by Hazel Parker
“If such people exist.”
But Brett wasn’t going to change his position, and neither was I. It was just the way things went—two brothers could never seem to co-exist without each having to carve out a space for himself somewhere. I was the athletic stud, Brett the charming know-it-all. I was the guy who won over people by being calm; Brett could yak it up with anyone at any time. I believed our family had grown out of legitimate means through a real “American Dream” story, and Brett believed we had connections to the mafia.
I was sane, and he was crazy. It worked!
We chatted for about half an hour longer before I told him I had to go.
“Make that money!” he shouted as I left the vineyard. “Or go play for the Yankees. Just not the Dodgers. God, veto a trade if that happens.”
“I’m vetoing any trade!” I shouted, and with that, I headed back out to my Tesla, turned it on, and slowly drove out of the lot.
Now, with no more distractions along the way, all my thoughts turned to whatever had compelled the owner and GM of the Giants to meet with me and my agent. It had to be a raise, didn’t it? Athletes who got traded got informed over the phone. They didn’t get in-person meetings like this. Even legends who got traded were told like so, and while I was an All-Star, I was not old enough to be anywhere near Willie Mays or Barry Bonds status. Not even close.
It was the only logical answer. And yet…I wouldn’t believe it until I signed a dotted line confirming it. I refused to. Too much could go wrong between now and then.
And as it was, a little under ten minutes into my drive, traffic seemed to slow down significantly. Confused, I looked out the right side and saw an ambulance, about a half-dozen cop cars, and people outside looking tearful and hurt beyond comprehension. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought a mass tragedy of some kind had occurred.
In the slowdown of traffic, I searched to see if any breaking news was coming from the Sacramento-Oakland-San Francisco area, but besides the usual traffic reports and some sports talk about the start of the regular season, there didn’t seem to be anything too unusual or urgent coming out. Maybe someone had had a heart attack.
But the way people looked, the way young people were crying, this did not seem like a heart attack. This seemed like something bad…something like…
Izzy’s ex.
I refused to believe the thought at first. He was so far away, and even if something had happened to Izzy, she would have sent some sort of warning. She would have said she’d seen him following her.
But when I looked more closely at the building, which said it housed the same marketing firm that had gotten me the speaking gig at Fresno State—the one that I met Izzy through—a sickening feeling hit the pit of my stomach. If it was her, and I kept driving by, I’d never forgive myself. If it wasn’t her, but she was still suffering…
But on the other hand, all it took was one person photographing me there. If nothing had happened to Izzy, then her need for privacy would have gotten shit on. I would have ruined everything out of some false moral obligation to be there. And it would have put her and her son in a worse spot.
As it was, I was kind of damn lucky that my grandparents or parents hadn’t said anything about the one photo out there. I liked to believe they just didn’t read TMZ, but the honest truth was it probably embarrassed them so much to know I was dating a mother with a child out of wedlock that they just pretended to believe this didn’t exist.
Traffic started to lighten up. The speed of the vehicles began to resume.
And you’re going to let outside forces dictate what you do? You’re not going to listen to your conscious? Are you that image-aware that you’re not even going to stop to see what happened here? Worst case…
Not about worst case. About making sure Izzy’s fine.
I lurched into the left lane, ignoring the driver behind me honking for cutting him off. I waited to make sure the other side of the road was clear and pulled off an illegal U-turn. Yeah, there were cops there. With all respect to the LEOs, they could kiss my ass if they wanted to ticket me at a time like this.
I pulled into the nearest parking lot, jumped out of my car, and jogged slowly over to the chaos. Most people were keeping their distance, grieving at whatever they saw. I saw out of the periphery of my vision a few people staring at me, clearly recognizing me, but I was in no mood for fucking autographs or to talk about the season.
“Yeah, he’s with her.”
I didn’t know who said it, but my ears seemed finely tuned to pick up that line. Her…Izzy…
Before I had a chance to process it, I saw a gurney being wheeled out of the doors about twenty feet in front. There was a medic with her back to me blocking the full view, but she would have to turn before—
And then she did.
Izzy was on that gurney.
Her face was red and swollen and bloodied.
“Izzy!”
I tried to charge through, but two police officers cut me off.
“What the hell, man?” I said. “She’s hurt!”
“Sir, we’re taking her to the hospital; we need you to step back.”
“Step back? Her ex just beat the shit out of her! I need to make sure she’s OK!”
“She’s alive and in stable condition. We still need you to step back.”
Those words provided some relief, but I didn’t want to be in a position to have to feel this kind of relief. And in any case, that temporary relief quickly got replaced by unbridled rage.
I wanted to fucking kill Malcolm.
I wanted to get my hands around his throat, break his spine, twist his neck, and curb stomp his face until it was bones and blood.
I wanted him eradicated from the face of this Earth and for his soul to suffer in hell forever.
I wanted him fucking dead.
The ambulance took off. I hopped in my Tesla and followed her. The meeting with the Giants could fucking wait.
