Hail Mary

by C. C. Galloway

  ~ * ~ * ~

  The Tide’s offensive players were getting their asses handed to them. The Buccaneers had wasted no time in flattening Johansen three times already in the second quarter, preventing him from releasing any decent passes and they’d completely stuffed the run. Neither of the Tide’s running backs or even the lone fullback had been able to net more than two yards for any run.

  “Fuck. Johansen doesn’t get his head back in the game, we’re fucked,” Murray remarked to Michael as they paced the sidelines watching their teammates while shot-gunning Gatorade to replenish their own depleted electrolytes. “Doesn’t matter how many times we hold ‘em. Won’t matter if we can’t score any fucking points.” Murray threw his cup in the trash and directed his attention to Santiago. “They can’t pull it out here, it’s up to us. Which means you and me gotta score some fucking points on defense.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Murray explained his plan. It was ballsy, but they needed a shot in the arm, or in the defense as it were, to turn this game around. The hometown crowd was restless and dismayed at how embarrassingly bad the Tide was playing. The offense was a mess, demoralized and discombobulated and in all likelihood, wouldn’t be focused back on the field until after half time.

  The defensive play was their version of a Hail Mary, a play only made when the game was on the line, no timeouts were left, and there was nothing left to lose. “You confident Johnson can do his part?” Murray questioned, his contempt obvious.

  “He’ll do whatever I tell him to do,” Michael responded.

  When the offense didn’t connect on third and five, out they went after special teams had fielded the punt. In the huddle, there was some slight discomfort among the players listening to Murray telling them what the call was even though he hadn’t looked at Coach to read the signal. He and Santiago were running this. Coach was destined to be pissed either way. If it was successful, he’d be upset they went rogue. If it was unsuccessful, well, they’d probably be down by yet another touchdown and he and Santiago would be benched at least for the rest of the game. But their choices had been taken away and this was their best shot for the entire team.

  Tampa Bay’s quarterback called the play and the action commenced. As soon as the center snapped the ball, Murray, Santiago and Johnson all swept off to the right side of the line, swooping in towards him. Johnson’s job was to grab his hands, squeezing as hard as he could in an effort to release the ball as Murray tackled him, hoping to cause the fumble or the release. Michael’s job was to catch the ball, wherever it landed, and take off to the end zone and not turn back.

  Johnson held on to the quarterback’s hands like it was nobody’s business, doing his job exactly how Murray and Santiago had instructed him, squeezing them like twigs. He did his best, but Murray and Johnson combined were too much for the quarterback and he dropped the ball to his left. Michael leaned down, picked it up, and started running as fast as he could remember ever running in his life, his legs pumping, his lungs contracting and expanding. He could feel the players behind his back, the crowd screaming all around him and was only five yards out from the end zone when he felt the impact. Then everything went black.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Mary told herself repeatedly that under no circumstances was she going to turn the channel to CBS in the afternoon. No way in hell was she going to watch the Tide. She could watch whatever game Fox was broadcasting. Maybe for once they’d have the Lions, but when she flipped the channel and realized it was the Patriots versus the Bills, she became irrationally angry. Why should she deprive herself of football watching pleasure simply because of Michael Santiago? It wasn’t like he would ever know she was watching. She was at home, cuddled up with Max on the floor and grateful that for once, the Tide’s defense, and specifically their right defensive end, was not dominating the game.

  All that changed with three minutes left in the second quarter. The Tide’s defense took the field, Santiago lined up on the right side. The ball was snapped and the players sprung into action. Michael was in the middle of it, picking up a fumble the announcers said was caused by the rookie, Tamar Johnson. Michael flew down the field, protecting the ball, completely focused on the end zone, no one even close to him except for a wide out who was pursuing him and who tagged him right as he crossed the end zone line.

