Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Sitting on the ground leaning back against the splitting stump sat Tyler, his arms by his side and his chin resting on his chest.

  Behind him, the thick handle of the ax emerged, only the bottom foot of it visible

  “Oh no, oh God, no,” she whispered and pushed herself away from the sink and through the back door. She jerked it open and spilled out onto the back porch, the sound causing Tyler to raise his head to stare at her.

  “Oh, thank God,” Margie whispered, tears spilling down her face as she drew in a deep breath and put her hands to her chest.

  Tyler remained where he sat, staring at her, saying nothing.

  “Tyler, what are you doing out here? In just a t-shirt and shorts?” she asked, edging towards him. She could see sweat glistening on his forehead, his dark hair wet. “What’s going on? How long have you been out here?”

  Tyler gazed up at her with red rimmed eyes and shook his head. “Awhile.”

  “Come on, I’ll help you inside.”

  Tyler shook his head again. “I’d rather stay here for a bit. I like the cool air.”

  “Cool? Tyler it’s forty-five degrees outside. You’re going to catch pneumonia.”

  Tyler let out a soft smirk. “Kind of be the least of my problems right now wouldn’t it?”

  A single tear slid down Margie’s face. “Tyler, you can’t talk like this. I know you lost your leg, but we’re going to get through this.”

  Tyler raised his head to stare off into the distance, his eyes focusing on nothing as his voice took on a far-off tone. “I talked to Coach Valentine today. Since I can’t play ball anymore, my scholarship’s been rescinded.”

  Margie’s eyes slid shut as the breath caught in her chest. She made no attempt to respond. The words just weren’t there.

  “Best part was, I found out because my email account was turned off. Bastards couldn’t even extend me the common courtesy of a phone call.”

  Margie remained motionless, willing herself not break down again in front of Tyler.

  “I’ve gave them three years, three thousand yards and my left leg and they couldn’t even give me a year’s education. Hell, they couldn’t even give me a phone call.”

  Silence followed, the bitter tone of Tyler’s last words hanging in the air. After several long minutes Tyler raised his backside up onto the stump and pulled the ax free. He gripped it the head of it and used it as a makeshift cane, hobbling towards the house.

  He paused beside Margie just long enough to give her a hug with his other arm before walking on towards the back door.

  Margie remained where she was until she heard the back door close behind her. Finally her eyes opened and she followed Tyler inside, standing in the kitchen as he retook his seat in the wheelchair.

  “I’m sorry honey, but I have to get back to work.”

  “I know mom, you go on ahead.”

  “You going to be alright?”

  Tyler answered without looking at her. “Yeah, I’ll be alright.”

  Margie nodded and walked to the front door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob and turned to look at Tyler, still seated with his gaze focused out the window above the sink. “What are you going to do?”

  The question seemed to pull Tyler from his thoughts. He snapped his focus away from the window and wheeled himself back towards the computer.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’ve got a few ideas.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A late spring rain washed over Boston for most of the afternoon, departing just in time to leave the sidewalks wet and glistening as Shane left for the night. The storm clouds had brought with them dark grey overcast and the only light was the fluorescent hue of the street lamps above.

  Despite the moisture in the air, it was warm and Shane decided to walk home. Seemed as good a way as any to spend a Friday evening with no particular plans in sight.

  On his way, Shane wandered by a corner pizzeria and got two slices of New York style pie and ate them at a window stool. He sat a few extra minutes to watch handfuls of college students filter past from nearby Emerson and Northeastern before taking up his bag and heading for home.

  His mind wandered to the events of the week, and everything still left to do this weekend, as his hands found their way deep into his pockets. Gaze averted, he let himself recede deep into thought before being pulled back by a single vibrating pulse from his cell phone against the back of his hand. Without breaking stride he fished his original 2005 model phone out and flipped it open.

  FOUR MISSED CALLS.

  Effectively four more than he received the rest of the week combined.

  Raising a glance just long enough to make sure he wasn’t in anybody’s way, Shane scrolled through his phone log to see the same phone number listed four times, all from the 307 area code. For a moment he tried to place who the number might belong to, another to determine if he even knew where the 307 area code was.

  Nowhere in Ohio or Boston. Anything beyond that would be pure speculation.

  Shane thumbed in the number for his voicemail account and held the phone to his ear, waiting as a digitized voice told him he had four unheard messages. In quick succession they played, the first two nothing more than hang-ups, the third a pair of heavy sighs before signing off.

  On the fourth, he hit pay dirt.

  “Hey, Shane. This is Tyler Bentley...from Ohio Tech...I don’t know if you remember me, but you taught a class I was in last year....”

  Shane stopped walking and pressed the phone harder to his ear, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Listen, I’m real sorry to call like this but I was kind of hoping to talk to you about something. If you could please give me a call back at 307-555-4836. It’s very important.

  “Thanks a lot, hope you are well.”

  The message ended and Shane pulled the phone away and stared at it in a bit of a shocked stupor. Just that morning he’d tried emailing Tyler, and to his knowledge it hadn’t even gone through. The fact that he was now getting a personal phone call from him was surprising to say the least.

