Page 58 of The Cadence
“He’s walking. That’s great,” Cully had whispered, and I had shushed him. But all they said next was that he’d gone into the injury tent. We kept the TVs muted to continue listening to Herb and Buzz, since they seemed to know everything Woodsmen-related and were very clearly on the side of our team. The only other thing they reported about Will was that he was back on the bench but wouldn’t be coming in to play again. The TV cameras showed him with a towel over his head so that I couldn’t even see his face.
“It’s good news that they didn’t take him to a hospital or something,” Cully said, and I nodded and thanked him for his help. Then I waited for the game to end so that I could talk to Will directly and learn exactly what was wrong. I waited forwhat felt like years and I wrote to him a few times…quite a few times.
On the way home from the store, with that image of him kneeling on the field plastered in the forefront of my mind, I finally heard back.
“I’m ok,” he texted. “It’s my ankle again but it’s fine.”
I pulled over so I could devote myself to reading and so that I could avoid an accident in this nice car. “What happened?”
Just a slight sprain, he said, and it was really ok. “I can tell.”
“Did medical tests also tell that? What tests? How many? When will you repeat them?” I had a lot more questions but as I was writing, two words came back to me.
“Hold on.”
Then my phone rang and I answered. “I figured you’d feel better if you heard my voice,” Will explained. “I feel better when I hear yours.”
“I do,” I said, because I experienced a rush of relief. “I was so worried.”
“I’m going to get hurt sometimes,” he told me. “That’s part of the job. But I’m ok, I promise. Can you do me a favor?”
I was nodding but also managed to say that yeah, I definitely could.
“Can you pick me up at the airport?”
“I’m coming right now,” I answered, and signaled and turned out onto the road before I realized that I didn’t know how to getthere and would have to plan a little better. I hadn’t lived here long enough to learn my way around.
“No, don’t come yet.” He gave me the team’s ETA and he told me where to wait for him, and he also said that he’d tell the security people to let me through. “I don’t think I should drive with this leg but if I get a car, everyone in the whole town will hear and talk about how I can’t even push on a pedal. All the other guys just want to get home to their families instead of chauffeuring me.”
“I’ll chauffer you! I’ll do it!”
“Calla, take a breath. I have to hang up but I’ll see you soon. Don’t drive too fast.”
I checked the speedometer and saw that it was good advice. “I’ll be there when the plane lands.”
“I know,” he told me.
And I was absolutely there, about an hour before he’d said to arrive. I’d driven past a gaggle of orange-clad fans on my way in and the security guard had directed me over to the hangar. I saw the lights in the sky as the orange plane came in for a smooth landing and I made myself stay in the car as it taxied slowly past the main airport building and to this smaller one, which had “Woodsmen Football” painted on its side.
The players got out, and the coaches, and then Will. He was walking with crutches and Langston, the center, carried his bag for him. They approached where I was parked and then I couldn’t stop myself from jumping out and running over.
“Oh, Holy Moses! This is bad, Will. This is bad!” Because there was some kind of contraption on his leg, and the crutches, and—
“No, it’s fine. I promise,” he said, and then he did something kind of surprising. He reached forward and took my hand, and he pulled me to his chest to hug me. “You sounded so worried on the phone. Your voice was an octave higher than normal.”
“I was very worried but…but it’s not about me, so let’s get into the car.”
“To do that, we’ll have to let go of each other,” he said quietly. I didn’t want to.
But I did, because it really wasn’t about me and I wasn’t going to make a man with an injured leg stand there just so we could hug, no matter how wonderful and earth-shatteringly amazing it had felt. It was like I was floating up to the stars, that kind of amazing, but no matter! I stepped away. “I put the passenger seat all the way back so there’s plenty of room for you. Thank you, Langston, I’ll take that bag,” I said briskly.
Will answered some questions about treatment and doctors on the way home but he would get a lot more information the next day when the Woodsmen team got their hands on him. For now, my hands were on him—not really, just in the sense that I was the person currently in charge of his recovery. That was why I immediately heated tomato soup and made grilled cheese when we got home, as he rested on the couch with his leg up.
“This is what my grandma made for me the first time I got sick when I was at her house,” I explained as I put the tray on the new coffee table. There was plenty of seating in here now, butit was too heavy to move so I carried a chair from the dining room so I could place myself right next to him. There might have been some kind of food emergency or another good reason that I needed to be close.
“Did you make this for her, too?”
“When she wanted to eat,” I answered, nodding. Then I exhaled a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. This all reminded me a lot of what happened with her. I was watching how you weren’t able to stand and then no one would say what was really wrong with you and if you were going to be all right.”
