Paralyzed

by Jeff Rud

“It’s right here,” she said, pointing to a door. “He has a roommate, and he’s pretty tired. So you can only see him for a couple of minutes. And you have to keep the noise down. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  I opened the door. The lights were off. There wasn’t enough light coming through the lone window to fully illuminate the room. There were two beds, about ten feet apart. A light was on above the far one. I guessed this was Nate’s.

  My heart was pounding as I crossed the room toward where he lay. Nate was reading a football magazine. He obviously hadn’t heard me come through the door. I bumped into a metal cart beside his bed. The noise made him look up from his magazine.

  I’m not sure whose face wore more surprise, mine or Nate’s. His eyes widened as he looked up. He didn’t look sick or hurt—just tired—and he smiled at me.I had never been so relieved to see a smile in all my life.

  “Hey, Reggie.” Nate grinned from his bed. “Thanks for coming in to see me.”

  “Hey,” I replied. “I’ve been really worried about you, dude.”

  A few seconds of awkward silence followed. “So how are you doing?” I said, finally. “I guess that’s a stupid question, huh?”

  Nate shook his head. “I’m still pretty messed up,” he said. “But I can feel my legs and my feet again. The doctors say that’s a really good sign. For a couple of days, it was pretty scary.”

  He had hardly finished his sentence when I just blurted it out. “Nate, I wanted to say sorry,” I said. “I’ve felt so bad with you lying in here. I wanted to let you know that I didn’t mean...”

  “Naw,” Nate said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it. It didn’t have anything to do with you. I’m the one who—”

  The door to the hospital room burst open. In strode Nate’s mom.

  “What are you doing in here?” she yelled, flashing me the same angry look she had given me last week. “I told you not to come back. We don’t need you here!”

  “Mom,” Nate interrupted. “It’s okay. He’s my friend. We’ve been to football camp before. He’s just checking to see how I’m doing.”

  “Friend!” the woman shrieked. “What kind of friend does this to somebody?”

  When she said the word “this” she pointed to Nate, lying in the hospital bed. I was feeling sick to my stomach again.

  “Stop it, Mom!” Nate yelled. “Reggie didn’t have anything to do with this. It was my fault, not his. Why are you doing this?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I started to back away from Nate’s bed. “I’d better be going, anyway,” I stammered. “I’ve got to get to school. Take care, Nate.”

  The woman had taken a seat in the corner of Nate’s room. She had her head buried in her hands. It seemed like she had already forgotten I was there. Nate waved at me and shrugged his shoulders, looking over at his mom and back at me.

  I left his room feeling a little better than when I had entered. The fact that Nate’s condition was improving was awesome news. He didn’t seem the least bit mad at me, which was also a huge relief. His mom, however, was a very different story.

  For the entire bus ride to school, all I did was think about what had happened in that hospital room. Nate’s Mom had been so upset. I still didn’t really understand why.

  My detour to the hospital meant that I had missed third-period math. It was lunch hour by the time I arrived at Lincoln. I was heading to the cafeteria to find some of the guys from the team when I heard myname being paged. I was to go to the office. Probably because I’d missed math.

  When I got to the office, Coach Clark was there waiting. Beside him was another man, wearing a dark suit and carrying a briefcase.

  “Hi, Reggie,” Coach said, smiling. “This is Mr. Danton from the Northeast Athletic District office. He wants to speak with us. Can you spare a couple of minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  The three of us walked down to Coach Clark’s office. Once inside, the coach pointed each of us to a chair and then closed the door before sitting down.

  “Reggie, I’m sure you’re curious about what’s going on,” Mr. Danton said.

  I nodded.

  “Here’s the situation. We’ve had an official complaint about you from Milbury. It didn’t come from the coaches or the players. But the complainant feels that you behaved inappropriately during and after the play on which Nate Brown was injured.”

  Once again, I felt queasy, and my mouth went dry. Hadn’t pretty much everybody been telling me that none of this was my fault?

