He hurries over to the curtains and opens them, the sun flooding in.
“There,” he says, dusting off his hands. “Where were we? Oh yes. So I’ve been going over the tests you did yesterday and, to no one’s surprise, you still have a concussion. Tricky bastards, aren’t they? They’re like my son, took a long time for him to leave the house but when he finally did, boy did his mother and I party.”
I blink at him, wondering if the doctor himself is some sort of a comprehension test.
He goes on. ”But the good news is, you’re being discharged from the hospital tomorrow. We’ll run a few more tests in the morning, of course, basic ones, you’ll be awake and cognitive for all of them. But you should be good to go home.”
“And back to the game?” I ask hopefully.
“That will take time. Hopefully for your sake, and for my sake, because I always have a lot of money riding on Los Blancos. But don’t get frustrated when it doesn’t happen right away. You don’t want to be put back in the game too soon. That’s where the real damage comes from.”
I know I should be more grateful that I’m alive. Grateful that when Mark York’s shoulder connected my head, and caused me to lose consciousness, that serious brain damage didn’t occur. It easily could have. Concussions during football are rarely talked about, but it is a full-contact sport where we don’t wear helmets, and they are very common. In some cases, life-threatening.
I’m lucky to be in this hospital bed, awake and using my brain.
But all I can think of is the game.
Getting back to it.
When can I play again?
When can I train again?
It’s March and there’s not a lot of the season left. Things will wrap up in June and this is the most crucial part, where I’m needed the most. After spending so much of last year out with the knee injury, it would kill me to sit on the sidelines forever again.
At least last time, I had Thalia.
The thought of her stings, like a sliver in your finger that you thought you got rid of. It’s small but it’s still there, reminding you at the worst times that you might not ever be rid of it.
She’s embedded deep.
“But I have some more good news,” he says to me, clapping his hands together.
I glance up at him, brow raised. “This has been all a dream and I’m going to wake up soon?”
“No,” he says with a sigh. “Just that you have visitors. Your mother and your brother. They’ll be happy to know that you’re awake this time.”
Apparently my mother came by yesterday but I was half-asleep and barely coherent during it. I honestly don’t remember, so it would be nice to actually see the both of them, or just see anyone that doesn’t work at this hospital.
The last few days since the accident have been a complete blur. I don’t really remember any of it, especially not the game. I wouldn’t have even known exactly what happened to me if a nurse (and a die-hard Madridista) hadn’t given me the play-by-play of the accident this morning, using a plastic knife and fork from the cafeteria in a re-enactment.
It sounded pretty violent and insane, (I mean, she broke the neck of the fork), so naturally, once I get out of here, the first thing I’m doing watching is the slow-motion replay.
The doctor looks me over one last time and then leaves the room.
In his place, my mother and brother come in.
My mother’s face looks pale and gaunt and the same goes for my brother, even though he’s trying to play it cool by chewing gum.
“Alejo?” she says softly as they approach me, staying close to each other, almost afraid to leave each other’s side.
“Hi mama,” I say to her, my voice coming out hoarse and weak. I smile at Armando, overjoyed to see them. “Armando.”
“Oh Alejo,” my mother cries out and immediately bursts into tears.
I can’t tell you the last time I saw my mother cry.
Oh wait, I can.
Sneaking in through the house, passing by the living room where my mother had her face in her hands, sobbing, the team of police offers around her, my parents’ bedroom down the hall, beckoning me.
That’s the last time I saw her cry, the night of my father’s death.
And here she’s crying again, for me.
She practically throws herself on top of me, her hands wrapping around my hands, her head in my chest as she sobs, her back heaving.
“Mama,” Armando says, trying to lift her off of me. “Please. Give him room.”
She lifts up a little and Armando gets her a chair to sit on, standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder, trying to console her.
I’m starting to get choked up, not expecting this emotion from her. I know my mother loves me, of course she does, but she’s such a hard-ass most of the time that I’m never really sure what gets through to her.
Apparently this will do it.
“Mama,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m awake. I’m alive. I’m going to be okay. It’s just a concussion.”
She just shakes her head and cries onto my hands that she holds up to her chest, like I’m part of her prayer.
“She hasn’t been doing well,” Armando says quietly. “She’s been like this ever since the accident.” He glances down at her and now my little brother’s face is starting to crumble. “She thought she lost you. She was afraid she lost you, just like Papa.”
Fuck.
Now I’m feeling it. I squeeze her hand tighter. “Mama, you didn’t lose me. Okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
“I know,” she cries out, raising her head to look at me, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’re here. But I thought I lost you. I couldn’t stand the pain of losing you, not after losing your father. You and Armando are all I have left. My boys, my family.” She breaks down again.
Armando leans over and gives my mother a hug and now he’s crying too.
And now I understand.
This isn’t just for me.
This is for my father.
The death they swept under the rug, the grief they denied themselves. It’s all coming out now, finally, for them to realize and grasp and process.
