Chapter Ten Dominic
Chapter Ten
Dominic
I t’s coming together really nicely,” Jack admitted as he stood next to Dominic on the shore and they both looked out at the dock. “I think it’ll be ready by the Boat Parade for sure.”
Admittedly, Dominic hadn’t actually believed he could pull this thing off, and without Jack’s help, that would absolutely have been the case. He chuckled remembering the time Jack accidentally fell into the lake when they were repairing the posts and how they both laughed until their sides hurt. And just a few days ago, when they sat on the partially completed dock in companionable bro silence, drinking a cold beer as the sun set, admiring their hard work. Yeah, spending the last few weeks working on it together with him had actually been a really great experience and reminded him a lot of when he’d done joint projects with his grandfather.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.
“Thanks for all your help, Jack. I’m excited to show Amanda the progress.” Dominic crossed his arms over his chest and made a mental list of the few remaining things he needed to do to the dock before the parade. “She’s going to love it.”
“You two are getting pretty close. I’ve seen you guys around town together here and there,” Jack commented, giving him a sly grin and side-eye. “She’s a pretty great girl, you know. Everyone in town will be pretty sour if you do anything less than what she deserves.”
Dominic let out a wry chuckle. “Nothing like that is going on, Jack. I promise. She’s dating other people, and I just got divorced.”
“Divorced means you’re single, though,” Jack countered. “You still hung up on the ex or something?”
“No,” Dominic assured him. “Nothing like that. I just don’t know what’s next for me right now. I wouldn’t want to jump into something with anyone if I can’t give them certainty.”
“Well, that’s dumb.” Jack gave him a friendly smack on his back. “No one can guarantee anything in life—especially not in relationships. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or a baseball.”
“Gee, thanks,” Dominic replied, not missing the reference.
“I’m just saying, all you can do is follow your heart and spend your time with and around people who make you feel happy, who make you feel like you belong. That’s all there is to life in the long run, you know?”
Baseball had been the place he’d felt like he belonged, however, and this upcoming interview was likely his way of getting back into that setting. But that meant moving away, something he wasn’t ready to tell anyone about yet, in case it didn’t work out.
“That’s a nice way of looking at it,” Dominic told him. “Are you married, Jack?”
“Nah.” Jack shook his head. “My sweetheart and I don’t believe in all that paperwork crap. We just choose to be together every day because we love each other. Been together almost thirty years now. Met in the Navy and then he moved back here to be with me after we both got out.”
Dominic hadn’t been expecting that, but it warmed his heart to hear the man’s story.
“It wasn’t like we could get married for the longest time anyway, and thirty years ago, everyone just thought we were roommates. I’d guess a lot of people still do,” Jack mused. “Which is fine. The world is changing, but not fast enough, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dominic agreed. “There was a guy on my team who was gay. We all knew it, but no one ever talked about it, and he never said anything. The media can be brutal about that kind of stuff in sports. To be honest, I kind of feel like an asshole that we weren’t more openly welcoming about it.”
Jack shrugged. “Don’t beat yourself up, kid. That’s just the world we live in. All any of us can do is just keep trying to do better in the future.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, then glanced down at his smartwatch as a notification beeped. “I have to get going. I’ve got a doctor appointment.”
“Your eyes?” Jack asked.
“Uh, yeah.” He wasn’t sure how Jack knew that, or how he guessed. “My vision hasn’t been the same since the accident. Still hoping that there is more we can do.”
“I could tell while we were working on the dock,” Jack confirmed. “It’s hard to do manual labor if your vision isn’t right. If you need anything or just want to vent, let me know. That kind of shit can be hard to cope with. I would know, believe me. I’m losing my hearing, and these hearing aids are the only reason we’re talking right now.”
“Thanks, Jack,” he replied, unsure of how he felt about the current conversation. All he did know, though, was he wanted to leave. He didn’t want to sit here and talk about what might be coming down the pike or that he might lose his vision entirely. There were a lot of things that he’d learned to become more vulnerable about thanks to therapy—like his marriage history and his injury—but the future was still a terrifying prospect that he preferred to just avoid entirely.
Plus, his vision was another reason why he couldn’t imagine dating or being with anyone right now, or maybe ever. It would be so much work for a partner one day to be with someone who couldn’t see easily, or at all. He wasn’t about to put someone else through that just because he felt lonely sometimes. And he had Tom now, so he shouldn’t be lonely anymore.