  A young couple excused themselves around him on the sidewalk, forcing Shane back into the present. He apologized to them and nodded, his feet finding their way home without any active participation from his mind. He waited until he was about to ascend the steps to his building before thumbing on the phone and listening to the message again.

  Shane bypassed the elevator and trudged up the stairs to his fourth floor apartment, the message weighing on his mind. There was only one, maybe two, reasons in the world that Tyler would be calling him, neither of which seemed plausible.

  Shane walked into his apartment and let his suit jacket slide off his shoulders, tossing it on a chair back. He filled the empty stainless steel bowl on the counter with Friskees for his cat Molly and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Moving slowly he changed out of his suit and into a pair of gym shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, settling down onto his couch at half past ten.

  He stared down at his phone for several more minutes before opening it, scrolling through the saved call list and hitting send. The call rang only once before it was snatched up, a brusque voice answering on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, yeah, this is Shane Laszlo calling for—“

  “Hey Shane, it’s me. Thanks for calling me back.” Already the tone was lighter.

  “No, of course. I’m sorry it took me a while, I got out of work late again with the month end approaching and everything.”

  “Please don’t apologize. Again, I’m just glad you called me back.”

  Shane leaned back on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table in front of him. Already the apprehension of calling was fading away, even if the confusion wasn’t.

  “It’s kind of ironic that you called. Just this morning I tried sending you an e-mail, but it bounced back to me. I read about what happened man, just wanted to say I was real sorry to hear about it.”

  A few s
econds of silence passed before Tyler answered, his voice low. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”

  Shane made a face and cursed himself for saying anything. He should have known Tyler was going through a hard time right now without everyone mentioning it all the time.

  “So, uh, what can I do for you Tyler?”

  “It starts with that email bouncing back to you this morning, oddly enough. That was about the same time that I found out my email was shut down and my access denied too.”

  A banging sound rang out from the kitchen and Shane turned to see Molly up on the counter, already face deep in her food dish. He watched her for just a moment before turning his attention back to the phone.

  “I called the IT department and asked if that was standard, and they told me it was for students the registrar’s office lists as having withdrawn.”

  “Withdrawn? As in, permanent?”

  “Apparently,” Tyler answered, agitation evident in his voice. “And let me tell you, it was news to me as well. I called the registrar’s office and asked what the deal was and they routed me to Coach Valentine. Took a whole bunch of hemming and hawing before he’d just level with me.”

  “Nobody wants to be the bad guy.”

  “Nope. Took almost an hour on the phone for someone to tell me the athletic department decided to rescind my scholarship the minute I couldn’t play anymore.”

  Shane’s jaw dropped open and before he could think to stop himself, he heard his voice say, “You’ve got be shitting me.”

  “I wish I were. Three years and just like that, out I went.”

  A few seconds passed as Shane tried to wrap his head around the news. No less than twenty questions sprang to mind, but he forced them aside. Instead, all he said was, “Damn, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Almost a full minute of silence passed, long enough to make Shane fidget. He was about to ask if Tyler was still there when he spoke again.

  “Listen Shane, I know we don’t know each other all that well, and of everybody I know at OTU you don’t owe me a thing, but I could really use your help.”

  Shane made no attempt to hide his surprise. “Well sure, I mean, I’d like to help in any way I can. Fact of it is though, I’m not a doctor or a therapist or anything like that. I don’t know if you remember, but I’m a lawyer. I’m not sure how much help I can be.”

  “That’s just it, I don’t need somebody in the medical field right now. That damage’s already been done. What I need now is a lawyer to help me get what’s coming to me.”

  Shane blew out a puff of air and ran a hand back through his hair. “Tyler, I don’t mean be obtuse here, but I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “They took my damn leg Shane,” Tyler said, his tone non-negotiable. “I did everything they asked me to, and that still wasn’t enough.”

  “Tyler, don’t take this the wrong way because I’m on your side here, but you can’t go after the athletic department to get your scholarship back. It wouldn’t be worth the time or money you have invested, even if you win.”

  “I’m not worried about the scholarship right now Shane. To be honest, I don’t know that I’d go back there even if they begged me to.”

  Shane remained silent a moment, his mind racing. “If you’re thinking of going after the university for civil damages...” He let his voice trail off, trying to figure out how that would play out, almost certain it wouldn’t be good.

  “I’m not thinking of going after the university for civil damages,” Tyler said, his tone even, resolute. “When I hurt my knee I was convinced by my doctors that my knee was beyond saving, that the only chance I ever had at walking, of playing, ever again was to try this joint implant of theirs. My doctors, the medical reps, everybody told me this new KnightRunner was my golden ticket. I’d be back on the field by this fall, be ready for the draft next spring.

  “Not even four months later and I’m sitting here talking to you from a wheelchair.”

  Shane could hear the bitterness in Tyler’s tone, almost see the expression that must be worn on the other side of the line.

