“Benny Griffiths?” he asked.
I nodded confirmation and his hand shot out to shake mine.
“Nick was a great man. We all miss him. But uh… he wanted me to watch you,” he said. It’s almost like he was waiting for a reaction from me, but my mind was still reeling from Nick’s letter. “Nick would always say, ‘If you think I’m good, you better watch my buddy, Benny.’ He said, ‘I may be here in the league now, but he’s gonna stay up here in the Big Show.’ Just thought I should tell ya. If there’s anything I can do for ya?” he asked.
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak justyet.
“Where ya playing right now?” he inquired.
I cleared my throat and fought off heat rising in my neck. “I’m not sure I’ll keep going,” Iadmitted.
His eyebrows drew down. “Why the hell not, son?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m supposed to report back to my minor team in California at the end of the week, but I don’t think I can leave Detroit. Nick asked a few things of me… ” I trailed off. I didn’t want to explain myself to him. It was too personal to us. I couldn’t break a pact from over a decade ago between two kids from a shit town in Canada. I’d lay down my life to honor Nick’s last wishes. Now that I knew he wanted me to take care of Savannah… and his kid… there was no way in hell that I was leaving.
“You’ll be hearing from me,” he snapped. Then he turned and shuffled away to his office. He still had a slight limp from shattering his leg in an NHL game back in the nineties.
I wasn’t sure what to make of anything that he said… and I didn’t really care.
All I knew was that I needed to get back into that hospital to be withSavannah…
____
But I got all the way to the front desk and was stopped again.
“Savannah Callahan,” I said clearly. “She’s definitely here. I fucking brought her here,” I said through gritted teeth.
“No, sir. I do not have a Savannah Callahan, try again,” the nurse said while clicking away on her keyboard, not even bothering to make eye contact with me.
I knew she was just doing her job, but the urgency running through my veins overpowered my manners. I was about to lay into her, until I realized…
“Do you have a Savannah Johns?” I asked. I always forgot they got secretly married years back… They went to the courthouse and she changed her name as an anniversary present one year. I always wondered when he was going to give her a ring…
She paused and eyed me overtop of her reading glasses. “Who’sasking?”
“Her… friend,” I said, trying to harness the crazy amount of frustration mounting in me.
She pursed her lips together. “She’s not havingvisitors.”
I ripped my hat off and threw it on the ground in front of me. “She’d want me to know!”
My phone rang then, cutting me off, and I glared at the nurse.
“Duke, hey, I took Sav to the hospital this morning andshe-”
“Hey, hey, hey, calm it down, Griff,” he said– which was rich– I was usually the one calming him down. “She told me.”
“She told you?” I asked, feeling my knees shake.
“She said she had the flu and was super dehydrated.”
I felt my heart drop through the floor. Why hadn’t she told him the real reason she was here? Was the baby alright? How the fuck would she be alright if she lost both Nick and his baby?
“She’s staying a few days for monitoring, I guess?” he asked more than told me. “Is that normal?”
“Uh…” It probably wasn’t normal for the regular flu, but for a pregnant woman who was dehydrated… maybe? “How long is she staying?” I asked him. “I’m here at the hospital but they won’t let me in to see her.”
“I’ll call her back and ask again. She said a couple days… Could you stay there and be on call to take her home? I don’t want to leave, man,” he said. I could detect a frustrated edge in his voice that told me he really didn’t know what to do.
