The Line Drive

thirty-one

Dane

I'm in agonizing pain when I wake up from my short nap. I think it's actually mostly mental, because I know without a shadow of a doubt, that what I feel in my shoulder means that my career is over. I won't be able to play in the season, so I won't be able to be scouted.

The doctor had told me that I had a rotator cuff tear. It was only a small tear so if they did surgery now and I was good about PT, more than likely I would regain full shoulder motion. Pitching was out of the question for months though.

They're monitoring me in case of concussion, since apparently I'd slammed my head pretty hard into the ground. My surgery is scheduled for first thing in the morning and I'll be out of the hospital by tomorrow at lunch. It can't come soon enough. I hate hospitals. Every time I'm in one I think of my mom.

I blink slowly and Mackenzie comes into focus. She's sitting in the corner, by the window. Even under the shitty hospital lights, she looks beautiful. Her soft brown hair is pulled back from her face into a pony tail and she's clearly focused on the papers that she has in her lap.

She's holding a hot pink pen and grading with a rapidity that I've come to expect from her. The efficiency of her grading is truly impressive.

Mackenzie's eyes snap up to meet mine as if she can feel me looking at her. "Dane." Her voice is soft. "You're okay." She breathes a sigh of relief. Something inside me snaps and I'm so mad. Nothing is okay and she's sitting there without a care in the world.

"I'm not okay."

"I just meant that you're awake."

"My baseball career is over. My life is over."

"That's not true." She insists, clearly caught off guard by my sudden anger. "Baseball isn't everything, Dane." I know she doesn't know this, but it's the absolute wrong thing to say.

"Baseball is my everything!" I'm nearly yelling at her, and she stands to come over to the bed. Her hand brushes mine, but for some reason, this just pisses me off more.

"Dane, please-- You're so smart--"

"Just stop." I scoff. "I don't even know why you're here." Mackenzie looks so taken aback and I hate myself for saying it, but the words keep coming out of my mouth. "Why are you here? To say you were a good person? You came to check on the sad baseball player that you've been tutoring?"

"I--"

"We're not friends." I snarl at her. I've never hated myself more. I'm so mad. "Just leave."

Mackenzie looks like she's ready to start crying, but she doesn't say anything as she shoves her stuff into her backpack. I expect some smart-ass comment from her, but none comes. Instead, she just gives me a sad look and then walks out of the room.

I lay there, tears running down my face. The one person who cared enough to sit with me in the hospital room, and I told her that she wasn't my friend. I was such a fucking liar. Mackenzie was my best friend. She'd gone so far past our original agreement. She was so nice to me and patiently answered all of my questions about computer science, and even helped me study for my other classes, I knew that she cared about me.

As if my day couldn't get worse, when I turn my head, I see the last person that I want to see at that moment.

"What the fuck happened?" My father asks as he strides into the room.

"Hello to you too." I cannot deal with this right now.

"You ruined everything." My father hisses. "The one good thing that you had, and you managed to fuck it up too." I'm too tired to even reply, so I just lay there, feeling like I probably deserve this after what I said to Mackenzie. "I threw so much time and money into this stupid baseball obsession, and you convinced me that you would make it pro. That it would all be worth it."

"I--" I don't really have the words to defend myself. It all seems so stupid now.

"The doctor says you'll never be able to throw the same again. Your career is over." I stare at the ceiling, praying that maybe he's just a hallucination. I know what he's saying is true, but until that moment, I'd held onto the tiniest thread of hope. "You've lost the one thing that you were good at."

"Don't talk to him that way!" Mackenzie's voice cuts through the room, and I lift my head to see her standing in the door. I wonder if it would be too dramatic to heave a sigh of relief.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I could ask you the same question." Mackenzie shoots back although I know she's definitely smart enough to put two and two together. She moves so that she's over by me, and this time when she reaches for my hand I take it, squeezing so tightly that I'm worried I'm going to cut off blood flow in her fingers. I can't stop though, because I feel like she's my life raft in this awful storm that is my father.

"I'm his father."

"Well then maybe you should start acting like it." Mackenzie replies in exactly the same vicious tone that my father gave her.

"You can't talk to me that way." My father sounds offended to his core.

What Mackenzie says next seals my fate as her number one biggest fan. "Mr. Sawyer." Her voice is suddenly eerily calm. "Do you know how far it is from the mound to home?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's sixty feet and six inches." Mackenzie tells him, totally ignoring that he'd spoken at all. "Do you know approximately how fast a baseball leaves a bat when its hit?"

"No." My father manages to grind out.

"With how fast Dane pitches, it's probably around 100 miles per hour. That's a little under 150 feet per second. But the important thing is that your son had less than a second to react to a line drive coming straight towards him." Mackenzie pauses for dramatic effect and I'm pretty sure that it's the moment that I start to fall head over heels for her. "If he'd reacted in the wrong way, and the ball hit him in the wrong place, he could have died."

My father is dead silent, and instead of looking at him, I just stare up at Mackenzie's face with a mixture of shock and affection. I don't know when she bothered to educate herself on all of these baseball facts, but it has me weirdly turned on.

"All I'm saying is that you should be thankful that you still have a son." Mackenzie and my father are having a stare down and he loses. Without saying anything, he strides from the room.

It hits me that Mackenzie is right, and I could be dead, and all the sudden I'm sobbing. For my fucked up shoulder, for my father leaving me yet again, for treating Mackenzie like shit, for Mackenzie being the better person as always and coming back, for everything.

"Hey." Mackenzie's voice is soft as she drops her bag. "Hey. Dane." She holds my shoulder, but she can clearly tell its not enough to do anything because I just cry harder, finally letting everything out. Mackenzie manages to ease her way into the hospital bed and holds me against her stomach as I sob into her soft t-shirt and clutch at her like she's the only thing that's going to save me. She strokes my hair and murmurs my name over and over until I eventually fall asleep.