by John Goode
He was a handsome guy; he rocked that whole military style in a way that looks stupid on other men. What hit me, though, was how young he looked to me all of a sudden. I don’t know if it was the naked fear on his face or just the scruff, but I could see the guy my mom had fallen in love with and married all those years ago, and I realized I looked like him. He was still young, younger than the dads of anyone else I knew, but I hadn’t realized it until now. My dad was always older and invulnerable in my mind, but I had the feeling I was seeing him for the first time as a human being.
The nurse came in and saw me starting to sweat from the pain and my dad’s panicked look and hit the buzzer on the wall. “I need pain management stat,” she called into the intercom as she moved my dad aside. “Danny, where does it hurt?” she asked slowly, like I was a retard or something.
“My leg?” I gasped out, trying my best not to scream at her.
“Your leg or hip?” she asked, slipping a blood pressure cuff over my bicep.
To be honest, the pain seemed to be everywhere, but I tried to focus past it to see if there was an actual answer to her question. And there it was—just to the right of my ass, which made it more my hip than my actual leg, though there was a throbbing from my knee that wasn’t friendly at all. I tried to move slightly and was rewarded by another explosion of pain.
“Hip!” I screeched as I clenched my dad’s hand for support.
The nurse’s expression didn’t waver as she took my blood pressure, but I could hear her cuss just under her breath as she glanced over at the monitor on the other side of my bed. Pulling the cuff off, she turned toward the door and screamed, “Where are those meds?”
The pain was getting worse now as it crept from the side of my hip toward the rest of my groin. It felt like my bed had caught fire, and I involuntary tried to raise my hips to get away from it, which only caused it to flare harder.
The nurse’s hands grabbed the sides of my hips and pushed them down. Her eyes locked with mine. “Do not move,” she commanded in a tone that I was pretty sure could have stopped my dad in his tracks. “I know it hurts, but you have to keep still.”
I closed my eyes, and my head fell back onto the pillow as I tried to keep myself as still as possible. Through pained gasps I said, “You should seriously date this chick, Dad.” I took a few deep breaths as another wave of pain passed through my hips. “You guys could just order each other around.”
I heard my dad say something, but it was lost as the feeling of a hot poker being shoved into my pelvis hit me. I didn’t care what she said or who was watching—I let out a howl that was probably heard two states over. I arched my back instinctively, which only made it hurt more. Someone else ran into the room, and I heard my dad calling my name like he was at the end of a tunnel. He sounded worried, but he was so far away.
And then my hand was engulfed with heat, as if someone had put it in a bowl of boiling water. The feeling slowly but steadily made its way up my arm and into my shoulder. When the heat hit my heart, the world ceased to exist. I thought fuzzily that I had jumped up out of my body for a moment from the way the pain ceased to be. The no-pain wasn’t numbness; it was much more invasive than that. I was sure I was hovering above the bed and away from my body, which had trapped the pain.
I knew in some distant way they were doing something to me, but it felt like it was happening to someone else entirely. I was lost in that space of no time, and that was when I knew they had dosed me again. I assume this was what doing hard drugs felt like, and I had to admit I hated it. The lack of control and feeling of just floating made me sick to my stomach in ways I had never felt before. It was so beyond the dizzying feeling you get from heat exhaustion, or even getting hard fouled during a game, that it was insane. If this was the feeling junkies chased, I knew at that moment I would never be one of them.
Time must have passed, because the next actual thought I had was that the room was much darker than I remembered. My dad was there looking five years older than he had earlier today—least, I hope it was today. He saw I was awake and put the paper cup of coffee down and strode to my bed.
“Hey, bud, you okay?” he asked in a tone I wasn’t used to hearing from him.
I opened my mouth to talk, but it felt like my tongue had been deep fried in kitty litter. I croaked out a barely understandable “Water?”
He nodded quickly and poured me a cup of water from a plastic jug that was just out of reach from my bed. I tried to sit up to take the cup but found myself strapped to the bed. I looked, and there was some kind of belt across my waist holding me down. “You really aren’t allowed to move,” he said with a slight smile that seemed more sad than happy. He put a straw to my lips, and I sucked the liquid down as fast as I could manage. I know now it may have just been normal, room temperature tap water, but let me tell you, that was the best-tasting water I had ever experienced.
I finished the contents of the cup in one swallow and took a few seconds before asking, “More?”
He chuckled, and this time it sounded more joyful than sorrow filled.
“Take it easy. You have cotton mouth from the meds, that’s all,” he said, putting the straw up to my lips again.
This time I did take a few smaller sips, but the water was no less exquisite than it had been before. If anything, now I had time to relish its perfection as my throat came back to life. “What happened?” I asked after finishing the second cup.
“Today?” he asked, tossing the empty in the trash.
I shook my head and nodded to the cast. “I mean what happened?”
He followed my gaze and nodded. “Ah, you mean what happened with the car?”
“Oh God! Did I wreck your Jeep?” I felt my stomach do a barrel roll as I thought of even a scratch on the Jeep.
