Alive on Opening Day (18 page)

“
Dad!” Dan said. “What’s
going on? Why are you all in my room?”

David jerked, startled by
his son’s clutch and voice, and broke into a wide smile. “Welcome
back, sleepy head!” he teased.

“
Dan!” Clara gasped and
nudged past her husband with her hip.

“
Hey, no pushing!” David
teased her. She pushed harder.

“
Mom, hi,” Dan
said.

“
You scared us, young
man,” she said.

“
I did?” he asked, and
looked at the bundle in her arms. “Hey, you have Troy! Can I hold
him?”

“
Well, he is your son,”
she said. “Can you sit up, or do you need some time?”

“
I’m fine, mom,” Dan said,
and he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He
weaved back and forth a couple of times, his eyes unfocused. Gabbie
grabbed his shoulder to steady him.

“
Thanks, Gabbie,” Dan
said, placing his hand on hers. “I think I’m OK now. Come sit by
me?”

The young girl stepped
around the end of the bed and settled onto the mattress beside Dan,
uneasy but feeling a warmth grow in her chest. The two had been
together for a few years, but it had been really hard to go through
the pregnancy on her own, and their relationship had been strained
since Dan woke up in the spring. Still, he was Troy’s father, and
she loved him and was afraid to lose him again.

She threw her arm around
his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek as Clara bent to place
Troy in Dan’s arms.

David tapped his wife on
the shoulder and motioned toward the hallway with his head. She
nodded and said, “We, um, need to finish cleaning up the dinner
dishes. We’ll be back in a bit.”

And then, even if for just
a little while, Gabbie, Troy, and Dan were a family.

—

David and Clara drove Dan
to the hospital later that night, where Parks met them and ordered
another series of tests. By the next morning, he had pulled in Dr.
Rayburn, an endocrinologist from Terre Haute, and the two of them
were able to confirm that Dan’s hormones were slipping again and
that his profile was similar to where it had been during the
previous winter.

From all appearances, Dan
was on the verge of hibernating.

He managed to stay awake,
with the help of a pot of black coffee and some stimulant drugs
administered intravenously, throughout most of Thursday morning. By
that afternoon, however, he was groggy, and Clara called Gabbie to
the hospital, just in case something happened. Gabbie arrived with
Troy around 7 pm, and there was just enough time for her to see Dan
for a few minutes before he blacked out.

His sleep was even deeper
than it had been on Tuesday night, and he didn’t wake up again
until late Friday. When he came to, Dan sensed several people
around him, but he zeroed in on the wide face at the end of his
bed. It was coach Croft.

“
Sleeping on the job
again, eh, Hodges?” the coach teased.

“
Hi coach,” Dan
rasped.

His parents and Gabbie,
who had been in chairs around the edges of the room stood and
gathered near him, their faces swimming into focus.

Dan was wild-eyed when he
said, “I almost hate to ask, but what are you all doing here? How
long was I out?”

David grabbed his son’s
toes through the hospital blanket. “Just a day or so, Dan,” he
said.

Dan sighed in relief.
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “At least I haven’t missed anything
yet.”

He clipped that last word
as he realized the Eagles were scheduled to have played the second
round of sectionals on Thursday, the night before. “The game!” Dan
gasped.

“
Don’t you worry about
that,” Croft said. “You’ve already got our offense hopping,
remember?”

“
So …,” Dan led, and Croft
nodded.

“
We won, Dan,” the coach
said. “We won big — 13-2.”

“
Wow! That’s great,” Dan
enthused. “Addison was supposed to be really good. That means we’ll
play on Saturday … who do we play?”

“
Rosedale,” the coach
said.

Dan looked determined.
“Well, we shouldn’t have any trouble with them. You know they’ll
send Hartenstein to the mound. Hard fastball, but not much else.
Can’t wait to see the game!”

Another realization
flashed across his face, before disappointment took its place. “Oh,
man,” Dan said. “I
knew
this would happen! I’m going to be in Cincinnati
on Saturday!”

Croft and David looked at
each other, an exchange that didn’t escape Dan.

“
What?”
he said. “
What??
”

“
Dan,” David said in a
soft voice. “Doctor Parks wants you to stay here, in the hospital,
for at least a little while. They need to monitor your condition
and try to come up with a treatment. I’m so sorry, Dan.”

All the people gathered
around Dan put a hand on his arms or legs, and Gabbie kissed him on
the cheek. Even though he knew he was getting worse, he was still
stunned by the idea he was sick enough to stay in the hospital. His
eyes teared up as he thought about all he would miss — Troy’s first
Christmas, Gabbie heading off to college, the World Series
…again.

“
Well,” he said in a
quivering voice after a few seconds, “I guess there’s always next
year. And the spring — we can count on that, right? I always come
alive on Opening Day.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Nesting

As Parks and his
colleagues predicted, Dan’s bouts of sleep came closer together and
lasted longer as the days progressed. When the Eagles won the
sectionals on Saturday, he was in the hospital and had been asleep
for 16 hours. When they won the regionals on June 16, Dan was in
the midst of a three-day sleep, and, as the semi-state loomed on
June 23, Dan was sleeping four days for every eight hours he was
awake.

