First Kiss Fireworks

by Kristen Ethridge

  “We can make it work.”

  All Cole needed was a chance. Dane would make anything work to prove to his son that this time, his dad was in it for the long haul.

  FIRST KISS FIREWORKS

  Chapter Two

  Amanda couldn't get her fingers on the keyboard to her computer fast enough when she returned to her office after lunch. From the minute the baseball coach walked away from the table, her mind had started swimming.

  Such was the life of a college professor who loved to research. Once an idea sparked in her mind, she had to answer the curiosity.

  She began clicking through files and pulling up her notes, trying to see if the ideas that Stavros had for cognitive improvement in children could also have the same effect on concussion patients. As she scanned through file after file, Amanda began to think that maybe it was possible. Turning to the Internet, Amanda opened her browser and began searching even more deeply.

  Three hours later, the sound of footsteps in the hall distracted her from reading the fine print of yet another medical study. She looked over at the clock and realized she’d been immersed in the search for knowledge for the better part of the afternoon.

  All the signs she'd seen this afternoon pointed in one clear direction. One question remained in her head: what if?

  What if her research wasn't going to end, as she’d thought. What if it was just beginning? What if she didn't have to travel halfway around the world to get what she needed to change lives?

  Amanda pushed her chair back and almost knocked it to the ground in her excitement. She left the office, closed the door firmly behind her and headed down the hall to where Roger worked.

  “Is he in? I need to talk to him.”

  Amanda wasn’t usually a woman of few words, and she genuinely liked the department secretary, Mary Scott. But she didn’t have time for the inevitable questions Mary would have about Amanda’s change in travel plans.

  There would be time to sort all that out later, but for one Cole Vasquez, every minute counted.

  “I think he’s finishing up last minute changes the syllabus for the curriculum management course. I still need to get those printed out in order to have them ready for his first class.”

  “Okay,” Amanda agreed, willing to say just about anything in order to get in front of Roger to talk through everything that was in her mind at this moment. “I promise I won’t take long.”

  Amanda knocked on the door with three sharp raps.

  “Come on in.”

  When she opened the door, the chair of the department was indeed where his assistant said he would be, sitting behind the desk chewing on a pencil and staring down his computer monitor.

  “Roger, what if I didn’t have to go to Greece?” Her heart pounded a little as she threw the what if out to her boss.

  “Amanda, you’re not going to Europe,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  “I know. But what if it didn’t matter?”

  “I’m not following you. Did you have a conversation with Stavros?”

  Amanda shook her head. “No, no not with Stavros. Do you know Dane Vasquez, the baseball coach?”

  “I’ve heard the name.” Roger hesitated slightly. “I think I met him at some luncheon last year right after he came on board. But I don’t get out to many baseball games. It’s not really my thing.”

  “Understood.” Amanda nodded. “But did you know that his son plays on the team? Well, actually he doesn’t play right now.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware that his son was here too. But what do you mean he plays, but doesn’t play?” Roger leaned forward, still chewing on the wooden center of the yellow pencil.

  “His son was recruited to come here and play for Dad. But he was hit by a pitch his senior year of high school. He’s still suffering the effects of the TBI. He’s probably got post-concussive syndrome and maybe who knows what else. Anyway, he hasn’t been cleared to play since he got here. And now, his grades are suffering and he’s probably going to lose his scholarship if he can’t bring them back up. Coach Vasquez stopped me today and said he’d heard about some of the work I do with ADHD kids and was wondering if there was anything I could do to help Cole with his inability to focus now due to the concussion.”

  "Okay, I see where you're going. I think. Keep talking.” Roger leaned back in his chair and tucked the well-chewed pencil behind his ear.

  “I think the work I wanted to do this summer might could instead happen here. Stavros's lab is gone, but what if we had a lab at Provident College?”

  Roger’s chair jerked forward and he waved his hands. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I don't even have budget to pay you this semester. I certainly don't have the money to set up a lab for experimental therapies, no matter how good of an idea you think it is.”

  Amanda paced across the room, trying to gather her thoughts. She knew she’d get one shot to get Roger on her side. She had to convey the most important details to him and not let her emotions take over her request.

  “I know that, Roger. I'm not asking for it right now. But, if I could do the do the work—see if it holds up—I’ve found so much background and other studies online in PubMed and some other places today regarding this same idea in concussion patients. What if I started with Cole, tested some ideas and then if it looks successful, maybe I could put together a full workup to pursue grant funding to build the lab here. We could be a leader in this. You know it was worth my going halfway around the world this semester because nobody else is testing these kinds of things in real time—especially not as they apply to kids. Let me work with Cole, see if it’s worthwhile. Then we can go from there.”

  “You don’t have any teaching responsibilities, Amanda, so you can work with whoever you want to work with.”

  “I was hoping we could find a way to pay me to do it,” she said with a lopsided grin. Just call me Captain Obvious, she thought as she waited for her boss’ thoughts on the matter.

