Page 4 of Buried Treasure
"What?"
She sighed and put the box down on the condo floor by her feet. Whoever this guy was, he seemed to be confused, but not confused enough to get any sympathy from Sydney. She was all out of fucks to give, as Lucy liked to say. Instead, Sydney just sighed as she stood in the doorway, her shoeless foot still propping her door open.
"My name is Sydney, I live next door to Ryan McCloud, who lives in that condo." She gestured down the hall with an agitated hand. "You're going to see him because you know him from the Pirates, but it's been a bad day so I can't remember how. I was going to hang out with him, but again, bad day. And since I don't want to talk to people, I would appreciate it if you told him I'm not coming over."
"Sure, but um…"
Sydney rolled her eyes, then stared indignantly at this man, expecting him to respond with something completely annoying.
"I'm actually here to see you."
Huh. Well, she wasn't expecting that.
"You're here to see me?"
"Yeah, I'm Andy Mitchell. I'm the trainer for the Detroit Pirates."
She remembered now. The team trainer she saw on television during games, stalking the bench behind the players. The trainer Ryan said he was going to check in with about his pulled muscle.
"So why exactly are you here to see me?" she asked.
He looked at her apprehensively. "Have you not heard about Ryan?"
"Bad day."
"Right." He took a quick glance at the box on the floor before looking back up at her. "So Ryan is in the hospital."
She was not expecting that either. Every nerve in her body went on high alert for the second time today as she tried to process this latest drama.
"Why is he—"
"He's OK," Andy said reassuringly. "It's his appendix, that's all. It's just… gone."
"Where did it go?" she asked seriously.
Sydney closed her eyes and took a deep breath when she realized what she had just said. She apparently had a knack for asking stupid questions today. But Andy seemed to take it in stride, his demeanor softening a bit with sympathy.
"There was an incident at practice this morning, and we had to rush him to the emergency room so the doctors could remove it. But he's going to be fine, I promise."
She sighed and leaned against the door jam to try and get her bearings before straightening up again.
"You shouldn't be telling me this!" she yelled, pointing at him. "This is a violation of doctor-patient something or laws or whatever."
"Again, it's OK," he replied. "The team put out an announcement about it. Everyone knows. You just have to watch the news tonight and you'll see it there."
The news? That was definitely not something Sydney wanted to do tonight. There were cameras and media people set up outside her office building when she left that afternoon. She didn't need to relive all of that by seeing it on the news. Sydney leaned on the door again, her brain officially filled with too many thoughts to make sense out of any of them.
"Um, Ryan said you would have a key for his place. At least I think that's what he said. He's on some weird drugs right now." Andy shrugged. "I just wanted to get a few things for him for the hospital."
She gave him a skeptical look. "And how do I know you're not scamming me?"
"He blamed the bagel you gave him this morning for his current digestive issues," he said.
"When did he say that?"
"In the car ride over to the hospital. He said, 'I bet it was that fucking bagel Sydney gave me.' And then he whined about your constant lack of donuts, which, as his team's trainer, I actually appreciate."
He gave her a small smile and she would've appreciated the compliment if today was any other day. Instead, all she could do was shake her head. That rookie bastard next door was going to blame her for this for a long time, even if it was clearly not her fault.
There were a lot of things that were not her fault today that she somehow got stuck cleaning up.
Sydney pushed herself off the door jam and kicked the stupid box under her end table, then grabbed the keychain she had unceremoniously thrown on top of it when she walked in. She closed her eyes for a moment, balled her hand into a fist around the keys, and somehow conjured up the courage to head next door.
She pushed her way past Andy into the hallway, not paying any attention to his personal space. The keys were heavy in her hand as she searched for the one with the hockey tape on it. Then she realized Andy hadn't followed her and looked up to see him still standing where she left him, staring curiously at her. She could only roll her eyes at the trainer who was on her last nerve.
"Are you coming or what?"
