To them, you're the classic hard-luck pitcher, the guy who's already labored into the extra innings of life, scattering a run or two but doing all he can to keep himself and his team in the game. It's the chorus you wrote, one of your favorites to sing, and when you leave this hospital, you'll sit down at the piano and belt it out louder than ever. It's nothing new, this mantra: fall down seven times, get up eight. Megan told you this and you nodded at the words, but here you are: cracking wise, staggering around the ICU with a walker.
Moonlight man full#
The doctors had to wait out the bleed as long as they could before pumping you full of thinners that would let them go back in and replace the bad valve. The minor stroke that landed you in this bed two weeks ago had you slurring and unable to move for a few days. You've had two heart tests already today, and they show that the infection of the artificial valve that was put in three years ago has caused swelling. But you'll save that energy for tomorrow. Normally, you might tell them they're wrong. You're sure they think they're not allowed to. Faces you've shaped into smiles with ease in the past - just an inappropriate joke away - not smiling today. Your infielders, your pitchers, your AA sponsor.įaces, sometimes clear, sometimes blurred, depending on the hour. The rest of your relatives from Boston, where you grew up. She's seen as many cold, sterile corridors as you. Your open heart surgery, your two bouts with cancer, now this.
She never seems to stop moving, taking care of something, gathering the latest information. Your daughter, Megan - 16 years old, if you can believe it - comes in and out of the frame. Your mother, who lives down the street and has been with you since the stroke, sits in silence, watching over you through the glass walls that separate you from innumerable machines and workers dressed in white. The flight from Germany has caught up to him early. They're saying hello, dammit, and you'd swear by it, and you say out loud how nice it is that so many of them are taking the time out of their busy days to do it. Your brain's been leaking blood for two weeks, but you're still sharp enough to have convinced yourself that it's the opposite. You repeat this to yourself as your withering body greets the procession that stamps its way over the shiny white floor to your bedside to say goodbye.