Page 110 of Fake Love

When the voice comes on not only does my heart drop to the floor but my eyes right away go to the field and I try to find Maddox.

I can’t see him, but he is on the screen, a huge smile on his face.

The second that I tell him what the voicemail says, that smile will disappear.

I should have answered the call sooner.

32

SEPTEMBER 24, 2022

Maddox

Ma was right, it was a cold. A cold that her body was too weak to handle and put her in the hospital.

Doctors told me that even though she is in remission from her tumors, her body is still weak from the medication that any little illness can knock her down.

And knock her down it did.

Mom was watching the game on the couch like she told me she was going to do, but I guess during that time the fever she had spiked. She took over the counter medication but her body was so weak that she decided to call the ambulance.

In a way I’m glad she did because I can’t imagine what would have happened if she had gone upstairs and fallen asleep.

When she arrived at the hospital, they called me but because it happened during the game I didn’t answer. So they called Jen.

Mom had asked me when we came to Chicago in July if we should add her to the list just in case something like this happened. I was hesitant, given that at the time of the question all of this was still fake, but if it gave her a piece of mind, I told her to do it.

In a way, I’m happy that we put Jen on the list, because I have no idea how I would have reacted if I was the one that had gotten the call.

I already didn’t take it very well.

I had just pitched a perfect game. The Miners had just won the west. I was on the highest high, that I thought no one could touch me.

When I saw Jen walk onto the field, I had this image in my head that I was going to pick her up and kiss the ever living shit out of her. That we were going to celebrate with my teammates and their families. Then at the end of the night we were going to take one of the champagne bottles that were handed out and have a celebration of our own.

Everything was already planned out.

But the second I saw her face, I knew something was wrong and that image was never going to happen.

Tears were running down her face as she told me about the voicemail she got.

The voicemail from a nurse at my mom’s hospital that said that an ambulance brought my mom in.

All celebrations for me came to a screeching halt.

I started to panic, and somehow during that panic, I was able to find Ben and tell him what was going on.

Given the largeness of the game, I was set to do interviews, but he stepped in, so that I could be able to go.

Two hours later, me and Jen were on a flight to Chicago and now I’m sitting next to the hospital bed my mom has been occupying for four days.

If she was a normal patient, they would have sent her home by now. The only reason she’s here is because her doctors are keeping tabs on her and making sure her tumors haven’t multiplied, she stayed.

Now I’m in her hospital room, watching her sleep, something that I’ve been doing these last few days.

And where I will stay until she leaves this place.

She may not be in a coma but they do have her on heavy antibiotics to fight the fever that has only started to go down.

---