My stomach twists into a knot. I pace back and forth across the kitchen as the anticipation of the conversation gets the best of me.

I’ve intentionally put this off for much longer than is acceptable or responsible. It’s the first thing in my life that I haven’t necessarily met head-on, and that’s because I don’t know how to do that.

I don’t want to do that.

I want to pretend like it’s not a thing.

I grip the back of a kitchen chair. “All right. Let’s chat.”

“I’m sorry we’re not meeting face-to-face for this confirmation, but I’ve had your test results sent to our partners in Scottsdale.”

My chest burns as I try to drag in enough oxygen to keep me awake and alive. Whatever he says next—the diagnosis I’ve been avoiding—is going to change my life forever. My world will be separated into two parts: pre–this conversation and post–this conversation.

My fingers itch to end the call and never go forward, as if not hearing the words from Dr. Miigi will somehow make the facts he needs to deliver to me not relevant. Or real.

Yet they are real.

But for the first time since I started struggling to see a curveball and had unexplained muscle spasms that massage and sports therapy didn’t cure, I have a plan. I have hope for a life that isn’t centered around baseball.

I want to be with Palmer.

And if that’s going to happen, I have to address this. I have to hear what he has to say and then move on—hopefully with her and Ethan.

Maybe it isn’t as bad as I think. There’s always hope . . .

I cling to that thought. “What did they say?”

I close my eyes. It’s as though I’m in a movie scene where everything blurs around the main character, and the only thing that he can do is spin in a circle.

I’m spinning fast and wild, and the only thing keeping me centered is the kitchen chair.

“I’m very sorry to tell you, Cole. But your MRI, blood work, and the spinal tap you had a few months ago all point to multiple sclerosis,” he says.

His words are careful and calculated, if not a little cold.

“But I feel fine. Aside from the vision issue that started all of this and some pain here and there, which could totally be from baseball,” I say, trying to make a case for Dr. Miigi to be wrong, “I feel fine. I could still play. You know that. Maybe the results are wrong.”

I say that, even though I know in the pit of my stomach that they’re not.