He pulled the chair closer to the side of the bed. “One, it was your Jeep; two, your Jeep saved your life; and three… yeah, it’s wrecked.”
I didn’t know how to process that information and lay there feeling like I had just found out a family member had passed away. Dad had owned the Jeep since before I could remember, and it was gone because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered after a few moments of silence. He looked down at me in confusion and saw the tears in my eyes. “I know I screwed up,” I said, choking up.
He looked like his eyes were going to fall out. “Danny, the guy jumped into your lane. This isn’t your fault.”
I had no idea where all this emotion was coming from. I was tired and still woozy from the drugs, sure, but it was more than that. The Jeep was just a symptom of a larger problem, and that problem was me. Everything I seemed to touch got fucked up, and no matter how hard I tried to make things right, I just ended up making them worse by the time I was done. Basketball was supposed to be the thing that made me right, and I’d fucked that up just like I had fucked everything else up.
I felt my eyes sting as I got out a barely audible “I mean the other thing.” I forced myself to keep talking. “I know I’m not what you wanted in a son—”
“What?” he said, cutting me off. “Are you serious?”
His voice was angry, and normally I would have been taken aback by it, but all it did was make me feel worse. “I know you would have liked someone who wasn’t—” The word refused to pass my lips. “—who wasn’t wrong.”
He stopped and stared at me with an intensity that made me think he might go off and hit me for a second. In a halting voice that cracked with emotion, he asked, “Did I make you think that? That you weren’t right?”
I couldn’t even look at him. “I know what I am, Dad. I know what it is.”
“Jesus!” he cursed, pulling at what little hair he had in frustration. “I don’t….” He stopped and turned away from me.
“Dad?” I asked, feeling light-headed for a moment
When he turned around, there were tears in his eyes. “Danny, I almost lost you like I did your mother. When I got the call….” He stopped, unable to go o
n. Fighting back the emotion, he continued, “Son, you are exactly what I wanted in a son, and if I ever made you feel anything different, that is my fault, not yours.”
He took my hand again, and I felt a weight melt off my shoulders as I began to get sleepy. “I just want to be better….”
I never finished the sentence because I drifted off to sleep.
My dreams were haunted by half-glimpsed images that refused to come into focus but were nonetheless terrifying to my sleeping mind. There was a pack of people just outside my vision who were screaming things at me, but I couldn’t understand them. I was wearing a basketball uniform that was too small, and no matter how I tried to pull it down to cover me, it didn’t work. I was supposed to shoot a free throw, but every time I picked up the ball, I could feel my shorts riding up, exposing me to the crowd. I could hear the crowd laughing from inside the darkness, and I saw the shot clock running out.
I woke up drenched in sweat, fighting as hard as I could against the band that kept me strapped to the bed.
“Whoa, Danny,” my dad said, putting a hand on my chest to hold me down before I hurt myself more. “It’s a dream. It was just a dream.”
I could still hear the laughter in my head, but it faded away to the sound of my pounding heart as I realized I was awake. “Dad?” I asked, confused about where I was for a moment.
“You were in an accident, Danny. You’re in the hospital?” he offered, and it came back to me.
I nodded and lay back as he moved his hand. “Bad dream?”
My mouth opened to answer him, but as quickly as the dream had hit me, the memory of it vanished. I struggled to grab what I could about it, but all I could remember was holding a basketball and people laughing at me, which didn’t seem that scary at all. Instead I just nodded and reached for the water before I realized I was still strapped down to the bed.
“How you feeling?” my dad asked, pouring me a fresh cup of water.
I downed it before answering. “Sore but nothing serious.” My leg throbbed, but it was a dull ache compared to the knives of agony I had been through before. “How long was I out?” I asked, not sure how much time had passed.
“Not long,” he said, pouring me another cup and putting it on the tray closer to me. “So you think you’re feeling up for a visitor?”
I paused. Who would want to come see me?
Before I could even ask, the door opened, and Nate burst through with a handful of balloons bobbing over his head. “Man, the things you do to get my attention!” he said with a huge smile on his face.
I could feel my face break into a matching grin when I realized he was really there and not some drug-induced hallucination.
“There’s no need to fear,” he said, handing me the balloons. “Natedawg is here.”
And for the first time since I woke up in pain, I felt better.
I had no idea why my dad had called Nathan, but I got the feeling he thought something “more” had happened between us in Florida. There was really no way to explain to him that Nate and I were just friends, but at that very moment, I didn’t care. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed him until I started talking to him. He ended up eating my Jell-O as we watched SportsCenter during lunch, the entire time telling me how the season was for him and his team. My dad went home, hopefully to shave and change clothes, and we watched football until dinner.
As I ate my tasteless hospital meal, he chowed down on a burger he had bought from the vending machine. “So… tell me this was an accident and not a cry for help,” he said as we watched the scores scroll past the bottom of the screen.
I almost choked on my chicken as I looked over to him. “What?”
