Paralyzed Page 5

  Sure enough, Jeff caught the football on the dead run and headed to the outside at full speed. He found a couple of blocks early and managed to get all the way to midfield before being brought down by Sammy Price. If not for that one tackle, Jeff would have gone all the way.

  His return was enough to get us off to a terrific start. Lance Turner, our startingquarterback, had looked unbeatable in practice. He carried that into the game. Three plays after the opening kick, Lance and Jeff Stevens were already celebrating a touch-down after the quarterback completed a twenty-yard strike down the middle to my best buddy. Even though I wasn’t out there with them, my heart soared as Jeff crossed the goal line. This was an awesome start for us.

  But things evened out in a hurry. The Demons were conference co-favorites along with Lincoln, and we quickly found out why. Vince Poynter, their starting quarterback, was a tall fluid athlete who could run and throw with equal ease. Whenever we bottled him up inside, Poynter dropped back in the pocket and delivered an accurate pass. And whenever we tried to get more pressure on his throws, he seemed to find daylight outside, running for big gains.

  Our offense was clicking too. The game evolved into a terrific seesaw battle. With four minutes remaining in the fourthquarter, we trailed Franklin 28–24 with the ball in our possession at our own twenty-five yard line. “Time-out!” Coach Clark yelled. We all huddled around him.

  “Okay, guys, this is it,” Coach said, scanning the eyes in the huddle. “This is where we see what kind of character you have.”

  The coach paused and let his words sink in before continuing. “Lance, I want you to run the L Series. Get out of bounds to stop the clock whenever you can. Protect the ball. No fumbles. Okay? Let’s make this happen, gentlemen.”

  All the players stuck their right hands into the middle of the huddle. “One-two-three, Lions!” we yelled.

  The L Series was a sequence of plays we ran whenever we needed a score in the dying minutes of a game. It was a series of short passing routes and running plays. Lance usually threw quick patterns to Jeff, pitched out to Ronnie Bright or ran himself. They were our three most dependableoffensive players. It was a good plan on Coach’s part.

  Meanwhile, Franklin’s huge defensive line dug in to try and stop the Lincoln drive. I could hear them taunting Lance as he bent over to take the snap. “Comin’ for you, Turner,” one yelled. “Gonna be a Turner-over,” screamed another.

  Lance ignored them and confidently called out the signals. He took the snap, dropped back two steps and nailed Jeff on a quick crossing pattern. First down. That shut up the wise guys on the other side of the ball.

  Six plays later, we were at the Franklin twenty-five, knocking on the door with our crowd getting louder and louder. Lance turned, looked at Coach Clark and made the shape of a triangle with both his hands. Coach nodded. I knew what was coming next.

  The triangle was the signal that we had arranged to use during this game for our“special”—the one play our coaches felt could beat the Franklin defense for a long gain. We had saved the special for just such a moment, facing second-down-and-ten with just under two minutes left.

  Lance dropped back and put the football at his side. It appeared he was going to hand it off to fullback Dexter Bart, who was steaming up the middle. I could see the Franklin defensive linemen and linebackers caught in mid-step, not knowing how to react to what looked very much like it was going to be a running play.

  The deception was enough to throw the Demons off for just a split second. Lance deftly pulled the football back up to his shoulder just as Bart raced past him. As the quarterback rolled out quickly to his right, he scanned downfield to where Jeff Stevens was streaking toward the end zone.

  Hot on Lance’s heels was a crush of three Franklin defenders. It looked as though they were going to catch him for a big loss. But just as they converged,he unloaded the football. As it hung in the air, the entire stadium seemed to hold its breath.

  In the end zone, Jeff Stevens was being closely pursued by Franklin defensive back Curt Hodges. Both players leaped to meet the ball. When they came down, Jeff had the football tucked in his arms. He sprang up quickly, raising his hands above his head. The crowd roared. Kyle Nance, our ninth-grade kicker, booted the extra point. Lincoln led 31–28 with only ninety seconds remaining.

