had done his best, but he
was as unstable as I was in many ways. Cam was solid. He was unwavering. He steadied me.

  I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  “Cam?” I said after a minute.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want you to stay.”

  He didn’t respond. He just kissed my forehead.

  We stayed like that for another minute or so while I tried to prepare myself for the pain of walking inside. When I was ready, he took my hand and stayed right with me. Strong. Steady. Quietly determined. He was like a rock at my side.

  My rock.

  I drew his hand closer to my side, squeezing it as we went through the front door and stepped into the chaos of Laura’s attempt to make order of my life.

  IT FELT LIKE forever before Laura and her minions finally left. It probably wasn’t fair of me to call them her minions. Hell, half of them were my teammates. It just felt as if all she had to do was snap her fingers, though, and everyone rushed around to do her bidding. I shouldn’t begrudge that. She was going to make sure that Sara and Scotty were looked after all the time, and that meant I wouldn’t have to worry. I just hated that they had all been around so long today and that I hadn’t had any time alone with Sara to really talk to her, and now she was beyond exhausted.

  They didn’t get the hint on their own that Sara had long since passed the point where she needed peace and quiet and sleep and had moved into the stage where she was getting loopy between her exhaustion and pain. Eventually, I had needed to put my foot down and kick them out.

  For some reason, Babs, of all people, was one of the last to go. He’d been the one to leave the hospital with Razor this afternoon to get my truck. Razor had just gone home once he’d dropped Babs off at the practice facility. Then when everyone had arrived at Sara’s house with the keys, Babs had gone in and brewed a pot of coffee, which was surprisingly completely drinkable—Babs’s kitchen skills were horrible, including something as simple as brewing coffee—and he’d made sure there was always plenty ready for anyone and everyone who wanted some. And when we’d gotten hungry in the middle of Laura’s planning and scheduling, he’d been the one to sneak out—with Katie, of course, while her father wasn’t paying attention—to pick up take-out for everyone. I wasn’t positive, but I had a feeling he’d paid for it all on his own, too, not even bothering to ask everyone else to ante up. Later, he’d volunteered to go over to my place and grab Buster and some of my clothes so I wouldn’t have to leave Sara. Every time I turned around, he’d been quietly doing something that was necessary without a word of complaint.

  Sometimes it felt like I didn’t have a lot in common with the kid, but after today, I sure as hell had a ton of respect for him. Babs had spent the entire day working in the background, and it seemed as though he’d accomplished more than the rest of us combined. So when he kept hanging around as everyone else was finally slipping out, I couldn’t help but wonder what was up.

  Burnzie was about to leave when Babs stopped him, and he was blushing like a fucking idiot when he did.

  “I, uh…” Babs shrugged, and he looked over at Sara. She was propped up by a bunch of pillows on the couch, half dozing but mostly in pain, with Buster curled up by her side. Then he blushed some more. “I was just thinking… Scotty can’t really be going up and down the stairs when he comes home tomorrow, not even with help. At least not for a while. He’s going to need to sleep downstairs. We should find somewhere to put a bed for him down here.”

  That made a ton of sense. Just sitting upright in that wheelchair most of the day today had been too much for Scotty, and I’d seen how difficult it was for him to get up and do the little bit of walking that he’d had to do. Stairs would be next to impossible. He’d be able to climb them again someday, but not anytime soon.

  Burnzie grunted in agreement and cuffed Babs on the back of the head. “You should do that thinking thing more often, you know? Use your noggin for good, not for evil.”

  I practically snorted at that. “When has Babs ever done anything evil?” I doubted he’d ever even walked out of the movie theater with his 3-D glasses instead of dropping them in the recycle bin. Hell, it was legal for him to drink when he was home in Ontario, but just stepping into a bar with the boys here in Portland made him uncomfortable.

  “Whatever,” Burnzie said. “Let’s figure out where we can put his bed.”

  We’d all been hanging out in the main living areas the whole afternoon, not really venturing down the hall to see what else they had going on beyond the bathroom closest to us. I debated asking Sara for suggestions, but she looked like she might finally be getting to sleep and I didn’t want to disturb her, so the three of us went off together to explore.

