End Zone: A Second Chance Romance (Bad Ballers Book 5) Page 2

  I closed my eyes as pain seared through my head and, when I opened them again, the Renaissance Prince was gone.

  “Can you tell me your name?” asked the doctor, a homely man in his mid-forties with graying brown hair and a neat brown beard.

  “Where am I?” I asked instead. I was testy and, to be honest, in a shit-ton of pain and pretty damn frightened. The past half hour had seen me poked and prodded by a team of nurses. One of them had squeezed something into my IV, which had done a lot to dull the pain.

  “You’re at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, Massachusetts,” said the doctor. “You were in a car accident and have been unconscious for five days.”

  “Five days,” I said weakly. My eyes travelled to the door, looking for the gorgeous man who’d been standing over me when I’d regained consciousness. Had I imagined a camera crew in my room?

  “Yes,” the doctor replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you answer a series of questions. You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, and your body shut down to protect you while it healed. I want to see how much you remember. Can you tell me your name?”

  I opened my mouth to respond but had to stop a moment when my name didn’t come to me automatically. Panic flooded in, and I forced it down, forcing myself to focus. Come on, you know your name!

  “Erin,” I responded after a moment. “Erin Alyssa Duvall.”

  “And how old are you, Erin?”

  “Twenty-four,” I said quickly.

  The doctor frowned.

  “Am I not twenty-four?”

  He shook his head. “You’re twenty-six,” he said. “We’ve called your friends. They’re on their way now, and they can confirm this. But does that number sound right to you?”

  I wanted to cry. “Maybe,” I said. Now that he mentioned it, perhaps I was twenty-six. But I couldn’t remember celebrating my 26th birthday – and I did remember my 24th birthday. Damon had taken me to La Brasa in Somerville. Goddamn it. My head hurt, and it was hard to remember anything when panic was threatening to overwhelm me.

  “Do you remember the accident?” the doctor pressed.

  “No,” I said. I tried to shake my head, but that didn’t feel good at all, so I lay still.

  “What is the last thing you remember?”

  I closed my eyes, uncertain what it was I was looking for. I saw Damon’s face staring back at me. Beautiful blue eyes, warm smile.

  “I was with my boyfriend,” I said. “We were travelling somewhere…”

  “You have a boyfriend? Can you remember him? What else can you tell me about your life? Can you tell me about your family?”

  My family? It took a moment. “My boyfriend’s name is Damon. He’s a cop. My parents are deceased,” I said. “My mom passed away during my sophomore year of college. Dad died when I was....” Wow. How old had I been? “Little,” I finished.

  “Where did you go to high school?”

  I closed my eyes. “I can’t remember,” I said. It came out as a whisper.

  Turns out, there were a lot of things I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember where I’d went to high school or college, but my more recent past was easier to recall. I knew who I was. Erin Duvall, content and media assistant at Beezeness. I knew the names of my colleagues – most of them. But I couldn’t recount my address or what my salary was.

  Where I fumbled with details, the doctor was able to fill in some blanks. He told me about the accident: about the blue car that had run the red light and slammed into me. He knew where I lived; he had met my friends. It turned out that Damon had been by. He’d been the officer on duty when my accident had come in over dispatch. But he’d only been by once in five days. Maybe he was still working. Maybe that was why he wasn’t here.

  The man whose face I’d seen when I’d come out of the coma was gone. He hadn’t looked familiar. I wondered if I’d forgotten his face, too, or if he was a stranger. And because nobody mentioned him, I wondered if I’d been hallucinating both him and that camera crew.

  “Doctor Marx.” There was a knock on my door, and an older man in a suit stood in the doorway. “We’ve got at least three newspapers and two TV crews outside looking to talk to you or to Ms. Duvall.”

  “TV crews?” My doctor stood and stared at the man in the doorway.

