Her First Game

by Suzanne Hart

  “I can’t…” God this was so hard. “I can’t be here anymore.”

  He furrowed his brow, but I saw his face fall at the realization of what I was trying to say. “Dahlia, come on. This is a rare thing.”

  I tried and failed at swallowing the lump in my throat. “It’s not just about what happened yesterday. It’s everything else. I’m supposed to do no harm when really all I do is patch up people just enough that they can keep going and send them right back out, like they’re cogs in a machine and not human beings.”

  “They know what they’re getting themselves into.”

  I gazed up at him, the hot tears freely falling. I guess a part of me believed that he would take my side in the end, that there was another solution other than the one staring me square in the face. But no. “They don’t know any better. They don’t realize the long-term damage, and all anyone ever tells me is to ignore it, to deliberately allow it without taking any safety measures.”

  “It’s just,” He took my hands in his. “It’s just the way it's done. Sometimes… It’s hard.”

  I couldn’t even understand what he was saying. My heart pounded in my chest. “I just won’t sit back and watch this. If it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. But I won’t be a part of it anymore. I’m leaving.”

  He bowed his head. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders went completely stiff. “You’re leaving.”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered

  “You’re leaving the team?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re leaving me.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. This was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I was sure I would never meet another person like him in my life.

  “Yes.”

  Chet

  I stood up, clearing my throat, and buttoned my suit jacket. I was standing at the head of the conference table at the end of a meeting during which we had screened new candidates for the vacant position. Even though she had barely been apart of the company for three months, I had fought for and won some kind of compensation for her. I thought that would make it easier for her since she had basically quit into nothing.

  Dahlia.

  It had been two weeks since she quit her job and kicked me out of her house. I couldn’t deny that it hurt. It hurt like hell. She was one of those people who had become a permanent fixture in my life. After two months of dating her, I had basically already taken for granted that she would always be there for me. I had assumed that I would always have her.

  I needed her.

  But she was gone. I had tried everything, calls, texts, emails, but she was resolved. I had to try to move on. And yet, as we concluded that meeting, as I closed up my office and left for the day, I couldn’t deny this sneaking feeling that I was making the wrong decision letting her go, that I should do more. But I was at a complete loss. I could barely gain the respect of the board members acting as a glorified proxy for my dead father. How could I possibly get them to agree to a gutting of our entire health and safety policy and protocols?

  As I got in my car, taking a detour to the cemetery, I couldn’t help but wonder if I even should. The fact of the matter was that this was the way it was. It was a contact sport. It was practically expected that these things would happen. The players sacrificed their physical health, put themselves through extreme pain and mental strain for the millions of dollars they made every year, for the fans who bet their paycheck, their hopes on a good performance. There was so much to this I wished I could get Dahlia to understand. But she had made her decision.

  I stepped out of my car and took the short hike to my father’s grave. I hadn’t been there since the day he was buried and it seemed fitting to come back on a day that I missed him more than I ever thought possible. Once I had reached the headstone, I caught sight of my mother’s small frame hunched over with flowers in her hand.

  “Oh. Chet,” She said, her voice breaking.

  I realized that she had been crying. “Do you come here a lot?”

  She nodded. “Every day.”

  I gazed at the headstone and was met with death staring back, an infuriating emptiness. My father was another person I had taken for granted for always being there. We never got along and I never liked him, but I felt that he would always be there, and I didn’t realize how much I depended on him until he was gone. “I don’t know what to do.” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

  My mother didn’t say anything, but stepped towards me, putting her arms around me. “You’re father always did what he thought was best. You should be no different.”

  I nodded. I had to be my own person.

  Dahlia

  I hadn’t left my house in three days. Between being completely consumed in finding another job for myself and trying to pack up my house, I had possessed no desires to leave. I was crushed in the combined loss of Chet and my job, a job I had started to enjoy more and more. On the morning of the fourth day, I got up, dragged myself to the kitchen and finally called my mother back.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom?” I clutched my coffee mug in my hand, dreading what she would say.

  “Where have you been?”

  “It’s been a crazy two weeks.” I let out a humorless laugh.

  There was a pause, and then a sigh. “So what happened?” That knowing sound in her voice almost brought a smile to my face. It was so reassuring; the fact that mom was always mom.

  “I uhm… I quit my job.”

  I stood there in the silent reality of those words, waiting for her reaction. I hadn’t said them out loud until that moment and could barely face it myself. A lump lodged itself in my throat, my eyes watering.

  “So…” She sounded worried. God, she sounded so worried. I hated that. “So, what are you gonna do, then?”

  I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not coming home?”

  My eyes widened. “Oh. No yeah I think I am. I think I have to now.”

  She let out another sigh. But she almost sounded relieved. I grimaced. Sometimes I felt like my mother wasn’t thinking about what was best for me, but what was best for herself. I felt like she gave me advice according to what would have me closest to home, and herself: what would result in less loneliness for her. “That’s great.”

