“Yes.”

“Who am I?”

“Dad.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Boone High School. Dugout.”

“What’s the score in the game?”

“Three-three, bottom of the seventh.”

“Has anyone called an ambulance?” I say to Coach Dickson.

“They’re on the way, but it always takes them fifteen or twenty minutes to get here.”

I can sense someone beside me, and I turn my head. It’s Ray, Caroline, and Toni.

“He all right?” Ray asks.

“He’s coherent.”

“Let me see.”

I pull the towel back again. Caroline gasps, and a flash of anger runs through me like an electric current. How could they do this? Why would they do this? It’s just a baseball game, for God’s sake. Jack has been hit dozens of times in the past, but never in the face. And Coach Dickson is right; their pitcher displayed excellent control until Jack came to the plate in the seventh. They hit him intentionally.

I gently replace the towel and look at Ray. I’m thinking seriously about grabbing a bat from the rack and going after Jefferson’s coach.

“You don’t want to wait for an ambulance,” Ray says. “We need to take him now.”

“Why?”

“His pupils are different sizes. There’s already a lot of swelling. I’ve seen this before, Joe. He might be bleeding internally.” Ray was a medic in the navy for eight years, so he knows what he’s talking about. At that moment, Jack leans forward and vomits on the dugout floor.

“We have to go,” Ray says. “Right now.”

Caroline and Toni rush off to get the cars while Ray and I each drape one of Jack’s arms over our backs and lift. Coach Dickson holds the towel in place to try to slow the bleeding as we walk Jack out through the gate. Just before we reach the parking lot, he loses consciousness, and I feel a sense of dread so deep that I nearly pass out myself.

He regains consciousness after we put him in the backseat, but during the ride to the hospital, he’s in and out.