  “They’re calling her Sleeping Beauty,” chimed in one of the nurses who’d been standing in the corner. She looked at me and smiled sheepishly. “Ted Schnieder – he’s one of the New England Patriots – he was doing meet and greets on the floor and came in here. I guess he must have, er, kissed your temple or something.” The woman blushed. “Anyway, you woke up right then and there, and Schneider’s cameraman, who works for CBS, caught the whole thing. It’s a big story now.”

  “Ted Schneider?” So I hadn’t hallucinated the man. The name sounded vaguely familiar. But then again, if he was a Patriots player, I definitely would have heard of him.

  The Doctor looked aghast. “Ted Schneider was in here?”

  Both the man in the suit and the nurse nodded.

  “She’s not up for interviews,” said the Doctor, curtly. “Not yet. And leave me out of this, Don. I’ve got patients to see…”

  “Excuse me,” said someone from the hall. I peered past the suited man in the door toward where a pair of massive shoulders were now filling the frame.

  “I’m sorry, Officer,” said the man in the suit, stepping aside to reveal the worried, intent face of my boyfriend.

  “Damon!” I said, relief swamping me. His face I remembered. It was a gorgeous face: half-Italian and half-Irish, like a young, darker Ryan O’Neal.

  “Hey, Erin,” said Damon, smiling at me. “Glad you’re up. You had us worried.”

  I held out my hands, wanting more than anything to be in Damon’s arms. Damon took a step inside the room, heading toward me, but the Doctor intercepted him. “Are you Ms. Duvall’s boyfriend?” he asked.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Damon corrected. “But I was on call for her accident. I rode with her in the ambulance.”

  Ex-boyfriend? Damon was my ex-boyfriend? I took another deep breath and closed my eyes.

  “You’re her ex?” the doctor asked, nodding as if that made more sense. “Ms. Duvall says that you’re the last thing she remembers. Did you and she cross paths the night of her accident?”

  Damon nodded. “Yes. We ran into the each other on the T. She got off at Charles Street…”

  And just like that, the memory emerged: hazy, but I could see his face, see the doors of the train closing behind him.

  “How long since the two of you parted ways?” asked the doctor, grabbing his clipboard.

  “Two years.”

  The doctor nodded. “Mr…Marino,” he said after checking Damon’s badge. “Can you wait outside a moment?”

  “Sure,” said Damon, his eyes finding mine over the doctor’s shoulder. “I have to get back on shift anyway. I just wanted to see…Good to see you’re okay, Erin. I’ll check back in later, all right?”

  “Okay,” I said weakly, watching him leave. We weren’t together anymore. That seemed to make more sense – somewhere in my poor, battered head, I knew that.

  Damon left, and the doctor turned back to the bed. “Amnesia is a tricky thing,” he said.

  “Amnesia?” Of course. Of course that was what this was. I tried to still my rising panic.

  “There’s a lot about the brain we don’t know. But based on the information you’ve been able to give me, it sounds as if you have retrograde amnesia. You’ve retained some memories and lost others. I have a feeling you told me that you were 24 because the last thing you remember is seeing your ex on the train. Your brain latched onto a memory of the time you were last together. Two years ago. The interesting thing is the childhood memories. Those are usually intact. In most cases, it’s just the immediate past that gets jumbled…”

  “How do we fix it?” I interrupted.

  The doctor pressed his lips together, irrita
ted that I’d interrupted him. “We don’t. Almost all cases of amnesia clear themselves up. The brain just needs time to get over its trauma. To be honest, there will be some memories you might never regain. Most likely, though, as you heal, you’ll find small things triggering memories you thought you’d lost. Worse comes to worst, there’s hypnosis… but I would give yourself some time to heal before panicking.”

  Right, Erin, don’t panic.

  The doctor reached out and grabbed my hand. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Your memories will come back; it’ll just take some time. In the meantime, thank God that nothing was broken and that we didn’t have to do surgery to fix a cracked skull. There was swelling in the brain, but no bleeding. You had a bad knock, but you’re going to make a full recovery. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  4

  Ted

  “I could not have planned that better had I tried!” hooted Barry over the phone.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, rubbing at my head.