  As the fans and the team cheered, Michael remained down. The announcers were discussing the replay and how the play had occurred, and still, Michael remained down. Mary’s alarm escalated when two of the Tide’s trainers came out and the replay demonstrated it looked like Michael’s neck caught the brunt of the tackle at the five yard line, causing him to land and strain his neck at an unnatural angle.

  Her alarm peaked into full panic mode when the hospital bed was wheeled out onto the field after the trainers put Michael’s neck into a restraint and hoisted him up on the transfer bed and into the back of a waiting ambulance.

  Chapter 19

  The low murmurs of voices all around him contained various pitches and cadences, Michael thought. Some female voices indicated this was probably not the Tide’s locker room. As he opened his eyes, his disorientation abruptly gave way to increasing panic. People in white coats, Coach DiPalma, a couple of nurses, and tubes running from his body to a variety of medical machines. Fuck. He was in a hospital, lying on a hospital bed. He must have been taken there before the game concluded.

  “Did we win?” he croaked out, as heads around the small room immediately swiveled to focus on him with a whole lot of concern etched on each unfamiliar face.

  “Michael, my name is Dr. Harrington. Do you know what date it is?” This came from an older black man, complete with the white coat, Ben Franklin spectacles, and kind brown eyes that didn’t entirely mask his worry.

  “It’s Sunday, November 16. At least, it was when I was last awake. Is it still Sunday?”

  “That’s right, Michael. What’s your full name?”

  “Michael Thomas Santiago.”

  “Good. You’re doing well. Do you know your date of birth?”

  “September 29, 1982.”

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two.”

  A wide smile crossed the doctor’s broad, smart face. “Excellent. What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Michael coughed as the rest of the room’s occupants, including Coach, watched him intently. Their anxiety was palpable. How bad was he?

  “I was heading towards our end zone with a ball and about to score when the ground came up and met my teeth. That’s all I can remember.”

  DiPalma emitted a nervous chuckle while Dr. Harrington continued to calmly watch Michael. “Anything else?”

  Michael shook his head and scratched his right ear. Evidently his arms worked just fine. “No. I don’t even know if I scored or not.” Turning to DiPalma, he asked, “Did we win?”

  DiPalma placed his wide, sun-bronzed hand on Michael’s shoulder, his eyes grave, his mouth happily quirking. “Yes, Santiago, we won. After you were tackled, you were unable to get up and you failed to respond to any kind of prompting.”

  Dr. Harrington continued where DiPalma left off. “For awhile, we were concerned there might be a problem with the top two vertebrae of your spinal column that produced momentary paralysis. However, your CAT scan is clear as are your x-rays of your back and neck. Now, that’s the good news. It means you don’t have a neck or spinal cord injury. The bad news is you have two compound fractures in your right lower leg which is why it’s currently elevated.

  “We immobilized your leg with a fiberglass cast you see right now. This holds the bones in position and immobilizes the joints above and below the fracture. Once the swelling goes down, we’ll place your leg in a removable brace, probably sometime tomorrow and send you on your way. Do you have any questions?”

  Questions were all he had. His eyes found DiPalma’s and now he knew exactly the reason for DiPalma’s solemnity.

  “How long am
I going to be casted?” Michael snarled, the panic threatening to choke him.

  “The fractures are severe. We’ll monitor your progress every two weeks, but you’ll be in your cast for at least four to six weeks, probably closer to six. After that, we might schedule you for some physical therapy depending on whether there’s any atrophy. For most patients, that would be necessary, but given your occupation and the shape you’re in, any potential therapy will likely be fairly minimal. Mainly exercises designed to strengthen and condition your legs. But that’s a bridge we’ll cross when I take your cast off. I’m on for a few more hours, so if you need anything, feel free to page the nurse who will find me. Otherwise, I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

  Michael could not bear the kindness in Harrington’s brown eyes as though telling him what he needed to hear was as painful as Michael hearing it. His own eyes jumped to DiPalma’s face.

  “Is he for real?” Michael’s tone was incredulous.

