Less than a second later he took the hit.
Margie knew the second contact was made that Tyler was hurt. She was on her feet before he hit the ground, racing forward to the sheet and casting a long shadow across the screen. Silent tears streamed down her face as she grabbed the sheet in front of her and kneaded handfuls of it between her palms. The tears grew heavier as she registered the level of concern in the announcer’s voice and thicker still as the network replayed the hit again and again.
By the time an ambulance rolled onto the field she was hyperventilating, both cheeks stained red and glistening in the half-light of the gym.
Rooted in place, she watched as medics loaded Tyler onto a gurney and hoisted him into the back of the ambulance. On the field groups of players knelt in prayer as the cameras panned over the shocked faces of spectators from both sides.
The ambulance crossed the enormous logo painted at midfield and fled from the stadium as Margie stood with a hand pressed over her mouth. Every pair of eyes in the gym was locked on her, a few with tears of their own.
Nobody made any effort to go to her. Even the youngest children sensed the gravity of the moment and stood still, watching things unfold.
The sound of Margie's cell-phone rang out, just audible above the concerned voices of the ESPN crew working the game. By little more than reflex she tugged it from the pocket of her jeans and held it to her face. “Hullo?”
“Ms. Bentley," a deep baritone responded, "this is Jeromy Burbank, team doctor for the Crimson Knights. I assume you saw the play.”
It was a statement, not a question.
Moisture again pooled on the underside of Margie's eyes. “Yes.”
“Ms. Bentley, I’m very sorry to call like this but Tyler insisted that I do so. He wanted me to tell you that he’s alright and not to worry.”
Margie pushed out a breath, trying to work down the lump in her throat. “Is that the truth or is that what Tyler asked you to tell me?”
A long pause followed and Margie could hear him sigh. “All I know is we are flying Tyler back to Ohio right now to get it looked at. We’re not even waiting for the game to be over. As soon as they can get his leg stabilized, they're getting him on a private plane back."
“They’re taking him back to Ohio Tech? Right now? To get his leg looked at?”
“I wish there was something else I could tell you, but right now that’s all there is to report. Dr. Leddy is with him; he’ll be doing all he can to help your son until they land.”
“Th-thank you,” Margie said and closed the phone. She shut her eyes as the phone slid from her face and dropped to her side.
Without opening her eyes she rotated to face the room. “Can someone please give me a ride to Cody? I have to go to Ohio and I don’t know how long I’ll be there."
The room stood stock still for several seconds. Somebody had killed the audio on the video play and the only sound was the wheels on the projector as the game got back under way. It threw a ghostly pallor across Margie as she stood there, though nobody noticed.
After several long moments of silence, a solitary man in blue flannel and denim took a half step forward. “You go on home and get everything you need Margie. I’ll be by in fifteen minutes to get you.”
“Thank you Burt,” Margie mumbled.
Eyes still closed, she strode across the gym and into the night, leaving the entire town staring after her in complete silence.
Chapter Three
Marcellus Sarconi wound the solid black tie around his neck and knotted it inches below his sagging chin. It was a move he practiced almost every single day dating back over two decades, his fingers moving through the motions from pure muscle memory. He pushed the knot tight up to the neck of his starched white dress shirt and flipped the collar down over it, giving himself one last check in the mirror.
As he dressed a list of things he would rather be doing on New Year's Eve ran through his mind, though he said nothing. It was one of the few nights a year he allowed his wife to call all the shots and though it involved a suit and forced conversation with stuffy friends, he knew better than to fight it. Most of the time he was given the freedom his job demanded without hearing complaints from her or the kids, so it was a tradeoff he was willing, if not happy, to make.
The thought was still processing through his mind when Angelica, his wife of over fifteen years swept into the bedroom. She was still dressed in a bathrobe, though her hair and makeup both looked to be pristine. This meant her inordinately long ritual was fast coming to a close, the dress always being the last thing to go on.
"Are you almost ready?" Angelica asked, sliding past him and selecting a pair of dangling pearl earrings from the vanity beside him.
"I'm ready whenever you are," Sarconi responded, forcing a smile. "Take your time, I'll be downstairs."
"I'm almost done," Angelica said, turning her head to the side and sliding in the left earring. "Just a few more minutes."
"Sounds good," Sarconi replied, his smile growing a shade larger. He pulled back out of the room and down the stairs before she could see the sullen look cross back into place and dropped himself down into his arm chair in the living room. The house was strikingly quiet without their two children running about and for a moment he sat and enjoyed the silence.
It was short lived.
A sigh of satisfaction was still rolling out when his cell-phone began to vibrate on the end table beside him. He considered letting it go to voicemail before lifting it up and checking the caller ID.
A small tangle of barbed wire formed in his stomach as he pressed the phone tight to his face. He would rather hear from his mother-in-law than receive this call out of the blue.
"Happy New Year," he answered, trying his best to sound chipper.
The caller ignored the greeting. "Are you watching this?"
