Page 77 of Puck Drop
How?
When?
Where?
Which hospital?
By the time he hangs up, he looks completely out of sorts and like I’ve never seen him before. I take a few steps forward with the intent to give him a hug, but the blank stare he gives me stops me in my tracks.
“What did she say?” I whisper.
He rests his hands on his hips and drops his eyes to the ground.
“Sebastian is in a coma.” His voice is so low, I can barely make out the words. “They don’t know if he’ll pull through.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Logan
“I needto be in New York after the game tomorrow,” I tell my coach.
He stares at me for the longest time, rocking back and forth in his chair while flipping a pencil in between his fingers.
“I know that we can’t miss games.” My knee bounces uncontrollably against the floor, to the point where I about slap a hand on it to stop it.
“If you know that you can’t miss any games, why are you asking?” Coach asks.
I stare back as I make an effort to control the tone of my voice. “Because I won’t get to be in the game anyway. So instead of sitting my ass on the bench at the game, I could be sitting next to my friend’s hospital bed while he’s taking his last breath.”
My voice shakes toward the end. I’ve been a mess since I found out about Sebastian. I can’t even process what happened to him. Apparently, he was with the wedding party on the groom’s side. They had a good ol’ time, drinking and partying until the wee hours of the morning.
At some point, they loaded into a limo to go back to the hotel where everyone was staying. Not all of them took the limo, only a handful. On their way there, a tractor-trailer entered the expressway on the ramp that put him driving in the opposite way of the traffic. The road was not as busy at that time of early morning, but, as luck would have it, the limo with all the guys was passing that particular ramp right then.
The aftermath was horrific. I saw some pictures on the news, where they didn’t show the victims, only what the limo looked like after the incident, and the bloody marks left on the pavement. My stomach turned as I wondered how much of that was my friend’s blood.
I wanted to fly out there right away, but Leyla, the PR rep of the Sliders, convinced me to wait.
“Sebastian is in an ICU unit right now,” she explained. “Only family is allowed in there, and his aunt is already there. I can let you know once they allow for outside visitors.”
I understood and stayed put despite the fact that I wanted to be there for my friend. But I was grateful for the reprieve as I’d never been around anyone on their deathbed. It gave me more time to come to grips with it.
Now, though, it is time. Sebastian is not getting any better, but he is not stable either, which is what they had hoped for. His blood pressure spikes at times for no apparent reason, then, just as abruptly it drops really fast, to the point where they think he is going to flatline.
The coma he is in is medically induced right now after he came to from the one caused by the accident. They wanted to give his body more time to heal and hopefully recover, but now they are concerned about his brain.
“If you want to see him, you should make plans to do so,” Leyla told me.
That’s why I now find myself in the coach’s office, begging for a day off so I can go visit my dying friend. I am disgusted with his reaction, though. He doesn’t seem to be affected much by the fact that one of the better players on the team is out, and that he might never come back.
“You can have the week off after the game tomorrow,” he finally concedes. “But I need you here tomorrow,” he insists.
“Coach…” My knee takes off again.
He puts a hand up to stop me. “I get it, kid,” he tells me. “Trust me when I tell you that I get it. And I know I seem insensitive toward what’s happening with Roonie, but at the end of the day, I have a team to run. If it was you in his place, and he begged me to go see you, I would tell him exactly the same.”
I nod at him like I understand what he’s saying. In reality, I am angry as fuck that he wouldn’t even consider it.
“Just one day, Mantei,” he tells me. “That’s all I’m asking from you.”