  “I’ll be straight with you, Reggie, because you deserve to know,” Mr. Danton continued. “The complaint is from Nate’s mother, Elizabeth Brown. She feels strongly that something you did on the field caused or helped to cause Nate’s injury. And she’s particularly upset because she feels you were celebrating after the play. She wants you suspended.”

  I was speechless.

  “We’ve looked over the video from that play and directly afterward,” Mr. Danton continued. “There is no evidence to suggest that you did anything wrong. In fact, the accident was clearly Nate’s fault. And it’s obvious that what you were celebrating was your interception, not the fact somebody got hurt.”

  I was relieved to hear that. At least the athletic district believed me.

  “Nevertheless,” said Mr. Danton, “the district has procedures it must follow. In cases like this, where there is an official complaint, we are compelled to hold a hearing. So that’s what I’m here to inform you about, Reggie.”

  A hearing? Sounded more like a trial to me.

  “What for?” I said, my voice squeaking. “I mean, you just said that it was an accident.”

  Coach Clark interrupted. “Reggie, it’s just procedure,” he said. “The hearing will be at the athletic district office on Thursday morning at nine AM. It will give you a chance to explain yourself in front of Nate’s parents. I’m sure once they hear your side, everything will be fine.”

  “That’s right, Reggie,” Mr. Danton said. “You have nothing to worry about here. I’ll see you Thursday.”

  He got up to leave. I said good-bye, and he walked out the door with Coach Clark.I remained in my chair and mulled over this latest news. Now I understood where the Times got the information about a suspension. It had probably come directly from Nate’s mom.

  I was just leaving the office when Coach Clark returned. “Try to relax, Reggie,” he said soothingly. “This will all blow over soon.”

  I told the coach about going to see Dr. MacIntyre that morning and about how I had popped in to visit Nate Brown. I also told him about my second run-in with Nate’s mother.

  “That’s great news about Nate,” the coach said, a wide smile creasing his square face. “That must make you feel better, hey, kid?”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t feel very good to have his mom screaming at me again,” I replied. “She hates me, Coach.”

  “She doesn’t hate you, Reggie. She just hates what’s happened to her son. We’ll doeverything we can at this hearing to smooth things over. In the meantime, let’s get you back on the football field this afternoon.”

  With everything that had gone on this morning, I had forgotten about practice. And all of a sudden, for the first time in more than a week, I realized I was actually looking forward to putting on the pads again.

  chapter twelve

  By Wednesday morning, my life seemed to be getting back to something approaching normal. Practice had gone okay on Monday and Tuesday. I still wasn’t hitting as hard as I usually did, but at least I was hitting again.

  My anxiety about Nate Brown had decreased too. Although I was still concerned that he wasn’t walking yet, it had been terrific news to hear that he had feeling back in his legs and feet. And thefact that he wasn’t angry at me had been a major relief.

  On Wednesday morning, when Mom dropped me off at Dr. MacIntyre’s office for my second appointment, I wasn’t sure what we were going to talk about. Now that Nate was on the ro
ad to recovery, I felt better about football. Not completely normal, but better.

  “Good morning, Reggie,” Dr. MacIntyre said as he called me into his office. The trophies gleamed from behind his desk. One large plaque that hung on the wall behind his chair caught my eye. Pac-10 Conference Defensive Player of the Year, it read.

  “Did you play football?” I asked. The psychologist had an athletic build, but it had never occurred to me that he might have been a serious football player.

  “A little,” he said modestly. “I was a middle linebacker for ucla back in the eighties. I played at Lincoln too. Just like you.”

  I was blown away. ucla—that was a big-time college football team. Dr. MacIntyremust have been a great player. It was my dream to get a football scholarship to a school like ucla.

  “That’s the position I play too,” I said.

  “I know, Reggie. I think you and I have a lot in common. In fact, I even went through something like you’re going through, back in my freshman year at ucla. For a couple of weeks, I thought I might even quit football. But I didn’t.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “When you were a freshman, I mean?”

