Fast-Pitch Love

by Clay Cormany

  "That’s what I'd do." Martha cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled to her infield. "Come in a few steps! Get ready for the bunt!"

  Her infielders moved in toward home plate, but it didn’t help that much. The Ladyhawk batter laid down a near-perfect bunt that dribbled between the pitcher’s mound and the third base foul line. Erica, playing at third, scooped it up and threw to first in time to get the out. But the sacrifice put two runners in scoring position with the top of the Ladyhawks’ batting order coming to the plate.

  Parents and friends of the Ladyhawks shouted encouragement to the lead-off hitter. Valkyrie supporters matched them with cheers and applause for Corey.

  "Strike her out!" spouted Mr. Davenport from his lawn chair. "She can’t hit. She’s not that good."

  Jace cast a wary glance at Mr. Davenport. If the man didn't quiet down, the umpire might tell him to leave, since league rules prohibited coaches, players, and spectators from saying negative things to or about players on the opposing team.

  "Just get an out, Corey," Jace implored. "Do it any way you can."

  The first pitch was a ball. Then came a strike and a foul ball that put the count at one-two.

  "You’re in charge now, Corey!" Jace yelled. "Finish the job."

  The next pitch appeared to be outside, but the Ladyhawk batter swung at it anyway and lofted a fly ball into short left field. Erica back pedaled, trying to draw a bead on the ball, but Jace could see that left-fielder Charlene had a better chance of making the catch. Martha apparently saw it that way, too.

  "Charlene, that’s your play!" she shouted.

  Charlene ran forward while Erica continued to run backward, and for one frightening second a collision seemed certain. At the last possible moment, however, Charlene yelled, "Mine!" and Erica halted her backwards motion just as the ball slapped into Charlene’s glove. It jumped into the webbing before Charlene squeezed it, giving her an "ice cream cone."

  "Run it home, Charlene!" Martha’s voice blared like a bugle. "Don’t let the runner score!"

  Brushing past Erica, Charlene dashed toward third, now covered by shortstop Tina. The runner at third took a few tantalizing steps toward home, no doubt hoping that Charlene would launch an errant throw, but the Valkyries’ left-fielder didn’t take the bait. Holding the ball aloft so she could make a throw if necessary, Charlene ran the ball to the infield and didn’t toss it to Tina until she was nearly next to her.

  "Great job, Charlene!" shouted Martha. Beside her, Sylvia gave a loud "woo-hoo" and pumped her fist. Jace chuckled and gave Sylvia a playful nudge.

  "Let’s show a little dignity around here, please," he said in mock dismay.

  "Hey dude, you celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine."

  "Fair enough, but don’t forget this game isn’t over yet."

  True enough. The Ladyhawks still had two runners in scoring position and at the plate stood their second hitter — a tall, lanky girl who already had two hits to her credit.

  "Bear down, Corey. We’re just one out away from another win," yelled Jace.

  Corey’s first pitch sailed low for a ball. The second caught the outside corner for a strike. Another ball, inside this time, followed. The fourth pitch became an omen of the calamity that would soon follow. The Ladyhawk batter, swinging a bit late, sent the ball flying toward the Valkyries’ bench. It plowed into the fence that protected the bench, knocking over several water bottles that were propped up against the interlocked chains.

  "Strike her out!" Valkyrie players and parents yelled. But the next pitch went wide, bringing the count full.

  "Don’t worry about the strikeout," Martha advised her pitcher. "Just get it over the plate."

  Corey obliged and the Ladyhawk batter again smashed a foul ball toward the Valkyrie bench. This one was higher, perhaps chest high. It went over the protective fence but then glanced off a light pole and came flying back to where the coaches stood. Before anyone realized the danger, the ball smacked Martha in the head above her right eye. Sylvia screamed as Martha’s hat flew off and she collapsed to her knees. On both sides of the field, a collective gasp went up from players and spectators alike.

  "Time out!" The umpire shouted, as Jace put an arm across his mother’s back.

  "Mom, are you all right?"

  There was no answer right away. Martha brought a hand up to her head and touched the growing welt left by the ball. "I’m not sure," she finally said. She searched for her hat, which Sylvia handed to her. After a moment, she spoke again.