A small wave of panic crept through Sarconi as he searched his brain for anything he was supposed to be watching right now. Nothing came to mind.
"No?"
"Turn on ESPN," the voice said. He didn't sound any angrier than usual and had not made any threats against Sarconi's person or family.
Both good signs.
On command, Sarconi turned on the television in time to see an ambulance streaking across a football field before disappearing from sight. A graphic in the corner said that Ohio Tech was beating Virginia State by a wide margin.
Sarconi wasn't against sports in general; he just preferred the traditional football played in his Italian motherland. The Americanized version was a little too crude for his taste, though he had on more than one occasion admitted it was good for business.
"I just caught the ambulance tearing away from the field. What did I miss?"
The voice scoffed, the sound a mix of exasperation and contempt. "What you just missed was the opportunity we've been looking for."
It took a moment for Sarconi to piece together what he was being told. Once it did, the image of the ambulance popped back into his mind with renewed clarity. "Seriously?"
The caller ignored the question. "Get a hold of Pink as soon as you can. You'll have to act fast."
"Yes sir, thank you sir," Sarconi said. His voice relayed a mix of relief that he hadn't done something wrong and blind optimism at what the call could represent.
It didn’t matter. The caller had already hung up without a word.
A small smile spread across Sarconi’s face as he turned off the television and leaned back in his chair. It remained there as Angelica came down and retrieved him. Even stayed in place through the entirety of the evening.
This was the opportunity they'd been looking for.
Chapter Four
The only sound in the room was the rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor attached to Tyler’s blood pressure cuff. It rallied on in a steady cadence, the previous tone falling away and pausing for a second before another one followed it in perfect sequence.
Lying on the bed, Tyler’s leg was wrapped
from ankle to hip and held suspended in air from a harness. His short dark hair bore thick grooves in it from a night of running his sweaty palms over his scalp. At the moment his face was clear and dry, but his puffy eyes and nostrils showed the tears weren't far removed.
The pain killers began to subside just a couple of hours before, tearing him from sleep with a searing pain that stabbed at his entire body. After that, sleep was out of the question. Instead, he locked his gaze on the wall opposite him and set his jaw.
Internally, every function of his body was pounding at record pace.
Externally, his entire visage was a mask carved from granite.
On his left sat Margie, her face even more red and puffy than her son's. Just shy of forty years old, she looked at least ten years older as she stared at the floor. Her thick brown hair was mashed flat against her head and her clothes were wrinkled from over half a day spent in transit. Every so often she would reach out for her son’s hand and squeeze it.
Not once did he pull back from her touch, but he made no effort to return the gesture either.
A pale half-light fell over the room, the result of the blinds drawn low over the windows. The television was off, the phone was disconnected from the wall, and the lights overhead remained dark. There was no way to tell what time of day it was or even if it was day.
They were in a timeless environment.
Neither one cared.
A light rapping sounded out against the door, snapping them both from their trance. In unison they rolled their gaze towards the sound to see two men enter, both wearing white lab coats.
The first man through was tall with receding red hair and a thin moustache. Both recognized him as Dr. Leonard Pinkering, one of the doctors seeing to Tyler since he arrived.
The second man in was shorter and somewhat plump. His black hair was greased to the side with a thin goatee encasing his mouth. He said nothing, but forced a smile that looked out of place on his features.
“Good evening,” Dr. Pinkering said. “How are you feeling?”
Tyler pressed his lips together and swallowed. When he spoke, his voice was thick. "Well, I'm feeling. That’s for sure."
“Which means you’re in a world of pain I suspect,” Dr. Pinkering finished.
“Yes sir,” Tyler mumbled, nodding.
Dr. Pinkering glanced between them and gave his best concerned look. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do until after the operation. You can’t go into surgery with that much narcotic in you.”
Margie’s mouth dropped open as if to ask a question, but she said nothing.
Dr. Pinkering picked up on the gesture. “Certain types of procedures require certain types of anesthesia. If he’s already under a heavy regiment of morphine before he goes in, it could compound the effects.”
Margie offered a mortified look, but again remained silent.
Dr. Pinkering held out a hand and offered his best reassuring smile. "I know it's uncomfortable right now, but we're doing it as a precautionary measure. Rarely, if ever, do we get someone in here with the unique physical dimensions of a college football player. Just to be sure everything is in order; we'd prefer to send him in with a clean system."
Silence fell in the room for a moment.
Tyler slid his eyes from his mother to Dr. Pinkering. “Be straight with me, how bad is it?”
Dr. Pinkering opened his mouth to speak, but closed it just as fast. His features fell somber and he stared at Tyler for several long seconds before nodding.
The room remained silent as Dr. Pinkering pulled a large yellow envelope from beneath the clipboard he was holding. In long strides he walked across the room to the x-ray board and flipped it on, casting a fluorescent pallor into the space as he drew out two films from the envelope.
One he kept in his hand, the other he placed on the board for the room to see.
