Concussion

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  “What is with this priest?” Uche said.

  “Power hungry,” Theodore said.

  “Throwing his weight around.”

  “Forgetting he is a man of God.”

  “We need to do something about this crazy priest!” Bennet said.

  They all chimed in.

  “We can’t stand for this.”

  “No, we cannot!”

  They understood the larger implications. In a tiny village like Enugwu-Ukwu, so cut off from the rest of the world, those village priests could get arrogant and start thinking of themselves as gods. The Vatican is supposed to have safeguards in place so Roman Catholic priests around the world remember that their loyalties are to God, and to Jesus, and not to their own egos. But supervision in a remote place like Enugwu-Ukwu is lax. Priests in the village had been going rogue. In fact, more broadly, self-appointed gods had been turning up in the name of all sorts of religions, all over Nigeria, a country where corruption had become the norm in business, politics, and even worship.

  Throw dirt, give me money, do what I say. It’s God’s law! You want to go to heaven, don’t you? Kill somebody, kill yourself, kidnap some schoolgirls, marry them, it’s the law. There are villagers who don’t know any better. There are villagers who don’t read or write. Everybody wants to go to heaven.

  “The pope is going to lose Africa if he doesn’t do something about this,” Mie-Mie said to the others.

  “We need to do something about this!”

  “We should write to the pope.”

  “Let’s write to the pope!”

  “We owe it to the pope to report this and help him.”

  Emails flew. It was the principle. An Omalu stands for principle. An Omalu thinks he can help the pope save Africa. An Omalu is obligated to do his and her share to help the world rid itself of religious militant terrorist organizations. Onyemalukwube is the name in its full version. “If you know, come forth and speak.”

  Theodore made the point that there was the more pressing matter of arranging Oba’s funeral celebration, and Oba needed a proper Catholic burial.

  So the family agreed to sign whatever the parish priest wanted them to sign. They approved the priest’s schedule for the funeral day, including the dirt-throwing part. They would deal with that priest later.

  —

  Alone at night, lying in bed in the dark listening to the familiar screech of crickets, Bennet thinks about how trivial these village matters might seem to people back home in America. Then again, a lot of American affairs would seem preposterous to villagers. Football? Everyone getting all upset over…a game?

  It’s good to see things from a distance, he thinks. It’s good to have two points of view like that, to see your tiny village from the viewpoint of America and to look at America from the viewpoint of a tiny village. That kind of perspective stretches you.

  Recently, back home in America, Bennet got a job offer to become chief medical examiner of Washington, D.C. It’s a huge honor. Probably the fanciest title a forensic pathologist could get. The office has a $9 million budget, provides forensic services for everyone from local crime victims to senators to foreign dignitaries.

  Prema had a hard time breathing when she heard about that one.

  “Outskirts, Bennet,” she said. “You belong on the outskirts, remember?” A high-profile position like that would be a political nightmare, she said.

  “Okay, Prema.”

  Bailes got excited when he heard about the offer. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “Bennet, that’s an amazing opportunity. You’ll end up dining with Obama!”

  “Okay, Julian,” Bennet said.

  After thinking about it for two weeks, after flying back and forth to Washington to get wined and dined, Bennet decided Prema was right. A political nightmare. Four of the last six guys who had held the post had left in scandal.

  He turned the offer down.

  “I belong on the outskirts,” he told Bailes.

  “I don’t understand you at all,” Bailes said.

  Oh, Julian, Bennet thinks, lying in the darkness of his room in the compound. A guy like that will never understand a guy like me. He kicks the sheet off, wishes there was a fan or something to put in here. The only air-conditioned room in the compound is Oba’s old room. Theodore’s in there now. Theodore is head of the family now.

