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Ted really should’ve cancelled practice.
All the news would talk about was the upcoming heat wave. He didn’t realise it got this hot in England, but hot it was. He thought about cancelling training, but it was the team’s first day back, and things weren’t supposed to get really bad until tomorrow.
Only things were really bad right now.
Ted was pulling at his polo shirt, fanning it against his sweating body, when Jamie trotted over to get a drink and bent-over, hands on his knees, catching his breath.
“Hey Jamie,” Ted asked as the Mancunian. “What do you call a greyhound in a heat wave?”
“Dunno, Coach,” Jamie answered, his head tipping to one side, sweaty hair flopping with it despite the headband. “Alright if I run inside? Getting a headache.”
“Of course, son. Headaches are like toddlers; they’ll scream until you give them attention. It's better to give in to the tantrum now than make it worse later.”
“Right,” Jamie turned on his heel and trotted inside Nelson Road. “I’ll be quick.”
Only he hadn’t been real quick. Only he hadn’t come back at all.
Will was the one who noticed. Another thing Ted should have done. The kit man came running back, yelling frantically for help. Beard and Isaac reached him first, following the younger man back into the building. Ted had Roy stay with the team as he race-walked to the entrance, only to catch a glimpse of Beard and Isaac carrying a seemingly unconscious Jamie Tartt into a treatment room.
Only then did Ted break into a run, his sneakers squeaking to a halt at the treatment room door as physios flitted around a too-red-faced Jamie. Had he been that flushed when he went inside? Surely Ted would have noticed that wouldn’t he have? But Ted had been distracted. Henry was arriving the next day, and Ted remembered thinking he should ask Jamie to join them for dinner one night, but had he actually looked at the player before he excused himself?
In the scheme of professional footballers and maladies, a headache without a concussion was so far down the list that Ted barely even registered it. Heck, he had a headache right now, though that might have more to do with the whiskey he consumed last night than anything else.
From the treatment table, Jamie roused awake, and physios whispered words Ted’s brain refused to comprehend.
“Is he alright?” Ted asked stupidly. The physios were inserting an IV into Jamie’s hand, of course, he wasn’t alright.
“Probably heat exhaustion,” Beard said before sending Isaac and Will reluctantly back to the training pitch.
Ted watched helplessly as Jamie’s tight training shirt was removed, physios rolled him to his side, placing ice packs in his groin, neck, lower back, and armpits. Jamie didn’t fight them; he just let them move him around like a life-size footballer Ken. Ted took a tentative step forward, wary of getting in the way, before brushing a sweaty strand of freshly dyed blonde hair off Jamie’s forehead.
“Have to say, Jamie, the blonde really is growing on me.”
“Walnut mist,” Jamie mumbled, and Ted worried about increased delirium.
“Whatever you say, bud,” Ted said, running a hand through Jamie’s hair, less tentatively this time. “You’re still looking like a young David Beckham.”
Jamie purred like a newborn kitten, and Ted took that as a sign to continue it as the physios covered him with a cooling blanket.
“Just let him rest; we’ve given him some muscle relaxants to help with the shakes, we’ll check him again in fifteen minutes and see if his temperature has come down. If not, we’ll have to get him into an ice bath,” Gail explained. “Try to see if he’ll drink some water or Lucozade.”
“Thank you,” Ted thanked her and the other physio, Allison, taking the offered bottle.
“Are you doing okay, Jamtartt? Your forehead feels hotter than a Kansas City sidewalk during a July heatwave. I’m pretty sure I could fry an egg on it.”
“What?” Jamie said, words slurring.
“Never mind. Do you think you can drink something for me?”
Jamie nodded slightly, and Ted held a straw to his lips.
Ted’s worried after Jamie a lot during these two plus years he’s known the kid, and for many varying reasons, but never more than right now with him curled up and too-hot in a suddenly too-small room.
”He’ll be okay,” Beard said, doing that thing he did where he managed to read Ted’s mind and reassure him with only a few words and a pat on the back, before he too returned to the practice pitch.
“Hot dog,” Jamie said once he finished swallowing the drink and Beard had left.
“You want a hot dog? I don’t know if they have any here, but I got some in my apartment I can get you one later.”
“No,” Jamie said, pausing to take another sip from the straw. “I am – I’m the hot dog.”
Maybe he should grab Gayle; between the walnut mist, whatever that was, and Jamie now thinking he’s a hot dog, his brain might be set to boil.
He put the Lucozade down and wet a paper towel, smoothing it onto Jamie’s still too-warm forehead, and tentatively asked, “You – uh – you think you’re a hot dog?”
“No,” Jamie said, taking another baby sip of the sports drink before shaking his head. “Your joke.”
Light dawned on marbled-Ted.
“Oh right. What do you call a greyhound in a heat wave?”
“A hot dog,” they answered simultaneously.
Ted was definitely cancelling training tomorrow. And he would be baking a special batch of biscuits in Jamie’s kitchen while he slept later because there was no way Ted would let him out of his sight. He hoped Jamie had the aircon that he didn’t. Rebecca would have to understand that her lack of biscuits tomorrow meant he’d be sharing them with Jamie.
He could call it biscuits with the bedbound. Eh, he’ll workshop it.