Page 80 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
He walks in silence for a while, and then speaks again. “Renée and I got in a huge blow-out fight when I fucked up my knee in that car wreck. My football career was over, and I couldn’t admit it. I was determined to rehab my knee and go for the combine. I was gonna get drafted by the Bears. That was my sole focus in life. Renée was pissed. She knew I loved football, knew I was really, really good. She knew I had a real shot at going pro, which is like…the chances of that are like winning the lottery, pretty much, and I had scouts and agents telling me I was a shoo-in. Not to toot my own horn, but I was one of the best offensive linemen in the country.” He pauses, sighs. “Then I wrecked my knee, and it was over. Renée wanted me to think about life beyond football. Rehab my knee, certainly, so I’d have full mobility, still be able to work out and all that, but just admit my career playing competitive ball was done. I couldn’t, wouldn’t. I got pissed, she got pissed, and we blew up at each other while I was in the damn hospital. Cleared the floor, just about. I’ve never lost my temper like that, before or since.”
Another pause, a long silence.
“Renée left me. Broke up with me. Said she couldn’t and wouldn’t be with a man who was so stuck on himself that he couldn’t admit when something was beyond his control—and that the fact that I was so angry about it—at her, for even suggesting I let go of playing ball—meant I was weak and pathetic. Those were her words to me. Weak and pathetic.” He scoffs. “You know how deep that cut? I could squat six hundred pounds. Deadlift eight hundred. Bench over four hundred. Run the hundred-yard dash faster than half the defensive ends at the combine. And I was pathetic and weak? God, that hurt. She didn’t come back, either. Broke up with me in the hospital—walked the fuck out on me. Her parting words to me are something I’ll never forget. ‘Jamie,’ she said, ‘the only person, the only force in this entire goddamn world that will ever be able to stop you is you. You are too damn stupid and stubborn to get out of your own way, and I cannot and will not stand by and watch you keep hurting yourself. I love you, Jamie. I love you more than life, and I always will, but I won’t be with you if you can’t get over yourself.’”
I shake my head. “Damn. Takes real balls to say that to the man you love.”
“At twenty years old, too. She was the wisest and most self-aware person I’ve ever known.” He walks in silence for a while. “So I thought about it, and what she said. Took me weeks, but I realized she was right. The point is, though, that she left me. Broke up with me. Wouldn’t answer my calls, wouldn’t come back to the hospital. Nothing. I wrote her letters, sent them to her through Jess. Nothing. I was in so much pain, physically and emotionally, and my dad was just…suck it up, son. Play hurt. Toughen up. Get over her—she’s just a girl.”
“Jesus. What an asshole.”
“It’s how he was raised, so it’s how he raised me. It’s taken me this long to de-condition myself from all that, and sometimes I think I’ll never quite totally beat that mentality.”
“Seems to me like you have,” I say.
He shrugs. “To some degree, yes.”
“I will go see someone,” I say, at length. “Craig is still inside me, down deep. Being with you still makes me feel guilty, sometimes, and I can stubborn my way past it for the most part, but…”
James shakes his head. “That’s what Doc Rich has had to drill into me these past few months—you can’t stubborn your way past this shit. You’re just burying it, not dealing with it.”
“You’re right, James. I know you are.”
“These past few days, though?” He shakes his head. “Seeing Jess like that?”
I gaze up at him. “Brought it all back?”
He nods. “Yeah. Hard-core.” We reach the end of his street that ends in a T-junction at a huge fenced-in field, scattered with cows munching on grass. We stand at the fence line and watch the cows amble this way and that. “I was there again, for a minute. In that hospital, in that very fucking hallway. I remember it like—like it was yesterday. Jess was with the girls—my folks were in Florida, and hers were at their lake house. So it was just Jess there to watch Nina and Ella while I took Renée to the hospital. So I was alone. Totally alone. Pacing that hallway, trying not to panic. But I—I knew. I knew something was wrong. It all happened so fast—one second she was fine, the next she was…bleeding, having these crazy contractions. Twenty-six weeks, she was. Too soon, and we both knew it. I knew, I fucking knew something was seriously wrong, and nobody was telling me anything. The more time that passed the more I just knew in my fucking guts that it was wrong, all wrong. Eventually, I just…snapped. Just like Jesse did, only there wasn’t anyone to hold me back. There was one security guard, but he was this fat old dude, and he didn’t stand a chance. I shoved him through the fucking wall, literally. I shoved my way into the OR, and she was…” He blinks hard, coughs, clears his throat, keeps going. “There were these blue sheets covering her—the doctors, surgeons, nurses. Blood everywhere. She was opened up, and I—I fuck—I fucking saw. Saw her opened up, bleeding out, trying to save her and the baby. They couldn’t put her under—they had to do an emergency C-section, and she was awake, and alone. They were trying to save her, and the baby, but they—they couldn’t. And she knew it. And she was fucking alone.”