  Bennet folds his hands under his head, thinks how different his life in America would be if he made the move to D.C. He searches his heart and finds no regret. He likes working out of his garage in Lodi. I really like it! He’s still trying to figure out suicide, why some depressed people kill themselves and some, like him, do not. He no longer suffers debilitating depression, but he recognizes the fragility, feels the lurking; there has to be something in the brain. Most of his CTE research continues to be geared toward finding a way to diagnose the disease in living people; he and Bailes and Fitzsimmons have teamed up with a guy at UCLA and they now have a patent for the test. People still contact Bennet and ask him to autopsy brains and look for CTE, and he’ll still do it, although he is less inclined to drop everything and jump at the chance than he once was.

  The last time he jumped at the chance was May 2012, and the experience did not go well.

  It was a Saturday and Bailes was calling him with the news that one of the hardest-hitting linebackers ever to play the game, the NFL superstar Junior Seau, had just committed suicide.

  “Who?” Bennet said.

  Bailes explained the significance. Seau was a league institution—he had played for twenty years—a ferocious tackler with charisma for the ages, beloved off the field as much as on. A first-round pick in 1990, Seau spent most of his career with the San Diego Chargers. He racked up fifty-six career sacks and was named to twelve Pro Bowls, but his end-zone dance and signature smile were what captivated fans. He had a way of making you love the game as much as he did. San Diego embraced him. He started a foundation for disadvantaged kids, he had a TV show, a restaurant, a clothing line, and a three-million-dollar home. His decline after his retirement in 2010 was gradual at first; only those closest to him could see what was happening. His memory slipping, crippling insomnia. Then his temper started flaring, and he became reckless. He gambled away his money. In 2010 he beat up his girlfriend and got arrested for it, and that same day drove his Cadillac off a hundred-foot cliff. Somehow he survived. He said he fell asleep; he wasn’t trying to kill himself. But then on May 2, 2012, alone in his Oceanside, California, home, he pulled the trigger on a .357 Magnum revolver. He shot himself in the chest, as Duerson had done. He was forty-three. They found a paper in the kitchen on which he had scribbled lyrics to the country song “Who I Ain’t.”

  Seau’s celebrity status made his brain the most coveted specimen yet, and as soon as Bailes heard the news, he suggested that Bennet go get it and look for CTE. So Bennet called Seau’s son and got permission. He booked a flight to San Diego and he brought a cooler. He assisted in the autopsy, took the brain out, cut it, and put it in a jar of formalin, as usual. But there in that dank, windowless morgue, before he even took off his rubber gloves, the chaos started.

  Other people were calling the Seau family, telling them not to give Omalu the brain. Nowinski was calling, saying he wanted the brain. The Boston group had, after all, been designated the NFL’s official brain bank.

  The Seau family was confused. Two different groups wanted Junior’s brain? Who were these people? How does a grieving family, still in shock, even begin to understand that?

  At the same time that Nowinski was calling, the NFL was calling the Seau family. Despite the fact that Boston was the league’s designated brain bank, the NFL didn’t want Seau’s brain to go to Boston. They were fed up with Boston. By this time, Boston was diagnosing CTE in brains with regularity, and with each new diagnosis came more bad PR for the NFL. In a study Boston commissioned, seventy-six of seventy-nine player brains showed signs of CTE.

  The NFL wanted to take the narrative back. They
would start with the Seau brain.

  The Seau family was confused. Three different groups wanted Junior’s brain?

  Bennet stood in the San Diego morgue with his gloves on and his open cooler. “If you please, the family said I could take the brain,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” the chaplain for the medical examiner’s office said. He said the Seau family had just called to rescind its consent. “The brain is going to the NIH.”

  “The NIH?” Bennet said.

  The NIH? people like Nowinski wondered.

  It was the first time during this whole saga that people had heard of the NIH expressing an interest in CTE research. Where was this coming from?

  It was coming from the league’s new concussion committee—the group it formed after it disbanded the deeply flawed MTBI committee. For its newly created Head, Neck, and Spine Committee, the NFL had chosen a brain expert to lead the research: Dr. Russell Lonser, chief of surgical neurology at the NIH.