He was a cat dad, after all.
Dominic’s ophthalmologist was a little north of Detroit, so it would be a several-hour drive to get there, which was why he was leaving early in the morning when normally he’d have spent a few more hours working on the dock that day. Instead, he said goodbye to Tom, made sure that she had enough food for the day, and placed her cat bed in front of the back window so she could watch the birds.
An hour into the drive down, his cell phone rang, and he answered it with his car’s Bluetooth.
“Hello?” He gripped the steering wheel, a bit of a headache creeping in from his eyestrain.
“So looks like the interview is getting moved up,” Eric said through the speakers. He had never been the type for pleasantries or niceties, but always just got right to the point. It was one of the things Dominic loved about Eric, because he never had to guess where his head was at. “And one of the other interviewees just took a different contract, so he’s out.”
That was an interesting development. “That means it’s down to me and one other person?”
“Theoretically, yes,” Eric explained. “I mean, they could always find someone last minute, but the odds are looking better and better. You might be a New Jersey resident soon.”
“You’d love that,” Dominic kidded.
“Hell, yeah, I’d love that, man. You could take the train into New York City anytime and we’d be able to actually see each other more than two or three times a year,” Eric confirmed. “But listen, I don’t want to pressure you. I know last time we spoke you had some reservations about the whole thing. I think if you get this position, it could be amazing, but I’m always going to advocate for you to do what’s best for you—whatever that looks like.”
“Even if that means full retirement?” Dominic asked, slightly joking but also… he wasn’t. The possibility was very real, and there was, somewhere deep down, an insecurity that he might lose this friendship too if their professional relationship ended.
Eric’s response seemed unfazed, though. “I’ll be the first one at your retirement party, D.”
He smiled as he merged into a faster lane on the highway. “Thanks, Eric.”
“Send me a text later about what the doctor says. Sending good vibes your way,” Eric said before hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.
He was only about half a mile farther down the road when his phone rang again. This time, his mother’s picture appeared on the screen. He clicked the answer button on his steering wheel to connect to the Bluetooth again.
“Hey, Mom,” he greeted her. “I’m another hour out still.”
“That’s fine, baby,” she replied. “I’m leaving the house now and will be there probably a little before you. You know how I like to make sure I can always find parking.”
Ellen was perpetually forty-five minutes early to everything just in case she couldn’t find it, or there wasn’t close parking, or who knew what other anxious reason her brain convinced her of.
“I appreciate you going with me,” Dominic continued. “I’m sure you had plenty of better things to do today.”
His mother clucked her tongue into the phone. “Don’t be silly, Dominic. No one should have to go to these types of appointments alone. It’s always good to have support at things like that.”
He’d been to appointments like today before, but there was the tiniest of chances that today he might actually get good news. At least, that’s what he was hoping. There was a surgery that he was potentially eligible for as long as no further deterioration had occurred since his last tests. Today would determine if that was the case or not, and he refused to get his hopes up.
But even if he was telling himself not to hope, he could still feel the hint of a future with vision stealing its way into the back of his brain as a possibility.
“I mean, don’t get your hopes up or anything. We have no idea what the doctor is going to say,” he reminded her. “It very well could be bad news.”
“And if it is, we’ll deal with that when it comes.”
He thanked her and they said their goodbyes as he finished the last leg of his journey. When he pulled up to the familiar office, his mother’s car was idling out front. He pulled into the empty space next to her and they both got out of their cars. After a quick embrace and hello, they headed into his doctor’s office and he checked in at the receptionist’s desk.
“Want me to come in with you?” his mother asked him before gesturing to the waiting room. “Or stay out here until you’re done?”
“You can stay here,” he confirmed as one of the nurses called him back. He gave her an awkward wave goodbye, then followed the nurse into the back offices.
“How are you doing, doc?” he greeted the man he’d been working with for the past year and a half after his traumatic retinal detachment. Dr. Jerry Ahn was probably only in his late forties, but he was already one of the best in the field in this area, and Dominic trusted that he was giving him the best treatment he’d find out there.
Dominic’s doctor did the usual tests for eye pressure, including numbing drops in both of Dominic’s eyes, the slit lamp pushing against his cornea, and a retinoscopy to check his current prescription status. All of it was awkward and uncomfortable, and he found himself just sitting quietly through each exam in complete silence like he was waiting for someone to say something he didn’t want to hear.
