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  We were at the first hole and Gabe was eating blue cotton candy he had gotten for free as we waited with the crowd to see Jimmy Savage off. There were cameras, kids, parents, and other celebrity golfers watching as Jimmy and Jesse stared at the clubs in Jimmy’s bag. From the look on Jesse’s face, I had the feeling that golf was not a sport he knew very much about. I didn’t know much about it, either, but from the little I had seen on television, I knew that Jimmy was the first golfer ever to wear leather pants on the course.

  I moved in closer to hear Jesse and Jimmy’s conversation as Jimmy rummaged through the golf bag.

  “Do I begin with the big ones and work down to the little ones?” he asked his caddy.

  “Believe big and begin big,” was the answer.

  Jimmy pulled out a club with a big, wooden head on it.

  “This?”

  “Why not?” Jimmy answered.

  The TV sportscaster was whispering into his microphone in that annoying way they do at golf tourneys. “Looks like Jimmy Savage is a novice, relying on the advice of his caddy. He’s going to need some great coaching to beat Dweezil Zappa, who just birdied . . .” At that moment, Jimmy took a giant swing at the ball. The back swing nearly connected with his head. The crowd gasped at his close call, and the ball went sailing off into a water hazard, scattering ducks and landing on a muddy bank.

  That was probably his best shot of the day. He went from water hazard to sand trap to water hazard until he was caked with mud. To his credit, his state of mind stayed positive. Maybe Jesse was feeding him “Willardisms” or maybe it was just his personality, but Jimmy seemed to be having a good time in spite of his pathetic showing.

  The sportscaster continued whispering, “If Jimmy Savage keeps this up, he’ll pull down the record of two hundred and sixty-three strokes for one game on this course.”

  The crowd was beginning to thin out a bit when Jimmy finally popped the ball out of his latest water hazard. Jesse executed a massive fist pump in triumph, and Jimmy smiled proudly.

  “Now I know where I get my athletic ability,” Gabe mumbled.

  The sportscaster seemed to be so fed up that he wasn’t even bothering to whisper anymore. He actually sounded pissed off. “Jimmy Savage would need an act of God to just stay in this competition, folks, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He turned to the few fans that were left. “Let’s move on to . . . anybody else in the game.” And with that, he and the cameras moved off with most of the crowd.

  Jimmy’s next shot landed in a sand trap, and he and Jesse trudged after it with Gabe and me following. When we caught up, Jesse was on his knees brushing the sand away from the ball, trying to give Jimmy all the help he could. He handed him a club.

  “So, kid,” Jimmy said, “tell me something about yourself. Are you a fan of mine?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Can you tell me why?” Jimmy asked as he wound up and started his swing.

  “’Cause you’re my biological father,” Jesse said. “I’m a 908 donor kid.”

  It was exactly at that moment that Jimmy connected. Scooping under the ball, he sent it flying straight up into the sun. He stood there, open-mouthed, staring at Jesse, oblivious to the fact that what goes up must come down. The ball bounced off Jimmy’s head with a loud crack that made us all gasp. Then, with Jesse looking on in horror, Jimmy Savage dropped to his knees and fell face down into the sand.

  chapter twenty-two

  “Somebody call 911!” I screamed.

  Gabe pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and held it up in front of my face.

  “Why don’t you?” he asked.

  “Step one in an emergency is to say ‘Call 911,’” I said, defending myself. “Now I will take step two, which is to actually do it.” Inside I was kind of embarrassed as I punched in the numbers. “See, I’m doing this in logical order.”

  Jesse had turned Jimmy face up and was crouched next to him, listening to him breathe. Jimmy actually had a sweet, goofy smile on his face. The kind that people smile with their lips closed. He looked very happy and peaceful.

  “He’s breathing okay,” Jesse told us, and Gabe and I both sighed with relief.

