On the Fly (27 page)

“
She’ll be okay,” Dana
said. “Kids are resilient. She didn’t even get knocked out—not like
you did.” She said that last part looking over at me.

Not like I did?

My confusion must have registered on
my face because Zee said, “Back in peewee. We were in a game and
they took you off the ice on a stretcher. I was with Dana in the ER
waiting room for what felt like hours before they finally told us
you were going to be fine.”

That was so long ago I barely
remembered it. I’d had dozens of other injuries since then that
kind of dulled the memory. “How old were we?”

“
Eleven,” Dana said. “I was
eight and terrified.”

Eight and
terrified…
Tuck was only five. God, I was
an ass. I was so worried about Maddie—and Rachel—I had hardly
spared Tuck a thought since we’d left the practice facility. I’d
told Rachel I’d take care of him, but I hadn’t. Dana and Babs had
done most of it, and I’d pretty much ignored him.

He was still over in the corner
playing with a couple of Babs’s brothers. I dragged a hand through
my hair and got up. I hadn’t noticed anyone giving him any
food—nothing since Dana had given him the orange juice—so I headed
over to the buffet and fixed a couple of plates. I loaded them up
with mac and cheese and brownies. Now wasn’t the time to worry
about eating healthy. I just needed him to eat.

When I went to the kids’ corner, I
took a seat on the floor, leaning my back against the wall. Tuck
held out a Matchbox car. “Wanna play cars?”

“
Maybe in a minute. You
hungry?” I held one of the plates out for him.

Tuck nodded and took it, scooting over
closer so he could sit right by my side, leaning against the wall
exactly like I was. “Does Mommy know I’m getting
brownies?”

“
It’s our secret.
Deal?”

For just a second, his eyes went
really wide. Then he grinned and picked up his fork, loading it
high with mac and cheese. “Deal.” Half of what he’d put on his fork
landed on his shirt. He blushed just like Rachel always did, set
down the fork, picked the stray pieces of pasta off his shirt with
his fingers, and popped them into his mouth.

I had a feeling we were going to have
a huge, cheesy mess on our hands in about thirty seconds. Lucky for
me, Jim came over with a stack of napkins and tossed them in my
direction.

“
Thanks,” I said, setting
them beside me on the floor. He nodded and kept going, moving on to
talk to Hammer and Bergy. That was another thing I was going to
have to learn—kids meant messes, and so I had to be prepared to
clean them up.

I’d known before I’d ever gotten
involved with Rachel that women with kids meant complications, but
the complications she was bringing into my life were pretty much
the opposite of what I’d been expecting.

Tuck ate his meal with an insane level
of enthusiasm, and I tried to do the same. I hadn’t been thinking
when I’d put the same stuff on my plate that I’d put on his. This
wasn’t really my go-to sort of meal, but I wasn’t going to get up
again now. I could grab some salad and a banana later.

After a few minutes, Tuck had made a
good dent in his pile of cheesy goodness. He stuffed half a brownie
in his mouth and dropped the rest back on his plate, wiping his
hands all over his shirt. “Mr. Soupy?” he said, his mouth full and
bits of brownie falling out onto his plate.

I tried not to laugh.
“Yeah?”

“
Is Maddie gonna be
okay?”

That was probably the only
question he could ask that I’d been dreading. I didn’t want to lie
to him, but
I don’t know
didn’t seem sufficient. I set my plate aside and
grabbed a napkin, using it to wipe a little of the mess off his
face. That didn’t seem to do much good, and he was still eating
anyway. He was just going to keep making more mess for a
while.

I dropped the napkin onto my plate and
bit down on my tongue, hoping the sharp pain would help clear my
head and give me a brilliant answer.

Nothing brilliant came to
mind.

Damn it
.

He kept looking at me, his big eyes
slowly filling with tears the longer I took to answer him. I wasn’t
cut out for this sort of thing. Not at all.

“
I don’t know, Tuck,” I
finally said when nothing else came to me. “But we’re in the best
place for her. She’s got doctors and nurses taking care of her, and
your mommy, too.”

“
She bleeded a
lot.”

“
Yeah, she did. She hit her
head really hard.”

“
I shoulda gived her my
cape. Then she could be Supergirl and not get hurt.”

“
You think your cape might
have helped?”

He nodded, his expression
serious.

“
I should have given her a
helmet like you had on.”

Tuck nodded and took another bite of
brownie, dragging his sleeve across his mouth and spreading the
mess further. “Yeah. We gotta take care of Maddie
better.”

“
I’ll make you a deal,” I
said.

He looked up at me
expectantly.

“
If the doctor comes and
tells us Maddie is going to be okay, then you and I have to work as
a team to take care of her and your mommy. You do the kid stuff,
and I’ll do the grown-up stuff. Deal?” I stuck out my hand to
shake.

He tackled me with a hug instead of
shaking my hand. “Deal.”