It was the image of a healthy knee.
Using an ink pen as a pointer, Dr. Pinkering started just below the kneecap. "This image was taken of your right leg earlier. It provides a textbook example of what a healthy joint looks like. The fibula and tibia come together from the lower leg and fit into a socket, across from which is the femur. These three bones together form a hinge that acts as the knee and as you can see here, the knee cap covers that hinge.
“Now within the hinge there are several ligaments holding the muscles to the various bones, which are what makes the leg work. Beneath those are tendons, which hold the joint itself together.”
He pulled the first film from the wall and replaced it with the second film.
“This is what your left knee looks like.” He paused for a moment as Tyler’s exhaled and a tear slid down Margie’s cheek. “As you can see, the knee cap has been shattered. The fibula and the tibia are both fractured and every ligament and tendon you’ve got has been torn.”
For several long moments, it appeared every bit of air had been sucked from the room.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Pinkering added. “I know it’s a little jarring to see laid out this way.”
Tyler stared at the film for several seconds, forcing himself to look at it with borderline masochistic fervor. When every last bit of it was seared into his memory, he rolled his gaze back to the doctor.
“So what’s this mean?”
“It means if you were to even have the mental image of walking right now, your leg would fold up on itself. There’s no way it could support even a fraction of your bodyweight.”
Margie dropped her head to her chest and sniffed.
Tyler laid his head on the pillows, processing the words. “I’m never going to play again am I?”
“Right now, there’s just no definitive way to answer that. We’re going to give you a full knee replacement surgery. Beyond that, it depends on how your body responds.”
Margie raised her head up from her chest. “A replacement? Can’t you just repair what’s there?”
Dr. Pinkering began to respond, but stopped himself short. Instead, he motioned a hand to the man beside him.
“This is Marcellus Sarconi. He works for a company called SynTronic. We have been working together for a long time now to develop something reserved for catastrophic instances such as this.”
Sarconi stepped forward from behind him and dipped his head low to each of them in greeting. “Through the generosity of the good folks here at OTU and the hard work of everybody involved, we have been able to create a synthetic knee that we believe will decrease the recovery time by as much as seventy percent. So far in all our testing, the new joints have proven to be even stronger than a standard human knee.”
Tyler raised his head up from the bed and glanced at his mother. “Wait wait wait. I’m not letting you put some synthetic joint in me. I’m twenty-one years old, not seventy-five.”
“Just repair the knee. That’s what we’re here for,” Margie echoed.
Dr. Pinkering’s face fell flat as he stared from Tyler to Margie and back again. “I’m very sorry, but apparently I haven’t been clear. This isn’t a discussion. We’re not presenting you some wild alternative.”
His arm jutted out to the side, pointing to the film of Tyler’s shattered knee still hanging on the wall. “This is the only option. Not just from a football standpoint, from an ever-walking-without-a-cane standpoint.”
Tyler swallowed hard on the bed. “Why are we just now hearing this?”
“This is the first time your sedation has worn off enough to have this conversation.”
“My mother’s been here the past eight hours.”
“You are an of-age patient. We don’t discuss any medical matters until you are cognizant enough to comprehend.”
Tyler’s eyes slid shut. He raised a hand to his face and pinched it across the bridge of his nose, pressing his fingers down into his eyes on either side.
“Come back in an hour.”
Sarconi’s mouth dropped open. He swiveled to see his colleague looking just as s
urprised as he did.
“Mr. Bentley,” Dr. Pinkering began. “I don’t think you understand.”
Tyler responded without moving his hand or even turning his head. “I understand just fine. And I’m telling you to leave and come back in an hour.”
“But your leg...the morphine is already starting to wear off. It’s imperative we get you to surgery as soon as it does.”
“Was that your plan?” Tyler asked. “Pull a bait and switch on me seconds before I was wheeled into surgery?”
There was no mistaking the venom permeating his voice. The sound came as a surprise to all, even dropping Margie’s jaw towards the floor.
Tyler removed the hand from his face and rolled his gaze towards the doctor. “Can my knee get any worse?”
“Excuse me?”
“In the next hour, could it get any worse? Is it even possible for a knee to be worse off than mine is right now?”
“Well...no, but the amount of pain you’ll be in...”
“I can handle pain. Give us an hour.”
There was a tone of finality in the comment that left everybody in the room knowing the conversation was over.
Margie lifted her jaw and stared at the men. Tyler rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling, making a point of not looking at either of them.
Dr. Pinkering and Sarconi gave each other one last hopeless glance before fleeing the room as instructed.
Chapter Five
Shane Laszlo sat alone at his desk in the corner, trying in vain to hide behind the mountain of legal volumes stacked before him. Most of them had been bestowed upon him six months prior when he was studying for the bar. When he tried to return them he found out they were his and that his pay had been docked accordingly. Since he owned the things and didn’t have anywhere else to put them, he had left them piled up on his desk.
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