“You’re shittin’ me!”
“Ask him. Doctor says she’s done for the season. I guess I am too if Coach wants to bounce me.”
Rick groans. “Jesus, man, I’m sorry about Gauthier, that’s terrible, but goddamn, don’t say things like that. I don’t think I can take having to listen to Pete’s bullshit the rest of the season, never mind having to play with him.”
“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Sam responds sarcastically and drops the receiver into the cradle.
His light is still on when he wakes where he has fallen asleep, face down among his books. For an instant he thinks it is Indy’s cry that has broken his sleep and then he moves swiftly, shoving texts aside. He has reached the stairwell when Pearl sticks her head out of her bedroom door.
He waves her back. “I’ll take care of it. She probably needs her dope.”
On the daybed, Deanie moans and sobs in her sleep. He holds her, rocks her, and she comes around a little. The clock says she’s not due for the painkillers for another half hour but he can’t stand it and he gives her the pill anyway. Lying down next to her, he slips under the layered blankets and quilts. The warmth of his body calms her shivering and gradually she quiets and sleeps again. And so does he.
Overhead, the baby’s crib creaks and shakes and a small voice shrieks cheerfully for mama-mama-mama. Sam opens an eye. The dark is threadbare, morning coming on. Narrow bed, narrow room, narrow girl against him. He holds her in the crook of his arm, bandaged head on his shoulder. She’s still wearing the clothes he put on her at the hospital. He can feel the soft bulge of tit against his bare rib cage through her pajama top and he is suddenly intensely aware of having a piss hard-on. She exudes a smell of fever sweat and blood and urine and she’s drooled in his armpit. Carefully, he shifts her and slips out from under the bedding.
His bare feet are noiseless on the stairs but as he reaches the landing, Pearl comes out of the nursery with India in her arms. She gives him a level look and a soft-mouthed smile. “How’s Deanie?”
“Rough night,” Sam answers and moves past her.
In a few moments he has pulled on some clothes and gotten his books together. Gym bag in one hand, basketball under his arm, he raps at the bathroom door and his father mumbles permission to enter.
Thrusting his chin at the mirror, Reuben rinses his blade and cocks an eyebrow questioningly at Sam.
“Toothbrush,” Sam explains.
Reuben steps back and Sam dips to open the cupboard under the basin and hook out an unopened tube of toothpaste with a free toothbrush attached to it. One of Pearl’s quirks, reminding him of his father in its automatic bargain-seeking, is that she never actually buys a toothbrush but always finds the brand offering the freebie.
Downstairs again, Sam peeks in at Deanie. She stares at him with her right eye. The left one’s closed with swelling. He squats next to her, pressing the new toothbrush into her thin hand on the pillow. “Ready to try the bathroom?”
She nods and holds on to his shirt while she swings her legs out and hauls herself to her feet. She sways and props herself against him, fighting the dizziness of anesthesia hangover. He walks her to the bathroom. “Want me to stay?”
“I can manage,” she rasps and the little bit of crossness in it gives him a lift.
“Don’t lock the door. I’ll be right outside in case you feel faint.”
He waits outside, listening anxiously to the intimate noise of her making water. She moans when she tries to brush her teeth. When she opens the door, she is using the frame to stay on her feet. She needs him to get her back to bed.
It feels odd, leaving the house—leaving Deanie behind, in his home, while he goes off to school. He knows Pearl and Reuben will check her regularly through the day but now that she’s his responsibility, he doesn’t quite trust anybody else to take it over for him. They don’t know her; she doesn’t know them.
“Hey, bud!” Rick calls across the parking lot.
Sam swings out of the cab and meets him on the walkway. He tosses Rick his keyring. “Later,” he promises and lopes past Rick on his mission to the Office.
Laliberte, Liggott and the coaches are grouped grimly around the Office coffee machine, watching it cough and steam and dribble. Sam feels an immediate empathy for the machine and only hopes he’s able to perform a little more efficiently. But by now he’s got his lines down and the recitation’s easier.
No one wants to take him to the woodshed over cutting classes and practice while on probation, though technically he should be suspended from school and booted off the team. Of course he’s drawing on four years’ credit but there’s no doubt the administration’s taking care of business too. They don’t want an angry Sam pointing out in public why he broke the rules.
The practice slows and comes to a halt when Sam arrives. There are no secrets for long in a town this small except the ones everyone agrees to keep. It’s apparent they know something—Rick for one and some of them have other sources—parents or sibs working at the hospital or Town Hall. Deb Michaud shuts down the sound system as the players drift toward Sam.
“We heard Gauthier’s out for the season,” she says.
Sam nods.
The confirmation raises a ragged chorus of dismay from the girls. Boys look at each other and then away in unease—except for Pete Fosse, who is theatrically bored.
“How bad is it?” Nat Linscott presses in a low voice. “We heard she got her face messed up.”
Automatically, Sam’s hand drifts over the left half of his face.
