Page 62 of The Billionaire Benefactor

“Did you know her?” Blake asked, looking at him closely.

Roman went to shake his head and winced. “No.”

Blake stood up and sighed. His mother came back in the room with a doctor. She and Blake stood on one side of the bed and the doctor on the other. His mom grabbed Roman’s hand.

“I’m Dr. Altman. Would you like to talk privately, or is it okay to share with all of you?”

“That’s fine,” Roman said.

The doctor looked at Roman as he spoke, his voice and eyes steady. “You have a type of TBI—traumatic brain injury—known as coup-contrecoup. Essentially, the force made his brain bounce, for lack of a better term, in his skull, causing injury on the brain at the impact site as well as the opposite side of his skull.”

His mom’s hand tightened to bone-crushing pressure, but Roman didn’t mind. Blake put an arm around her waist, steadying her.

“This can cause contusions or subdural hematomas at both points of impact. There are various levels of TBI and you seem to be in the moderate range. You were unconscious for more than a minute. We didn’t notice last night, but now you’re experiencing some memory loss?” The doctor looked to Blake and his mother.

“I’m not having memory loss,” Roman said.

Blake sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. “That woman in your bed? She wasn’t some random woman.”

Roman scanned his memory, trying to put the pretty face somewhere that fit. Nothing. “No,” he said. “I can’t—Is she…my girlfriend?”

“No,” his mother said, just as Blake said, “It’s complicated.” They both gave each other hard looks.

“Why did you let her in here?” His mother said to Blake.

“He was calling her name while he was asleep,” Blake said. “Even if he didn’t actually remember her, his subconscious did.”

Roman put his free hand to his head, which was throbbing and piercing at the same time. He tried to remember her. Again, like the remnants of a dream, there would be a snag of something, a feeling almost like déjà vu, but it slipped away. It was incredibly frustrating. He saw the hurt on the woman’s face before she fled the room. Even though he couldn’t remember her, thinking of the pain that he caused her sent a rush of guilt and compassion toward her.

“What did you say her name was?” He licked his dry lips.

“Jenny,” Blake said.

“Jenny.” Roman thought maybe saying the name out loud might help jog something, but it didn’t. “Is she okay? I basically kicked her out of here.”

“Roman,” his mother said. “Let’s worry about that later and focus on you for now.”

Roman looked at Blake, sending a silent signal. Maybe he didn’t remember Jenny, but if he had cared enough about her that Blake was standing up for her, Roman didn’t want to leave her hurting. Blake seemed to understand and nodded.

The doctor continued. “The CT and MRI results were positive. Mild hematomas at both sites, but no hemorrhaging or swelling. This is really the best-case scenario with this kind of injury. The memory loss is concerning, but I don’t think that it pushes us too far from where we thought you were in terms of severity.”

“What are…” His mother seemed to struggle forming a question, then shook her head and regained her normal poised look. Her hand loosened its squeeze, just a hair. “What will happen next as far as treatment and recovery? What can we expect?”

“We want to keep him for a full 24 hours for observation, maybe longer now that we know about the amnesia. That wasn’t apparent last night, so we were assuming it was perhaps a more mild to moderate case. This development means it’s more moderate to severe. We’ll do another CT scan tonight, just to make sure there isn’t late swelling or anything else to worry about. He will likely feel as one would after a concussion—I don’t have his full medical records here. Has he had one before?”

“I’ve had a few concussions,” Roman said.

The doctor’s lips hardened into a firm line. “That’s what I suspected. I’ll need to access his records if you can contact his primary-care physician or whoever treated him last time. This will be familiar to him, then: headaches, fatigue, possible dizziness and balance issues. How’s your head now?”

“Trashed,” Roman said.

“We’ll get you something for that right now.” The doctor pushed a call button on the bedside, then turned his gaze to Blake and his mother. “The next few days or weeks, he may also feel depressed or irritable and suffer with apathy. Support from loved ones is especially important during this immediate recovery time, so I’m glad to see that he has a good group around him.”

Roman swallowed and asked the question he didn’t want to ask. “What about football? When can I go back?”

The doctor looked at Blake and his mom before looking back at Roman. “I’ll need to confirm how severe your other TBIs were to give you my recommendations. Even without seeing those, though, just looking at this one, I’d recommend that you don’t return. For the sake of your own health.”

Roman nodded, the words burrowing down in his head. He didn’t have the ability to process them now. His mom squeezed his hand once, softly.

“Whatever keeps him safe and healthy,” Blake said. Roman met his eyes even though Blake spoke as though he was talking to the doctor. “We care more about Roman the person than Roman the player.”

A nurse came in then, offering some pills and water in an odd pink plastic cup with a lid and straw. Roman swallowed both down gratefully, drinking the water until it was almost gone. The doctor gave a few more recommendations and fielded a few questions from his mother and Blake.

Roman closed his eyes, wanting a break from the harsh lights in the room. The doctor’s words settled deeper into his head: I recommend that you don’t return. What would that mean for his life? He didn’t need the money, but playing was his joy. His team was like his second family. He knew how it was when guys retired. You’d try to stay close, but it was so easy to drift apart when you didn’t see someone daily for practice and travel constantly. Who would he be without football? It felt so superficial to tie up his identity in playing. But he hadn’t realized how much he had done this until now, when it was being taken away from him.

God, get me through this.

He didn’t know what else to ask for as he lifted up that silent, desperate prayer. Then, haunted again by the hurt look on the woman’s—Jenny’s—face as she fled, he added another prayer.

Help me remember.

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