  They must have had paramedics on the golf course, because two guys with a gurney appeared almost as soon as I turned off the phone. They got Jimmy into one of those things that stabilize your neck, lifted him onto the stretcher, and took off running toward the club entrance, where we could see the flashing lights of a waiting ambulance. We followed Jimmy and the EMTs, fighting our way through CVD kids and their parents.

  The closer we got to the driveway, though, the harder it became for the paramedics to navigate the gurney. It seemed word had spread that Jimmy Savage had knocked himself out, and people were gathering from all over the golf course to take a look at him. He seemed to be even more interesting to them now that he was unconscious. The medic team kept yelling “Clear the way,” but everyone kept doing exactly the opposite, including the paparazzi, who were running alongside and snapping pictures of Jimmy.

  We hit a bottleneck at the iron gates of the club entry, where another TV reporter was keeping the public up to date and loving every moment of the disaster. The dude was from one of those dumb shows that are all about celebrities, one of those shows that seem to be based on the idea that celebrities matter more than anyone else. You would have thought he was covering a state funeral from the serious tone of his voice.

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” he philosophized. “Rock star and philanthropist, Jimmy Savage, has been struck down by his own ball during the first Celebrity CVD Golf Tournament. Perhaps his caddy can fill us in on the details.”

  The reporter grabbed Jesse’s arm, stuck a mike under his nose, and asked one of those questions they all ask when something bad happens. “What is your name, son, and can you tell us what ran through your mind during that horrifying moment when Jimmy Savage was struck in the head, perhaps fatally, by his own golf ball?”

  Jesse pushed the mike away with a “Get lost, dude.”

  The reporter took the hint and continued his show. “Jimmy Savage’s caddy is too overcome with emotion to speak to us. We do not yet know the details of this accident, this golf swing gone terribly wrong, but our thoughts and prayers are with Jimmy.”

  It was then I realized that once they put Jimmy in the ambulance, we were going to lose him again. There was no way they’d believe we were his kids, no way they’d let us go with him. Then a plan occurred to me.

  “Follow my lead,” I whispered to Jesse and Gabe.

  I grabbed a fistful of blue cotton candy and stuffed it into Gabe’s mouth.

  “Help!” I shrieked. “My brother is deathly allergic to blue food dye. He thought he was eating pink. He could die! Please help us.”

  Gabe clutched his throat and fell dramatically into Jesse’s arms as the cameras swiveled to catch the latest drama. More EMTs rushed to his side as he uttered this amazing sound that combined choking and gagging. It sounded kind of like a combo of “Aaaaargh” and “Gluuuugh,” a phlegmy, gurgly scrape in his throat, and people standing near us looked as if they were going to puke. Little kids were crying in fear and clutching their parents. It was a beautiful thing, an Oscar-winning performance.

  The TV guy was in Access Insider Hollywood heaven. His voice dropped an octave as Gabe was wheeled past him.

  “Another tragedy, folks,” the TV dude declared. “One of the most severely afflicted CVD kids ate the wrong color cotton candy and had a life-threatening allergic reaction, and now they are moving the young boy into the ambulance with Jimmy Savage. In seconds, the two of them, rock star and CVD kid, will be racing to the hospital together, perhaps racing for their lives.”

  I grabbed the arm of a nearby parking guard who was watching as they loaded Gabe. “We need to get our car out of the parking lot. That’s our brother they’re putting in the ambulance, and we have to follow him.”

  I looked up at him pitifully and choke
d out a sob.

  Jesse put a protective arm around me. “They’re very, very close,” he said to the guard.

  “Follow me,” the guard told us. He yelled to the other guards, “Hey, help me get these kids out of here. Their brother’s in the ambulance headed for the hospital. They’re in 125, row C.”

  In an instant, the guards were throwing keys to each other, running around, and moving cars. Our guard took our ticket, pulled our keys off the parking board, and handed them to us with a tear in his eye. “I’ll be praying for your brother,” he said to me. “Stay hopeful.”

  “I guess I seriously better consider it,” I told him. “You’re the second person who’s suggested that to me recently.”