  “Yes, he is,” DiPalma calmly answered, as Dr. Harrington and the nurses left. “You’re lucky, Santiago. Harrington’s one of the best and I saw your fall. Your injury could be far worse and life-threatening. Six weeks in a cast is very doable, even for you. You’ll be back in training before you know it.”

  “Bullshit.” Michael was shaking his head and looking everywhere but at DiPalma. He couldn’t face him. If he did, he’d be forced to acknowledge everything that he had to deny for his own peace of mind. Un-fucking-believable. Five weeks out from the fucking playoffs and he was destined to miss the final games and post-season action? Why couldn’t this have happened on the final play of the Super Bowl? How the hell was he supposed to contribute to the team, sitting on the fucking sidelines? And what the fuck were they going to do with both him and Campbell out?

  “Santiago, I know how hard this is.”

  Michael rolled his eyes and clenched his hands, finally looking back at DiPalma. “Really? Because where I’m laying, your leg isn’t in a fucking cast and your coach hasn’t benched you for the remaining season.”

  DiPalma sighed. “Santiago, you’re only five years into your professional career. I’ve coached a lot of players and you and I both know that you’re destined for a lengthy career, barring a career-ending injury. I know you’re disappointed. I know how hard you work and how dedicated your commitment is, on field and off. If I could have every player follow your example, I would have the best, most intense team in the league.”

  “Enough with blowing sunshine up my ass. This fucking sucks.”

  “I know it does and I know how unfair this must seem. But I need you, Santiago. The team needs you. Now, we’re planning to move Johnson over to the right side and bringing Turner over to fill in for Campbell. We need to make these adjustments in order to get us through the season.”

  Well, if that wasn’t the fucking nail in the proverbial coffin. Johnson had now officially moved into his position in time for fucking playoffs. November was shaping up to be a spectacularly shitty month. Beyond shitty in every measurement that mattered. Professional life, shot to hell. Personal life in the gutter. Girlfriend, now gone.

  “You’re kidding me, right? ‘Cause what you just said sounds like a fucking joke. Unless the joke’s on me.”

  DiPalma’s sigh was deep and long. “You are the best defensive end in the entire league. Period. You shouldn’t have any concerns about your position with the Tide. You’re safe. No way will Johnson be the Tide’s right defensive end as long as you play for me.”

  DiPalma’s statement did little to placate Michael.

  “Except for the rest of this season.”

  “You’re injured. It happens. You won’t be the first and you won’t be the last. You need to start thinking about how you can still contribute while you’re injured. If you care as much about this team as I believe you do, then you’ll do as I ask and help me and Higgins work with Johnson to learn the right side of the line as well as you taught him the left side.”

  “He already knows the right side. He played it all through college,” Michael reminded him, mentally calculating how many weeks until training camp where he’d be able to demonstrate his superiority over the little rookie motherfucker. July couldn’t come soon enough. No way in hell was Johnson even going to qualify as a starter so long as he had something to do about it.

  “He’s never played the position with us. Our formations are different than what he’s used to, particularly on the right side. I need you, Santiago. I need you to help me get him ready. It’s a key position and Johnson has to excel in order for us to advance. Trust me, I wish a lot of things were different, but this is where we’re at, now.”

  Michael looked out the window, noting the inky darkness of the Sunday night as the silence deepened. Alone on a hospital bed, receiving news from his coach he could barely process.

  “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” DiPalma stated.

  “Well, Anderson Cooper, I’m just about all talked out, but I guess we can fit one more topic into this therapy session.” He knew he was being a jackass, and a childish one at that, but he couldn’t, and wouldn’t take the words back.

  DiPalma began. “The Tide doesn’t have any next of kin listed for you. People for us to call when serious injuries, like yours today, happen.” He waited a beat before continuing. “Talk to one of the administrative women in the front office next time you come in and take care of it.”

  “Nothing to take care of, Coach. Just me.”

