Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (36 page)

I laughed. Poor Jake was always in trouble
of one kind or another. It was good that he didn’t really let it get to him I
thought, as he blew up a zombie convoy and grinned from ear to ear.

“I’ll see you later,” I told him as I went
out the door. The zombies were getting back up; I think the grunt was for me.

When I got to the hospital I went to the
children’s unit first. I liked playing for the kids. They didn’t expect
anything fancy, just fun. It also helped me put my own stuff into perspective.
I mean if a bald three-year-old can sit in the bed while poison is being pumped
into his veins and still giggle at my silly songs, then who was I to feel sorry
for myself…ever.

I spoke to the nurses who said they were
always glad to have me. They told me which rooms would be okay to go into. The
first one was a little guy named Carlos. He had just turned four his mom said,
and he was sitting in his crib with an IV, watching SpongeBob and eating a strawberry
Gogurt when I got there. I had met him a few times before when I’d come here. I
knocked on the door and his little face lit up, “Brock!” he yelled. It sounded
more like “Bwock!” but I liked it.

“Hey buddy, how are you today?”

“Mama says we can go home tomorrow. I’ll
be there for Michael’s birthday.” Michael was his older brother. He had told me
about him the last time I was here. He was turning twelve and Carlos
hero-worshipped him.

“That’s great!” I told him. I loved his
enthusiasm. “That must mean you’re doing better?” I looked at his mom when I
said it. The last time I had talked to her, the little guy’s tumor wasn’t
responding very well to his treatments.

“The doctor changed the chemo. The last
MRI showed that the tumor was shrinking.”

I looked back at Carlos and smiled at him.
“High-five on that, buddy!” He held out his little hand and I gave him a five.
“You have any requests?” I asked him. I knew what he was going to say; it was
the same every time.

“Five little monkeys!” he squealed. It
wasn’t my best work, but what are you going to do? I sat in the chair next to
the bed and we sang it…five times while I strummed the tune on my guitar. It
would be stuck in my head now for the rest of eternity, but as I left his room
and saw that huge smile on his little face, I knew that it was worth it.

I played for two more kids. One was a
little girl who was six and a half. She was shy, but she loved Katie Perry. I
did my best girl voice while I sang “Eye of the Tiger” and for some reason,
that made her laugh. The next guy was a thirteen-year-old. When I’d first met
him, he was really angry about being sick. He had a tumor in his brain too, an
inoperable one. I told him about mine, and he said, “You’re lying. You don’t
look sick.”

“I was bald as an eagle my freshman year
in high school,” I told him. “You see all these tattoos? I got them to cover up
the scars all of the IV’s left on my arms.” He still looked skeptical so I
parted my hair and holding it apart with each hand I told him, “See the scar?
That’s from one of the three surgeries.” I also had a drain in my head. When
the tumor had gotten big, it blocked the ducts that drained the cerebral spinal
fluid out of my head and cause horrific headaches. They put in the drain, and
they had never removed it. The doctor told me that my brain had grown to it,
and to take it out now would just be more traumatic. I had a tiny little bump
under my hair where it was at. I told him to feel it; it was just like the one
on his head, apparent because he was bald. “When you get better, you can grow
your hair out and no one will ever be the wiser,” I told him. I was pretty
proud of myself when he smiled. Then the little traitor blew it for me though.
He turned to his mom and said, “Can I get tatted up to cover the scars?” I tried
to laugh it off, but I thought maybe it was time to move on. In my defense, I
did mention to him that I didn’t get the tats until it was legal.

I went to the adult unit then. The nurses
told me I could just go room to room and ask each patient if they wanted to
hear a song. I got quite a few takers, and sang everything from Kenny Rogers to
Usher before I’d got to the last room on the end. I stepped up to the doorway
of that one and saw an older woman sitting next to the bed. She was facing me,
but she didn’t see me. She was looking at the dark-haired girl that lay in the
bed. I looked at her face and my heart went out to her. I had seen that worried
drawn look on my dad’s face more times than I could count. I thought about
leaving and not disturbing her but then the sleeping girl on the bed shifted
onto her back and if my guitar hadn’t been hung around my neck, I would have
dropped it. It was Molly. My Molly!

