“What?”
“Yes. I jumped in front of him,and he stepped around me, just in time to take the bullet himself, so if you’regoing to get mad at anyone, it should be Tad, not me.”
He takes a breath, and I can tellhe’s working to process what’s going on, not just operating out of rage.
***
Tears rush down Debra’s pale face.
She sits up in a hospital bed. Ican tell that she’s rattled by the experience as she shakes furiously.
She glances around nervously. Likeshe’s worried something is going to pop out of nowhere and surprise her. I’veseen others like this before, and it’s not all that surprising. She looks likeshe’s struggling to make sense of what happened.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She shakes her head as she takes asip of water from a paper cup. As she sets it down, the cup shakes against thetray in her lap.
“Is someone coming down to seeyou?” I ask, assuming that she should have family visiting her considering whata traumatic experience this has been.
She shakes her head. “The onlyperson who would have come is my ex Megan, but she’s in Brazil with her newgirlfriend, and I can’t bother her with this.”
She’s never mentioned this Megangirl before, and that she’s only mentioning it during her distress leads me tobelieve she likes to keep her private life private.
“We ended it about a month ago. Iwas traveling too much, so she found someone who was a little morefamily-oriented. Someone she can have kids with.”
Her face trembles.
“Keep it together, Deb. Just keepit together.”
She balls her hands into fistslike she’s summoning as much mental strength as she can.
“I was hoping this season woulddistract me from everything, but all I can think about is how my mother can’t evenget out of bed right now and the last time I saw her could have been it.”
“I’m sorry. You never mentionedanything was wrong.”
“She has cancer. They just found anew growth, and she has a second operation coming up. She can’t really get upand get moving, you know?”
“Oh, that makes sense.”
“Is Tad—”
“He’ll be fine. The doctor saidyou both got lucky. Yours just skimmed your shoulder, and the injury to Tad’sshoulder wasn’t too bad. Banged up his skin, but just skimmed the surface whenI was pulling him to the ground.”
“Will he need to take time off?”
It’s amazing that even amid herpanic she’s just thinking about how shitty this is going to be for their busyschedules.
“A few days, probably. The doctorsays he shouldn’t play the next game, but he doesn’t see a reason why he can’tmake the playoff games. The actual experience was more traumatizing than thebullet, I think.”
She gazes off, clearly thinkingabout how shaken she is from it as well.
“This is what I’ve been trying towarn you about,” I say.
“I don’t know what I thought thiswould look like. I guess I assumed that since the FBI was working on it, theywould get a lead. Some anonymous tip. They would crack this before it had achance to escalate. I mean, you don’t really ever think about all those littlethings like when we were doing that stupid photoshoot. That was one of tens ofthings we were doing that day that could have put us in a risky situation.Stuff like that really makes you think. Makes you worry.”
I can tell she doesn’t want to talkabout this anymore, that it’s disturbing her as she replays all the ways thatsomething like this could affect her life, so I try to change the subject.
“Where is your mom staying?”