  Coach Clark quickly huddled us on the sidelines. “Okay, guys. The offense did its job. Now it’s up to the D. Let’s go win this football game.”

  Once again, the team ran through its cheer, and our guys took the field. Nance sent the kickoff high and deep to Vince Poynter at the Demons’ ten yard line. Poynter managed to avoid a couple of early tackles to get outside and use his long, easy stride to reach the Franklin forty-five yardline before being brought down by a gang of Lincoln special-teamers.

  There were now only eighty seconds remaining on the clock. Franklin still had a chance, but it would be able to get off only three or four plays before the fourth quarter ended. I was confident that our defense was up to the task. Suddenly, I wished I was out on the field with the rest of the guys, fighting for this big win.

  I noticed immediately that Franklin had lined up slightly differently with its backs deeper behind the line. In a second, I knew why. Vince Poynter dropped back five yards behind his center and called for the snap. The Demons were going into the shotgun formation for the first time in the game.

  The long snap gave Poynter the time he needed to get outside our rush and find the sidelines. By the time we had brought down the graceful Franklin quarterback, he had crossed midfield.

  The Demons remained in the shotgun the rest of the game. But after the initial surprise factor, it didn’t work nearly as well. With the clock down to twenty-five seconds, Franklin found itself in a desperate fourth-and-ten situation with the ball at our forty. It was too far for a field goal, so the Demons had no choice but to make one last stab at a first down.

  Poynter dropped back once again, taking the long snap. But this time, he didn’t head to the outside or throw the football. Instead, he faked left and ran straight up the middle. It was a naked quarterback draw, and Bryce Clark was in a perfect position to bring down the Franklin quarterback.

  Clark rushed toward Poynter, ready to make the tackle. I could almost feel his heart beating as he zeroed in on the quarterback. He could end the game with this one hit. It was that simple.

  Except for one problem. As Clark rushed toward Poynter, the smooth Franklinpivot juked with his hips and stuttered his step ever so slightly. The motion was just enough to cause Clark to mistime his tackle. He missed his target altogether. As Poynter squirted by the fallen Lincoln middle line-backer for a key first down, I heard the crowd groan. If the Lincoln stadium had been a gigantic balloon, this missed tackle was a devastating pinprick.

  Bryce Clark was still lying on the field after Poynter was finally hauled down at our twenty-five. I felt badly for him. He was the coach’s son, so he took enough heat just for that. But tonight the eleventh-grader had been asked to fill a very difficult position against an extremely good team.

  Poynter’s first down meant it had all come down to one play. Franklin needed a field goal—about a thirty-five-yarder, including the snap distance—to tie the game. There was only time for one more play before the fourth quarter expired. Sammy Price, the Demons’ senior kicker, trotted confidently onto the field.

  The teams lined up. It seemed like an eternity before the ball was actually snapped. It went to Poynter, who pinned it perfectly and allowed Price to lay a solid boot into it. Again, the crowd was quiet as the ball sailed toward the uprights. I hoped desperately that it would sail wide or fall short. But Price was an all-district kicker. The ball split the uprights cleanly. The horn sounded to end the game. We had tied Franklin 31–31. So why did it feel so much more like a loss?

  chapter ten

  The disappointing way that the Franklin game had ended bothered me, but not as much as the other news hanging over me all weekend. Dad had delive
red it casually on Saturday morning.

  “You’ll have to miss some school Monday morning,” he said. “Dr. MacIntyre’s office called today. It’s great he can see you so soon.”

  Yeah, great, I thought. On Monday, some-one was going to start dissecting my brain.

  All weekend, I thought about little else. What kinds of questions was he going to ask me? Would he hypnotize me like some of those quacks on TV? I wasn’t feeling too comfortable about it at all.

  Dad must have sensed my mood at dinner Sunday night. After we had all cleaned up, he asked me if I wanted to shoot a few hoops down at Tipton Park.