  “You’re viral, man. Absolutely viral. You are all over the internet! All over my news feed, all over twitter! What on earth drove you to kiss her?” Barry demanded.

  “Fuck if I know,” I lied tersely.

  “What’s up your ass?” asked Barry. “I thought you loved media attention!”

  “No,” I argued. “I love fan attention. Give me a screaming crowd and a bunch of busty blondes asking me to sign their cleavage. Give me a controlled commercial shoot where I get to take my shirt off. I’ll happily read the comments section on YouTube all day. But keep the news media away from me. They’re fucking vultures. You should hear some of the messages they’ve left!”

  “You haven’t called any of them back, I hope,” demanded Barry.

  “I’d like to know how they got my number in the first place,” I said.

  “You can find everything online,” said Barry, vaguely. “Oh, hey! Listen to this one: Mattress King wants you to do a Sleeping Beauty commercial featuring one of their mattresses!” Barry cackled over the phone. “Ooo. These are too good! Don’t do any interviews, Ted. Let the hype build up for another day or so, and then we’ll address it.”

  “You can address it,” I said. “I’ve got a game to focus on.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Barry. “Do what you do. I’ll handle things on my end. But seriously. What made you lean down and kiss her?”

  “Good night, Barry,” I said, hitting the end button on my cell. Turning my phone off, I wandered into my living room, threw myself onto my sofa, and turned on NECN.

  “…Sox fell to the Yankees 3 to 5 last night. Rough night for Porcello, who got pulled during the fifth inning. The Sox’s run of bad luck puts a lot more pressure on the Patriots to deliver as they look to this week’s home opener against the Giants.”

  “You just gotta believe in magic, Rich! And the Patriots look like they’re going to have a charmed season! If their new pickup has anything to say about it…”

  The two talking heads were quickly replaced by a montage of me: running down the field, dodging defenders, and snatching impossible catches. Then the image switched to the shaky shot of the cameraman at the door of a hospital room, zooming in as I stood over a young woman and leaned down, pressing a light kiss to her temple. A series of beeps went off, and someone off-camera gasped and yelled for someone to “get Doctor Marx!” The cameraman zoomed in on the young woman’s eyes, which stared at me, bewildered.

  Laughter cut over the noise from the video clip as the announcers replayed the kiss in slow motion.

  “Ted Schneider, ladies and gentlemen! Over 400 receptions for 4,500 receiving yards, 26 career touchdowns, and he can even wake up women from comas! Predictions, Rich?”

  “My prediction?! With Ted Schneider on the team, the Patriots can’t lose this year.”

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  I turned to ESPN. “…CBS is set to air the full video of Patriots Wide Receiver Ted Schneider waking up coma patient Erin Duval, but we’ve got a short clip of it…”

  I flipped to NBC.

  “…They say that hearing is the last thing to go, so coma patients can still hear you. He was in the wing visiting a Browns fan, actually…”

  Shit. They were interviewing the nurse who’d shown me around the hospital.

  “What do you attribute Ms. Duval’s recovery to?” the reporter asked.

  “I can’t say, really; that’s privileged medical information.” The nurse shrugged at the reporter. “But coma patients can hear you. There’ve been tons of studies done.”

  “What do you think Mr. Schneider said to her?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  This was going to be a PR nightmare. I shut the TV off. I didn’t need to see the CBS special. I needed to shut down all technology and brace myself for practice tomorrow. The coach was going to rip me a new one, and the guys were going to show no mercy.

  5

  Erin

  “They’re calling her Sleeping Beauty…”

  “Who the fuck are they?” grumbled James from his seat beside my hospital bed.

  “Shhh, I’m listening.” His wife, Casey, was perched on the edge of my bed, her eyes glued to the screen as photos of the car accident flashed across in quick succession.