Revenge for what had just happened to Izzy could not.
Chapter 16: Izzy
The whole world felt like a blur, and every sense I had followed accordingly.
My eyes felt like I was looking at the world underwater. I didn’t see distinct shapes or people, just blurred masses that blended together.
My ears only heard distant sounds—I thought at one point I heard someone calling my name, but I couldn’t tell if they were saying “Izzy” or “Is it,” nor could I even tell if it was a man or a woman. I just had a constant ringing in my ears that didn’t go away.
Everything hurt. Even just having my weight lie on the…whatever I was on, the ground, the bed, the table, hurt. Everything, and I mean everything, hurt. Just breathing…
I couldn’t taste the inside of my own mouth. I could smell blood—that was it. That was the one thing that I had was that I could smell blood.
“Izzy…”
Someone definitely shouted my name. But who? It sounded like an echo, actually, not someone yelling my name.
“…still.”
And then I shrieked immediately when I felt myself being lifted up. It was as if the Earth beneath me had shoved me up in the air, and I tightened up, preparing to fall down. I closed my eyes as I prayed it would end soon.
The ground shook.
No, not the ground. A bed. A gurney.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but that hurt like hell too.
“Izzy!”
Someone definitely shouted my name. But who?
Nick.
Ferrari…
I couldn’t smile. I hurt too much. But I knew it was him.
I knew I could rest as easily as one could right now.
* * *
The first thing that I noticed when I woke up was that everything was sore. Every single damn part of my body felt awful. My ribs hurt the worst, and breathing was excruciating, but at least I didn’t have any tubes going down my throat or nose.
My head…Jesus, I had never had a headache this bad. I wou
ld have killed to have a hangover instead, because at least that would have felt better. I…I…
Malcolm.
Malcolm!
My eyes jolted wide. I sat up in the bed, ignoring the agonizing pain.
“Ryan!” I screamed for my child.
“Ryan’s OK.”
I looked to my right, and for the first time since I’d woken up, something in my world was good.
My mother and my father were sitting together, holding hands. My mother had tear stains on her cheeks while my father struggled to stay composed.
“Ryan’s with the Collins family,” she said, referring to a close family we had known for my entire life. “I can promise you, he’s as safe there as he is with me.”
I nodded. I believed her.
But now that my guard was down, now that I didn’t have to fight like hell to protect my only son, everything came rushing back.
The first blow to the head had temporarily blacked me out. I had turned just in time to have Malcolm kick me.
“You fucking run away from me again, bitch?” he yelled.
What followed was traumatic and awful. The only thing that got him to run away, if memory served me right, was that two other women had walked in, screamed, and chased him off. By that point, I was in so much pain and so shocked by what had happened I couldn’t even say who the two women were, and in some ways, it was just a fight not to slip into unconsciousness. There was a real fear that if I did, I wouldn’t wake up.
But I had…right after hearing Nick’s voice…
I started to cry. Like, really, really, really fucking bawl my eyes out. The worst had not only come to pass, but the unimaginable had happened. I had planned for the possibility that Malcolm would come and track me down, but I was not prepared for him having hurt me so bad. He’d hit me before, but he’d never beaten me up.
My mom rose from her chair, took my hand in hers, and squeezed. It was probably the only spot on my body that could be touched without me grimacing.
“I’m so sorry, Izzy,” she said. “I’m sorry we didn’t do enough to protect you.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
It’s…
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.
“He won’t be coming after you again,” my mother said, but… “The cops already found him and arrested him. The evidence is pretty strong. And even if he hadn’t done this, he was under strict orders to remain in Los Angeles. So…”
I nodded, still sobbing. That was good news. But it wasn’t news that would change anything.
Malcolm had gone to jail once. What was to stop him from waiting it out, getting out again, and doing this all over again—especially if things with Nick continued to be more and more public…
Nick.
Nick’s voice was the one I’d heard. Nick had come to see what was going on. Nick…he’d put himself in public to make sure I was OK.
I still couldn’t smile, but there was something profoundly powerful about that realization.
“So, Malcolm’s in jail?” I said, not wanting to take any chances with what I had heard.
“Yes, dear,” my mother said. “The cops caught him before you even got here. I…”
“Someone needs to kill the bastard,” my father said.
My mother, usually one to disagree with my father in their banter, didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure if I liked the idea of murder. But I sure wouldn’t mind the removal of a threat from my life like that for good.
There was so much to think about and so little energy to do it. Already, I felt like I needed to go back to sleep, like someone had woken me up at three in the morning without notice. I had a gross feeling that my life would just permanently be like this now: half sleeping through pain, half jolting awake in some form of PTSD.
“And Ryan’s safe?” I asked one more time.
My mother nodded.
“He is.”
That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes, said I’d be back in a bit, and went back to passing out.
Hopefully, when I woke up, I wouldn’t have dreamed all of this.
Chapter 17: Nick
This is entirely my fucking fault.