  We’d been shooting for just a couple of minutes when Dad grabbed the ball and put it on his hip. “Are you nervous about seeing Dr. MacIntyre?” he asked.

  “I guess. Were you nervous when you asked for help?”

  “I wasn’t so much nervous as I was a total wreck,” Dad said. “But I’ll tell you, after talking about it with somebody once, I felt a hundred percent better.

  “Just go in there with an open mind,” he continued. “He’s not going to be performing weird experiments on you or anything like that. You’re going to be talking, like we are now.”

  I hoped he was right. I went to sleep that night stewing about my appointment, but the next morning, I felt a little better. I figured if Dad could do it, so could I.

  Mom drove me to the Gower Medical Center where Dr. MacIntyre had his office. It was about twenty minutes from home and right beside Gower General. She dropped me off there before heading to work. After my appointment, I planned to take a city bus to school. If everything went according to plan, I might be able to get to Lincoln for third-period math. Oh joy.

  As I walked toward the clinic entrance, I stared up at the third floor of Gower General, wondering which room Nate Brown was in. I tried to push the thought out of my mind as I headed through the glass doors and reported to the receptionist.

  I’d only been waiting for about three minutes when an athletic-looking man in his forties with sandy brown hair came into the waiting area. He smiled at me. “Reggie,” he said. “Come on in.”

  We shook hands at the doorway. “I’m Reggie Scott,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already.”

  “Middle linebacker for Lincoln, right?” the psychologist replied. “You’re quite a player.”

  “Thanks, Dr. MacIntyre,” I said. “But not so much lately.”

  Dr. MacIntyre ignored my last comment and smiled. “You can just call me Jim,” he said. “We like to keep things informal around here.”

  As I stepped into the room, I couldn’t help but notice that it looked more like a sports hall of fame than my idea of a psychologist’s office. There wasn’t a couch or anything even remotely medical. There were a few overstuffed leather chairs and a whole lot of trophies and pictures—some showing a young football player and his teammates, others showing the same young man on a basketball court.

  “You’re probably wondering about all the pictures and souvenirs,” Jim said.“I’m a sports nut. Played every sport I could when I was a kid. I just can’t seem to bring myself to get rid of all this stuff. My wife doesn’t want it at home, so I keep it here.

  “Besides,” he continued, “it kind of fits in with what I do here. There are a lot of good psychologists out there, Reggie, but I focus specifically on sports. A lot of people thought I was crazy when I told them I was going to specialize in working with athletes, but I’m so busy, I have to turn patients away. It’s a big field, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

  I laughed at his lame joke. I hoped his treatment was better than his sense of humor.

  “Anyway, what we try to do here is help people find out what’s stopping them from achieving their best performance,” he said. “We identify what’s bothering them. Then we teach them ways of coping with those things so they can reach their potential.So I guess the first thing I have to ask is this: What’s bothering you, Reggie?”

  I gulped. I guessed I’d better just get it out there. This was what I was here for.

  “Well, I don’t know if I actually need to be here or not,” I said, hedging a little. “But my coaches think I do, and my parents think I do, so I guess I do.”

  “Well, Reggie,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “This is only going to work if you want help. If you’re here just to satisfy somebody else, you might as well not waste your time or mine.”

  “I guess I do need some help.” The second I said it, I felt a little weight come off my shoulders. Dad had been right.

  I spent a little while telling Dr. MacIntyre about the game against Milbury: how I hadn’t even seen Nate Brown until he made contact with me. I told him about celebrating the interception before I realized that Nate was seriously injured. I told him how angry Nate’smom had been with me that day at Gower General.

  “So why do you suppose your coaches asked you to come see me?” Dr. MacIntyre asked.

  “They say I haven’t been hitting well in practice, that I’m not myself out there. They say they’re worried about me getting hurt.”

  “What do you think, Reggie?”

