Covering the Quarterback

by Amber Thielman

  “I survived,” I agreed.

  “How are you?” Grace asked. Although her cold-shoulder attitude seemed to be on hold for the time being, her tone was different, cooler than usual. Grace wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it was extra noticeable today. She had her guard up, I could tell, and she was tense around me, as if waiting for the moment I would snap at her or something.

  “I’m still waiting on the verdict,” I admitted. “But I think I broke my ass.” At this point, I was starting to hurt again, and it made me wonder how many drugs the doctors had me numb on that were about to wear off.

  “You took a hard hit,” Grace said. “I thought you broke your back.”

  “The nurse said something about a herniated disk. As far as I can tell I’m not paralyzed, but my legs are sore and tingling something fierce.” I wiggled my toes for effect and smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. “Grace,” I said. “Is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in days.”

  “Your coach and your friend Tyler came yesterday,” she said, shoving the question aside like I hadn’t even asked it. She wouldn’t look me in the face; she kept her eyes averted. “They wanted to see you but you’d just gotten out of surgery, so they left. They’ll probably be back today. Also, your coach called your parents, but according to Tyler, your dad has no plans to stop by because he saw your photo in the paper. You know, for the Women’s Rights March.”

  “I wish I could say I’m surprised, but that sounds about right.” I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. My ribs hurt, too. “My mom will get updates from Coach and Tyler so she doesn’t have to go behind my dad’s back to come visit me. Since I’m not on my death bed, they won’t bother.”

  “It’s my fault, too,” Grace said. She looked down at her hands.

  “Hell no, it’s not your fault. Everything that happened with my parents and me happened because of my own doing, not anybody else’s.”

  “Well, I’m sorry anyway,” she said. I smiled and shook my head, not caring one way or the other about what my parents were or were not going to do. Grace was my friend and having her here right then and there was all I could have asked.

  “Thanks for staying,” I said. “You didn’t have to stay all night.”

  “I know,” she said, then said nothing else as the door to my room opened again, and the nurse came back. This time she was accompanied by a man who I recognized very vaguely as Dr. Andrews.

  “Good to see you awake,” he said, checking the monitor. Now that company surrounded us, I could see Grace visibly tense up even more than before, and she looked down awkwardly at her hands again. After a moment, she looked back at me.

  “I should go so the doctor can speak with you,” she said.

  “You can stay,” I insisted.

  “Get some rest,” she said, monotone, then she got up and walked out of the room. I watched her go, wishing I could go with her and resume my silly life outside these hospital walls.

  “Okay, doc,” I said. I pushed Grace far from my mind and averted my eyes to look at him. “Lay it on me. What’s the damage?”

  “You have a herniated disk,” the doctor said.

  “Yeah, no kidding.” I forced a laugh. “That's not a big deal, though, right? I mean, I hear about a slipped disk happening in people all the time. Especially athletes.”

  “Yes, this is a common injury in athletes, and it’s commonly an easy recovery,” Dr. Andrews said. “However, in your case, we had to do surgery.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Why surgery? Don’t these things usually heal with time?”

  “In most cases, yes,” the doctor said.

  “But I’m not most cases.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Jackson,” Dr. Andrews said, and I flinched internally because it was never good when a doctor said your name amid explaining something like this. “A herniated disc occurs when the outer fibers of your intervertebral disc are damaged, okay? The soft inner material of the nucleus pulposus ruptures out of its normal space.”

  “English, doc.”

  “If the fiber happens to tear near the spinal canal, the nucleus material can put pressure on your spine.”

  “My spine? But I feel fine. My back doesn’t hurt.”

  “Do your legs hurt?” Dr. Andrews asked.

  “Well, I mean, they’re sore,” I muttered. “But I was blind-sided by a football player.”

  “Do you feel any tingling or numbness in your legs?” he pressed. I met his gaze, debating on whether I wanted to answer his question aloud.

  “A little bit,” I said.

