Chapter 90

I drifted off to sleep again as my brain tried to process all the information I’d received. It seemed as though the surgery (or surgeries, I suppose) had been far more extensive than seven years earlier.

I had followed the rigorous recovery routine the surgeon had suggested then – not only because I wanted to get back to playing baseball again, but also because Rosalita had been a dictator about forcing me to comply.

Then Domingo had been promoted and she had left with him. I had maintained my exercise routine until it became clear that I would never take the field again. I had not been as active once I moved to San Diego for college. I wondered if I had somehow reinjured the shoulder and not known about it.

I was still pondering the questions (with no answers) when I fell into a light sleep. The opening of the door awakened me and I shifted my head to see who had entered.

Liz stood in the doorway, looking scared and uncomfortable. I offered the best smile I could muster given my pain level and the amount of drugs still coursing through my system.

“Hey,” I said.

“I can come back if you’re sleepy,” she said in a soft voice.

“I guess I’ve been asleep for a week or so,” I replied.

“Yeah,” Liz answered but still made no move to come closer.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in yoga pants and a skin-tight top?” I asked.

I got the little half-smile I’d grown to love.

“Once I get you home,” she said, finally coming over and taking a seat.

“I’m ready to go when you are,” I told her truthfully.

“A couple of more days, Hon,” she said. She leaned forward and, ignoring my unkempt nature, kissed me softly on my oily forehead. Then her lips moved to my scraggly beard. I shifted my head when she approached my lips. I hadn’t brushed my teeth in several days and I could barely stand to smell me.

Liz seemed to accept that (or perhaps she caught a whiff of my breath and recoiled in horror). She sat back in her chair and took my left hand in hers.

“I was really scared,” she admitted.

“Me, too,” I replied.

“Not on the plaza,” Liz corrected. “Afterward, with you. I think I knew you guys would ... do whatever it took, I guess ... to look after me. It never once crossed my mind that I was actually in danger. If Dom hadn’t been hurt, I think he might have tried to pick me up and carry me to the SUV.”

“What the fuck happened, Liz?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly.

“It was a kidnapping attempt,” she told me.

“Well, yeah,” I answered – because it seemed pretty obvious to me in hindsight. “Who were those guys?”

“Ryan is going to be here in a few minutes and fill you in,” Liz said. “He has all the details and he’ll be able to answer your questions better than I can. I just want to make sure you’re really OK.”

“I am,” I confirmed. “Or I will be in two or three months.”

“Six or seven,” Liz corrected. “The doctor is going to talk to you tomorrow. The hospital is going to set up a video link with him in Birmingham so he can answer all your questions. But they had to do a lot of things in a short amount of time so it’s going to be a few weeks or more before the bone grafts are solid enough for you to even start light rehab.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“There is some good news,” Liz said, smiling slightly. “You’re not going to be in a cast for most of it. Yes, your arm will be immobilized but now they use plastic and metal plates that are strapped on. You’ll have a harness around your neck and waist for a couple of months but once they’re sure the bone is good, you’ll be given a little more freedom. The arm will rest across your stomach instead of in the air like it is now. But that’s still a week or two away. For now, they want your arm completely immobile as much as possible. It’s not because of the bones. It’s because of the artery they had to repair. They said, in a year, you’ll very likely be able to do almost anything if you do your rehab and take care of it.”

“They told me that last time, too,” I pointed out.

“I know,” Liz said with a nod. “This time, though, you’re not trying to get back onto a baseball field. You’ll just be looking to write and eat and brush your teeth. Oh, and to play with my boobies. We can’t leave that out.”

“No, we can’t,” I said as I took a close look at her.

Her eyes had bags beneath them and the wrinkles were starting to show around her eyes. The past few days had been a lot harder on her than they had on me. I gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

“Now, the bad news,” Liz said. “Are you OK with bad news right now?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Well, you should have signed your contract with LLE earlier,” she said with a sigh. “There is a 30-day window before you are covered on our insurance. You let your policy from San Diego lapse. You owe the hospital and the doctor in Birmingham about $3 million.”

“Oh fuck,” I mumbled.

“I’m kidding,” Liz said. “Well, not about your insurance. That had lapsed because you didn’t send in your COBRA payment last month.”

“I didn’t have the money to send to them last month,” I noted.

“I know, but you should have told me about it,” Liz replied. “Anyway, it’s not a problem. I would have paid for it after what you did. But I didn’t have to. You have people lining up to pay your medical bills. It was classified as a workplace accident so my insurance is paying part. RFN is paying part because it happened on their property.

“Let me go back. I was pretty frantic when I finally got to the hospital. You were already in surgery. They rushed you right into surgery and got to work on you. It was ... I almost lost you, Travis.”

“I know,” I said. “Sondra told me.”

