Come on, aren't you glad Lester never went anywhere?

There were several different places Boston's Jon Lester could have been on the third Monday in May instead of working the Fenway Park mound like a maestro, burying the Kansas City Royals with a no-hitter.

Jon Lester gets ready to jump into the arms of catcher Jason Varitek. (Getty Images)

Minnesota? Yeah, he could have been there. Could have been wearing a Twins uniform as part of that deal that was supposed to send ace Johan Santana to Beantown over the winter. Lester was, after all, the subject of more rumors than Angelina Jolie.

Some bland, antiseptic hospital room? But for the grace of God and some steely inner strength, yep, Lester could have been there, too. Still receiving treatment for the lymphoma that blindsided him in 2006 just as his baseball career was supposed to be taking off.

Or, how about worse? That, too, seemed an option early on during those horrific, terrifying early days when the word "lymphoma" spilled from the doctor's tongue like a maximum sentence from a judge, back before more information arrived and Lester produced the resolve of a superhero.

That the left-hander has come back at all is impressive enough.

That he was doing what he was doing on that Fenway Park mound Monday night?

"Words can't describe it right now," Lester said in the immediate aftermath on the New England Sports Network.

But this could: Manager Terry Francona wrapping Lester in a couple of hugs tight enough to take his breath away.

In other words, same thing that Lester had just done to legions of New Englanders and baseball fans everywhere.

The Royals, tied for third in the AL Central, trailing first-place Chicago by two games, didn't exactly arrive in Boston as a powerhouse on a roll. But this isn't the Royals lineup of past few seasons, either. Manager Trey Hillman's club ranked fifth in the AL in batting average, 10th in on-base percentage and somewhere in between on the learning curve.

With Alex Gordon, Billy Butler and Mark Teahen, these guys are no slouches. Coming in, they had scored 27 runs in their past five games.

Lester? He was pitching far better than his underwhelming 2-2 record might have indicated. Over his past four starts, he was 1-0 with a 2.13 ERA when David DeJesus stepped in to start things off.

Still, just as Clay Buchholz snuck up on everybody in no-hitting Baltimore last Sept. 1, so, too, did Lester. There is no predicting these things, though they suddenly seem to be becoming a regular occurrence in Fenway Park.