Page 181 of The Off Limits Captain

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The captain is gone.

The player is gone.

The man beside me is a son trying to find the nerve to walk inside.

I do not touch him this time.

He takes a breath.

“Okay,” he says to himself.

Then he opens the door.

I follow.

The hospital lights wash over us as we cross the parking lot. He does not reach for my hand.

But he waits half a step at the entrance until I am beside him.

We walk in together.

Ryan

The waiting room is too bright for two in the morning.

Fluorescent lights. Linoleum. Bad coffee. A nurse behind the desk typing like nobody’s world is ending because in a hospital, somebody’s world is always trying to.

Dad sits in a chair with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped hard enough to whiten the knuckles. He looks up before I say anything, like some part of him has been listening for his son since the ambulance doors opened.

The twins are asleep on the couch under one thin blanket, curled toward each other. Ten years old. Too small for this room. One of Emma’s shoes has fallen off. Lily still has a purple marker line on the back of her hand from whatever she was doing before fear interrupted childhood.

I stop in the doorway.

Peyton stops beside me.

Dad crosses the room and pulls me into a hug that does not ask permission. It knocks the breath out of me. I grip the back ofmy father’s flannel and hold on because there is no locker room here, no bench, no version of captaincy that matters.

“You got here,” Dad says against my shoulder.

I cannot answer.

When Bill lets go, he looks past me to Peyton.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Of course.”

Two words, quiet and wrecking.

I should say them too.

I cannot find where my voice has gone.

Peyton does not seem to need it. She moves past me to the couch, crouches, and eases Emma’s shoe farther from the walkway so nobody will trip over it.

The kind of care that does not announce itself.

“How long has she been in?” I ask.

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