Free Plunked by Michael Northrop

we’re at the car and Mom is closing the door for me. I get shotgun without even calling it. All of a sudden, Dad is in a huge hurry and driving about a hundred miles per hour. His eyes stay on the road this time.
    I don’t have to wait long for the doctor. It’s not like there are a lot of drive-by shootings to attend to out here in the sticks.
    â€œSo we meet again,” says Dr. Redick.
    I have to smile at that. I’ve been here before, for my ankle and my wrist and my other ankle. Dr. Redick is probably the leading expert on which kids around here play sports and which ones don’t.
    â€œYeah,” I say.
    â€œI see you’ve stepped it up this time,” he says.
    â€œYeah,” I say, “I thought you might be getting bored of ankles.”
    He takes the ice pack and throws it away. He doesn’t ask about it or say that it was the right or wrong thing to do, he just takes it from me like it’s a leaf that I didn’t realize I had in my hair.
    Then he asks me some questions and makes me follow a light with my eyes.
    â€œIs there a ringing in your ears?” he asks. “Anything like that?”
    I try to listen to the inside of my head, which is weird. “Maybe, like, a hum?” I say. “A humming, maybe?”
    â€œA humming?” he says.
    He flicks his eyes up toward the ceiling.
    I look up at the big bank of lights there. I listen again, and yep, that’s what that is. “Oh,” I say.
    That’s kind of embarrassing. Duh. He asks me some more questions and pushes my hair aside to take a look at the knot I can feel just above my left ear. The skin feels really tight, and it hurts when he touches it.
    â€œMaybe a minor concussion,” he says when he’s done. “Maybe not. Nothing too serious, but I wouldn’t run out and get another one anytime soon.”
    It’s not clear if he’s talking to me or my parents, but I look him in the eye because it’s my head.
    â€œDoes it hurt now?” he asks, and now he’s talking to me.
    â€œYeah,” I say, “a little.”
    And it does, but it’s just a normal sort of hurt, as if I got punched. It isn’t some special brain pain or anything.
    â€œIt’s what we used to call getting your bell rung when I was a kid,” he says.
    Adults are always saying things like that: “When I was a kid…” Like life was so much tougher and more hard-core back then. I sort of want to say something like, Yeah, what happened? Did the first caveman wheel run over your head?
    I don’t, though. I like Dr. Redick. And anyway, I figure I’ll be back again before too long.
    â€œI got my bell rung,” I say. I guess I’m sort of trying it out to see how it will sound in school on Monday. Pretty good. You know: tough. “I got my bell rung; no biggie….”
    After I get out of the little white room, my mom lets me borrow her cell phone. I don’t bring mine to games: no pockets. The game must be over by now, so I call Andy to get the scoop. He picks up right away and says, “Hey, my man. How are you?”
    I hold the phone against my right ear, because of that knot above my left.
    â€œOK,” I say.
    â€œWe won,” he says. “Seven-zip.”
    â€œSweet,” I say. “Did I score?”
    What I mean is, Did Geoff come around to score when he was pinch-running for me? And with anyone other than Andy, that’s probably what I’d have to say. But Andy knows what I mean, just like he always does.
    â€œNah,” he says. He pauses, setting something up.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œThrown out at the plate!” he blurts.
    â€œNo way!” I say.
    I wince because shouting into the phone hurts my head, but it’s not too bad, and I don’t miss anything. “Yuh-huh,” he says. “Gunned down!”
    I pause to make sure I’m OK, which is fine because it gives me time to think of