Scooter by Mick Foley

Author:Mick Foley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307427649
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

[ 17 ]

Like most Bronx hospitals of the time, Morrisania had been forced through necessity to become a good trauma center. Baseball bats weren’t just for baseball anymore and surgeons had employed their “Saturday Night Special” kit immediately—a series of saws, drills and scalpels that allowed rapid access to the brain. Burr holes had been drilled to allow brain pressure to release, but the blow had been a far more vicious one than I’d realized and the swelling had been bad.

She’d been out of the operating room for several hours but had yet to regain consciousness. Her prognosis was a cloudy one—only time would tell.

My father had carried his daughter in and had gone back to his car. He had called in a robbery in progress on a woman who’d been beaten, and even though the Bronx was not his precinct, he’d taken off in pursuit.

He had hit a telephone pole at eighty, with no sign of slowing down. The Charger had been totaled, along with much of my dad’s body.

I called the house on Shakespeare and caught my mother as she was headed out the door.

“Mom, come quick!” I pleaded. “Patty and Dad are both hurt bad—and Dad’s partner died last night. Please come quick!”

I put myself in my father’s shoes, on the worst night of his life. A fighter who’d been staggered. One blow from going down. He sees his best friend die. Grieving for his partner, trying hard to numb the pain. Coming home intoxicated for the first time in many years. Expecting to find comfort in his home and finding Rizzuto’s memory in pieces. Was Vinnie’s death the final blow or was it seeing the Scooter’s broken bat?

Then the man who had been color-blind lets out some racist words. And pays dearly with his daughter’s health and payback from his son.

I thought through these things for hours inside a smoke-filled respite lounge. Sometimes looking for my mother so I could be wrapped in her arms. In spite of all the sadness and the anger and the hate, part of me was still a little child looking for warmth when things went bad.

My mom had always favored Patty, and that fact had always hurt me. Now I just hoped that Patty would get better so I could tell her that I cared. I’d been so focused on self-pity that I never even tried to get to know her. I prayed for extra time together. Got right down on my knees like Grandpa used to and prayed to God to give her time.

Grandpa! He could help me. But he didn’t have a phone. The subway stopped at 167th, just a couple blocks away. I could have been in his room in fifteen minutes, but I didn’t want to take the chance of missing the arrival of my mother. Besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Grandpa, knowing what I’d done with Joe D.’s ball. He would have taken one quick look at me and known I’d hocked the ball.

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