Life at Your Feet (Sequel to The Player)

Nothing more than pity and empathy

Jessica was walking around her service, making sure everything and everyone was alright.

“Nurse? This has ended…” An old man turned to her, pointing at his IV

“Oh, let me take care of it” Jessica walked to him, taking it out, leaving his catheter only. “Are you feeling alright?”

He smiled “of course, there is no possible pain when there is a game like that on”

Jessica looked at the TV of the room, noticing Chelsea was playing “Well, that’s great to hear, Mr. Charles” She smiled before walking away.

After putting the empty bottle and used IV system on its proper trash, she went back to the nursing room, only to see everyone completely out of themselves, looking at the TV.

“What?” She smiled, sitting at the computer, she had lost interest to watch Chelsea’s games a long time ago. Wonder why? “Don’t tell me they’re losing…” she joked

“Jess, the dude just fell unconscious on the floor, look at the uproar!” The male nurse spoke, even his voice sounded worried and incredulous.

She immediately looked at the TV “What? Who?”

“He just collapsed on the floor and when everyone started approaching he went unconscious. It was too quick” The other nurse spoke “Heart attack?”

Jessica felt this unusual jitters inside her, she tried to focus on the screen, but there were too many people around the poor guy.

“Maybe…” the other nurse said “But he’s been playing for a good time now”

“Well, I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out”  

“Who?!” Jess snapped

The male old nurse looked at her “Robert Lockhart”

Her eyes widened “W-What…?” She glued on the TV. Robert? Falling unconscious? They were performing basic PCR on him already. Oh God.

Please tell me you’re not on drugs again, Robert. She thought to herself.

It was a matter of seconds until they showed a repeat of the scene. She saw him walking, his face pale and looking painful. After he tried to catch a ball and failed, he embraced his chest, before collapsing on the floor like a corpse. Only then people started to surrounding.

“He was still conscious there…” the female nurse said “He fought it well”

Jess turned to her, slightly annoyed “He’s still fighting”

“Well, it won’t…” The male nurse was interrupted by the phone ringing next to him “Hello? Yeah,… oh, of course it’s all over the TV…yes, ok, ok… we’ll handle it” He finally dropped the phone, before turning to the team “He’s coming here, we need to get the urgency room ready for any kind of thing. Since we don’t know what really happened”

Jess stormed out of the room “I’ll do it”

Her heart was beating hard on her chest, this news affecting her more than she could ever imagined. She was used to hear news from him, at least what was told in the tabloids, and out of everything she could ever imagined, this was not definitely on the list.  He just couldn’t… he needed to… be ok.

She would never be ok knowing he wasn’t either, as hard as it was for her to admit it. As hard as it was to listen to news from him during all that time, she always looked forward to at least read them. She wouldn’t want to see games or interviews, she refused to do it, but she always wanted to know that at least, he seemed alright.