  "I think I’ll be okay. Probably won't have anything more than a bad headache."

  A small crowd gathered around Martha and from out of that crowd a quivering voice rang out.

  "I'm sorry, coach," said the lanky Ladyhawk batter, wiping away tears. "I didn’t mean to hurt you."

  Martha walked over to the girl and patted her arm.

  "I know, honey," she said. "You’re just trying to help your team like you’re supposed to." Martha put on her hat. "Maybe I should make a stop at the ER just to be safe," she said to the umpire. "But let’s get this game ov–"

  Martha never finished her sentence. Instead, she gripped her head and fell backward as if pushed by an unseen hand. Jace, Phoebe, and several others ran to where she lay unconscious.

  "Someone call nine-one-one!" Jace yelled as Phoebe burst into tears.

  Kneeling beside him, Sylvia pulled out her cell phone. "I’m on it."

  ****

  Martha regained consciousness even before the ambulance arrived and could speak clearly and coherently. But she complained of dizziness and couldn’t recall much of anything that happened after being hit by the ball. Once the squad car zoomed off with red lights blinking, Jace and Phoebe raced to Martha’s station wagon in the parking lot. Right before they left, Sylvia reached over and took his hand.

  "I’ll deal with the team," she said. "You need to be with your mom now."

  Jace nodded and squeezed her hand before releasing it. He saw genuine concern reflected in Sylvia’s eyes, and he sensed she wanted to say more, but the emergency didn’t allow it.

  Once at the hospital, Jace and Phoebe found a parking spot close to the Emergency Room and then followed the signs that led them through a pair of automatic glass doors to the ER’s reception desk.

  "We’re here to check on Martha Waldron," said Jace to the matronly woman behind the desk.

  "Are you members of her family?" asked the woman.

  "Yes, ma’am. I’m her son and this is my sister."

  The woman went over to a nearby computer and danced her fingers across its keyboard. She fixed her eyes on the monitor for a few seconds and then came back to Jace and Phoebe.

  "Your mother is being examined right now. Take a seat in the waiting room, and a doctor will talk to you shortly."

  "Shortly" proved to be nearly an hour. Phoebe, fidgeting in her seat, tried at first to read a magazine but eventually was lured to the television. Other people in the waiting room, their faces creased with worry, hunched in chairs or paced about. Doctors and nurses glided by in scrubs or white coats. Occasionally, they would speak to someone in the waiting room. At one point, a group of people, perhaps seven of them, made a circle and held each other’s hands. Heads bowed, they prayed for someone in desperate need, someone apparently beyond the reach of human help. While Jace watched, he wondered how often scenes like that occurred in this room.

  "Jace and Phoebe Waldron?"

  The words came from a young, square-jawed doctor wearing green scrubs and holding a clipboard.

  "Hello," he said. "I’m Dr. Welsh. I’ve just finished examining your mother, and it looks like she suffered a mild or maybe even a moderate concussion from that softball."

  Jace opened his mouth to speak, but Phoebe beat him to the punch.

  "Will she be all right?"

  "Oh, I think so," Dr. Welsh responded. "Concussions usually aren’t life-threatening to people like your mother who are in good health."

  J
ace sensed the uncertainty in the man’s voice, and he hesitated before asking, "Can she come home tonight?"

  The doctor shook his head. "I think to be safe, we should keep her overnight and run a couple of tests on her. Sometimes the symptoms from a head injury don’t appear right away."

  "What kind of tests?" asked Phoebe.

  "The main one will be a CAT scan," Dr. Welsh answered. "That will let us see if there’s any bleeding inside your mother’s brain. If there’s not, we can probably release her tomorrow."

  "Can we see her before you do the CAT scan?" Jace asked.

  "Sure," said the doctor. "In fact, you can see her right now."

  He escorted them through a pair of swinging doors, past a nurse’s station, to an area where a series of curtains were arranged in a circle. Doctor Welsh opened one of the curtains to reveal Martha reclining on a bed, her head nestled into a pillow. She wore a hospital gown and had a white blanket pulled up to her waist. A heart monitor was attached to her left arm, and an ice bag on her forehead partially obscured the ugly bruise above her right eye. The doctor vanished as Jace and Phoebe took seats on either side of her. Martha reached out and clasped a hand from each of them in hers.

