Page 29 of The Game Changer

“Thanks, have a good time at the game!” he calls after us.

“I’m guessing he’s been working here for a long time?” I ask John as we walk down the hallway. It is practically empty, seeing as how we’re in a limited access area. I’m only used to coming in the main entrance with all the thousands of other fans, having to wait in long lines to do anything, so this is a wee bit different. John leads me to an elevator, pressing the button to go up. The suite that we’re going to is up high, around the top ring of the arena.

“Yes, I think he’s been here since the team was formed.”

Once we’re on the floor with suite access, he leads me to the one marked with the Eagles logo. He flashes a card in front of a sensor and the door opens for us. “That’s pretty slick.”

“Yeah, they updated things years back. Makes it so they don’t have to have someone stationed outside the suites to let people in. Since this is the team’s suite and reserved mainly for the girlfriends, wives and kids of the players, they have full season access, so it just makes sense. I’m not really sure what they do for the ones that aren’t necessarily used for the same people game after game.

“Johnathan.” An older man calls his name from across the room.

“Excuse me, please,” he says, dropping a quick peck on the corner of my mouth. “I need to go talk to Mr. Erickson.”

“Of course,” I tell him, shooing him away. I make a beeline for the bar set up along one wall in the back.

“What can I get you tonight, miss?” the bartender asks.

“7-Up with a splash of cranberry juice if you have it,” I ask, hopeful.

“Of course, coming right up,” he says, filling a cup with ice before adding the 7-Up and cranberry juice.

I pull a twenty out of my pocket, ready to pay him. “What’s the total?” I ask.

“No charge, ma’am. Everything in this suite is provided for the guests, courtesy of the team.”

“Oh, wow. I wasn’t aware of that,” I told him. I drop the twenty I’d taken out for my drink into his tip jar. “That’s really nice of them,” I add as an afterthought.

“Thank you,” he says, nodding his head toward the tip jar as he hands over my drink. “The owners are very family oriented and want all the family members of anyone on the team to be taken care of.”

“Thank you,” I tell him before stepping away. Julia walks through the doors, her face lighting up with a smile as soon as she sees me. She beelines it over to me, stopping right in front of me, and pulls me into a hug.

“I’m so glad to see you here! How’s JC doing?” she asks so only I can hear. I’d confided in her the other day that I thought he was having a hard time these last few days, and she assured me that it was a pretty normal thing for players to go through. Even though her dad retired on his own accord, he still went through a mourning period when the next season rolled around.

“He’s doing,” I tell her as I look over at him. He’s deep in conversation with the older man that he left my side to go talk to. “When I got home from work he was in a mood, didn’t get the news he was hoping for at his appointment today, not that it was bad,” I rush to add so she knows it wasn’t anything bad, just not what he was hoping for.

“That sucks, but kinda what you guys expected, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, as you know, fully recovering from a TBI is pretty rare. At this point, we can just hope that his symptoms don’t worsen over time. If we could keep them as they are, which is manageable, I think he’ll do just fine. We just need to find him something to keep busy with. If he sits around much longer with no real motivation or task to focus on, he’s going to fall into a deep depression.”

“Any more talk about starting a foundation and working with the league on furthering the safety protocols to prevent other guys from suffering a TBI?” she asks.

“I keep encouraging it, but he’s got to take the initiative to actually do it, ya know?”

“Oh, I know. It’s like my patients at work. I can walk them through their PT exercises and work them while they are at their appointment, but if they don’t do the exercises at home, then they’ll recover so much slower. Some just don’t understand that and then get frustrated at me when they aren’t miraculously healed after seeing me two to three hours each week.”

“Hello, ladies.” John’s deep voice startles me slightly. I was no longer paying attention to him talking and didn’t notice that he was headed over to where Julia and I were standing.

“Hey, JC, good to see you,” Julia greets him.

“Nice seeing you, how’s your boy today?” he asks, nodding his head toward the ice.

“He’s pretty excited!” she says, her eyes going wide with her own excitement.

“Is it weird to be here because it’s your fiancé playing and not your dad?” I ask.

“I’ve spent so much time here that I feel at home in this rink. It was a little weird last season when I attended my first game as his girlfriend. The weirdest part was wearing someone else’s jersey. I always cheered for the other guys, so that part wasn’t all that awkward.”

“I can see how that would be weird.”

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