The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [196]
Henry didn’t say anything.
“You even set up away from the plate, so he’d have to come farther inside to buzz you. You baited him into it.”
Henry wasn’t going to admit it any more than he was going to argue with it.
“What were you thinking, Henry? How many bodies you want to pile up in one day?”
Schwartz was pissed, no doubt about that, though he hadn’t raised his voice and had barely twitched a muscle, as if he’d reached such a state of exhaustion that he’d never move or yell again. “What about the Buddha? Poor Buddha. He just found out about Affenlight—and now he’s got to sit there and watch you try to kill yourself? You could have just stayed home.”
“I thought I’d be able to turn my shoulder into it, get a free base that way,” Henry said. “I didn’t expect him to throw it so high.”
“Well, Dougal’s a crazy bastard. Just not as crazy as you.”
This was the gentlest thing Schwartz had said. An odd giddiness was tickling up and down Henry’s spine, despite the intensity of his headache. “I didn’t have a lot of options out there,” he said.
“Swing and miss. Get us on a plane back home. That was an option.”
“Aren’t you glad you won?”
Behind the shut curtain of the room’s lone window, a little light was beginning to appear. Schwartz’s watch, glowing yellow-green in the grayness, read 5:23—Henry felt too confused to subtract forty-two, but it was four-something in the morning.
“Yes,” Schwartz finally said. “I am.”
The giddiness was washing over Henry from his toes up to his neck. It felt beautiful, like angel-song. Maybe in some partial way, and despite Schwartz’s anger, Henry had redeemed himself in the eyes of his friend.
The giddiness deepened into bliss. His limbs lacked energy to move, but a different type of energy was moving through them, originating somewhere in his bones and organs and spilling outward, scrubbing and scouring him from within, suffusing him to his skin. Maybe it was Schwartz’s presence, maybe it was the fact that the Harpooners had won the national championship—but the bliss laughed at those things, and Henry realized that they were irrelevant where the bliss was concerned. Maybe this was what dying felt like.
“Am I okay?” he said.
“Depends what you mean. You’ve got a concussion. A pretty bad one. Dougal throws ninety-two, you know.
“But that’s not why the doctors think you collapsed. According to your blood work you’ve run out of pretty much every mineral and nutrient necessary for life. Even salt. It’s not easy to run out of salt. I think you’re going to be here for a while.”
“—”
“Tried to drown himself from the inside was how one of the doctors put it.”
Henry looked toward the white underbelly of his forearm, where a length of transparent tape kept the needles and gauze in place. “Is this morphine?”
Schwartz half smiled at this. “If it was I’d have ripped it out and stuck it in my own arm. Those are both just nutrients.”
“Hm.” He had begun to imagine that the bliss was a function of morphine or some other spectacular sparkling drug being shuttled into his blood. But maybe it was mere food that was making him feel like this. In which case maybe it was worth it not to eat for a few weeks, to reach this bliss at the end.
“How’s Owen?”
Schwartz shook his head as if to say, Don’t ask. “He headed back right after the game. To take care of Pella.”
“How’s Pella?”
Schwartz stood up, looked at his watch. “I’m going to try to catch the early flight,” he said. “Some of the other guys will probably stop by later to visit, if they wake up in time. They’re out partying now.”
“Okay,” Henry said.
“Don’t mention Affenlight. They’ll find out soon enough.”
“Okay.”
A little bit of dawn was seeping past the dense hospital curtains. Schwartz stood there, a hulking shadow in the dimness. With undisguisable difficulty he hoisted his huge beat-up backpack and slung it onto his back, adjusting the straps so they wouldn’t cut into the meat of his chest. Then he shouldered his equally huge equipment bag.
“This is the psych floor,” he said.
Henry nodded. “Okay.”
“Figured I’d give you a heads-up.