When the nurses at Christiana Hospital heard the screaming coming from Room B30, they rushed in, again and again.
Across Billy Phillips' hospital bed late Monday night at the Newark, Del., facility, they saw the glow of a television. The Maryland baseball team was playing UCLA in the NCAA Division I tournament. It was the decisive game of the Los Angeles Regional, and the score was close, and it was just excruciating.
Seeing his visitors, Phillips would have to apologize. "Oh, no, it's just the game," he would tell the nurses, a friend recalled, Phillips explaining that one day, hopefully soon, he would join the team wearing the white ball caps with the "#BP15" in gold lettering stitched onto the back.