  “I guess they’re right,” I said. “I mean, every time I draw a bead on a kid to tackle him, I think of Nate lying in the hospital. Then something happens. I can’t hit hard or sometimes even at all. For some reason, I let up.”

  “What do you suppose causes that?” Dr. MacIntyre asked.

  “Well, I don’t really know. I guess I’m still freaked out by what happened. I don’t want something like that to happen again, maybe. And I don’t want to keep feeling responsible for Nate.”

  “That’s a great start, Reggie,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “We’re going to have to wrap it up for today. I’d like you to come and see me at the same time Wednesday morning. Does that work for you?”

  I was surprised the session was already over. We hadn’t solved anything but, as I looked at the clock on my way out of the reception area, I realized I’d been in there for nearly an hour.

  I don’t know quite how it happened or when I decided to do it. I had been planning to head straight for the bus stop and catch the bus that would take me to school.

  But as I left the medical center, I took one look at Gower General and realized that I had to go there instead. If Nate Brown was still in there, I had to make another attempt to see him.

  I was already familiar with the hospital layout, so I bypassed the lobby and headed straight for the elevator. When the doors opened on the third floor, I proceeded tothe head nurse’s station. I just hoped that I didn’t run into Nate’s mother again.

  The nurse on duty was the same woman with jet-black hair and hazel eyes that I had met the last time. She seemed to recognize me.

  “He’s not here,” she said softly, before I could even ask for Nate’s room number.

  My face dropped. Not here? What did that mean? Oh, God. It couldn’t mean that he was...

  The nurse’s warm smile calmed me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s doing much better. He’s in recovery. He’s not in the ICU anymore.”

  “What does ‘in recovery’ mean?” I asked. I felt completely at her mercy. Every bit of information she had about Nate was like precious gold to me.

  Instead of answering me, she said, “You’re the boy who was here before, aren’t you?”

  I nodded, half expecting her to kick me out in the next breath.

  “I felt so bad about what happened last week,” she said. “You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. His mom was so stressed out, she didn’t know what she was saying.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I had felt the hatred in Mrs. Brown’s stare that day. I didn’t want to feel that ever again.

  “So, how is he doing?” The words clogged my throat. I wanted so much for the news to be good.

  “He’s getting better. He’s got some movement back in his legs. The doctors are hopeful that, as the swelling on his spine goes down, he will get more and more mobility back. With lots of hard work in physioth
erapy, he could make a full recovery.”

  A full recovery? I sat down in the chair next to the nurse’s desk. My legs felt weak. This news was so good, so welcome, that I was numb all over.

  “Do you want to see him?” the nurse asked. “I might be able to arrange it.”

  “For sure,” I said. “I mean, yes, if that’s okay.”

  The nurse picked up the phone and dialed some numbers. “Hello, this is Harrison from ICU. Is Nathaniel Brown awake right now? Oh, good. I’m sending a friend down to see him. All right then. Thank you.”

  The nurse turned to me with a smile. “It’s your lucky day. He’s awake, and his Mom isn’t here. Poor thing. She went home to get some sleep this morning. She hasn’t had much of that since this happened.”

  The nurse told me to go to the fifth floor and ask at the desk there. I could see Nate for a few minutes before his next round of medication.

  I turned to leave, and then I turned back. “I just wanted to say thanks for helping me,” I said to the nurse. “I never introduced myself. I’m Reggie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Reggie.” She smiled. “I’m Brenda Harrison. I had a good feeling about you. I’m so happy you came back.”

  chapter eleven

  I rode alone in the elevator to the hospital’s fifth floor. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect when I got to Nate’s room. And I was anxious about the possibility of running into his friends or, worse yet, his mom.

  As Brenda Harrison had instructed, I went to the head nurse’s station on the fifth floor. I asked the older woman at the desk where I could find Nate Brown.

  “Nathaniel is in room five,” she said. “I’ll take you down there.”

  I followed the nurse down the hall.