The Big Game

by Tim Green

  He had to beat them both. A kid who’d be going to varsity as an eighth grader had to dominate his teammates. He dug deep, forcing his limbs to swing faster despite being numb. The burn torched his lungs, but he kept on, closing the gap and taking the lead in the final ten yards.

  When his foot hit the goal line first, he immediately backed his weight to slow down fast. His feet slapped the ground until a sharp pain pierced the side of his right foot. This pain was white hot, like a bolt of electricity.

  Danny stumbled. In the instant before he crashed to the turf, he wondered if he’d stepped on a nail, so deep and so fundamental was the pain.

  When he hit, he saw stars and felt another sharp pain in his shoulder, but neither one concerned him because he knew that something serious had happened to his foot.

  Coach Kinen appeared above Danny. “Okay, stop screwing around, Danny.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Danny squeezed his leg below the knee, rolling on his side in pain. “Coach, my foot.”

  “Are you kidding me, Owens?”

  “Coach, I’m not.” Danny winced and gritted his teeth. He couldn’t believe the pain. It made no sense.

  “What did you do?” Coach Kinen knelt down beside him.

  “Nothing. I was running. It felt like someone stabbed my foot, or like I stepped on a nail.” Danny had his ankle in both hands.

  Coach Kinen looked at his cleated foot. “I don’t see anything.”

  Suddenly Danny swallowed hard. Bile churned up from his stomach. He was scared, scared enough to make himself sick.

  “What is it, Coach?”

  “Here, let’s try to get you up.” Coach Kinen put his hands under Danny’s arms and lifted.

  Danny stood on one leg and tentatively placed his right foot on the ground. As soon as it touched he snapped it back into the air because it felt like he’d stepped on the same nail, maybe worse this time.

  “Did you twist it?” Coach Willard asked. “Is it your ankle?”

  “It’s my foot.” Danny’s voice broke and he bit down on his mouthpiece. “I can’t walk.”

  “Foot?” Coach Willard looked at Coach Kinen, who shrugged.

  “I have no idea,” the head coach said. “Let’s get his mom to take him to Doc Severs. You call her and I’ll get him up to the locker room.”

  Coach Willard took out his phone and Danny told him his mom’s number while Cupcake and Coach Kinen each slipped a head under one of Danny’s arms. The rest of the team fell in behind them, keeping respectfully quiet. Danny had no idea what had happened, but the pain told him that whatever it was, it wasn’t a minor injury. As hard as he fought it, the pain and the fear made his eyes watery. He sniffed and kept his head down, thankful for the helmet and the cover it gave him.

  There was a bench outside the locker room, and that’s where they set him with his leg up. Coach Kinen removed Danny’s shoe, which hurt enough that Danny couldn’t help grunting with pain even though he clamped down tight on his mouth guard.

  “Mom’s on her way.” Coach Willard held up his phone as he marched past.

  Coach Kinen and Cupcake stayed with Danny, even as his other teammates began to filter out of the locker room with their street clothes on. Cupcake’s brother, Herman, pulled up in his pickup and got out to investigate. Cupcake filled him in with a hushed voice.

  Herman put a strong hand on Danny’s shoulder. “I bet you’re gonna be fine, Danny. Can’t be anything too serious, right?”

  “Right,” Danny said weakly.

  Ten minutes later, Danny’s mom pulled up along the curb and stopped with a screech before jumping out of the car. “Danny, what in the world?”

  “I don’t know.” Danny shook his head.

  “I texted Doc Severs at the health center,” Coach Kinen told Danny’s mom. “He’s the best. Just give your name at the desk and he’ll take you in right away.”

  “Thank you, Coach.”

  “Here, let’s get him in the car.” Cupcake helped Coach Kinen as Danny limped between them.

  He got loaded into the front seat. Coach Kinen tossed his cleated shoe in the back and patted the roof. “Okay, Danny. Good luck. We need you, kid. If we’re gonna win a championship, we surely need you. Let me know what they say.”