  “Despite your performance in this room this afternoon, I do know you didn’t spring from a donkey’s behind. You have family.”

  Michael shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  Not anymore. “No.”

  DiPalma’s brown eyes were full of a lot more understanding than Michael was comfortable with. The weight of that knowledge was too much for him to bear. And that was before DiPalma began speaking again. “I was alone for a lot of years, Santiago. Had a lot of fun in those years. Met a lot of women, dated a few, did a few things more with a boatload of others. But when I met my wife, I realized what I’d been missing. Now, I’m not saying you need to find a wife or a serious girlfriend, but being alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially on a night like tonight.

  “You need to list someone for us to call who should be notified in the event anything like this happens again. I expect to see you Tuesday morning to discuss our upcoming opponents.” DiPalma swiftly exited the room, leaving Michael alone with himself, his future suddenly looming like a big, black hole, with no definition.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  “I saw the clips on the news tonight.” Calleigh made her way inside Mary’s apartment, her eyes grave.

  “Thanks for coming over,” Mary sniffled into her bottomless tissues, her constant companion since seeing Michael’s injury.

  “Of course. What happened?”

  “What happened during the game? Or what happened with us?” Mary asked, blowing her nose, trying to quiet her heart that was pumping in double-time.

  “The latter first, please,” Calleigh quietly asked as she settled herself on Mary’s loveseat.

  “It was so stupid. We went to dinner at one of his teammate’s house and he made this stupid crack about marriage and how guys get what they deserve when they get married. He tossed it off in this patronizing way that indicated he would never be stupid enough to get married. Then, it just snowballed from there.”

  Calleigh nodded her head in support. “He made a crack about marriage and…”

  “And I asked him about it on the way home. Asked what he wanted for his future. Asked all the questions you’re supposed to ask when you love someone. Then I realized he doesn’t love me back, that we will never want the same things, and that it would hurt too much to stay with him knowing he would never want to be married.”

  “So you broke it off.”

  Mary nodded. “Yeah. And now he’s hurt,” she wailed, devastated that she wasn�
�t with him. He was completely without family, both literally and figuratively. Would any of his teammates visit him at the hospital? Who would drive him home? Who would reassure him that everything was going to be alright?

  “What are you going to do about it?” Calleigh asked.

  Mary shrugged. “What can I do about it?”

  “You can call him. I’m sure his cell phone is still working in whatever hospital he was taken to. Ask him if he’s alright and if he needs anything. Go visit him.”

  Mary shook her head before Calleigh even finished speaking. “No. I made it clear what I wanted and what I needed and he made it clear he doesn’t share my beliefs. There would be no point in visiting him.”

  “You’d feel a whole lot better,” Calleigh gently pointed out.

  “But that’s about me, not about him. I’m sure wherever he’s at, they’re taking good care of him.”

  “You sure? You might regret not reaching out at a time like this. You don’t always get a second chance,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m positive. He’ll be alright and I’ll be the one worse for wear. Things are better this way. Our break remains clean,” Mary said, as the tears continued to mutely flow down her cheeks while she and Calleigh sat in the quiet silence.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  The Tide’s weight room was as empty as his heart, all of his teammates on the practice field. Hollowed out with his blood barely coursing through, enough so that he was living without truly being alive. Two weeks had passed in a blur and at the same time, with crystal clarity. After being casted at the hospital, Dr. Harrington had released him the following day. Reaching his condo, it mocked him everywhere his eyes landed, daring to question the series of choices that had landed him alone at home and on the sidelines on the team. He couldn’t enter the kitchen without seeing Mary sitting at the island or standing at the stove, missing something they would share. At the grocery store, he’d unconsciously reached for her Special K and soy milk before realizing what he was doing. His bed had enlarged overnight, far too large without Mary in it. Flipping through channels, her shows remained on despite his disinterest, reminding him of all the nights they’d spent together watching television together before bed.