“Well, it’s not the news we’d hoped for,” Dr. Ahn finally stated as he returned to the exam room after leaving Dominic there for about twenty minutes to sweat it out. He sat on a small swivel stool and placed a laptop on the counter next to him that had Dominic’s medical chart pulled up. “The good news, however, is that the deterioration is minimal. It’s not moving at the pace we had worried about, so I’m hoping that means you have your vision a lot longer than expected.”
Dominic appreciated the encouragement, but he could read the subtext to what Dr. Ahn was saying. “That means it is still deteriorating, though.”
“It is,” the doctor confirmed. “We could try the surgery—either laser or cryopexy—but I’m not going to lie to you. The chances of either being successful are minimal. And what would be considered successful in this scenario would only be an insignificant improvement for a period of time. It would potentially slow things down even more, but it’s not an outright cure. We wouldn’t be able to return your vision to the way it was before the injury was sustained. And honestly, you’re at a pretty big risk of it detaching again with any sort of even small injury.”
“I’m out of the game now, so no worries about getting injured again,” he replied, since that was the whole reason the league had let him go. The risk had just been too high. “But slowing things down sounds like a positive step, right? Can we do that?”
Dr. Ahn nodded, but he didn’t seem completely convinced himself. “That’s one outcome. The best outcome. There is also the possibility of things progressing faster or losing vision entirely from the surgery itself. There was nothing standard about your detachment, and the scar tissue is so thick.”
He’d known that the odds weren’t stellar, but he hadn’t expected that the surgery could make things worse. “It could get worse?”
The doctor confirmed. “It’s a possibility.”
“What are the chances it works well and just slows the deterioration down?” Dominic asked after a quiet moment of contemplation. “What are my odds if I do it?”
“About a thirty percent chance it works and buys you another five years with your current vision level, assuming there’s no further aggravation to the eye.” Dr. Ahn didn’t look directly at him when he delivered this news, but rather stared at the computer screen as if he couldn’t bear to see Dominic’s reaction.
But Dominic refused to react. He shut down any emotion he might have been feeling leading up to that moment and chose numbness instead. “Okay. Thanks, doc.”
Dr. Ahn looked up at him now, a little surprised. “Maybe take a few days to think about it? Then let my office know if you want to schedule it or not.”
“Will do.” His voice was flat now.
“Do you have a ride home?” Dr. Ahn asked. “The numbing drops in your eyes have probably worn off by now, but it’s best not to operate heavy machinery for the rest of the day out of an abundance of caution.”
“My mother is driving me,” he confirmed, barely even noting the feeling of appreciation for her taking a day off to do that. “Thanks, doctor. I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
With that, he stood up and walked out of the exam room, not even waiting for Dr. Ahn to dismiss him. When he entered the waiting room where his mother was sitting and scrolling through her phone, she took one look at him before jumping up and shoving her phone in her pocket.
“Come here, baby.” She put her hands out and wrapped them around him before he could even object.
He stayed still and stiff, letting her hug him but unable to let in any more than that.
“Jenny just picked up my car from me,” his mother informed him as she ushered him toward the office door, talking about her roommate who had agreed to the favor. Jenny was also going to come up to Heart Lake to pick up his mother tomorrow, which he appreciated. He was glad he’d had the forethought to give his mother her own room at his house. “Do you have your car keys?”
Dominic reached into his pocket in what felt like a robotic move, scooped the keys out, and handed them to her.
She took them from him, then wrapped her arm around his and guided him out to the car. “Let’s go home, Dominic. If you want to talk about it, let me know. But we also don’t have to right now.”
He said nothing as he let her lead him out to the car and even open the passenger side door for him. She waited until he climbed in, then closed the door behind him and circled the car to the driver’s seat. He pulled on his seat belt and buckled it, then just stared out the windshield as she reversed out of the parking spot.
He wanted to tell her, but what was he going to say? He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He’d already had multiple surgeries on his eyes, and none of them had been easy. They were really difficult experiences, and going through that again for—potentially—no good outcome felt like insanity. But then again, if it did mean he kept his sight longer… shouldn’t he try?
He didn’t know the answer, and he was afraid to admit that maybe the answer was… he didn’t want to try.