As in:
What Pierce experienced are the terrible things that go through one’s mind at times like this–this being the screaming and the bloodshed he’d created with the slightly misdirected but powerful smash off his Wilson T-3000.
It was hard to know how badly Lucas was hurt. Coach Sweeney, being both alert and a mensch, arrived first with a towel to try to staunch the bleeding. But this tended to leave Sweeney’s counterpart with less than enough to do and when Pierce started walking around the net to check on Lucas, the Cristobal coach loudly demanded that Pierce go to the bench between the courts and “stay there until I tell you otherwise, young man.”
As things unfolded it eventually became clear that Polly Lifton was reacting–oomygod! oooomygod! ooomygod!–more out of a preternatural panic at the sight of blood than out of deep concern for Lucas. Though Pierce was still blank and withdrawn and feeling something like Lee Harvey Oswald, it helped that Beth came over to sit with him, gave him a “can you believe this?” look, and whispered: “Jesus, you’d think you’d killed her mother.”
And then it dawned on Pierce that Meg had to have seen the whole thing. His heart sank. What would she think of him? The truth of the situation was hidden inside him. He’d aimed the smash at Lucas’s feet, not his head. But the scene looked like an attempted homicide, and he was being treated like a killer.
Brian had once joked about making Pierce carry a “disappearance pill” for times like these. Now Pierce wished there were such a thing, and that he’d brought one along.
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