“Help yourself,” I told her, pointing toward the restroom before turning back to the group chat. I had just finished typing out my lengthy explanation for why I preferred rosé when my phone rang.
And this time, it wasn’t a text.
It was Matty’s name flashing across the screen. In the middle of a game? I swiped to answer before the second ring finished.
“Matty?”
His voice came through tight and breathless. “Bella, it’s Bennett.”
The room tilted. The glow from Parker’s facial faded to nothing.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. Heat stroke, maybe? Or an anxiety attack. Team doc is taking him to the hospital just in case.” He lowered his voice before adding, “Bella, he didn’t want me to call, but he needs you. Just please, get to Arizona as soon as you can.”
Anxiety attack. Hospital. Arizona. The words didn’t fit together.
I was already on my feet, racing for the stairs.
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Bennett
Somewhere in the back of mind, I knew that I was getting the sheets dirty.
It didn’t matter. Nothing did.
My chest felt hollowed out, like someone had reached in and scooped out everything that made breathing possible.
It was hard to say how long I had been lying here like this. In the dark, on my back, sweating beneath the comforter in the dirt-streaked uniform I still hadn’t found the energy to remove.
The sequence of events kept replaying in fragments, the way bad dreams did when you weren’t quite asleep. One second, I’d been in the dugout, rising off the bench during the bottom of the seventh. The crowd noise had been a low roar in my ears, the Arizona sun still brutal even as it had dipped toward the horizon. I’d taken a step toward the on-deck circle, bat in hand, ready to swing.
And then, the world had folded in half.
Tight chest. Blurred vision. Knees giving out like someone had cut the strings holding me up.
I’d hit the gravel. Hard.
The noise of the stadium had warped into a blur—shouts from the bench, the team trainers yelling my name, Diaz’s voice cracking as he’d vaulted the railing, calling out my name.
I remembered trying to speak, to tell them that I was fine and that I just needed a minute or two, but my mouth wouldn’t move right. The trainers had been on me in seconds, rolling meonto my side, talking me through my breathing exercises. And still, I’d been falling.
A vision of someone pressing an oxygen mask over my face had washed over me. The cold plastic had shocked me more than anything else.
I’d tried reminding myself, to no avail, that the camera was on me. That fifteen thousand people, along with every sports app in the country, had their eyes on me. Fuck, I could only imagine what the social media trolls were saying by now.
They’d wheeled me off the field on a cart, yet another humiliating ritual, before bundling me into an ambulance. Next thing I remembered, I’d been in the emergency room, staring up at a nurse with kind eyes as she’d dried my tears and talked me down from the edge.
Slow breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, until the vise around my ribs had loosened enough that I could finally pull in a full lungful without choking on it.
The doctor had called it a severe anxiety episode.
My first in years.
“Follow up with your primary as soon as you can,” he’d told me. “And please, consult with the team medical staff, Mr. King. They’re there to help you hopefully avoid situations like this.”
He’d discharged me with a script for some low-dose benzos and instructions to rest.
