76

His first thought was that he was President Affenlight and that he had died, but the mere fact of thinking such a thing meant that it couldn’t be true. Wherever he was was dark. He tried to lift his left arm to touch his head where it hurt, but the movement was arrested by two tubes that were taped to his forearm. A bitter taste stung his mouth. Schwartz was sitting in a chair by the bed, motionless in the dark.

The simple act of moving his jaw sent shocks of diabolical pain through his brain, worse than anything he’d ever felt. When he finally managed to speak, the words came out soft and slurred. “Who won?”

Schwartz cocked his head. “You don’t remember?”

“No.” He remembered the pitch, a tiny white pellet shoulder-high and rising. He remembered trying to spin away so it would catch him on the helmet rather than flush in the face.

“You scored the winning run,” Schwartz said, frowning.

“I did?”

“That fastball hit you square on the earflap. Everybody in the park thought you were dead. Me included. But you bounced right up and ran to first. The trainers tried to check you out, but you wouldn’t let them. Play ball, you kept saying. Play ball! Over and over again. Coach Cox tried to send Loonie in to pinch-run, but you yelled at him till he went back to the dugout.”

Henry didn’t remember any of that. “Then what happened?”

“Dougal got ejected. He screamed bloody murder about it, but the benches had been warned, and he was gone. They brought in their second-best guy.

“I knocked the first pitch off the wall. I almost hit it too hard, it caromed straight back to the left fielder. But you were flying. I’ve never seen you move that fast. By the time I got to first you were rounding third. Coach Cox tried to hold you, but you never even looked at him.

“You beat the tag by half an inch. Everybody piled on top of you, including Coach Cox. Heck, half the parents were on that pile. And when everybody else got up, you didn’t.”

Henry studied Schwartz’s face, or what he could see of it, in the dimness. To see if he was telling the truth, not that Schwartz ever lied; to see in what ratio the sadness of Affenlight’s death was mixed with the joy of winning the national championship; to see if his friend might be beginning to forgive him.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Schwartz said sternly.

“Done what?”

“You know what. Eaten that pitch.”

Henry’s idiot lips were taking forever to form the sounds of words. “I thought it was a slider.”

“Bullshit.”

He tried to cover his mouth as he retched, but the tubes inhibited his movement. A few bile-wet Rice Krispies spilled over his lower lip and down his chin.

“Bullshit,” Schwartz repeated. “I saw it live and I saw it on SportsCenter while I was sitting in the goddamn waiting room at the goddamn ER. You dove into that thing like it was a swimming pool.”

Henry didn’t say anything.

“You even set up away from the plate, so he’d have to come farther inside to buzz you. You baited him into it.”

Henry wasn’t going to admit it any more than he was going to argue with it.

“What were you thinking, Henry? How many bodies you want to pile up in one day?”

Schwartz was pissed, no doubt about that, though he hadn’t raised his voice and had barely twitched a muscle, as if he’d reached such a state of exhaustion that he’d never move or yell again. “What about the Buddha? Poor Buddha. He just found out about Affenlight—and now he’s got to sit there and watch you try to kill yourself? You could have just stayed home.”

“I thought I’d be able to turn my shoulder into it, get a free base that way,” Henry said. “I didn’t expect him to throw it so high.”

“Well, Dougal’s a crazy bastard. Just not as crazy as you.”

This was the gentlest thing Schwartz had said. An odd giddiness was tickling up and down Henry’s spine, despite the intensity of his headache. “I didn’t have a lot of options out there,” he said.

“Swing and miss. Get us on a plane back home. That was an option.”

“Aren’t you glad you won?”

Behind the shut curtain of the room’s lone window, a little light was beginning to appear. Schwartz’s watch, glowing yellow-green in the grayness, read 5:23—Henry felt too confused to subtract forty-two, but it was four-something in the morning.

“Yes,” Schwartz finally said. “I am.”

The giddiness was washing over Henry from his toes up to his neck. It felt beautiful, like angel-song. Maybe in some partial way, and despite Schwartz’s anger, Henry had redeemed himself in the eyes of his friend.

The giddiness deepened into bliss. His limbs lacked energy to move, but a different type of energy was moving through them, originating somewhere in his bones and organs and spilling outward, scrubbing and scouring him from within, suffusing him to his skin. Maybe it was Schwartz’s presence, maybe it was the fact that the Harpooners had won the national championship—but the bliss laughed at those things, and Henry realized that they were irrelevant where the bliss was concerned. Maybe this was what dying felt like.

“Am I okay?” he said.

“Depends what you mean. You’ve got a concussion. A pretty bad one. Dougal throws ninety-two, you know.

“But that’s not why the doctors think you collapsed. According to your blood work you’ve run out of pretty much every mineral and nutrient necessary for life. Even salt. It’s not easy to run out of salt. I think you’re going to be here for a while.”

“—”

“Tried to drown himself from the inside was how one of the doctors put it.”

Henry looked toward the white underbelly of his forearm, where a length of transparent tape kept the needles and gauze in place. “Is this morphine?”

Schwartz half smiled at this. “If it was I’d have ripped it out and stuck it in my own arm. Those are both just nutrients.”

“Hm.” He had begun to imagine that the bliss was a function of morphine or some other spectacular sparkling drug being shuttled into his blood. But maybe it was mere food that was making him feel like this. In which case maybe it was worth it not to eat for a few weeks, to reach this bliss at the end.

“How’s Owen?”

Schwartz shook his head as if to say, Don’t ask. “He headed back right after the game. To take care of Pella.”

“How’s Pella?”

Schwartz stood up, looked at his watch. “I’m going to try to catch the early flight,” he said. “Some of the other guys will probably stop by later to visit, if they wake up in time. They’re out partying now.”

“Okay,” Henry said.

“Don’t mention Affenlight. They’ll find out soon enough.”

“Okay.”

A little bit of dawn was seeping past the dense hospital curtains. Schwartz stood there, a hulking shadow in the dimness. With undisguisable difficulty he hoisted his huge beat-up backpack and slung it onto his back, adjusting the straps so they wouldn’t cut into the meat of his chest. Then he shouldered his equally huge equipment bag.

“This is the psych floor,” he said.

Henry nodded. “Okay.”

“Figured I’d give you a heads-up. They’re going to send in the shrinks to talk to you about not eating. Your anorexia, as they referred to it.”

“Okay.”

“I told them only cheerleaders get anorexia. You’re a ballplayer—you’re having a spiritual crisis.” Schwartz’s smile returned, rueful this time. “They thought I was being serious.”

“Well,” Henry said. “You’re a serious guy.”

Schwartz had never seemed like a college kid exactly, but now he looked flat-out old, sleepless and worn, the creases in his forehead deep. His knees wavered under the weight of his bags. He grabbed the railing at the end of the bed to steady himself. “Get some rest, Skrimmer.”

His big body eclipsed the doorway and vanished down the corridor, the thump of his shambling footfalls and the scratch of his backpack against his jacket diminishing as he went.