  He closed the door and off they went, with his mom chattering about how she was sure it couldn’t be serious. Between sentences, she took long drags on the unlit cigarette in her hand—her way of getting ready to quit smoking entirely.

  “I mean,” she said, looking over at him for what must have been the tenth time as they pulled into the front circle of the medical center, “you can’t hurt yourself bad just running, right?”

  She left him in the car and ran in to the desk, taking out her insurance card. It was only minutes before a nurse came out with a wheelchair. She and his mom helped Danny into a wheelchair and took him right into the X-ray room.

  “Dr. Severs wants a few pictures,” she said.

  “He was running sprints,” Danny’s mom said. “You can’t break something just by running, right?”

  The nurse gave Danny’s mom a patient smile. “It’s standard procedure to get some X-rays. Let’s get him up on this table.”

  They helped Danny up out of the chair and he scooted his butt back onto a raised table. The nurse put a lead apron around his torso, and then a radiology technician slipped a flat, black X-ray cartridge under his foot. Everyone left the room. There was a short buzz and the tech came back with another cartridge, changing the angle of his foot. He took four pictures in all before Danny got back into the chair and was wheeled into an exam room to wait.

  His mom continued to fuss. “I can’t believe it’s anything, Danny. Are you sure you can’t walk? I mean, should you try again?”

  “Mom, my foot is killing me.” He looked at her in disbelief. Did she think he was faking an injury? He could feel a steady throb of pain on the outside edge of his foot.

  “Maybe I tore a ligament. I don’t know. It just . . . went snap, and I went down.” Danny clutched his ankle as if to cut off the pain.

  Dr. Severs entered the room with the X-rays under his arm. He was a tall, lean man in a white lab coat. He had a large head and wore stylish black-rimmed glasses. “Hi, Danny, Mrs. Owens, I’m Dr. Severs. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  The doctor slipped an X-ray up into a clip on the top of a light box hanging on the wall. “Hmm.”

  Danny could see the ghostly white image of his ankle and the puzzle pieces of his twenty-six foot bones.

  The doctor yanked the X-ray and snapped another one into its place. “Hmm.”

  He examined all four before turning to Danny. “Let’s take a look at that foot.”

  “Did you see anything, Doctor?” Danny’s mom wrung her hands.

  “Not yet,” he said coolly.

  The doctor took Danny’s right foot gently in his hands and looked closely at Danny’s face. The long fingers crept around his foot.

  “That hurt?” asked the doctor as he went. “That?”

  “No,” Danny said over and over as the hands moved closer to the spot where the pain was like a police siren.

  When Dr. Severs touched the spot on the outside edge of Danny’s foot halfway to his heel, Danny yelped and jumped.

  “Okay,” said the doctor. “That could be a couple things. Let’s get you an MRI.”

  Dr. Severs had the door open and was on his way out when Danny’s mom asked, “What things? Nothing serious, right, Doctor?”

  The doctor paused. His face gave nothing away. “I really can’t say. We’ll get the MRI and I’ll know more.”

  “But nothing that can’t heal . . .” Danny’s mom let the words hang out there.

  “I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily,” said the doctor, “but I can’t say it isn’t serious until I know what we’re dealing with here.”

  They went down the hall to where a large white MRI tube stood in the middle of a spacious room. Danny was put in the tube, and the te
ch left the room. The MRI machine was loud and seemed to take forever, but finally they finished and wheeled him back into the exam room.

  Danny’s mom was a wreck. He smelled cigarette smoke on her and figured she was too upset to be calmed by imaginary smoke. That made him more nervous, because he felt the same way she did. How could it be anything super serious when all he had done was run some sprints?

  Finally, Dr. Severs reappeared. If his face was any indication, it wasn’t good, but reading his face might mean nothing. The doctor sat down on the stool beside the exam table and looked up at them. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got.”