  “Jackson, it’s very rare with a herniated disk that surgery is even required, but in your case, we had to decompress the pressure of the fibers against your spine.”

  “That’s good, though, right? It’s fixed. Isn’t it? I mean, you fixed me.”

  “When you came into the ER last night, you were already presenting with signs of myelopathy.”

  “Which is ...?”

  “Spinal cord dysfunction,” Dr. Andrews said. “What that means is even though we could relieve some of the pressure on your spine, the disk you slipped in your back is now at a much higher risk of slipping out of place again.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, what does that mean?” Dr. Andrews hesitated, just briefly, but his silence couldn’t have been any louder.

  “It means that if you ever slipped that disk again and it hit your spinal cord the wrong way, you could be paralyzed from the waist down. For life.”

  We were past dangerous territory at this point. Part of me wanted to close my eyes, end the conversation, and pretend none of this was happening, and the other part of me wanted to know every horrible detail.

  “There’s a very good chance you will never play football again,” Dr. Andrews said. “Not with this injury.”

  It took a moment for the words to register, and when they did, all I could do was lay there with my hands in my lap and stare at Dr. Andrews with what I could only assume was an insanely stupid look on my face. He stood patiently at the foot of my bed, and I saw the remorse in his face. I wondered if it was sincere, or if he’d practiced it so many times with other patients that it just came with the job.

  “I don’t understand,” I said finally. The words weighed on me, and I waited for him to tell me again in a way that made more sense than this did. Did doctors joke? Maybe he was kidding, pulling my leg, whatever you want to call it. Would laughing in his face be too inappropriate this early in the game?

  “I feel fine,” I continued. “I’m sore, there’s some tingling, but it’s nothing I haven’t felt before. I’m a quarterback. I’m lucky if I get out of practice without some part of me hurting every day.”

  “You’re lucky that you’re still able to walk at all,” Dr. Andrews said. “Had that herniated disk been pushed a couple of centimeters over, you’d be laying in this hospital bed while I told you that you would never walk again.”

  “But—”

  “And while you will recover just fine for light to moderate physical activity, the fact that you’re an athlete is where the issue arises. This injury will inhibit you from being able to play football the way you used to, Jackson.”

  I tried to sit up on the bed and then realized that the pain in my legs was too much to tolerate, so I settled back down. “Then I can get into physical therapy,” I said. “Gain the strength back and get back into it.”

  “You’ll have to do physical therapy anyway, yes, but that’s so you can continue to function without losing the feeling in your legs completely. The numbness and tingling will come and go, but may never go away completely. Unfortunately, there’s a very slight chance that you’ll never heal enough to reach your full potential. At least to what it was.”

  Another blanket of silence settled over the room. I was staring at Dr. Andrews, waiting for him to give me some sliver of underlying hope that I could cling to.

  “What if I do anyway?” I asked. “What if I play football?”

  “I
f you were ever hit again like you were hit yesterday—not even to that extent, actually—the chance of slipping that disk out of place and up against your spine is about ninety-six percent. And if that happened, it’s not something surgery would fix. You would be paralyzed. For life.”

  Chapter 31

  Grace

  Despite Alex’s eye-rolls and pleas to just let it go and move on, I went back to the hospital that evening by myself to see Jackson. I’d decided for the first time in my life to skip class for a hot shower and a long nap, and I was feeling refreshed and energized when I arrived. Upon my hospital entrance, however, I was told in a brusque manner by the charge nurse that Jackson wasn’t accepting visitors.

  “Tell him it’s Grace,” I said. I hated how desperate I sounded to see him, like some clingy girlfriend although I meant nothing to Jackson. Although he’d put on a pretty good façade when I’d seen him earlier, I hadn’t had the courage to confront him about what he’d told Tyler back in the library. I didn’t want to hear it ... I didn’t want to sit and listen to him conjure up some stupid excuse as to why he would say such a shitty thing ... or even worse than that, maybe he had no excuse at all. I wanted to hide and pretend that everything was okay between us and that the friend I’d laid under the stars with after the movie didn’t find me repulsive and obnoxious.