  "How are you guys doing?" she asked.

  "We’re fine," Jace assured her, "but we’re kind of worried about you and these tests the doctors want to do."

  "Oh, don’t be," she said. "They just want to be a hundred percent sure that I’m okay before they kick me out of here."

  "That was so scary," Phoebe said, her voice trembling. "I thought you might die."

  "I’ve never heard of anyone dying while playing softball," their mother said. "But this is the worst injury I’ve ever had." She paused and looked first at Phoebe and then at Jace. "I’m going to be all right. You can be sure of that."

  "How do you feel now?" asked Jace.

  "You know, not all that bad," Martha said. "When I first got here, I thought my head would explode, it hurt so much, but the ice pack is making it feel much better."

  "When are they going to do the CAT scan?" Jace continued.

  "Dr. Welsh said it might be an hour or two. And, hey, before I forget, Aunt Jill will be staying with you until I’m out of here."

  "Why?" Jace protested. "I can handle things at the house for one night. Even longer, if I have to."

  "I know, but the social worker at the hospital told me that since you and Phoebe are under eighteen, an adult needs to be with you until I return home."

  Jace rolled his eyes. He didn’t like Aunt Jill, his mother’s older, unmarried half-sister. She lived forty miles away in Marion, but even that was too close for him. The woman was meddlesome, and despite having no children, held strong beliefs about how to raise them — beliefs that were no doubt quite popular when Eisenhower was President. His mother seemed to read his thoughts.

  "I know your aunt’s not your favorite person, but please do what she says and be respectful."

  Jace decided not to argue. The last thing his mother needed was another headache that might worsen her condition. "Don't worry, I will."

  "And there’s something I want to give you." Letting go of their hands, Martha reached over, plucked a piece of paper from the stand next to the bed, and handed it to Jace.

  "Here’s the phone number for the hospital’s patient services desk," she said. "You can call them, and they’ll transfer you to my room."

  "We need you to get better, Mom," Phoebe said, "and to come home."

  "We need to get home ourselves," Jace said. "It’s way past dinnertime." They each leaned over and kissed their mother on the cheek. Then Jace pulled the curtain aside, and they headed back to the waiting room. When they passed the front desk, a voice rang out.

  "Jason. Phoebe. Come here, please."

  The two of them saw their aunt rise from one of the seats. She was a tall, awkward woman whose features seemed too small for her long, oval-shaped face. Streaks of gray ran through her short brown hair, which had been cut in an unflattering soup bowl style. Jace thought the haircut made her look like comic Moe Howard. But there was nothing funny about Aunt Jill. Despite the summer heat, she wore a black overcoat over her plain gray dress, and though there was no sign of rain, she carried an umbrella.

  "Hi, Aunt Jill," said Jace. "When did you get here?"

  "Just a minute ago," she said. "Come. Let’s go to my car, and I’ll take you two home."

  "Don’t you want to see Mom?" Phoebe asked.

  "Later. Right now, I need to get you home and fed. It’ll be dark soon. So come with me and I’ll –"

  "I drove us over in Mom’s car," Jace interrupted.

  "You have your license now?" Aunt Jill sounded more than a little surprised.

  "Yes, for almost a year," Jace replied, trying not to be annoyed.

  "Indeed!" said Aunt Jill. "Then go ahead and drive home, but wait for me outside the parking lot. I want to follow you."

  Chapter Twenty-two

  True to her word, Aunt Jill followed Jace home in her rusty subcompact at times coming so close that the reflection of her headlights in his rearview mirror almost blinded him. Once they were home, Jace and Phoebe helped their aunt put together a quick meal of tomato soup, carrot sticks, and turkey sandwiches. Not much was said by anyone, which was fine with Jace, since conversations with his aunt often led to an argument. When they finished eating, Aunt Jill went upstairs to the guest room with her suitcase, and Jace and Phoebe loaded the dishwasher.

  "Want to play some cards?" Jace asked after racking the last plate.