  “Nothing happened to me,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “It happened to another freshman on our team. He got hit hard in practice by somebody else and tore up his knee. I was right there to see it happen. He never played again. It kind of freaked me out for a while.”

  Dr. MacIntyre went on to explain that he’d had problems similar to what I’d experienced after that incident. He was shy of contact. He couldn’t bring himself to hit hard, even though he’d hit players thousandsof times before, and he was afraid of being tackled himself.

  “So what did you do to get over that?” I asked.

  “I used a technique that one of my coaches suggested,” he said. “It’s called centering.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It involves concentrating on something simple, typically something like deep breathing,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “You concentrate on that, and it helps keeps your mind from wandering and dwelling on negative outcomes. Takes a bit of practice, but it works.”

  It sounded pretty simple. Too simple, in fact. How could breathing deeply help me tackle better and forget Nate Brown’s injury?

  “Reggie, I’m going to give you some exercises to try,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “These are mental exercises tied to a simple physical component. I want you to breathe in deeply, hold the breath for a count of fiveand then exhale slowly. Try to focus solely on that task and nothing else.”

  I did what he said. It was easy. This guy might be a psychologist, but this wasn’t exactly rocket science.

  “Now, do me a favor,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “Today at practice, whenever you’re lining up for a snap, do this same deep-breathing exercise. Just wipe everything else out of your mind. And practice it at home too. The more you do it, the more effective it becomes.”

  “Okay, I’ll try it,” I said. “Is that what you did to get over your problem?”

  Dr. MacIntyre nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “It worked so well for me, I decided to do it for a living.”

  We both laughed. I felt a lot better about this second visit than I had my first. I was still skeptical about whether this “centering” thing was actually going to work, but I was willing to trust Dr. MacIntyre. After all, he had been an ncaa football star. Wait until I told the guys on the team about this.

  As I left the clinic, I had already decided to go visit Nate again. I knew I ran the risk of seeing his mother, but it was worth it. The last visit had done both him and me a lot of good.

  This time, I went directly to the fifth floor head nurse’s station. The nurse there gave me a warm smile. “He’s in rehab today,” she said. “His progress over the last forty-eight hours has really been amazing.”

  The nurse led me down to a room at the far end of the hall. The inside resembled a dance studio, with rows of bars and mirrors on the walls. Inside, patients were being led slowly through walking exercises, using the bars for support.

  I spotted Nate at the far end. He was standing up, resting one arm on the bar and shuffling ahead. It was so good to see him on his feet.

  “Hey, dude,” I said. “Nice to see you up and around.”

  Nate grinned. I could tell by the sweaton his brow that he was working hard. “It’s a bit weird, having to do this so slowly. But if feels great to be doing anything.”

  Nate told me that the swelling on his spine had decreased dramatically. He said he had bugged the doctors to let him try to walk. Finally, this morning, they had agreed.

  “I told them I wanted to be at football practice by Thursday,” he said.

  We both knew he was joking. But who cared? A week ago, neither one of us had been in any mood to joke about anything.

  I didn’t want to ask the question. Luckily, Nate sensed what was on my mind.

  “They say I probably will be able to play again,” he said. “If my mom lets me, that is. She’s not exactly the world’s biggest football fan right now.”

  I laughed nervously. “She’s not exactly my biggest fan, either.”

  Nate looked directly into my eyes. “I’msorry about that, Reggie,” he said. “I’m her only kid. This has been a nightmare for her. But I’m really sorry she took it out on you.”

  Nate stretched out his hand and I shook it. It was so good to see him up and moving around that I almost felt like running back to Lincoln instead of taking the bus.

  That afternoon at practice, Coach Molloy worked the defense hard. After we had surrendered the game-tying field goal against Franklin, everybody knew the pressure was on us this week in a road game against Filmore. We couldn’t afford a loss to the Friars or our playoff hopes would take a nosedive.