  “Maybe the coach can pay you. It’s his kid, after all.” Roger’s advice was practical—but not entirely probable. “I don’t have it in the budget, he’s got to fund it. I’ll support you in any way I can, Amanda. I’ll give you whatever air cover I can. I’ll support any research that comes out of it. I’ll support any grant proposal you pull out of it. If you’re able to get a lab here, I’ll support setting it up and bringing Stavros from the other side of the world to Port Provident. But you’ve got to find the funding elsewhere. I just don’t have it. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

  Amanda swallowed hard. Her left hand reached up and toyed with the end of her ponytail.

  “Okay. You don’t have any ideas for funding?”

  “Not a one,” said Roger. “But the athletics department budget seems to have a certain...um, cushion...in it every year. Maybe you could meet with Peter Downley, he’s the Athletic Director. Maybe he’s got an idea.”

  She’d never actually met the AD. She couldn’t just barge in there and ask him to put her on the payroll. “Maybe so, Roger, maybe so. But you’ll support me if I do this?”

  “One hundred percent.” He took the pencil from behind his ear and pointed it at her.

  She had her marching orders. Now to figure out the battle plan.

  “I think she’s going able to help you, Cole, I really do. I wouldn’t be bringing you here if I didn't feel like maybe there was something that the doctors just didn’t know—hadn’t told us. She does research, she’ll know the latest and greatest. And that’s what we need. Something new. Something that hasn’t been tried before.”

  Dane walked up the steps to Porter Hall with Cole following about a half-step behind. The younger Vasquez didn't share his father’s enthusiasm for this visit.

  Well, it wasn't really enthusiasm...it was the sense of something—anything. His son needed help. Dane knew he hadn’t been around to give help much during the last 18 years, but now he’d made big changes in his life. And his son had made a big sacrifice to come play for the Tidal Waves, to come play once
for his real father. Dane had let his son down for most of the boy’s life. He had one last chance to change and earn the young man’s trust. He wasn't going to throw that away like a wild pitch.

  “Dad, I'm just tired of doctors. I’m tired of appointments. I'm tired...I'm just tired, Dad. Just thinking about starting something else makes my head hurt, and these days everything makes my head hurt—but I can't do anything about it. I spend most of my days wanting to sit in a dark room and take a nap while my friends and my teammates are going to do normal college things. I don’t even want to join them, and I hate that."

  Dane’s heart broke to hear the flat tones in the boy’s voice. Cole had basically resigned himself to his fate. That this new life with a brain injury would be as good as it would ever get for him. Cole’s life as he knew it came to a dead stop when his head collided with a pitch. And sadly, he appeared to have accepted that as his future.

  Well, Dane hadn’t accepted it. He never would. He was slow to the uptake on this parenting thing, but he did know that parents were supposed to keep fighting for their kids.

  “Yeah I know, Son. That's why we're here. If there’s someone in Port Provident, or someone in Houston, or someone in Texas who has a better idea than what we've been told by your doctors back home, then we’re going to find them. And that search starts here, today, in our own backyard. If she doesn’t have anything to offer, we’ll move on. Texas is a big state—there’s someone here somewhere who can help you. TBI is not going to be a life sentence for you."

  He felt the sharp steel-like edge of anger slicing at the words as they rose from his throat. Dane meant every word. Traumatic Brain Injury would not be the story of Cole Vasquez’s life.

  They took the stairs to the third floor where Amanda McGovern's office was tucked at the end of the long hallway. It was ten o’clock sharp when Dane knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a voice from inside the room said brightly.

  Dane liked her enthusiasm. He liked Dr. McGovern’s willingness to help. And as Dane and his son stepped inside the office, Dane noticed the professor’s hair was once again styled in the same long golden ponytail that reminded him a little bit of Rapunzel.

  If he was honest, he liked that too.

  “Hi, Dr. McGovern.” Dane gestured to the young man standing next to him. “This is my son Cole Vasquez. Thanks again for seeing us today. We really appreciate it.

  Amanda pointed at the two chairs in front of her desk.

  “It's my pleasure. I really hope that I can help—please have a seat. It’s nice to meet you, Cole.”

  In return, Cole offered brief nod like he was signaling an upcoming pitch to his catcher. “It’s nice to meet you too, Dr. McGovern.”

  Dane heard the hesitation in his son's voice. He knew that even something as laid back as this introductory session could be too much for Cole. Walking over here, sitting in a room with fluorescent lights overhead, keeping up with conversation—they’d discovered that all of those could trigger a “flooding” sensation in Cole’s brain and send him straight for a migraine and then to his bed for the rest of the day.

  Still, Dane hoped Amanda didn't notice that Cole was holding something back. She was the best chance to make something happen for this semester to get his grades back up. Dane needed to keep Cole in school to give the teenager a shot at being on campus so he could then be a part the game they both loved and wanted to play together. The professor with the swishing ponytail couldn’t think they weren’t grateful an opportunity like this, to find out if she had any new ideas for them to try.

  “So, Cole, your dad tells me that you have some issues lingering from the concussion you got last year. Tell me about what that’s like.”

  Amanda focused her eyes directly on Cole, shutting out all distractions. Dane noticed they were a light shade of hazel, like a tree’s leaves gently changing to fall.