For them to finally heal.
“I miss him too,” I tell them, because I know it’s what they can’t put into words. “I wish so badly I could go back in time and change that night. I wish Armando and I hadn’t left the house. I wish we hadn’t gone to the beach. I wish we had stayed with you. I could have stopped him. I could have stopped him.” My heart sinks in my chest, down into the invisible fathoms, where I can’t see it anymore. “If only he had seen me, maybe he wouldn’t have done it. Maybe we’d still have him.”
“No, Alejo,” my mother says adamantly. “No, there is nothing you could have done. Nothing I could have done. I didn’t know what he was going to do. He…he came home and he was drunk and upset but I really thought he would be angry. I thought he would yell and break things. He didn’t…” she breaks off, licking her lips, staring into space as her face contorts into the kind of horror that breaks me.
“He didn’t seem to be all there and I thought, I thought, isn’t this lucky? I thought he would be more upset about losing his job. I really thought it was all going to blow up but it didn’t and he…he went to his room. And…and,” she lets out a deafening sob. “He closed the door. He closed the door and I was happy because I thought he was going to sleep.”
She bows her head and shakes as the grief rolls through her and Armando and I are trying to hold onto her, hold onto each other.
“I opened the door to check on him,” she sobs. “I opened the door and I saw…I saw…”
“I know,” I manage to say, choking on the sorrow. “I know because I saw him, too.”
“I miss him,” she cries. “I miss him. I wish you had your father. I wish he was here, he would have been so proud of the both of you, to see what men you’ve become.”
“I love you,” I tell them. “I love
you both so much.”
We hold on to each other, sharing the grief for the first time.
* * *
After my mother and brother visited, I ended up falling back asleep. To be opened so raw like that, to relive that night, to experience the loss through their eyes, really took it out of me. It was about as much as my bruised brain could handle, let alone my aching heart.
But when I’m awake enough later to force down some shitty hospital food for dinner, the Madridista nurse comes by with a big, excited smile on her face.
“One more visitor, is it okay?” she asks.
I push the food away. “Anything to distract me from the dinner.”
She giggles and scampers out of the room and I’m not too surprised to see Mateo and Luciano stroll inside, both of them in suits this time.
“Well boys, what’s the occasion?” I tell them, breaking into a grin. “This isn’t my funeral, you know.”
Luciano comes over and gives me one of our special handshakes and a hearty pat on the shoulder, “Good to see you brother,” he says to me. He straightens up and looks me over. “I fucking hate how good you look even with a concussion. It’s just not fair, pretty boy.”
I grin at him and turn my attention to Mateo, standing at the foot of the bed, his hands shoved in his pockets, head down. He eyes me and nods. “It sure is good to see you.”
I return the nod. “Same to you.”
Mateo and I have had a fairly strained relationship for the last while. It probably has everything to do with me blaming him for Thalia, and then also punching him in the face. We’ve made up and it hasn’t affected our working relationship, which I am sure is the one that counts, but we’re still a little wary around each other. Which hurts, because Mateo is someone I look up to, basically the person I want to be when I’m older. I want, need his respect and I’m not sure that I have it anymore.
“I talked to the doctor,” Mateo says. “He says you’re probably going home tomorrow.”
“Yeah but who knows when I can get back to the game.”
“You’ll get there,” Luciano says. “I mean…Jesus, Alejo if you had seen what we saw…”
“I know, the nurse gave me a play-by-play in graphic detail. She broke a fork. What happened to York?”
“He got suspended for the game but I think that’s it,” Mateo says. “Hard to tell if it was an accident.”
“There are no accidents in football,” Luciano says. “Macaquinhos na cabeça.”
I frown, trying to pick up on his Portuguese.
“I have little monkeys in my brain,” he explains. “I’m suspicious. York is the same player you trampled the last game. He was out for revenge.”
“We don’t know that,” Mateo says.
My thoughts go to where I don’t want them to go, somewhere dark.
Thalia was the one who gave me the information about York.
Is it…possible that she gave York information about me? Granted, he could have gone for my knee and he didn’t.
“Hey,” Mateo says to me, his eyes dark and knowing. “It was an accident. I know what you’re thinking. We should all just be grateful it didn’t get worse.”
“You fell like a sack of bricks,” Luciano says. “I didn’t know if you’d ever wake up, man. Scariest fucking thing.” He pauses and exchanges a glance with Mateo before looking back to me. “Do you want to see it? I know you’re supposed to avoid electronics and the like following a concussion but I think this can’t hurt.”
I nod, slowly, trying not to rejumble my brain. “I want to see it.”
“It might be hard to watch,” Mateo warns. “For more reasons than you think.”
“I can handle it,” I tell them, eager to see what happened. “Come on, I want to see what the rest of the world saw.”
Mateo nods at Luciano who brings out his phone.
He taps away and then gives it to me.
I stare down at the screen, at the freeze frame of the stadium from high up above, and I tap the play icon.