  “There’s a tiny hairline stress fracture in the fifth metatarsal. It didn’t show up on the X-ray, but we got it on the MRI.” The doctor looked back and forth between Danny and his mom.

  “He got this just by running?”

  The doctor nodded at Danny’s mom. “Yes. He may have weakened it in the game yesterday, but these small fractures usually present with something as seemingly harmless as running.”

  “So, it’s small,” Danny’s mom said. “That’s good, right?”

  “These things usually heal up in six to eight weeks with rest,” the doctor said.

  Danny’s mom brightened. “Six weeks! So you’ll be back for the big game, Danny. Maybe a few weeks before. You’ll be rested for the last part of the season. We’ll make lemonade out of lemons.”

  “Okay, so that would be the best-case scenario,” the doctor said. “Let’s not count on six weeks, though, because everyone is different.”

  “Even eight weeks won’t be the end of the world.” Danny’s mom was almost silly with joy. “The championship’s in nine. It’s part of Danny’s grand plan.”

  “I know about the game, but the issue with this type of injury is rest. He’s got to keep the weight off the foot until it’s healed.”

  The doctor wrapped Danny’s foot in a compression bandage. He took a deep breath and looked at Danny sternly while talking to his mother. “If he doesn’t keep off that foot and follow the RICE protocol, he may never fully recover.”

  Danny felt his stomach plunge. The paper on the exam table crinkled beneath his weight as he squirmed.

  Danny’s mom furrowed her brow. “Rice? What rice?”

  “The nurse will explain.” The doctor patted Danny’s leg and stood up. “The lemonade is that even in the worst-case scenario, he will be able to walk.”

  Danny’s mom put a hand on the doctor’s arm to keep him from going. “Walk? Not run?”

  “If it doesn’t heal—but I expect it will; more times than not it does—but if it doesn’t heal, then running would just be too painful. We’ll get you some crutches, Danny, and you really need to stay off the foot completely for the next five weeks. You can do some light leg machines in a week to keep your tone. We’ll get another MRI in five weeks and see where we’re at. Hopefully you’ll walk out of here.”

  The doctor looked at them with a forced smile. He seemed eager to get away. “Okay, you can make an appointment at the desk. Come back in five weeks. And I can’t say it enough, stay off that foot.”

  As soon as the doctor had gone and closed the door, Danny’s mom began to weep. She put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him to her.

  “Oh, Danny,” she moaned.

  “Mom, I’m okay. It’s gonna be fine.” Danny wriggled free just as the nurse came into the room with the crutches.

  The nurse explained that RICE meant rest, ice, compression from the wrapping, and elevation. She adjusted the crutches to fit Danny. His mom pretended to study a chart with a gruesome drawing of a knee and all its inner parts as the nurse showed Danny how to use the crutches.

  “Now, these are going to make you sore under your arms at first,” the nurse told Danny, “but you’ll get used to them. You may start to feel better soon, but please remember you need to keep all your weight off this foot until the doctor clears you.”

  She gave him instructions about icing his foot often for the next two weeks.

  “Yes, ma’am, I got it.” Danny made himself sound cheerful as he swung himself toward the door. “Come on, Mom. Thank you, ma’am. See you in five weeks.”

  Danny’s mom spoke in a low, pained voice to the woman at the desk who made the appointments. Danny was the one who accepted the paper appointment card from her and thanked her. They got in the car and his mom began crying again, just softly this time. Danny turned his head to the window and hunkered down for the long ride home.

  When they finally did get home, his mom sat at the kitchen table and put her head down into her folded arms.

  “Mom, you gotta stop. It’s gonna be fine.” Danny could barely speak, he choked so on his words.

  She held her head up and looked at him with dark, tear-stained makeup running down her cheeks. “That’s just what your father said. Every time. You . . . you just sounded so much like him. . . .”

  Danny’s face went still. His heart felt like it had exploded in his chest, and rage began to boil up into his brain.