  “He was very specific,” the nurse said. “No visitors. He’ll be discharged in the morning, so maybe you can catch him then.”

  I turned away, feeling surprisingly disappointed and hurt, and for no good reason at all. I’d been avoiding Jackson for a reason, and shame on me to think that seeing him earlier would begin to rebuild the friendship we’d started to create. This shouldn’t have surprised me at all, not after what he’d said.

  “Fool me twice, shame on me,” I muttered, but the nurse had already turned away. I sighed and zipped up my jacket before stepping back outside. I was about to phone for a cab when I spotted a familiar vehicle pull up outside the ER doors. It was Shawn.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as he leaned across his seat to throw open the passenger’s side door for me.

  “Alex said you’d be here,” he said. “I didn’t want you to have to pay for a cab after the visit. I thought you could use the ride.”

  Since Jackson had moseyed—or bulldozed—his way into my life not long ago, things between Shawn and I had been rocky and tense, but at that very moment, I was happy to see him, regardless of the annoying things he said and did. Shawn’s friendship was real, it was loyal, and I needed that now more than ever.

  “Thank you,” I said, sliding into the passenger’s seat of the beat-up-but-well-heated little car of his.

  “You weren’t long,” he said. “I saw you come out not soon after you went in. Is everything alright?”

  “Visiting hours are over,” I lied. “They wouldn’t let me see him.”

  Both of us knew it was a blatant lie, but for the first time in his existence, Shawn didn’t call me out or pester me for the cold, hard truth. He just put the car into gear and started driving towards home.

  “Is he okay?” he asked after a few moments of silence. “I wasn’t there, but I heard he took a hard hit.”

  “Do you really care?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to sound so snotty, but I wasn’t in the best of moods. I knew Shawn’s feelings towards Jackson were anything but trusting. Damn us both; he’d been right about him all along.

  “Not really,” Shawn said. “But you do, and that’s what matters.”

  “You don’t have to be nice about it,” I said. “You can tell me you told me so, rub it in my face, remind me that a guy like Jackson can never change.”

  “You want to know one of the reasons I love you?” Shawn asked, looking at me over the frames of his silly glasses. “As a friend, I mean.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you believe that there is good in everybody, even if they don’t show it immediately. You don’t assume; you don’t judge. You give people a chance, even if you don’t want to.”

  “Yeah, well, look how that worked out for me.” I turned my head to look out the window, eyes scanning the dreary, gray sky above us as raindrops started to fall on the windshield.

  “If I can’t have you as something more than a friend, then that’s okay,” Shawn continued. “Because your friendship is the kind I can only hope every person gets to experience in their lifetime.”

  “Shawn Pinkman,” I teased. “Look at you, all charming and shit.”

  “I’m just saying.” Shawn shrugged, then sniffed loudly. “If Jackson doesn’t see that, he’s missing out . . . on both accounts.”

  Chapter 32

  Jackson

  I was discharged the next morning from the hospital with a bolstering pat on the back and a ‘script for pills for the pain. The doctor assured me the agony in my legs would eventually lessen, but it would take time, and I wasn’t allowed to re-injure myself between now and whenever that happened, apparently. I wanted to tell him that that was impossible, however, because physical and emotional turmoil was quickly becoming my favorite thing in the world. I gathered my things and called a cab home because I knew that at this point I probably didn’t have many friends willing to give me a ride.

  After refusing visitors last night, some surly nurse had come in to tell me that Grace had stopped by, but was turned away. I wasn’t thrilled about being a jerk, of course, but I hadn’t been up to trying to socialize bearing the fact that my life was essentially over as I knew it. I didn’t feel like a person anymore. I felt like sometime between the moment I’d been knocked down on the field, and now, my individuality had slipped away into the dark, never to be seen again. Football was it; football was what I had. And it was over. Just like that, a snap of the fingers, and it was over.