“Yeah,” Liz said, using a knuckle to rub the corner of her eye. “All the security team was being transported to the hospital. The cops were tied up at the scene. I was too upset to drive and so were Jill and Skye.”

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“Sean,” Liz said, shaking her head. “He ... he lives a few blocks away. They cut to a live scene from a TV news helicopter and he raced over. He almost got arrested.”

“Why?” I wondered.

“Unlike everybody else, he was armed,” Liz said, shaking her head. “The cops didn’t want anybody having a firearm but them and he refused to give his up. He also refused to leave until he was certain I was in no danger. Jill finally got everybody calmed down and the cops let him drive us here. He was actually already there by the time the ambulance carrying you left and it only took us a couple of minutes to follow but you were already in surgery when we got here. Of course, since this is a hospital, the first thing they wanted to know was if you had insurance. I got waylaid by an administrator as soon as word got out who you were. I got a little frustrated. No one would give me any information but they were quick as hell to put their hands out for payment. I told them to call the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim if they wanted money because it was their fault you were in this shape.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Really!” Liz replied firmly. “Your initial injury is also covered under workman’s compensation – as the team found out when they tried to dodge responsibility. The hospital took my statement at face value. They did a little research, found that you’d injured your arm playing minor league baseball and contacted the Angels’ insurance company. The insurance company did what insurances always do. They denied the claim and said your medical situation was unrelated to your baseball injury.”

“Crap,” I said.

“Exactly,” Liz said. “Things got a little messy when the video came out.”

“Video?” I inquired.

“Oh, yeah, I guess you don’t know about that,” Liz continued. “There were three security cameras pointed at the courtyard – one from RFN and two from other businesses. The label immediately released theirs to the police. The others immediately sold theirs to the media. You were still in surgery when that hit the Internet and all the major networks. The Nashville stations were carrying the situation live. There was a helicopter doing a traffic report and it got overhead just as things were calming down. They stayed on the air for almost two hours live and then staked out the hospital. Somebody in here leaked the seriousness of your condition and what the team’s insurers had told them. The hospital is investigating but you know how that will go.”

“Pricks,” I said. The same thing happened everywhere despite federal laws regarding patient privacy.

“So, the Angels were in a bind,” Liz added. “You were being hailed far and wide as a hero and they were bickering about medical costs. The guy that wound up doing your surgery was interviewed. He said that anybody that thought your current injury was unrelated to what happened years ago was deluding himself. Our fans jumped on that statement and just went crazy. To make things worse for the team, they were playing in Texas. The players got booed everywhere they went.”

“The players probably agree with me,” I noted.

“Oh, they do,” Liz said, smiling and nodding. “Some of the team’s minor leaguers refused to play in the rain, citing unsafe working conditions and the fact the team would toss them to the wolves if they got hurt. They had to forfeit.”

“Christ,” I said, shaking my head. I was positive that anyone remotely related to that fiasco would find himself looking for a job – or returned to his native country – as soon as the team could do it without backlash.

“It got so bad that the Angels’ owner said that he’d pay out of his pocket if the insurance wouldn’t cover you,” Liz said.

“This is stupid,” I said.

“It’s celebrity,” Liz corrected. “Everything is magnified and analyzed. I told the hospital that I’d pay for your treatment but by that time the story had taken on a life of its own. I got my fair share of crap when it seemed like I was doing the same thing the team was doing. Rick stepped in and got things clarified for me once I got your phone back from the hospital. I had to have your mom come down because she is the next of kin and the only person they would release your belongings to. I mean ... she was coming down anyway. I called her first thing and she was already back on the plane before you came out of surgery the first time. But you’re not going to have to do side jobs to pay off the hospital. The Angels are paying a third; RFN is paying a third and my insurance is paying a third. I’ll cover any incidentals that might come up. You haven’t worked long enough for LLE to qualify for short-term disability either.”

“I guess I could have just let them grab you,” I said with a sardonic grin.

“The more I learn about things, the happier I am that you didn’t,” Liz said, shaking her head.

I frowned.

“When Ryan gets in here in a minute, he’ll tell you everything,” Liz said, seeing my frustration at being kept in the dark. “I promise.”

Ryan must have been monitoring our conversation from the nurses’ station because he appeared in the room about 10 seconds after Liz’s statement.

He looked as bad as I felt. He had both forearms encased in casts – and, despite how difficult it must have been, he had a crutch tucked under one arm and a bulky brace on his right leg. His face still showed the fading bruises from the blows he’d taken to his head and neck.

I shook my head when I saw him.

“You should have seen the other guy,” he said, smiling at me. He propped himself up on his crutch and put one of his casted hands on my shoulder. “Oh, wait, you did.”

“Sondra said that those guys are pretty fucked up,” I said.

“They sure as hell know they got their asses kicked,” Ryan said.

I shook my head again.

“I ... I played it over in my head when I first came to,” I said. “I was pretty sure I’d killed at least one of them and maybe two.”