Tuck didn’t let go, and I didn’t
really know what to do with that, so I put my arms around him and
hugged him. A minute later, when he pulled away some but stayed on
my lap, we were both covered in cheese sauce and brownie bits. Tuck
giggled when he saw my shirt, and all I could do was
laugh.

That was when Rachel came into the
waiting room.

Everyone fell silent when she opened
the door. She stopped short and looked around at the people packed
inside that tiny area like sardines, all of us expectantly waiting
for news about Maddie. She shook her head, blinking her
eyes.

She had to be looking for Tuck. I
stood up with him in my arms, so she could see him and know he was
okay.

“
Don’t forget our deal,”
Tuck whispered in my ear. He still had his arms wrapped around me
when Rachel’s eyes finally fell on us.

Then she burst into tears.

I’d thought the
nurse was joking when she’d said the whole waiting
room was full of people waiting on news about Maddie. I’d been sure
of it. Never, not since the day my parents had kicked me out of
their house, had there been people in my life who actually cared. I
figured Brenden would have come and brought Tuck with him, or at
least I hoped they would be there.

Walking into that waiting room and
seeing pretty much everyone who’d been at the Storm’s Christmas
party overwhelmed me almost as much as the doctor’s assessment
had.

Then I felt like the biggest idiot
because I was standing there bawling like a baby, and they had to
be jumping to conclusions about Maddie and basing those conclusions
on my ridiculous behavior.

I fought to get myself under control
while Brenden carried Tuck over to me, but I didn’t manage it very
well. By the time he got to me, I was practically hyperventilating
through my tears.

Brenden put his arm around me, still
holding onto Tuck, and nudged me back out into the hall with him.
He pulled the door closed behind us and held me close, his eyes
searching mine. “Tell me.”

“
She’s f-fine.” I
hiccupped, which only made me cry harder. “A concussion and
st-st-staples in her h-head. But she’s fine.”

Tuck put his hands on both my cheeks
and turned me so I was looking at him. He was filthy, and I laughed
through my tears. “I’m gonna give Maddie my cape so she’ll get
better fast,” he said just before he planted a sloppy kiss on my
lips.

“
What have you b-been
eating?”

“
It’s a secret,” he
whispered. “Mr. Soupy said not to tell you.”

Brenden’s fingers touched my lips to
brush away whatever debris Tuck had left behind. “She’s going to be
okay? Can she come home tonight?”

I didn’t miss the fact that he was
changing the subject, but I couldn’t really care about that right
now. I licked my lips where his fingers had been. “They w-want to
keep her for observation for a few hours.” Slowly, I started to get
myself back under control again. “But they’ll let her come home as
long as she stays like she is.”

“
Can I go give her my
cape?”

I had to laugh. My little boy was the
sweetest thing ever.

The head nurse had been walking down
in the hall, but she stopped at Tuck’s question. “Why don’t we
bring Maddie to you?” she asked. “I know there are a bunch of
people who’ve been waiting in there to see her. It’d be easier if
we put her in a wheelchair and bring her to them than the other way
around because of visitation rules.”

“
We can do that?” I asked.
I was still wrapping my head around everything that had
happened.

“
That would be perfect,”
Brenden said.

“
Wait right here, and I’ll
get her.”

Once the nurse disappeared around the
corner, Brenden passed Tuck into my arms and kissed my cheek. “I’ll
go back in there and tell everyone what’s going on. You two can
stay here and wait for Maddie.” He gave Tuck some sort of
meaningful look that I didn’t understand, and Tuck pursed his lips
together and nodded. Then Brenden went back into the waiting
room.

Tuck and I only had to stand there for
a few minutes, during which time he gave me lots of hugs and kisses
and told me all about how to score goals in hockey. By the time an
orderly wheeled Maddie over to us, all decked out in her hospital
gown and with an IV bag hanging, he’d done his best to convince me
he was ready to play in the NHL.

I wasn’t quite buying it, but Tuck
could make a good sales pitch.

He squealed when he saw Maddie and
squirmed to get down. As soon as I set him on his feet, he ran to
her and gave her a big hug. “Here,” he said while trying to untie
the cape from around his neck, “this’ll help you get better
fast.”

The orderly was quick to catch on. “Oh
yeah,” he said. “That’s one of those magic capes, isn’t it, little
man?”

“
Yep. But I’m not a little
man. I’m the Ginger Ninja.”

“
Gotcha. I’d better watch
out then, huh?” He bent down and helped Tuck untie the cape, and
then he attached it to the back of the wheelchair. “We can’t put it
on her neck, but it’ll still work its magic from here.”

“
Awe-some,” Tuck said,
emphasizing each syllable like he loved to do.

“
You all ready, Maddie?”
the orderly asked.

“
Yeah. No, wait!” she said
once he started pushing her inside. “Tuck, look at this.” She
leaned her head forward and pulled some of her hair to the side,
showing him the seven staples they’d put in her scalp.

“
Woah
.” Then he looked up at me, his eyes full of mischief. “I want
some, too.”