  So the NFL and the NIH were now partnered.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Omalu,” the chaplain said, while Bennet pulled off his gloves.

  “But,” Bennet said, “I don’t think you want to give this brain to the NFL.”

  “The family has decided,” the chaplain said, and he showed Bennet the door.

  Alone in the taxi, Bennet sat next to his empty cooler and he broke down and wept. He would learn later that the San Diego Chargers’ team doctor had told the Seau family that Bennet was a fraud, that “his research is bad and his ethics are bad.”

  —

  Shortly after the NIH got the Seau brain, the NFL gave the NIH $30 million, the largest philanthropic gift in league history. Goodell made the announcement the same day the league kicked off the 2012 season. “Our goal is to aggressively partner with the best scientists to understand more about the brain and brain injuries,” he said, sounding very much like his predecessor, Paul Tagliabue, who had set up the MTBI committee back in 1994 with the same stated mission. And yet NFL-funded research had only derailed the national conversation—its paid scientists seeking to silence independent researchers who disagreed with its findings. Was it going to be different this time around?

  The $30 million gift to the NIH put the NFL back in control of the science of concussions. It would be like the tobacco industry leading cancer research.

  In January 2013, Junior Seau’s brain tested positive for CTE. Like so many, the Seau family started understanding that the problem wasn’t the fault of the man who seemed to have gone crazy. A disease. Junior had had a disease. The Seau family learned about other players, so many other families, with similar tragic stories. Football caused the disease. Football made them crazy. And the league had known about it.

  The Seau family joined the consolidated lawsuits against the NFL that had started with Luckasevic’s initial filing. The massive tort—a combined effort of more than forty law firms representing thousands of former players—was winding its way through the courts and was now headed by David Frederick, a high-profile Washington lawyer who had argued cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The NFL’s chief outside counsel was, notably, Covington & Burling, a major player defending Big Tobacco in the tobacco wars in the 1980s. Tagliabue now worked for the firm.

  The NFL stood to lose $2.5 billion if it lost its fight against the players. On the other hand, the players, some of whom urgently needed help, might not live long enough to collect anything if the suit was allowed to continue to crawl through years of legal proceedings—to say nothing of the time on appeals if the players won.

  The federal judge, Anita Brody of United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, ordered mediation. The two sides would have to compromise to resolve the fight. In 2013 they reached a settlement: the league would pay $765 million plus legal fees.

  The players and their lawyers did the math. Would there be enough money to go around? Even the judge was skeptical. She ordered the NFL to produce actuarial data. How many players were we talking about, in the end? How many NFL players were likely to go crazy as a result of football?

  One third, the report showed. One third of all NFL players were likely to develop football-related dementia, and at “notably younger ages” than the general population. And that was by the NFL’s calculations.

  Brody sent the league back to the table to come up with a better deal for the players.

  On April 22, 2015, she approved a new “uncapped settlement” that would cost the NFL about $1 billion over the next sixty-five years. The players did the math again. Under the terms of the agreement, the average award a player will receive is about $190,000.

  Plenty of people will say the deal stinks. Luckasevic will say the deal stinks, and his heart will sink because of it. He will tell anyone who cares to listen that the attorneys handling the negotiations failed to do right by the players. (When lawsuits are consolidated into one massive class action suit, the individual attorneys who originally filed yield to the appointed leaders.)

  Mediation meant that the case would never go to trial, so there would be no public vetting. Tagliabue would never have to explain his flawed MTBI committee, or what a rheumatologist was doing heading it, or why the NFL turned a blind eye to the work of independent scientists. Goodell would never have to disclose what he knew about the risk of concussions and when he knew it. The settlement is not an admission of guilt. Moreover, under the terms of the agreement, players who died before 2006 are disqualified from receiving anything. There would be nothing for Mike Webster’s family or Terry Long’s or Justin Strzelczyk’s.

  Nor would any funds be provided for future players diagnosed with CTE.