  The first room we came to was clearly Scotty’s office. He had a desk and computer set up on one side of the room, and the other side was dedicated to video sessions—a big La-Z-Boy chair in front of a huge flat screen TV with lots of other equipment hooked up to it. No wonder he was so stressed out all the time. It looked like he brought a lot of work home with him. There wasn’t much room for us to put a bed in here, though, not without doing a lot of furniture rearrangement, so we moved on.

  The next door opened up to a ton of storage—boxes and boxes of paperwork, old files, lots more video equipment, framed photos of Scotty with the Stanley Cup and the various teams he’d coached over the years, and even a few things from his playing days. There wasn’t really any furniture to speak of in here other than some shelves that were filled to bursting with all that crap, but the room was packed to the gills. If it came down to it, the office would be easier to reorganize for him.

  There was one more room we hadn’t checked out on the ground level. We made our way to the very end of the hall, and I opened the door.

  I’d been expecting it to be a game room of sorts—maybe it would have a pool table or a pinball machine, things along those lines. Never in a million years would I have expected what we found. It was like a shrine to everything from Sara’s life. Where Scotty’s memorabilia room had been a mess, one thing stacked upon another without any rhyme or reason to any of it, this room was immaculate.

  There was a trophy case along one wall, filled with participation ribbons and figure skating medals and bowling tournament trophies. Next to that was a wall of her various uniforms from over the years, all in frames—everything from hockey to softball to gymnastics to karate. She’d done it all. Right in the center was what must have been her prom dress, a long goddesslike thing in a blue like the color of the Caribbean Sea. Another wall was lined with framed photos of her—her first school pictures, ballet recitals with her in a cute little tutu, the works.

  One photo, right in the middle of the wall, had Sara with her dad on a camping trip. Her brown hair was pulled into messy pigtails and she was missing three of her four front teeth, but she had on the biggest grin ever while he had her hoisted up on his shoulders.

  Once I looked closer, I realized a lot of the photos had Scotty in them, not just the one in the middle—and in each of them where he was present, his smile was as clear and true as hers. He wasn’t just proud of her; Scotty Thomas was completely enamored of his little girl. This room proved beyond any doubt that there was a hell of a lot more to him than I’d ever imagined.

  “Wow,” Babs said. He sounded as awed as I felt. “Never would have guessed.”

  None of us would have. All we ever saw of Scotty was the stressed-out coach. We never really got to see the father, the man. Even when he came to team events like our annual Casino Night or the charity auction Kally had just hosted for his Light the Lamp Foundation recently, Scotty was typically gruff and red-faced, at least when it had anything to do with any of his players.

  It was starting to make a little more sense why Sara was as attached to him as she was. And, for that matter, why he was reacting to me being in her life the way he had been.

  “Well,” Babs said, “I’d say this is probably the best room for a bed.”

  There wasn’t really a
ny furniture in the room other than the big trophy case along the far wall, so a bed would easily fit. We would even be able to bring a nightstand down and some of his clothes. We could make this into a real bedroom, even if it was only temporary.

  I nodded. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  We made our way out into the living room. Buster lifted his head when we went past him, and when he realized that we were on our way upstairs, he bounded off the sofa to follow us. That movement jostled Sara, and she moaned. Damn. I was hoping she’d sleep through all of the commotion we were about to cause.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice still groggy from the sleep and pain medicine. Her eyes were narrowed on the three of us.

  “Moving Scotty’s bed to the room at the end of the hall,” Babs said. “So he doesn’t have to go upstairs.”

  She shifted slightly and then winced. “Oh. That’s a good idea.” She tried to move again, but the pain that washed over her face nearly buckled my knees.

  “We’ve got this, Jonny,” Burnzie said. He and Babs kept going up the stairs, and Buster raced along ahead of them yapping like the freak he was.

  That was the only encouragement I needed to leave them to it so I could go take care of Sara. I went down the few steps I’d already gone up and crossed over to her. “What are you trying to do?” I asked.

  “I’m trying to get up.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can help.”

  I sat down next to her and cautiously put my arm around her shoulders. I did that for two reasons—one, I liked being able to touch her, and two, the weight of my arm would anchor her to the sofa so she couldn’t get up. Her struggles had to stop. I couldn’t let her wear herself out. That was the whole purpose of me staying here—so that I could take care of things for her, do what needed to be done.