  My little apartment was dark and quiet. Lonely. I shut the door behind me and locked the deadbolt, reaching over with a grimace to turn on the living room light. The curtains were all drawn, shutting me in like some prisoner. I didn’t bother opening them. The dirty laundry that had been sitting outside the bathroom door for weeks was finally making the place smell, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

  I took a seat on my couch, pushing aside a pizza box full of old crust. The pain was coming on again, radiating down my legs and even into my lower back. I sat in silence and leaned my head back and closed my eyes, trying to gain my composure and will the pain away. It wasn’t helping; nothing was. With trembling fingers, I reached into my hospital bag for the bottle of prescription painkillers they’d sent home with me. I tossed back one, dry swallowed it, then took another one for good measure. I briefly considered calling Tyler to have him come over, but then thought better of it and laid down on the couch for a nap, instead. It was there that I stayed for the next six hours, in and out of dreamland, reliving that horrific moment repeatedly. Six or seven times, I woke up in a cold sweat with pain radiating through my body, unable to catch my breath.

  Chapter 33

  Grace

  “How’s Tate doing?” Alex asked as she slid a shot glass filled with tequila in my direction. I shrugged before picking up the cup to shoot it. The liquid was bitter, and it stung going down, but I didn’t bother to chase it with anything. The pain felt good.

  “Haven’t heard from him,” I said. “He was discharged yesterday morning. I called a couple of times, but he never answered.”

  “I hope he’s okay,” Alex said. I furrowed my brow and scoffed at her.

  “Since when do you give a shit about Jackson Tate?”

  “I don’t, not really,” said Alex. “Especially not after what he said about you. But that guy was magnificent at making himself known wherever he was. I just find it odd that he’s not out all over campus boasting about his boo-boo.”

  “Fair enough.” I reached for Alex’s beer and took a sip. She was watching me, eyebrows raised, and it took everything I had in me not to hunker down and cower under her gaze. If anyone could set your nerves on edge
with just a look, it was Alex.

  “Something’s up with you,” she said finally. “I’ve never seen you so smitten to drink.”

  “I’m good.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and signaled for another shot.

  “Maybe you should check on him tonight,” Alex suggested. She poured me another drink, and I swallowed it. “He could probably use some company if he’s been staying holed up in that crummy apartment.”

  “Why me? He’s got plenty of friends, doesn’t he? Besides, I figure if he wants to see me or talk to me, he’d answer his fucking phone.” Alex didn’t say anything else as she filled a mug of beer for another customer. She cracked open a bottle for me, and I stared at it, cradling it between my hands without drinking it. Suddenly I was no longer in the mood to be there, surrounded by happy people and soon-to-be drunken buffoons.

  “I’m going home,” I called to Alex, putting down a twenty on the counter. She smiled at me, understanding, before being called away by another customer.

  “Text me when you get home!” she yelled. I shrugged on my jacket before stepping out into the chilly Seattle night. The rain had stopped, but it was still icy cold. I zipped up my coat before I started to head towards our apartment. It was a quiet night, and the streets were empty. When I got to the corner of Elm and Walnut street, I hesitated for a moment, and at the last second, I took a left instead of a right. Maybe Alex was right, and I should check on Jackson. That’s what friends did, right? Good friends did that, even for shitty friends.

  I arrived at his building in just a few minutes and rode the elevator up to his floor. I was too tired and a bit too tipsy to take the stairs. By the time I got to his door, my legs felt like cement and my head was swimming. I wish I’d just gone straight home instead because all I wanted to do now was fall asleep propped up against the wall out in the hallway.

  “Jackson?” I called, and knocked lightly. “Are you home?” When there was no answer after a minute, I took out my cell phone and dialed him up. It rang and rang, but no one answered, so I put it away and knocked harder. For all I knew he could be at some party with his real friends, and here I was standing like an idiot outside an empty apartment. I was about to turn around and leave when I heard the deadbolt slide and the door opened, just a little bit.