  And with that, Jesse and I took off across the parking lot to the Jeep. A path had been opened ahead of us so we could zoom out of the lot and we did—just like members of the Lucky Sperm Club.

  chapter twenty-three

  When we got to the hospital, Gabe was in the emergency room, in an area marked TRIAGE. He spotted Jesse and me, slid off the gurney, and sneaked out the front door to meet us.

  “Jimmy’s on twelve, some kind of special VIP floor,” he told us. “They told me you can’t get up there without a pass.” His eyes were gleaming; I could tell he was looking forward to the challenge of getting to our dad, and it was helping him bounce back from the Daisy heartbreak.

  Who would have thought that a nerd would get so turned on by illegal escapades? I was finding out more and more that you really can’t tell who people are just by looking at them.

  We went inside and headed for the elevators in the main part of the hospital, but a guard stopped us. He wore lots of official looking badges, and his biceps looked like bowling balls.

  “Fans wait out front,” he ordered, checking out Jesse’s Jimmy Savage cap.

  “We’re not fans,” said Gabe. “I mean we are, but we’re actually family.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Me too,” said the guard. “But he wants privacy, so get lost.”

  “You’re very tense,” Jesse commented sadly. “Your chakras are definitely not in alignment.”

  “That’s a shame, but I can live with it,” snapped the guard. “Now get lost before I align my foot with your ass.”

  This was no place for “Willardisms.” I took Jesse’s arm, and the three of us retreated through the front door, where a laundry van had just pulled up into the driveway. The driver jumped out, opened the rear doors, and began unloading folded linen into a big canvas bin on wheels. Then he rolled the bin into the ER.

  It took about twenty seconds for me to jump into the truck, grab some freshly laundered lab coats, and toss them to the guys. We hustled off just as the driver came back, slammed the doors closed, and slid back in behind the wheel.

  We had just put on our doctor coats and were wondering what to do next when some nurses came out of a door marked STAFF ONLY next to the ER. It had no handle on the outside, just a key lock. I pulled Jesse’s Jimmy Savage cap off his head, gave him a push in the right direction, and he raced over to grab the door before it closed. He flashed his golden boy smile at the nurses, who smiled back. When they’d gone, we dashed inside to find ourselves at the street-level entry to the hospital stairwell.

  “Why did they have to put him on the top floor?” I asked as we started to climb.

  “It’s the floor for VIPs,” Gabe told us. “The paramedic said it had special beds, a view of the ocean, and hot nurses. He said when Joan Rivers was here, she wanted to turn it into a time share.”

  The energy expended in climbing the stairs soon had Gabe wheezing and snorting.

  “You don’t sound so good,” I told him. “Why don’t you put one of those things on your nose?”

  “I thought you hated the Breathe-Rite,” he gasped.

  “It’s not that bad,” I mumbled. “Just take it off before we meet Jimmy.”

  By the time we reached the seventh floor, I was huffing and puffing myself. Jesse didn’t seem to be winded at all, but he suggested we take a rest and plunked himself down on one of the steps. I sat down on the same step, facing him, and Gabe settled down on the step just below us.

  “We haven’t had a chance to ask you, Swimmy,” I said. “What went down with you and Willard?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Jesse said warily, “but you have to promise not to laugh.”

  “We do,” Gabe and I said in unison.

  “Well,” said Jesse, “I don’t know if Willard is a nut, if he’s really psychic, or if he’s from another planet, but I do know he saw me in a way no one’s ever seen me before.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gabe.

  “Seems like all my life I had this feeling that my insides and my outsides didn’t match. I look like the dude who has everything. This . . .” He pulled at his face. “The jock thing, the popular thing. I tried to live in sync with that . . . like that was what mattered. But I always had this weird, empty feeling inside, even before Tina and Liz told me that they were splitting. Willard seemed to know all of that. He told me that it was okay. It was even a good thing for me to look inside myself for happiness instead of outside. He told me that I didn’t have to worry about what anyone else did or what anyone else thought. I had to do what was right for me. He showed me how to relax and how to breathe, how to be in the moment and accept it, and how to feel my own presence. When I did what he told me, I felt a difference. He’s the only person who ever understood that even though I had what everybody else wants, it only made me feel guilty instead of good.”