The luck of timing was on
his side in one way, though, as he awoke at 10 am that morning of
the semi-state game, and he was able to watch the Eagles play the
Columbia Knights on the hospital’s cable system. It was a tight
game, and South Pickens entered the ninth inning behind 3-2. With a
man on first and two outs, Waterman came to the plate and walloped
a ball deep into left field. It hit just in front of the fence and
rattled around against the wall before the left fielder could get a
handle on it. That was long enough for the lead runner to score and
for Ted to lumber all the way to third base. The next batter, Sam
Rolfe, slapped a single into right field to score Waterman but was
thrown out trying to make it to second base.

It didn’t matter, though,
because reliever Ab Ansley pitched a perfect ninth, and the Eagles
advanced.

Dan was out by 8 o’clock
that night, and his family didn’t know if he would wake up again.
Every time he closed his eyes, it was as if he were leaving
forever, and the Hodges were caught in a soul-shredding cycle of
mourning and hope that left them exhausted and confused. Even with
his solid standing at HBM, David had to keep regular hours at work,
but he spent every spare moment he could find in the hospital room
with Dan.

Clara was there all day
every day, and her nerves were frayed to the point she couldn’t
hold a normal conversation without snapping at someone. That
someone was often Gabbie, who came to the hospital several times a
day and was struggling to figure out what her future held. She
loved Dan, but she was young and had so much to look forward to —
she had graduated from high school just a few weeks earlier. Could
she really chain herself to a man who might die at any moment and
who was not available for her and their son on a consistent
basis?

She didn’t know, but
she
did
know she
had to figure it out soon.

And so it was that David
walked into a silent hospital room on the evening of June 28 to
find Clara asleep in a chair next to Dan’s bed and Gabbie standing
at the window watching the Friday traffic head home after a long
work week. She was oblivious to David’s presence and held a
slumbering Troy in her arms.

It had been a long and
trying week for the Hodges, and for Gabbie, as it appeared Dan had
entered a steady hibernation state. He had not been awake in
nearly
a week, and, as
of Friday morning, was exhibiting no REM sleep and no nocturnal
movements. For all intents and purposes, Dan was indeed sleeping
like a log.

That was bad enough on its
surface since it meant the family was missing out on time with
their boy, but it was made all the worse by the decisions it
necessitated. In particular, David and Dan’s insurance company had
determined they would pay only for ordinary hospital stays, which
they described as short-term visits of seven days or
less.

Dr. Parks had done his
best to game the system in their favor by checking Dan in and out
of the hospital and moving him around every time he woke up, but
the insurance company had sent their own doctor to consult with
Parks. When the Hodges’ physician detailed Dan’s condition, Poly
Health had explained they would NOT pay for an extended stay once
Dan went into full-blown hibernation. So, as July dawned, the
family would be forced to bring their son home. While that was
where they
wanted
him to be, both David and Clara remembered the uncertainty
such a situation created the year before, and they feared they
would not be able to handle medical emergencies that might
arise.

Parks had become something
of a family friend and vowed to check in on Dan regularly, in
person or by phone, but even that assurance did little to quell the
uneasiness.

It didn’t really matter
how he felt or how scared Clara was, though, because David knew
they had no choice. So, the family would spend one last night
together in the hospital and then, on Saturday morning, David would
load his son into the car and they would all head home. Gabbie and
Clara had already prepared Dan’s room for his return, making space
for a heart monitor and IV drip, which would keep tabs on Dan’s
condition and keep him nourished while he was asleep. Both women
had also learned how to change out the IV, since they couldn’t
afford to pay an in-home nurse and since insurance would not cover
that expense, either.

With these thoughts
weighing heavy on his mind, David stepped from the hall doorway
into the murkiness of Dan’s room and made his way toward his son’s
side. Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, David heard a
whisper from the middle of the gloom.

“
Dad,” a hoarse whisper
rang out. “Dad … why is it so quiet in here?”

David lunged toward the
bed and leaned in close to Dan to find the boy’s big brown eyes
looking up at him.

“
Dan!” David said and
hugged his prone son.

Dan gave his father’s
shoulders a weak squeeze and said, “When is it, Dad?”

“
When is what?” David
said, standing to focus on Dan’s face.

“
When is NOW?” Dan asked.
“Is it over? How long was I out?”

David shook his head. “No,
son, you’ve been asleep less than a week. It’s just late
June.”

Dan squinted, and David
knew he was running calculations in his head.

“
How late, Dad?” Dan
probed.

David smiled. “It’s June
28, Dan,” he said.

Dan’s face brightened, and
his eyes widened. “So the semi-state was last week,” he said. “Come
on, Dad, tell me: how did the Eagles do?”

David, still grinning,
said, “They won, son. They won.”

“
Yes!” Dan exclaimed and
pumped his fist. He tried to sit up but was still too groggy and
plopped back down on the mattress. “So they’re playing for the
state title?” He could hardly believe it.

“
That’s right, Dan,” David
said. “They’re playing Evansville St. Lydia tomorrow evening at
6.”

Dan adjusted himself in
the bed, and determination hardened his face. He fixed David with a
steely gaze and said, “I’m going to that game, Dad.”

—

“
I strongly advise you to
reconsider this decision,” Dr. Parks said to the room later that
Friday night, looking from David to Dan.

Clara stood at the
doctor’s side, fidgeting with the elbow of his white coat and
pleading with her eyes for her husband and son to listen to
reason.