He kept watching the screen. “I heard about your season and that you got pretty beat up.” I felt my stomach start to knot as the thought of my attitude reaching Nate’s ears passed through my mind. “Couple of people said you got pretty cocky.”
I wasn’t hungry before, but now I felt sick to my stomach and put my fork down carefully. He looked over at me, and all I could do was nod.
He took another bite and went back to watching TV. “Yeah, I did that too in high school, was a complete dick.” I almost choked as I tried to think of Nathan being as bad as I had been this year. “I thought I was the second coming of Jordan or something and started telling everyone what to do.” He shook his head at the memory. “Complete douchebag.”
“What did you do to change?” I asked, feeling like we were talking about a fictional character rather than him.
“We got our asses kicked, and I ended up having the best stats on a losing team.” He tossed the wrapper into the trash and looked back at me. “And in the end that made me a loser too. Remember that, young Jedi,” he advised with a smile. “The team wins or no one does. That’s the only way it works.”
I felt three kinds of shitty, but there was a light at the end of this tunnel, I realized. There was a way to get out of this. I just needed help. “How long you staying?” I asked him, trying not to sound too hopeful.
“I’m here as long as you need, bud.” His smile was infectious. “I ain’t going nowhere.”
I felt like things were looking up, right up until my dad walked in with the doctor.
The look on the doctor’s face was so neutral that it came across as fake. He obviously had his poker face down pat when delivering bad news to patients. If it was just him, I might have missed the way his eyes never lingered on me for long or the way he kept his distance as he talked. But as it was, it wasn’t just him, and my dad has a horrible game face.
I suppose my face wasn’t all that slick as well, because Nate grabbed my fingers and squeezed them to get my attention. When I looked up at him, he gave me a reassuring smile, which made me more confused than anything else.
“So, Danny,” the doctor said, looking at my chart. “How’s the pain?”
“Right now? Not bad,” I answered truthfully.
He nodded and checked something off. “Turns out you’re allergic to codeine,” he said, still not looking at me. “Would have been nice to know that before we gave it to you, but it turns out you’ve never needed it before now.” He glanced up at me. “See what being healthy gets you?”
I’m pretty sure that was an attempt at a joke, but I didn’t smile.
“So here it is,” he said, closing the chart. “The car that hit you impacted the driver’s side going somewhere around sixty miles an hour. It was the fact that your Jeep was so far off the ground that you’re here to talk about it. Instead of hitting you straight on, it caught you below the waist.” He paused and let those words settle in. “I’ve seen enough car crashes in my time to know, you would have most likely been killed in a normal car. You got lucky.”
If this is what lucky felt like, I did not want to be unlucky.
“Now the bad part. Your leg is broken in three different places, and there is a hairline fracture in your hip. I have no doubt that you’re going to heal from it completely. You’re young and in great shape.”
I nodded, not understanding the bad part of the news.
“But there is a chance you aren’t going to be able to play ball anymore,” he said flatly. “I mean, maybe recreationally, but professionally?” He shook his head as a way of finishing his sentence. “Anyway, we aren’t there yet. We have a lot of physical therapy in front of us first. You thought you exercised before? Wait until you try rehab; you’ll wish you could go back to just working out.”
Nate, who was still holding my hand, looked at the doctor. “You’ve never done two-a-days, doc, and you’re wrong.” He looked down at me and grinned. “He’s not only going to play basketball again, he’s going to kick ass at it.”
My dad asked the doctor some questions, but I ignored it as I looked up at Nate. “You really think so?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I know so.”
He said it with such conviction I had to believe it myself.
CHAPTER NINE:
REBOUND
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br /> TURNS OUT the doctor was not wrong; physical therapy sucked balls.
I was released with crutches and pain killers after a week and a half, a week and a half that Nate spent by my bedside. I asked him if he had other places to be, but he always shook his head no before going back to watching TV. “Nope, I’m where I need to be.”
And that was the end of the conversation.
When I got home, I found my dad had replaced my bed with a much larger hospital-style one. “Turns out there were still a few of these in storage on base from when it was a hospital,” he explained when I looked at the thing, confused. “You’re going to need to keep as much weight as you can off that hip for the time being. This is going to help.”
I found it hard to believe that my dad found a free hospital bed just lying around, but I was too tired from hobbling from the car to my room to argue. I sat down on the edge of the mattress, and my dad took my crutches. I saw most of my stuff had been moved out of the way, and my old bed was against the far wall. At the end of the bed stood two suitcases and a duffel bag with the A&M logo on it.
“Nate’s using your old bed. You don’t mind, right?” my dad asked me. I heard Nate clattering into the house, hauling the rest of my stuff in from the car,
“He’s sleeping in here with me?” I asked, panicked.
My dad gave me a small smile. “Relax, it’s going to be okay.”
Having Nate in my room as I slept was not my definition of okay at all. But I was too tired to argue. Instead I leaned back into the bed and scooted myself up, which brought an explosion of pain from my hip.