  “Fuck. Me.” She turned to look at me, her eyes running over the bruises that marred my face.

  I grimaced. When Casey and James had come in, it had taken me only a moment to remember their faces. The three of us were colleagues at Beezeness, working in the advertising and outreach department. Seeing them had given me a lot more access to more recent memories: I knew what I did at Beezeness; I even remembered a project I’d worked on last year. Dr. Marx was right. I just needed to give my brain time to heal.

  It was frustrating. Some things I knew, and some things were just gone. You don’t realize how much your past shapes your present until you can’t remember some of it. When the nurse brought me dinner, I had to pick the mushrooms off of my meatloaf. Casey gave me a funny look and told me that I’d started to like mushrooms last year, after eating a mushroom lasagna.

  I knew Casey and James were married, but I couldn’t remember their wedding.

  Back to the TV. They were showing Patriot’s wide receiver, Ted Schneider, leaning over the bed and pressing a chaste kiss to my temple.

  “Shit, girl,” said Casey. “Ted Fucking Schneider. I never thought I’d be jealous of a girl in a car accident. Why the hell was he here? Do you know him?”

  I shrugged. “No. But even if I did, would I remember?”

  James reached over and took my hand in his, giving it a squeeze before letting it go.

  “Wow. So, he literally walked by your room and thought: damn, she’s hot! I’ll kiss her.” Casey was grinning ear to ear. “It looks as if he was talking to you! Do you know what he said?”

  “No.”

  “Well, whatever it was, it woke you up.”

  “I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” said James. He sounded irritated.

  “Yah, well, if I were Erin, I’d take full advantage of this coincidence.” Casey turned back to watch the montage of Ted Schneider’s best catches. “See if you can get Pats tickets! Or make him feel guilty enough to take you out on a date!”

  “Of course, Casey, because the only way Erin could get a football player to take her out is to guilt him,” said James, drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair.

  “James, you know that’s not what I meant,” said Casey, softly turning her head to her husband.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, my voice matching Casey’s for softness.

  “For starters,” said James, holding up a small rose gold iPhone, “it’s your damn phone!”

  Was that my phone? Odd. It didn’t look familiar.

  “They took the case off of it after the accident,” said Casey, reading my expression.

  “It’s been ringing nonstop since we learned you were awake. And none of the numbers are known contacts. I’ve l
istened to some of the messages. It’s all reporters. Fucking bloodsuckers. You just woke up from a coma! They need to cool their jets!”

  “Here,” said Casey, reaching out to take my phone from James. “Why don’t I just hang onto it, and why don’t you go take a walk…”

  James got up and left the room without another glance backwards.

  I looked at Casey. “I think I’m supposed to know why he doesn’t like hospitals…” I said.

  Casey’s smile was small. “His mother was one of the Marathon Bombing victims. They took her here. She was unconscious and lost her leg…”

  My head ached, but the memory came back to me. “Right,” I finished. “James and his dad didn’t know if she was alive or dead.”

  “And when she was out of surgery, they didn’t know if she was going to wake up. He and his dad were on edge, and the reporters just kept trying to get an interview. This is a bit too similar for him to handle, I think.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he’ll be fine. I’ll take him home when he gets back.”

  “Thank you both for being here,” I said. I think the only reason I hadn’t broken down entirely was because they’d been there. Casey had taken me through everything she knew about me, then she’d asked me questions and wrote all of my answers down.

  Likes: Cooking, running (spin class, now?), steak, writing, steamy romance novels, the color green, white wine. Dislikes: Liars, the color red, any sport that involves hand-eye coordination, bell peppers, pickles, fake sweeteners, Damon.

  Casey had put that last one on the list because, true to his word, Damon had come back in to check up on me. He’d been there five minutes and had answered a few questions about our shared past before Casey had sweetly suggested that his new wife was probably waiting for him somewhere. Damon had shot her an irritated look but had left.

  “Why don’t we like him again?” I’d asked her.

  “Because he cheated on you.”