  “I was hit in the head by a pitch. Just didn’t see it coming...just couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. It knocked me to the ground. They say I was out for a few minutes. So, the next thing that I remember, my coaches were helping me off the field, then they called an ambulance and sent me straight to the ER. The doctor there did tests but said it was just a concussion, and probably within a couple weeks I'd be back to normal in the field. He said everything would be fine.” Cole stopped his stream-of-consciousness recollection and wiped his nose as he gave a sniff. He cleared his throat twice before speaking again. “But it wasn’t.”

  At his son’s description, Dane’s heart broke like a child snapping a twig. He could almost hear the click inside his chest as it popped in two.

  Amanda never looked away. It was clear she was very comfortable talking to students. She seemed like she was in her element—asking questions and getting to know her subject better.

  “So tell me, what are the symptoms that you have? Tell me all of them—not just the things that you think pertain to the classroom.”

  Cole closed his eyes. Dane could tell his son was carefully processing how he wanted to reply. “The worst part is that my head just gives out. I can be going along, doing fine, more or less. Then all of a sudden it just feels like Silly Putty is melting in there, like my brain just says, ‘nope, we’re done, come back another day’.” And I have to go take a nap, or lay down—just get away from wherever I am. Bright lights and too much noise bother me, and so even just being in a classroom with the overhead lighting—or walking across campus and listening to the sounds of the other students talking and yelling as they run by—or even being out there in the middle of the day with the sun shining—it just all sets me off.”

  Amanda wrote some notes on a scratch pad in front of her, then turned one hundred percent of her focus back to Cole. “Tell me more about when you're in class.”

  Cole dropped his head. “I just can't even focus. I start off with good intentions, but it feels like before my professors even get into the lesson, I’m lost. I got straight A’s in high school, so I don't understand what's going on here. It’s just so frustrating and I want it to stop.”

  The sound of a deep breath filled the room. “I just want to be normal again. I want to be me.”

  Amanda reached her hand across the desk toward Cole and gave him a reassuring pat. “I know it's frustrating. Did you say you’ve had concussions before?"

  “Yeah a couple. I think everyone who plays sports has ‘em, right?”

  Finally, a little bit of laughter. Dane clung to the fleeting hope offered by the small chuckle and the connection between his son and the professor.

  “It sure seems like it, doesn't it?"

  “Man, I just thought it was normal.” Dane jumped in. “I mean, I’ve gotten beaned a bunch of times, and some were worse than others, but I’ve never felt as bad as Cole feels—or for as long as he’s felt this way.

  “Well, we know the effects of TBI and Post-Concussive Syndrome are cumulative,” Amanda said. Look at the NFL players and the helmet lawsuit—there was even a movie about it not too long ago. The evidence now shows that the more concussions you have, the longer it will take you to get better. And while I'm certainly not a specialist in this area, I do know from some work I’ve done that the brain is fluid, and so if you get hit on one side there's a good chance that your brain moves and hits on the other side—or up or down and so you may wind up with multiple concussions from the same incident, or even something else. But diagnosing so many things in our brains is hit-or-miss because we can’t see. Doctors and others like me have to use our best guess about what’s going on. So, have you visited a neurologist?”

  “Yeah, my mom took me to one in Illinois. He just said to rest.” Cole gave another laugh, but this one was tinged with the bitter frost of sarcasm. “And that’s about all I can do these days. I mean, do you know how embarrassing it is for a college student to go to bed at eight or nine o’clock? That’s like grandparent time.”

  Amanda put down her pen, and a broad smile spread across her face. “Hey now
, I resemble that bedtime, and I’m not a grandparent. I may be a crazy cat lady, but I’m not a grandparent.”

  “Well it’s probably not as big of a deal to you, I guess, if you’re not trying to get someone to go on a date or something.”

  Dane hadn’t heard Cole talk about anyone he was interested in dating. His parent radar went up. But then, when Amanda replied, Dane discovered his blonde-with-a-ponytail radar stretched up even higher.

  “You’ve got me there. Not many hot dates for the college professor crazy cat lady.”

  He hadn’t been in Port Provident long, but Dane decided that all the men in this town were nuts if they weren’t lining up to ask Amanda McGovern out. She was smart, compassionate, and quite frankly, downright good-looking when she smiled—or when her casual ponytail gave a little swish.

  “Okay, grandparent time and crazy cat lady time. Either way, it’s not cool. That’s when my friends are going out—not going to bed.”

  “I’ve taught college students long enough,” Amanda said with a laugh. “Explain no more. So, do you have a neurologist you’re working with here? Illinois is a long way away.”

  “I went to go see one in Houston, and he told me the same thing as the first guy. I haven’t been back. I don't see what the point is.” Cole sounded defeated, like he’d watched his team get run-ruled before being sent to the showers.

  “Hmm, okay.” Amanda tapped her pen on the edge of the desk. “I think the first thing we need to do is to get you in with a neuropsychologist at Provident Medical Center to do a full neurocognitive exam. After that, will know better where you stand and what you can do. So I’ll take the first action item to make a few phone calls. Hopefully I can find some strings to pull and we can get this done quickly.”