Watching Izzy get taken into the ambulance on a gurney, the marks of her ex all over her…God, it was both heartbreaking and the most infuriating thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I had not taken care to consider if the paparazzi would snap a photo of the two of us out in public, holding hands like so. Perhaps the fact that I had to account for that said something tragic and terrible about our culture, but I didn’t really like to be one of those thinkers; I just wanted to know what the facts were and how to account for them. And very obviously, I had failed to account for that possibility.
I wanted to fucking drive to Los Angeles and burn down TMZ’s office all the same, though. What did the assholes gain by doing this? Some clicks and some ad revenue? Didn’t they have more salacious things with cheating Hollywood stars? What the fuck would they possibly want with me?
It was so fucking stupid.
And as for her ex…
Rage felt like too kind of a word to describe what I wanted to do to him. Unbridled fury felt like too calm of a term. Death was not enough for what he deserved; some sort of horrible, twisted, ugly torture was needed so he could know what he had put Izzy through before I let him die.
The revenge fantasies poured through my head. Oh, how much fucking delight I’d take in watching that fucking pussy weasel squirm. People thought I could get intense on the baseball diamond, but that was just athletic intense; they didn’t want to see what murderous intense would look like.
The phone rang. I looked down. It was Scott.
“Yeah,” I said, even though I knew full well what was going on.
“Hey, buddy,” Scott said in a light tone, far too light. “It’s OK if you hit traffic or something, we just want to know—”
“I just saw my girlfriend get beat up by her ex, Scott. I can’t do this right now. Tell everyone I’m sorry.”
With that, I hung up, even as Scott begged me to stay on the line. It didn’t fucking matter if they were offering me a billion dollars. Money didn’t matter at this point; money could not buy a time machine that would undo what had just fucking happened.
I sighed, then screamed “goddamnit!” and punched the steering wheel of my Tesla. No, it did not do anything. Yes, it felt a little bit good.
I let my anger with her ex run its course as long as it could before I just sort of mentally exhausted myself. Then it came time to ask the question that had always been asked in sports: what now? Perhaps it felt a bit flippant to use a sports phrase for this situation, but it was all I knew, really.
Wherever her ex was, I could not say, and I had to imagine—or hope, at least—that the police were hot on his tail, ready to pound his ass into the curb and throw him back where he belonged. Izzy was likely at the hospital, resting and recuperating with family. I knew from the times my teammates had gotten surgeries that even for minor things like that, they only let family visit for the first little bit after an operation.
And that was for something not life-threatening, for something professional, not personal. I probably wouldn’t get to see Izzy for a full fucking week. That was perhaps understandable from the hospital’s perspective, but it was unacceptable for me.
I had to do what I had sworn never to do.
I would have to leverage my name to get what I wanted.
I absolutely hated when my teammates would call up a restaurant or a store and say, “Well, I’m a starting pitcher for the Giants; don’t you think it’ll be worth the publicity?” It was cheap and artificially elevated their status. And yet, if it meant getting to see Izzy…
I needed to know that she was all right. Fuck, I didn’t even need to talk to her if I just knew that she was fine. That seemed like a fair compromise—I’d let her family visit her for now, but then I would still call just to get an update on her status. If s
he was stable and her vital signs good, or at least as good as possible, then I could wait some.
Fuck. Worth it, though. Now’s the time to use that.
I looked up the hospital’s general phone number and dialed it from my Tesla. Scott tried calling me again, but I just ignored him. By now, I knew full well he wanted me to come sign a contract extension, but when you already had over ten million in the bank, what was an extra few million? It wasn’t like I led a lifestyle that required multiple yacht purchases.
“General Hospital, this is Megan, how can I help you?”
“Hi, Megan? Nick Ferrari, San Francisco Giants here.”
God, I hated myself already. But I had to keep going.
“My girlfriend just got taken to the hospital after suffering some trauma, and I just need to know if she’s OK.”
“Your girlfriend?”
Shit.
“Um, yes, my girlfriend. Izzy Saunders?”
I wasn’t even focused on the fact that it was probably a bit presumptive to call her my girlfriend. Rather, I knew Megan wasn’t asking me this question because she wanted to make sure she heard me right.
“I’m sorry, sir, but if she is not family, then we cannot allow any visitors to any potential patients.”
Sir. I didn’t even get the benefit of having my famous name acknowledged. I knew Megan wasn’t being passive-aggressive, but I was nevertheless getting more and more flustered.
“You don’t understand; she got beat up by her ex and put on death’s door. I have to know if she’s OK.”
“Sir, I understand, but hospital protocol is such that we can only allow family to visit patients right now.”
She let the words hang. I wasn’t going to get anything else. This was a fucking waste of time. Everything that didn’t bring me closer to Izzy or see that Malcolm would suffer accordingly was a waste of time.
“Understood, thanks,” I said, hanging up before Megan had a chance to reply.
OK, so I wasn’t going to see Izzy for at least a day. That fucking sucked. That really fucking sucked, especially since it was my fault. So what could I do?