Page 170 of The Off Limits Captain
“No.”
“Does Coach?”
“Not yet.”
I stop walking.
Jennifer turns back.
“Do not bury this in process,” I say.
Her face hardens. “I am not burying anything.”
“Good.”
The word comes out sharper than I mean it to.
I do not apologize.
Silas and Bob meet us outside the tunnel.
Bob is in a dark suit, no tie, his playoff-owner face gone. Silas has a phone in each hand and the expression of a man already turning crisis into options.
“How serious?” Silas asks.
“Cardiac emergency. They think the first surgery’s failing — pressure, fluid around the heart. Bill and the girls are at Hill Country.”
Bob’s face changes first.
“We can get the helicopter ready,” he says.
“How fast?”
Silas looks at one of the phones. “Pilot needs clearance. Weather is moving in west of town. Earliest clean departure is likely after the final horn.”
“After?” I hear my own voice sharpen.
Silas looks at me. “If we pull him now, every camera in the building follows. He is the captain in a tied playoff game. He is having the game of his life. We can get him there faster by air the second the horn sounds.”
“That only works if you decide he should not know for another period,” I say.
Silas’s jaw tightens. “You do not know what he would want.”
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
The corridor stills.
I can feel Jennifer looking at me. Bob too. Everyone measuring what I am claiming and what it costs to claim it.
I have no right to speak for Ryan.
I also have no time to pretend I do not know him.
“He will want the choice,” I say. “Not the managed version of it. Not the optics version. The choice.”
Silas says, “The hospital is nearly four hours by car.”
“Then every minute you spend deciding whether he gets to know is a minute you are taking from him.”