  “I love this. It’s so anti-establishment,” I said. “What else?”

  “He gave me a list of books to read, gave me his phone number, and told me that I could call him any time to talk. Then he told me he believed I would find my path. All I had to do was look for it with an open heart.”

  “I’m sorta blown away,” Gabe said, “even though it sounds like what my dad calls ‘new age mumbo jumbo.’”

  “Whatever it is,” Jesse told him calmly, “I think there’s something to it.”

  “You’ve changed since Willard,” I told him. “In a good way.”

  “Thanks,” said Jesse. “I don’t usually let anyone know what I’m really feeling, but I had to tell both of you. It means a lot to me that you guys get it.”

  “I absolutely get it,” I told him.

  “Me too. And just for the record, I don’t always agree with my dad,” Gabe added.

  “Let’s go,” I said, getting up. “At this moment, our path is vertical.”

  We trudged up the next five flights without talking, thinking about what Jesse had told us. It seemed like this trip was opening a lot of doors, but when we got to the twelfth floor, we found that a very important one wasn’t going to open. The exit door from the stairwell to the hospital didn’t have a handle.

  “Someone’s sure to use the stairs eventually,” Jesse offered. “So let’s just wait.”

  It was then that his phone started playing “Love Ya Moms” by Noreaga.

  “Hi, Moms,” he said in a phony, cheerful voice.

  Why do we always use that voice when we’re guilty about something?

  “I’m good. I must have missed it ’cause I was in the shower. I sound echoey ’cause I’m at the pool. A couple of us are working out. We may enter some summer invitationals. Everything is cool.

  Sorry, but its my turn to do laps. I gotta go now. Love you, too. Bye.”

  “How are they?” I asked.

  “Maybe I haven’t changed that much,” Jesse laughed. “I forgot to ask.”

  Just then, we all came to attention. Someone was jiggling the handle on the hospital side of the door. We tried to look like we were having a consult about an upcoming surgery, but it didn’t really matter. When the door finally opened, a gray-haired patient, an old guy in a hospital gown, backed in and slid a credit card against the lock as he closed it. Then he reached up and took a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter from the ledge over the door. He flick
ed the lighter a few times and cursed under his breath when nothing happened.

  “You shouldn’t smoke,” Gabe said softly.

  The dude almost jumped out of his slippers. He turned around to see who had spoken.

  “Whaddaya know,” he growled in a raspy voice. “Three Doogie Howsers.”

  “What’s a Doogie Howser?” asked Gabe.

  “Never mind,” the old dude sighed. “You’re too young to be alive.”

  “Smoking will shrink your chakra,” Jesse warned him.

  “If it shrinks my prostate, I’m outta here.” He smiled. “Got a light?”

  I pulled a book of matches I’d taken from the cantina out of my pocket and lit his cigarette. He inhaled to his toes as I shoved the matches into his hand, and the three of us exited the stairwell and replaced his card in the door.

  “Try to cut down,” I told him.

  “If you say so, Doc,” he called after us as the door closed on his Amex Platinum and we entered the exclusive world of ailing celebrities.

  chapter twenty-four

  It was a typical hospital floor layout, but everything was so much nicer. There was wallpaper on the walls and real hardwood floors. The nurses’ station had vases filled with beautiful flowers. The doctors were all tall, dark, and handsome, straight out of Central Casting. The paramedic was right; the nurses looked more like model/actresses than medical assistants.

  Most of the doors to the rooms were shut, so now that we were here, we had no idea how we were going to find Jimmy.

  “What do we do now?” I asked Jesse as we went striding down the hall, trying to look as if we belonged. I think it was the first time I’d asked Jesse for advice, but he looked really good in that lab coat, almost like a real doctor on a TV show, and I was actually beginning to respect his opinion.