  My eyes stung. There was nothing great about this. I just wanted some support. “Yeah, I uh… I gotta go.” I said a hasty goodbye and hung up the phone.

  My mother was absolutely overjoyed at this opportunity to baby me again.

  It was going to be hell.

  But with no job and no way to support myself for the foreseeable future, there was nothing more for me to do. And moreover, the last thing I wanted was to stay in the house with all of its memories of Chet. I continued drinking my coffee and floated through the house, my eyes landing on the boxes, some of them half-packed from my haphazard efforts to try to get things started, others half-unpacked, because I hadn’t actually been in that house long enough to get to everything.

  Once I had drained my cup twice, I changed out of my pajamas and into a pair of jeans and t-shirt. I drew my hair up into a ponytail and started tackling the boxes. Even though I loved this team, and loved- … No, I wouldn’t think of him. Not now.

  My heart sunk anyway. My eyes watered.

  I still couldn’t believe this was happening.

  I sunk down on my knees, my stomach lurching with that familiar pain. It wasn’t fair that I had tried so hard, that I had cared so much. It wasn’t fair that after all the good I tried to do, I ended up here. I wiped my hands over my face and stood up, floating back to my kitchen.

  I gazed out onto my small back porch, thinking. That was another chapter of my life closed, over with, done. My eyes landed on my phone, laying on the counter, the screen black. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been calls and texts because there had been, plenty. I had ignored them because I knew what he was going to say and there was no point. I had made
my decision, and as long as all of the factors didn’t change, neither would I. What point was there in beating around the bush, hurting each other more and more?

  It wasn’t until well into the afternoon, that I was finally able to focus on something. I dragged an undeveloped, Home Depot box to my kitchen and formed it, the sound of the tape gun slicing through the dense silence. With that done, I laid out all the glasses in my cabinets, wrapping them and placing them inside the boxes. I continued doing this, almost obsessively, until my mind wandered again. I wondered what kind of jobs there might be for me in the future. I sat down to my counter and flipped open my laptop. Even though my first love had always been surgery, even though I had always been disappointed in the way things had gone without it, I couldn’t deny this new love of sports medicine. I wondered what other teams were hiring. And what’s more, I wanted to erase this experience, completely. I wanted to move on from this failure. Clearly, there had never been a place for me here.

  After idling searching the internet for an hour, I shut my laptop and had lunch.

  As I started up again, working through my kitchen cabinets, pulling all of my glass cups to be wrapped and shoved into the boxes I had spent all morning setting up, I heard a knock on my door. My brow furrowed in confusion as I made my way through my front hallway. I hadn’t ordered anything. But when I opened it, my heart stopped at the sight of Chet standing on the other side of the threshold.

  My first thought was that I had missed him. God I had missed him so much.

  My second thought was that I hadn’t brushed my hair yet that day.

  And my third was, “What are you doing here?”

  He smiled at me, a sad, desperate gesture that made his eyes twinkle.

  I wanted nothing more than to embrace him.

  “Can I come in?”

  I didn’t move at first. Could he? In that moment, I was so terrified of another terrible conversation, afraid of more words that would break my heart. I had to protect myself so that I could get out of there, so that I could move on.

  “Please?”

  But there he was, standing right in front of me, begging me to let him in. How could I refuse him. I bit my lip, stepping aside. “Yeah.”

  He stood in my front hallway, his hands in his pockets, glancing around.

  “I don’t have anything to offer you.” I said, my arms crossed. What was the point of this?

  “I’ve come to offer you your job back.”

  My heart sunk. Why was he so hell-bent on making this as hard on me as possible? “If I wanted it, I would have asked for it.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

  I sunk into my couch, placing my fingers on my temple. “That what you should apologize for. Is that what you’re gonna tell Collin? That it’s just too bad he’s paralyzed?”

  He sat down in the grandfather chair across from me. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “Do you even know? What do you stand for?”

  He set his jaw, folding his hands and leaning towards me. “I stand for you and us and this.” He said.

  My brow furrowed. He was wearing me down. I knew that I loved him, but that was just it. It wasn’t just about that. I had to know that he understood me. I had to know that we wanted the same things. I had to be sure that he was a good person. “But that’s not enough. Who are you? Do you even know?”

  “I know that things need to change with the company. And I’m not afraid of that anymore.” He stood up and walked towards me, leaning over me.

  I gazed up at him, my eyes watering. I wanted to believe him.

  “I thought about what you said and I don’t want things to be the way they always have been. I can’t go back to that.”

  “But what does that even mean?”

  “I won’t live my life on auto-pilot anymore.”

  My heart fluttered in my chest.

  “Not now, not after you. I want something better.”

  I sighed. My knees went weak as he took me in his arms. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

  He kissed me. “You were right, about the players, about me, about everything. I should have trusted you.”

  I was breathless. “How is this possible? How are you here?”

  I had been so dead set on leaving, so sure about getting as far away as possible. Now, the only thing I was sure about was him.