Okay, in reality she’s not mine. But in my
heart that was exactly what she is…my Molly. The older woman finally saw me,
and she must have seen the shock on my face. She got up and came over to me.
When she got closer, I could see that she had Molly’s eyes.

“Are you okay, son?” she asked me. The
human capacity for empathy amazes me. A few minutes ago she was sitting here
worried about Molly, and now she’s worried about me because I seem to be
standing in the doorway with my mouth wide open.

“Yes, ma’am,” I told her. “I’m sorry to
disturb you. I was offering to play music for the patients. I’m just surprised
to see…I mean I didn’t know….”

“Do you know Molly?” I nodded, dumbly.
When I found my voice again I said, “What’s wrong with her?” Her grandmother,
or at least that’s who I assumed she was at the time said, “Come here, let’s
sit.” She led me past the bed to two chairs by the window. I wanted to stop and
touch her. Hell, I wanted to climb in the bed and hold her. She was so pale,
and there was blood hanging from her IV pole and running into her arm. I
followed Molly’s grandma though, and took the seat she told me to.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

Her grandmother looked at her again and
said, “Molly has an amazing spirit. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” She still hadn’t
answered my other question, so I stubbornly asked it again.

“What’s wrong with her?” The old woman
looked at me with Molly’s eyes and said, “Molly’s a grown up now, as hard as
that is for me to process sometimes. I think we should wait for her to wake up
and see if she would like to tell you.” I wasn’t happy with that answer, but I
thought arguing with the grandmother of the girl I was probably going to fall
in love with was not the best idea. I nodded instead and then remembering my
manners I said, “I’m Brock.”

Molly’s grandma smiled and said, “It’s
nice to meet you Brock. I’m Gail Lewis. I’m Molly’s grandmother and her
guardian.” Then she looked at the guitar and said, “So, you’re a musician?”

“Yeah,” I told her. I was having a hard
time keeping enough moisture in my mouth to talk. My head was reeling with all
of the questions I had. This is an oncology unit. This is where I should be…not
Molly. She wouldn’t be here unless she had some kind of cancer. Why didn’t she
tell me? Asked the pot to the kettle. I remembered her grandma then and I said,
“I come by as often as I can and play for the patients who want me to. I
especially enjoy seeing the kids. They’re little troopers. It gives you hope
for the world.”

Grandma smiled and glanced over at Molly
again. “They certainly are,” she said. “Molly has been giving me hope for the
world since the day she was born. I had lost a little of that where her mother
was concerned, I’m afraid.”

“Where is her mom?” I asked, not knowing
if I was stepping over some kind of boundary or not. But, I figured her
grandmother would tell me if I was.

Grandma looked sad, and then I felt really
bad for asking. Then she said, “I don’t really know. Last time we talked to her
she was in Georgia. She travels…a lot. She left Molly with me when she was two,
and we’ve only seen her once since then…a few years ago. It was awkward for
both of them; they don’t really have a bond any longer.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to think of something
more profound to say. It didn’t come. Poor Molly. First she was abandoned by
her own mother and then…this, whatever this was. I wondered about her dad, but
didn’t ask. As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Her grandma wasn’t finished.

“Molly never knew her father. I don’t even
know who he was. Thank the Lord that Molly turned out as well as she did. She’s
got a good head on her shoulders.”

“You’ve done a great job,” I said. I
wished Molly would wake up, but then I didn’t. She hadn’t told me she was sick,
I doubt she was going to be happy to see me. I tried to tell myself that I
should go, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Grandma was smiling and she
said, “How do you know Molly?”

“I go to school here at the university,” I
told her. “My roommate is Molly’s best friend’s boyfriend.” That was a
mouthful.

