Page 69 of A Play For The Heart
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation, simply replaying the numbers in my mind.
Nine months.
Hopefully.
What was once shock descends into full-blown panic. The adrenaline of being injured is beginning to wear off, and the dread is rising in my body. Fast. The doctor and coaches finish talking, and Coach Barrett walks over to the hospital bed I’m in.
“We’re in this together, Henry,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder. The gesture meant to comfort only curdles my stomach.
Unable to speak, I nod at him. The door to the room swings open and my eyes land on my parents. My mom’s face is tear-soaked and blotchy whereas my father’s shows no outward emotion at all. His eyes are dark and his jaw is tense. Until this moment, I had forgotten they had attended the game. I was so focused on making sure Sawyer was okay, I forgot to tell my parents I was fine. Guilt trickles into my gut at the look on my mom’s face, the look of pure fright.
“I’ll give you a moment,” Coach Barrett says, walking towards the exit and nodding at both of my parents in passing.
The moment my coach leaves, my mom barrels towards my bed, throwing her arms around me. Her breath hitches as she frantically pats my body, searching for any additional injuries. I throw my arms around her, hugging her back, leaning into her. It’s a hug I didn’t know I needed, but now that I have it, the panic is fading. Her being here feels like a lifeline. Something to make sure I don’t float away from the pain and anxiety and despair. Because the prognosis feels like I’ve been dropped into the middle of the ocean with no way to get back to shore.
“I was terrified,” she says, through tears. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t been injured like this before and it's clear from my mom’s appearance that the whole situation threw her. I grab her hand and squeeze it, reassuring her I’m safe. “What happened?” she whispers, almost afraid to ask.
I relay to them what happened and what the doctor said. My mom holds tight to my hand and reassures me that everything will work out. Standing at the end of the bed, my father has yet to speak.
Not a single word.
My mom wipes her face and stands from the edge of the bed. “I’m going to go clean up and get a coffee. Want anything, Matt?” she asks, looking at my father. Concern flickers over her gaze at my father’s stony appearance.
He shakes his head, and she hesitates but ultimately grabs her purse and disappears from view. The moment she leaves the room, his demeanor changes. The once blank expression morphs into cold fury. If I hadn’t already resigned myself to an interaction the moment he walked through the door, the one-eighty would scare me. He spends a few minutes saying nothing. Simply pacing the length of the room, exuding energy so angrily it makes me lean back in the bed to distance myself from him.
“Well….” he starts, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” The humorless laugh that escapes him echoes in the room.
That makes one of us because this is all a surprise to me. I’m not sure what the hell he’s talking about, but I’m sure he’s about to tell me. I stay silent, knowing that speaking will only drag this out longer. Emotionally, I’m running on fumes, and this conversation is going to take everything I have.
“If you had worked harder, trained harder, you wouldn’t be in this position. I told you time and time again how important it was to focus,” he chastises me like I’m a small child who drew on the walls with markers and not a grown man.
The worst part is, I feel like that small child. I know I didn’t do anything wrong but hearing him tell me it could have been avoided hits me straight in the gut. Not once in his career did he get hurt.
“Now you're injured and you haven’t finished your first season,” he continues. “What are you going to do now?”
I say silent, assuming it’s a rhetorical question. I have no idea what I’m going to do. The only thing I can do, I guess. Get the surgery, do the rehab, and hope the Mavericks keep me on the roster. My dad stares at me, pointedly, and I realize he wants a response.
“I’ll do the rehab, the doctor said I should recover just fine.”
“And if you don’t?”
Recover, he means. What if I don’t recover? It wasn’t something I had thought about until this moment, and the thought is incapacitating. I don’t know what I would do if I can’t play anymore. I haven’t been on the team long enough for my guarantee, and no other team in the league would take me, not with an injury like this and no guarantee that I would recover fully. I would essentially be back at square one. The thought is haunting.
I have no response to his question.
“You better hope everything goes well, because if it doesn’t Henry,” he pauses and my chest goes tight, fearful of what he will say next. “You’ll have nothing.”
With that, my mom walks back into the room, a coffee in her hand. The bags under her eyes are dark and she looks haunted. As she walks up to my father, anger flickers over her face. An emotion I haven’t seen from my mother much in my life. She stands beside him, shoulders tense. He attempts to grab her hand, but she shifts away. Subtle but apparent.
“We’ll give you time to rest, I think there’s someone else here who wants to see you.”
Sawyer bolts through the door a moment later. Her eyes are frantic and bloodshot, and her hair flies everywhere. She looks ragged, but I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight. The tightness in my chest loosens as she flies towards my bed.
“Thank god, you’re okay,” she says, immediately grabbing my hand. Her skin is clammy as she grips my hand, her fingers squeezing tight against mine. My parents slip through the door behind her, leaving us alone. “Jack had the usher—he…he…” she hiccups, sobs wracking her body as she gulps down air.
“Sawyer, breathe,” I rub soothing circles on her back, trying to calm her.
“I was so scared,” she admits. Her voice is quiet as she looks at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “You were just lying there, and I thought…” She doesn’t finish but I can see the fear in her eyes. I felt the same fear when I was lying on the field.