  Phoebe shook her head. "I miss Mom. What did the doctor say she had?"

  "A concussion," said Jace.

  "And she’s coming home tomorrow, right?"

  "Yes, unless the tests show she has something more serious."

  "But she won’t have something more serious, will she?"

  "I don’t know. All we can do is wait until the doctors do those tests."

  Phoebe dragged herself into the den and turned on the television. Jace went with her but lost interest in the old Western she had on. He picked up the morning paper and moved to the sofa. An article on athletes suspected of using steroids caught his eye, but before he could read even a paragraph, the phone rang. It was Sylvia.

  "How’s your mom doing?"

  "Okay, I guess. But they decided to do a CAT scan and keep her overnight. If they don’t find anything worse than a concussion, they’ll let her come home."

  "Thank God. I was so worried, Jace. Could she talk to you?"

  "Yeah, Phoebe and I visited with her in the ER before they took her to a room."

  "Do you think she’ll be able to coach the next game?"

  "I don’t know. If she can’t, you and I could handle it."

  "We could if the league will let us."

  Jace jerked his head back in surprise. "Why wouldn’t they? They let kids our age be umpires. Wouldn’t they let us coach, too?"

  "Maybe they will. I’ll call the league commissioner and get back to you. Don’t worry about it. Just take care of your mom. I think she’s going to need a lot of help even after she comes home."

  "Yeah, you’re right about that. Hey, by the way, who won the game?"

  "We did. Six to five. Corey struck out that poor girl who conked your mom. I guess she couldn't –" Sylvia stopped in mid-sentence to speak to someone else in the room with her. Jace couldn't hear what was said, but when Sylvia returned to the phone, she sounded irritated. "Gotta run now, but don’t hang up yet cause Stephanie wants to talk to you."

  Jace almost dropped the phone. "Stephanie wants to talk to me?" he blurted. "About what?"

  "Don’t know. Here, ask her yourself."

  After a brief pause, Stephanie’s voice came over the line. The sound of it sent a wave of excitement rippling up his spine.

  "Hi, Jace. I hear your mom had a bad accident today at the softball game."

  "Yeah, she got a concussion from a foul ball. But she’ll be okay."

  "That’s
good. Say, I wanted to see if you’d like to go to the carnival with me."

  "The carnival? What carnival?" Jace’s mind fell into a jumble as concern over his mother collided with his desire to be with Stephanie.

  "You know — the one that the Golden Bear Club sponsors every year along the river."

  "Oh, yeah, that one."

  Jace pressed his fingers to his head. He felt like he had a concussion of his own right now. A concussion of disbelief. Could he be imagining things, or was Stephanie asking him for a date?

  "Yeah, yeah," he jabbered. "That’d be great. I’d love to go."

  "The carnival starts in a week. I’m not sure yet which day we should go, but sometime in the evening would work best for me."

  "That’ll work fine for me, too."

  They small talked for a minute and then said good-bye. After he hung up, he saw that Phoebe had turned off the television and now stared at Aunt Jill, who stood just a few feet away. She wore a purple bathrobe and had a net over her hair. Frayed red slippers covered her oversized feet.

  "Who was that?" she asked.

  Jace thought about evading the question, but that was as likely to start an argument as telling the truth. If there was going to be trouble with his aunt, he might as well get it over with now.

  "That was a girl calling. She wants to go to a carnival with me."

  "That’s nice. Where is the carnival?"

  His aunt’s response left Jace flabbergasted, and for a moment he could do nothing except stare at her. "Um, it’s in town here along the river," he finally said.

  "Sounds like fun."

  Jace felt tempted to go back to the newspaper, but curiosity got the better of him. "I thought you didn’t like it when girls called boys on the phone."

  Aunt Jill sat down on the sofa next to him. "I’ve had to change my thinking about that sort of thing since…since…Fred."

  "Since who?"

  "Fred, my boyfriend."

  "You have a boyfriend?" said Phoebe, jumping up from the floor.

  "Phoebe!" Jace shouted and pointed a finger at her.

  "Don't be angry with her," said Aunt Jill. "It’s hard for me to believe, too. After all, the last time I had a boyfriend was before either of you were born."