  “It won’t be that easy,” I said. “I need real changes. And Russ… Russ is dangerous.”

  He was kneeling before me, his arms wrapped around my waist, gazing up at me. “I know.” He chuckled. “God I know.”

  He kissed me again. “I love you.”

  My eyes teared up with happiness held him as tightly as I could. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “For what?”

  “For being everything I could ever want.”

  I kissed him, the touch like medicine, filling me up, making me feel more alive than I ever had.

  “I love you too.”

  Epilogue

  I sucked in a deep breath, letting my chest inflate with air. My eyes flickered shut as I tried to clear my head. I waited until the thumping in my heart had calmed down, at least a little, then opened them again. I stood up, bracing myself by placing my hands on the arm-rests of my office chair, then grabbed the big black binder I had spent months compiling. It was hard to think that I would be archiving this very soon, that very soon it wouldn’t be relevant anymore. I sucked in another deep breath, ran my hand through the thick brunette hair I had gotten jet straight, and picked up the binder.

  I had just stepped around my desk when I heard a knock on the door. I pursed my lips and opened it. There was Chet, looking perfect with his brown hair slicked back neat, his sharp features even more striking in the wake of his fresh shave, his bright stare boring into me. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of him, dressed up in a Tom Ford suit. I couldn’t tell whether the jitter in my bones, the one that still hadn’t gone away after six months of dating, was distracting or energizing, given what was just about to happen. “I told you not to come, before.” I said, but only part of me was truly annoyed that he had not followed my wishes.

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t resist seeing you.”

  Before I could say anything else, he took my face in both of his hands, grounding me, and planted a kiss on my lips, butterflies awakened in my stomach as our lips dance. My blood started heating up, the longer we stood there with me in his grip, his tongue, just ever so slightly in my mouth. I wanted more, but I had to focus. “Come on, you promised.”

  He chuckled and pulled away. “I need my daily dose,” then shifted his gaze down to the binder in my hands. He slipped it from my fingers. “Don’t worry. They’re all on your side. Your plan is flawless, and they’ve already debated it for months.”

  I stepped out of my office and shut the door behind me. “I know, but I just can’t see them being okay with the whole Doctor’s rec clause.”

  “Oh please. It’s only logical to have the doctor as the final say of whether a player plays or not. Especially if the injury happens in a game.”

  I nodded. “Everyone else is biased.”

  “Of course. Everyone is biased. Except for you. You have one goal.”

  “To protect the players.”

  The elevator came, and we stepped inside. “And the weekly physicals? What do they think about that?”

  But when I looked at Chet, I could see with his body language that it wasn’t exactly positive. “Well… to be honest, Russ finds it a little annoying.”

  “A little?”

  “Well more than a little. He thinks it’s a massive waste of time.”

  My stomach rolled. “Oh God.”

  “But he’s the head coach, not the board… and they aren’t really in the field like he is, so they won’t have the same opinion.”

  “You know that?”

  Chet turned his gaze on me, that deliberate stare stopping me in my tracks. I was possesse
d with an urge just to jump him in that elevator, but I had to put that away. This was some damn serious stuff. “Yes, I do.”

  “Okay, because that’s important. These players don’t wanna let people down. They’ll hide injuries. Literally.”

  The elevator swung open on the twenty-third floor of the building, and I stepped out. “What about the monthly mental health screenings?”

  Chet shrugged. “No major push-back there.”

  “What about having a senior medical professional as a permanent member of the board?”

  “There’s already a short-list of names.”

  We stopped in front of the large double doors of the conference room. I sucked in another deep breath and let myself think that this was it. I was finally going to get the change that I had campaigned so hard for, the change that had only been little more than a dream and some chicken scratch in a notebook. Chet squeezed my hand before he pushed the door open.

  We walked into the brightly lit room and walked around the conference-table, already populated with the entire board. Chet took his place at the head, and I sat down in the guest space - a little ways off. The next thing I knew, Chet was calling for the start of the meeting. This was the final vote. Everything came down to this.

  “Everyone in favor of incorporating the changes say, ‘I’.”

  I put my hands in my lap, squeezing them together, employing all the self-control I could to stop myself from biting my lips when:

  “I.”

  I looked around the table, and everyone had their hands up. Chet was the final one, his hand up, a twinkle in his eye.

  My eyes widened as I stood up. I couldn’t believe it. I had single-handedly changed the course of these players’ lives. I felt like I meant something; that everything I had been through, everything that everyone else had been through, actually amounted to real change…

  ***

  After I had officially decided to stay in Dallas, my mother was not exactly thrilled. In fact, she had already basically gotten accustomed to the idea that I would be with her again. She hated me always going away. But now that I had found a permanent position for myself… and a life, I could entertain the idea of her moving. We had been planning her visit for months, so when I picked her up from the airport that afternoon, right after the board meeting, our reunion was tearful in an ugly-cry-can’t-believe-my-eyes-are-burning, kind of way.