Chapter
2
The next week,
the guys arrived in Atlanta early Friday morning. They were scheduled to meet
Morgan at 2:00 and spend the afternoon with her. Then, she and her parents
would be going to the concert Saturday night. They had front row seats.
The guys all
checked into their hotel rooms and ate breakfast together. Then they split up
for the morning. Nick and Brian went to find a place to play basketball. They
ended up finding a nice park that was not too crowded to play in. AJ and Howie
went out to do some shopping. There was a gym in the hotel, so Kevin went down
to it and worked out for awhile. They met up again around noon and ate lunch.
Then they got ready to meet Morgan.
Kevin, Nick,
Howie, and AJ were all a little nervous. But Brian was looking forward to
meeting Morgan. He didn't even know here, but he felt connected to her. He
barely knew anything about her, only that she had some kind of heart problem.
But he felt like he knew somewhat what she was going through. He remembered his
own experience as a child. He was five years old. He had skinned his knee one
day and got a staph infection called bacterial endocarditis, which set into his
blood and traveled to his heart, which his doctor found had a hole in it. The
infection he had was supposed to be fatal. Everyone thought he was going to
die. The doctors even told him not to be afraid of dying. Eventually, he
recovered and was fine. But the experience was still vividly etched into his
memory. He still had nightmare about it sometimes, twenty years later.
Because of
that experience, Brian had always been very sensitive to the sick children he
got to meet. He really cared about them. And Morgan would be no exception.
***