“Megan’s boyfriend,” Grandma said with
another smile. “I met Jake once. He seems like a good boy. Megan is like another
daughter to me. She’s a good girl.”

“Yes, I like Megan a lot. Jake’s okay
too,” I told her. We both looked back over at Molly. She looked so small and
pale against the white sheets and her dark hair. I wondered what Grandma would
think if I told her how much I liked her daughter. So far the longish hair and
tattoos didn’t seem to be offending her, but then she didn’t know how badly I
wanted to date her granddaughter.

“Megan brought her here and called me. I’m
sure that Molly told her not to. Sometimes she gets our roles mixed up and she
wants to be the one who does all the worrying. I told her that was my job, and
even my right as her grandmother.”

I laughed, “Yeah that sounds like Molly.
She’s always thinking.”

“Too much sometimes, I’m afraid,” Grandma
said. “I tell her she’s too serious. She needs to be a kid before the time has
passed and she’s forced to be a grown-up. I try to help her more so that she
doesn’t have to work. I told her that I don’t mind, and it would free her up to
do more college things. But she says she won’t have me working two jobs while
she’s not even working one. I’m afraid she’s over-doing it.”

“I think she wants to be independent very
badly,” I said. I was thinking now about her telling me that she didn’t want a
boyfriend and wondering how much of that was not wanting to have to tell me she
was sick. It was so strange, because I could not only understand that, I could
identify with it. I didn’t like telling people that I was sick because no
matter how good I was doing, they still treated me differently. I knew that it
was with good intentions, and also just because most of the time people just
didn’t know what to say or do. But it was frustrating nonetheless

“Brock,” Grandma was saying, “Will you be
here for a while?”

“I can be, if that’s okay,” I told her.
What I didn’t say was, “Hitch up the wild horses and see if they could drag me
away.” I think she got the point.

“That’s fine,” Grandma said. “I have a few
errands and I didn’t want to leave her alone. I won’t be long, just an hour or
two.”

“I won’t leave,” I told her. Then I
grinned and said, “Even if she tries to throw me out when she wakes up.”

Grandma laughed then and said, “It’s
likely son. Stay tough.”

“I will. Mrs. Lewis?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for letting me stay here.”

The old lady put her hand on my face then
and said, “You seem like a nice boy. Thank you for staying with her.”

If she only knew…had she tried to kick me
out, she may have had to physically remove me. I didn’t just want to be here
when she woke up…whatever the consequences, I needed to be here. My chest was
aching just seeing her in the bed. I had to see for myself that she was okay. I
sat down in the chair next to her bed where her grandmother had been sitting
earlier. The paleness of her skin was a stark contrast to the burgundy of the
blood they were pumping into her. I looked up at the bag to see what type she
was. She was AB positive, the same as me. I whispered, “See I knew I was your
type.” I was glad she was asleep; that one was really corny.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MOLLY

I opened my eyes to the strip of
fluorescent lights above me. The lights were off, but because they were there,
I knew that I wasn’t in my room at the dorm. I looked to my right and saw the
tube going into my arm, attached to the bags of clear fluid and blood. I was in
the hospital…again. I remembered now. Megan brought me here because I was
feeling weak, and the doctor didn’t have good news…and Grandma was here. I
turned my head to where she was supposed to be and imagine my surprise when instead
of my grandmother, I was looking at Brock.

“What are you doing here?” I said a bit
too harshly, maybe. “Did Megan call you?”

I was instantly mad. How dare she? All of
this time she hadn’t told anyone and the one person I most especially didn’t
want her to tell was now sitting at my bedside…in the hospital.

“No, Molly,” he was saying as I cursed
poor innocent Megan in my head. “Megan didn’t tell me. I was here, in the
hospital. I play music for the patients sometimes. I saw you.”

I felt bad for snapping at him, and I felt
bad for accusing Megan. I felt bad period. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t
want Brock of all people to see me like this.
 
“I’m sorry. Where’s my grandmother?”