  “So you want to do what? Go after the company that made the device?”

  “Yes,” Tyler answered without even a pause to consider his answer.

  “Hmm,” Shane said, mulling the proposition. “Plusses and minuses there for sure. Public opinion would be on your side, and they’d have deep, deep pockets should you win. Of course, the flip side of that is they’ll be able to bring in teams of lawyers, experts, customer testimony.”

  “But you’re telling me it can be done?”

  “I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m just giving you my very preliminary, very off-the-record impression. That’s all.”

  Tyler sighed on the other end. “Look, Shane, I appreciate that, but I’m not calling you off-the-record. I’m calling to see if you’ll take my case.”

  Shane leaned forward on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. “Your case? Tyler, all I even know about this situation is a one-paragraph article I read in the paper and now a three-minute phone call with you. There’s no way I can tell if you have a case here.”

  Tyler pushed ahead as if he hadn’t heard a word Shane said. “The only other lawyer I know is here in Worland, handles wills and bankruptcies. Great guy, older than dirt, pretty sure he doesn’t even know what Viagra is.”

  “That still doesn’t necessarily make me any better,” Shane said, his voicing rising. He almost continued, but stopped himself short and took a deep breath. When he began again, his voice was lower, more even.

  “Look, Tyler, I appreciate the gesture and am even quite flattered, but I’m not what you’re looking for either. I’m an environmental lawyer fresh out of law school. I’m not even licensed in Ohio and I have no idea what their reciprocity rules are. There has to be hundreds of guys better qualified out there for this than me.”

  Tyler paused just a moment before pushing on, undeterred. “Shane, I had all day to think about this. I called you for two reasons. One, I know you and trust you. You were always very fair to me and never treated me like a football star. I appreciated that.

  “Two, I called you because you’re young and fresh out of law school. I can’t afford anybody else.”

  Shane rubbed the temples on either side of his forehead in small circles. What Tyler was saying wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean it was what he wanted to hear. “Yeah, I get what you’re saying.”

  “I can’t pay you for the trial, but if we win, I promise to make it worth your while.”

  Shane continued on his temples as Molly joined him on the couch, her pink tongue darting out to clean around her mouth. She ventured a dark grey paw out as if she might crawl up onto his lap, but thought better of it and retreated.

  “Believe me when I tell you, the money isn’t what I’m worried about. It’s just, in addition to every reason I just told you about, there are issues that make this a bad idea for me personally.

  “I’m a junior man in a very coveted position at a firm here in Boston. It was not easy to get into and I doubt they’d be too keen on letting me leave for several months to try a civil case.”

  This time Tyler took several moments to respond, and when he did his voice was soft and low. “Shane, I understand that, I do. And Lord knows nobody hates asking for help more than me, but I am asking for your help. This isn’t about greed, this is about protecting my mother. About giving her the life my leg won’t let me anymore.”

  Shane stared out the window at the city lights dancing off the water of the Charles River. Every impulse in his body told him to apologize and hang up the phone, but something in Tyler’s words wouldn’t let him.

  “Who’s this medical company you’re thinking about going after anyway?”

  There was paper shuffling on the other end of the line and Tyler said, “Guy’s name was Sarconi, works for a company named SynTronic.”

  Shane’s eyes hardened as he stared at a single orange light visible on the opposite bank of
the river. His breath caught in his chest as he locked in on it, the temperature in the room rising several degrees. “SynTronic?”

  “Yeah, you ever heard of them?”

  Shane nodded his head. “You could say that.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  All told, Tyler and Shane spent two hours on the phone Friday night. Shane was back in the office by seven the next morning, using company resources to perform research that had nothing to do with the environment. He stopped just after four in the afternoon and returned home with a ream of printouts in hand, a list of questions as long as his arm in his briefcase.

  That afternoon they talked for four more hours, this time being joined on the call by Margie. One by one Shane went through his list of questions, scrupulously taking down every note he could, and recording the conversation to be sure he didn’t miss anything. More than once a question led him down a path he’d never even considered, the time disappearing before his eyes.

  After a Sunday spent the same exact way, two things were brutally clear to Shane. He was in way over his head, and there was no way he could hope to do Tyler justice and remain in his current state of employment with Banks, Webster & Cohen.

  Monday morning, Shane arrived at the office even earlier than usual. He spent a couple of hours making a stab at some of the paperwork Hartman had left for him, but after the events of the weekend he just wasn’t interested in it. His mind couldn’t turn off the case at hand, his thoughts drifting back to dwell on some unanswered question, to reconsider an as yet untouched angle.

  By noon, he shoved the paperwork to the side and opened a blank email box. For someone that had spent the previous six months being as invisible as possible, sending such an email was one of the very last things on earth Shane wanted to do. He’d been trying to send it since Saturday morning, when he first realized this was a conversation that had to happen, and fast, but he couldn’t bring himself to type it. Same thing all day on Sunday.

  Now here it was midday on Monday, precious time dripping away, and he was still trying to find the words.