  “Okay, gentlemen, it’s offense against defense,” Coach Clark said. “Let’s run it full speed today. Hit hard out there, guys. We’ve got a big game Friday.”

  I lined up at middle linebacker, waiting for our offense to run its first play. While they huddled around Lance Turner,I began the routine that Dr. MacIntyre had suggested. I took a deep breath and held it for five seconds. Then I exhaled slowly, thinking of nothing else. I did it again and again.

  I was so focused on my centering technique that I was a second slow to react as Turner took the snap and rushed the football directly up the middle. I dove for his legs, but it was too late. He breezed right by me for a big gain.

  “Reggie,” yelled Coach Molloy. “You’re daydreaming out there. Get your head in the game!”

  I was embarrassed. So far, Dr. MacIntyre’s technique wasn’t exactly working wonders.

  Still, I tried it again on the next play. I inhaled and held it for five seconds. Then I exhaled, clearing my mind. The ball didn’t come my way for a few snaps, so it was difficult to tell if it was working. I was a little more relaxed than I had been during recent practices.

  I continued to use the technique before every snap. Half a dozen plays later I was ready when Turner took the snap and dropped back. I was trying to read his body language, figuring out whether this was a pass or a run. Our quarterback started to his right but then looked up the middle where Jeff Stevens was streaking into the flat.

  Lance cocked his right arm and fired the ball on a tight line toward Stevens. Jeff stretched out his arms to bring the ball into his body. But my own instincts had taken over. Three feet away from Jeff, I launched my body into a full tackle. The football and I arrived at the same time. It bounced off Jeff’s hands and fell to the ground, joining both of us in a heap on the turf.

  Jeff sprung up and glared at me. Then a big smile broke out underneath his face guard. “Yah!” he screamed. “That’s the old Stick-’em! Nice hit, dude!”

  I looked around at my teammates and coaches. Most of them were smiling. I was back, and it felt great.

  I used Dr. MacIntyre’s technique for the rest of the practice. It was working. I hadn’t hit this well since before the incident with Nate Brown. At
the end of practice, Coach Molloy and Coach Clark called me over for a talk.

  “Now that’s more like it, Reggie,” Coach Molloy said, beaming.

  “Outstanding effort, son,” added Coach Clark.

  After a week from hell, it felt so good to be comfortable again on the football field and with my coaches. There was just one more hurdle to clear. The hearing with the Northeast Athletic District officials was tomorrow morning.

  chapter thirteen

  My alarm was set for 7:00 AM, but I woke up at six and couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided I might as well head downstairs and get some breakfast.

  Dad was already up and nursing a cup of coffee. “You okay?” he asked, eyeing the kitchen clock.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m just a little nervous. I don’t know what this thing’s going to be like.”

  “It’s perfectly natural for you to be nervous,” Dad said. “But I think this is just a formality so that the district is seen to be following proper procedure. Anybody with an ounce of sense realizes you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  My father’s words were reassuring. I was happy he was coming with me this morning. Dad had taken a half day off from his job at the post office to accompany me to the hearing. I felt a lot better knowing he’d be there to back me up.

  I carefully buttoned up my blue dress shirt and put on the striped tie that my aunt had given me for Christmas. I kept it permanently tied and hanging on a coat hook in my bedroom, since I didn’t know how to tie it yet. I pulled on my black blazer and tan pants and checked myself out in the mirror. I always felt like somebody else whenever I dressed formally. The only other time I wore this outfit was for the preseason Lincoln team booster dinner, when Coach insisted on it.

  Dad and I were quiet on the twenty-minute ride to the Northeast Athletic District office. Neither of us had been there before. Neither of us knew quite what to expect.

  When we entered the lobby, Mr. Danton greeted us. He smiled. “Good to see you Reggie, Mr. Scott.”

  We were led into a large boardroom and seated together on one side along with Coach Clark. Seated along the other side of the table were Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown was looking toward the far end of the room as we took our seats. She seemed to be deliberately avoiding eye contact with us. The Browns were with a man in a dark suit.