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“You’re not playing if I have anything to say about it.”
“Doyou have anything to say about it?”
“No, probably not. But believe me, I’ll chart this so when your memory is shot and you don’t know in which direction to turn to find the bathroom in your apartment, they’ll know why.”
“Gee, thanks. What was your name again?”
“Really?”
“Ha! No. It’s Wendy. Wendy Adams. And how’s Sadie?”
She immediately softened. “Sadie’s awesome. She misses you though. We’ll have to get together so you can see her again.”
“You’re so beautiful, Wendy,” he mumbled. “I think I love you.”
“You have a head injury, don’t forget.”
Oliver watched her smiling down at him until he had to close his eyes. “I want to talk to you, but I need to take a nap.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a concussion. Let Coach Clark say it won’t hurt you to play.”
They arrived at the hospital, and the same trauma specialist who had seen Oliver the last time he’d visited met them at the door.
“Tom Bennett called me.”
“Great.”
“Um, maybe not so great,” he said, looking in his eyes with the penlight again. “Mr. Saint, you can’t keep showing up in our emergency room with the same injuries. It’s abuse.”
“I’m too tired to argue.”
“I’m going to admit you, and I’m not letting you out of here until after the next game,” the doctor said.
So that was how Oliver Saint’s professional football career nearly came to an end.
Chapter 2
Instead, he was discharged in the morning, released to play at the next game the following weekend, the game that would be attended by Wendy, his mother and father and two uncles, his aunt Roberta, and several cousins and their wives and girlfriends.
The Saint family arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport Thursday night and took a limousine to the hotel outside the city.
“Will we see you tonight?” Aunt Roberta had asked, upset when Clare told her Oliver wasn’t able to meet them at the hotel.
“I’ll meet you for breakfast in the morning. I’m still at the practice facility and don’t know when they’ll release me.”
“Oh, okay. I guess I forgot that you’re a real football star now,” she said, backing down.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but thank you, Aunt Bertie. I’ll see you first thing. You’re all invited for the Coach’s Breakfast.”
The team hierarchy went all out for the families of the players, and the pregame breakfast for home games was just one of the generous things they did. So Friday morning, he and Jim dragged themselves out of bed and made their way back to the practice facility.
When Oliver walked into the lobby, he got the surprise of his life; Joanne had made arrangements to join the family at the last minute.
“Surprise!” she shouted, running to him.
Picking her up when she jumped on him, it wasn’t the embarrassment that she’d done it in front of his parents but rather how glad he was that Wendy had said she had to work on Friday when he’d contacted her to attend the breakfast. She was coming to the game, and now he’d have to figure out how to juggle that mess. It was for such a time as this that Aunt Bertie came in handy; she loved all intrigue, all the time, and he told her the details. She already knew the story of the dog because Charlie had told his brother Big Mike, and Big Mike told his wife, Roberta.
“Leave it to me,” Roberta whispered. “I’ll keep Joanne busy, and you let your mother know about Wendy.”