  “Shut up!” he screamed, and it was as if it was someone else was screaming. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  He swung his crutch like a flipper. The lamp on the stand next to the couch shattered. The light bulb popped in a blue flash.

  “Danny!” his mother yelled. Danny got down the hall and into his room before striking the door with the same crutch. It slammed shut as his mom screamed again at him from the kitchen. “You come back here! Daniel, you come back here this instant!”

  He heard her loud and clear and he shouted through the door, “No!”

  Danny locked his door and then put his Xbox headphones on and turned up the volume. He thought he heard his mom knocking, but it stopped after a while. He didn’t know why he couldn’t talk to her, just that he couldn’t. With the Xbox settings on private, he would be able to tell when his friends got back from the varsity game, but if they got online they’d have no idea he was even signed in.

  He played and played, cursing people he didn’t know, killing opponents in the game with earnestness. He grew tired before he did his trick of dispatching his own team and shutting down the game. He got up, balanced on his crutches, and pressed an ear to his door. He heard the TV in his mother’s bedroom, so he snuck out and quietly crutched into the kitchen.

  It wasn’t easy, but he found an empty plastic grocery bag and filled it with some leftover pieces of chicken from the refrigerator, ice, and a can of soda. He quietly used the bathroom before retreating to his room. After slamming down the chicken and soda, he iced his foot, then tied up the garbage in the bag and went to sleep.

  In the morning, he woke to the sound of gentle knocking.

  “Danny?” His mom spoke softly. “Danny, honey?”

  Danny held his breath. He felt terrible about the night before. His foot hurt, but his heart hurt more.

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Can I make you breakfast?”

  “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Oh good. I’ll make scrambled with cheese like you like.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

  Danny used his crutches to get into the bathroom. Balancing on one, he brushed his teeth and changed into fresh clothes.

  “You look nice,” his mom said as he entered the kitchen.

  “Thank you.” Danny kept his voice and his head down, feeling ashamed of the way he’d behaved the night before. He still didn’t know why he had acted that way.

  “How’s your foot?” She was trying to sound upbeat, even bubbly.

  “Sore.”

  “Let’s ice it.” His mom got an ice pack from the freezer.

  Danny nodded and sat down at the table and propped his foot on a chair with the ice. He remained silent until she brought his eggs. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.” She sat down across from him with a strong-smelling mug of coffee. “So, we both kinda lost it last night, and we don’t have to go there, but I’ve been thinking and I’m determined to see a couple
things through.”

  Danny took a small bite and chewed.

  “You’re hearing me, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Still, he couldn’t look at her.

  “Good. So first, I’m going into school with you Monday morning to talk to Mr. Crenshaw. I don’t know why you’re doing some things that you’ve never done before, but I need to know if I can help. Honestly, right now I feel like I’m part of the problem.”

  “You’re not.” Danny met eyes with her briefly before hanging his head again and filling his mouth with eggs.

  “Well, I want to see what he has to say, and . . .”

  Danny could feel her eyes on him, and she didn’t speak until he finally looked up.

  “I want to apologize to you,” she said.

  “No, Mom. It’s my fault.” His lips felt numb.

  She shook her head. “I’m your mother. God knows I should have learned something about all this by now.”

  She sighed before continuing. “You’re just so good, I got caught up in it, the cheers, the looks, Mr. Colchester buying our dinner. It’s exciting, but I know better than anyone you can’t build your whole life around a game. Or . . . you shouldn’t, anyway.”

  She looked right at him. “We need—you need—to act like football doesn’t even exist, because it might not.”

  “I’m gonna get better.” Danny gritted his teeth.

  “I think you will, too.” She nodded enthusiastically. “But if you don’t, or if something else happens, it’s my job to make sure you’re okay, that you have other things you can do.”

  “Like what?” Danny had never considered doing anything other than the NFL.

  “Oh, Danny, there are hundreds of things . . . you could be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer. Think how smart you are in math.”