Page 121 of Bountiful
I drove all those hours thinking about Zara and Nicole. The goodbye kiss I’d finally gotten. Zara’s hug—a tight one, like maybe she didn’t expect to ever get another—and her words of endearment in my ear. “I’ll miss you,” she’d whispered. “We both will. Take care of yourselfforus.”
Those words cut me. Having her and Nicole was a gift, and I wasn’t sure I deserved them. I was committed to doing right by them, but it was really hard to picture how the next three years were goingtowork.
Would she really wait for me? If I were her, I don’t know if Iwould.
I got to New York in time to turn in my rental car and eat a late breakfast in a midtown diner. My only companion was my giant duffel bag, sitting across from me in thebooth.
Afterward, as I walked toward the specialist’s office, the traffic noise was startling to me. I’d forgotten how loud it was here—something I never used tonotice.
The specialist took me back into her exam room right away, where she took a series of images with some of her cutting-edge equipment, then proceeded to prod my shoulder for a while, chatting away with a medical student who was observingthatday.
“And you’ve been doing PT all summer?” the docasked.
“Isurehave.”
Then shedisappeared.
While I sat waiting, I checked my phone. Zara had sent me a photo of Nicole in her clip-on high chair, smiling up at the camera with yogurt on her face. The text read,Guess who finallysaidMAMA?
I laughed out loud. That’s when I realized I’d been waiting kind of a long time for the doctor to review my data. Maybe the news wasn’t good. If they sent me back for another ten weeks oftherapy…
That idea would have made me vomit at any other point in my career. But the first idea that popped into my head was that I could spend more time with Zara if I wasn’t going to play attrainingcamp.
The door popped open and the doctor walked in. “Congratulations, Dave! Good work on your shoulder. I see no reason why you can’t get back ontheice.”
She held out her hand to shake, and I took it reluctantly. “Really? That’s it? Am I doingmorePT?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I mean—if you suddenly develop any more pain, make sure you report it. But the joint is nicely mobile, and the tendons seem strong.Welldone.”
“Thankyou.”
And that was that. I walked out of there feeling a little numb, probably from lack of sleep. This was the good news I’d beenwaitingfor.
In the elevator I texted Bess. Then I stuck my phone in my pocket and went out into the noise of Manhattan. There was a subway stop a few blocks from the doctor’s office, and I headed in that direction. But when I got to the turnstile, it wouldn’t let methrough.
Card expired, the machinecomplained.
Well, fuck. That was just the kind of welcome home that New Yorkdishedout.
Both MetroCard terminals were spoken for, so I waited, wishing I’d taken a Lyft instead. Although sitting in bridge traffic to Brooklyn would probably take evenlonger.
Not that I had anything to hurryhometo.
“Hey! Aren’t you DaveBeringer?”
I swiveled carefully to avoid knocking anyone with my bag, and found a teenager in a backward baseball cap—a Bruisers cap—grinning at me. “Sure am,” I said afterabeat.
“How’s the shoulder?” the kidasked.
I laughed. “It’s actually fine. I’ll be at practice this weekend, if you’re takingattendance.”
“Autograph?” the kid asked, whipping off his hat to offer me the brim. There were a few scrawls on it already. This guy must be a superfan, because he’d already cornered a couple of myteammates.
“Sure.” I patted my pockets, but came up empty. “Dude, I’m sorry.Nopen.”
His face fell. “I don’t have oneeither.”
“Here.” I grabbed one of my cards out of my money clip. “Email this address and use the name Bess, okay? That’s my sister. Her assistant answers my email. Tell Bess I wanted to send a puck to the guy I met in thesubway.”