  About two hundred families, including some of Luckasevic’s clients, will opt out of the settlement. Seau’s family will opt out, choosing instead to go after the NFL personally in a suit alleging wrongful death.

  Luckasevic and other lawyers will fight to keep the cases alive in an effort to force the NFL to answer for what they did; let the public hear this, over and over again, until it sinks in:

  The league lied. They had the evidence and chose to ignore it. They had the evidence at least since 2005, when one unlikely scientist, a man from nowhere who would not go away, who would not back down, found proof.

  —

  Nobody talks about any of these matters, or any of Bennet’s research, in Enugwu-Ukwu. It’s as if that story is unfolding on another planet, or in another century. If anyone here in the village mentions Bennet’s work at all, it’s “He’s a doctor!” and “He lives in America!” Is there anything else?

  Right now he’s with Oba, dressing him. Armed guards are stationed outside the doors of the village morgue, a concrete hut set back on the edge of the jungle spreading out toward an infinite green. Nobody but Bennet gets in to see Oba.

  “To be able to see many points of view,” Bennet is saying, alone with his father’s corpse. “That is what school does for you, all right.” It feels wonderful to have these last moments with his dad, even though he’s dead—for Bennet, a mere technicality. “Everything you said was right, Daddy.”

  There’s not a lot of light in here. It’s so crude compared to what Bennet has become used to. The table is wooden, a little fan whirs by the window, and red dirt has been tracked in from outside so the old linoleum floor feels gritty.

  They did a good job with the embalming, Bennet thinks. No fluids. Everything nice and solid. Excellent preservation. Winny, Uche, and Mie-Mie especially will be happy to know that.

  “You were so right, Daddy,” he says, again, running a washcloth over his father’s cold arms. “I got my education and everything you said was right.” He picks up his father’s hand, checks the nails for dirt. He wants him to be perfectly groomed for the funeral, and for God.

  The robe his sisters provided is white satin. The mahogany casket Mie-Mie bought is top of the line. It’s electric. Push a button, and the top pops open! That is something else.

  “There are many people here t
o praise you, Daddy, and I am proud to be your son.”

  He wipes the cloth over his father’s face, gently dabbing his eyes and then his lips. He bends over and kisses him.

  “I am trying to stay true to myself like you told me,” he says. “I am trying to live up to the Omalu name.

  “Ka anyï kpe ekpere.” Let us pray.

  —

  Up by the gate at the compound, one brown goat with stubby horns looks on, doesn’t challenge the rope attaching it to a croton shrub ready to bloom. The gravediggers work up here in tandem. The earth is packed tight as clay, so this will take some time.

  As soon as the gravediggers are done it will be time to bury Oba here, next to his mother’s grave.

  In the meantime, they have a parade. The pallbearers are dressed in colorful red, yellow, and black traditional vestments, and one of them has a horn. Another follows with a drum. They carry the casket and dance with it, around the village, under the billboards and around in the streets, while the family follows. The drumming and the horns create a collective trance.

  The paraders stop at the house where Oba was born. The pallbearers put the casket down and the music stops. It is time to open the casket. A pallbearer pushes the button. The top opens with a slow hum, and there is Oba, a small dark head above flowing white satin garments.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Winny cries, collapsing.

  “Daddy!” Uche wails.

  Theodore and Chizoba come to their sisters’ aid.

  Mie-Mie holds her mother tight. Ikem stands tall, chanting prayers, and Bennet stands back.

  When they close the casket, the drumming starts again, and then the horn. The parade continues through the village and Bennet dances in front of the casket, slaps it with his open hand, kisses it and slaps.

  —

  The gravediggers have finished. The hole is deep and red, with perfectly straight sides. Just beyond the grave, forty women in green smocks down the hill have begun setting up their giant iron pots, while teams of wiry men without shoes sharpen knives and a cleaver. The goat has been ushered to the man with the cleaver. Three cows have already been slaughtered. There will be plenty of meat for all.