The game comes alive.
So far, I remember all of this, which I guess is a good sign for all that long and short term memory junk.
Then comes the play.
Luciano has the ball.
I’m completely surrounded.
There looks there’s no way out.
But I remember knowing that Luciano was going to kick it high.
Our eyes met before it happened and there was a split second of understanding, an almost telekinetic way of communicating that seems to happen between you and your teammates, and then the ball went high and I jumped.
I watch as my head makes contact with the ball and that’s the last thing that I actually remember.
I then watch as York plows up and into me, causing the ball to go soaring above the goal post.
His shoulder slams into my head.
I really do fall like a sack of bricks. It doesn’t even look like me. I don’t even look human, just some ragdoll dropped from above.
The camera then cuts to the crowd, everyone standing, the horror on their faces.
Then it cuts to a close up of me, my eyes closed, mouth open, not moving.
And then it pans back to the whole pitch.
Someone starts running across the turf toward me, just one person, all on their own, slipping between the players on the field.
Ponytail flowing behind her.
Thalia?
I watch as she runs right to me and yells at the players who have gathered, her hands out and ready to stop them from moving me. She drops to her knees, looking at me with a face full of anguish.
The same face she had the day we broke up.
I can feel her pain, even from this video, the utter fear.
What is she even doing?
The video stays on her, trying to talk to me, and even without hearing what she’s saying, from the way her lips, her beautiful lips, are coming together, I know they’re saying my name over and over.
Alejo.
Alejo.
Please, Alejo.
And then the Real Madrid medical team arrives and Mateo appears, grabbing her from behind and holding her back. Thalia struggles like a wild animal until he finally calms her.
When I’m put on the stretcher and lifted off the field, she follows.
No hesitation.
She just gives one last glance at Stewart and then follows me off the field.
Effectively choosing a side.
Choosing me.
I gently turn the phone off and hand it back to Luciano without looking at him, staring ahead at the wall while my brain struggles to catch up.
I’m not sure how I should feel.
“What does this mean?” I say, eventually finding the words. I look up at them. “I don’t understand.”
“It means that…” Mateo begins. “If you still want her, Alejo, you have her.”
“No,” I say, trying to keep the anger and frustration from rising through my throat. “No, I don’t. She left. She left me, she left the team. She fucking went to the other side. Back to her ex, back to Man U. She left me, she left all of us!”
“Easy now,” Luciano says, putting his hand on my shoulder. He looks at Mateo. “Maybe we should have waited.”
“No!” I cry out. “No, I don’t…I don’t want to be kept in the dark, I just…none of it makes sense.”
“Love often doesn’t make sense,” Mateo says.
“Are you sticking up for her?” I ask him. “After she left you high and dry?”
“Alejo, you know she was doing what she thought was right. And I’m sure going back to her old team wouldn’t have been easy for her but she did what she had to do.”
I close my eyes, trying to think but my thoughts come up dry.
All I can do is feel.
That heart inside me, the one that wants to beat for her, the one I’ve trained not to.
It’s starting to stir.
For the last three months, I’ve done e
verything I can to put Thalia past me. I’ve turned her into a game in itself. First it started small. If I could go an hour without thinking about her, I won. Then it turned into a couple of hours. Then half a day. Then a whole day.
But I could never go the whole night.
Because she lives in my dreams. She stays there with me all night long, her ghost in my bed, and when I wake up, she’s the first thing I think of.
I miss her. I’ve missed her more than words can say, more than I dare admit to myself, because she shouldn’t have this hold on me anymore. She didn’t want me, why should I let her control how I use my heart?
But it’s been a futile fight.
She’s in me, deeper than my skin, living in my veins.
No matter I do, I can’t shake her.
Can’t erase her.
She is still the sun of my heart.
Only now that sun hasn’t risen for a long time. I’ve been living in darkness.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I say after the silence has settled upon us like dust.
Mateo shrugs. “I don’t know. But I can tell you she’s not with Manchester United anymore.”
That’s a relief. “Then where is she?”
Mateo looks to Luciano who then gives me a small smile. “She’ll be ready when you are.”
“Gentlemen,” the nurse says as she pokes her head in the door, smiling big at the both of them. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to let Alejo rest for the night. I’m sure you’ll see him tomorrow.”
Mateo comes over and shakes my hand, leaning in for a hug. “You have her, Alejo. If you want her,” he says to me. “Now get better soon. We need you. We all do.”
Luciano gives me a wave and the two of them leave.
I sink back into the bed, trying to make heads or tails of all of this.
I have so many questions, and I’m so hurt, and I’m so fucking tired, too. Nothing makes sense and it’s just too much for me to handle, even if I wasn’t concussed.
I fall asleep, knowing who I’ll be dreaming of.
* * *
The next morning, the doctor performs a few tests on me, just to get a rating of my concussion, and then he sends me home.
The Younger Man: A Novel Page 39
