My eyes scan the quarterback as he sets up under the center. He pauses before quickly dropping back into a shotgun formation and the center lunges the ball back to him once he calls the play into motion.
Three receivers fan out wide, but our corner and safeties are all over them. Their quarterback does some fancy footwork, darting to his left further away from me. I hold off for a few seconds, anticipating he’s going to throw the ball immediately, but since he doesn’t my next step is to sack him. At first, it feels like a pointless feat. He’s quicker than me, but I just need to get close. I’m bigger than him, and I can take him down if I can just get closer.
The moment I’m within arm’s reach, he fires the ball from his hands and I swerve from tackling him to avoid a costly team penalty, but it doesn’t take me completely out of harm's way. One of their linemen breaks free and in an attempt to block mefrom hitting his quarterback, he takes me to the ground. His hit felt legal. On the jumbotron watching it back, it looked legal. But the way my knee bent, it felt like every piece of ligament in my leg was tearing at the same time.
“Fuck!” I yell out from the field as the medical staff come to my aid. I try to stand up and walk it off, but they tell me to stay seated for the moment while they do a quick assessment.
“Do we need a cart?” one of the staff asks and before anyone can answer, I interrupt.
“No. I can walk off. Let me up,” I say, shrugging one of the staff members off me.
They help me to my feet and I’m able to limp off with some assistance. Coach Aarons makes eye contact with me when I get to the sidelines, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
“We’ll need x-rays, come on.” The team doctor throws my arm around his shoulder as he helps me off the sidelines and into the locker room.
A million things run through my mind. I’m praying CeCe was asleep or occupied or something during that play. She’s never seen me get hurt and I’m not sure how she’d react. Playoffs start soon and having to sit out would be such a blow to our team and to my whole fucking mood.
I can hear the doctor and some of the medical staff talking as they do the x-ray. I’ve known most of these people long enough to pick up on when things don’t look so hot.
“Just tell me,” I grunt out, pulling my gloves off my hands.
“It’s a sprain, Chase. I’m sorry.”
My fist slams the table I’m lying on. Knee injuries can be hard to come back from and all that’s running through my mind is that I’m not ready to be done with football. I’m not ready to go out like this.
“We’ll ice it now. You’ll need to take it easy, rest. You’re in good shape, Chase. I don’t see this being anything detrimental,just rehab it the right way. We’ll make sure you get in with the physical therapist, do some recovery movement on it soon.”
“Playoffs are out of the question, though.” It’s not me asking them, it’s my need to say it out loud. To tell myself that my season right now has come to an end.
“Playoffs are out of the question,” the doctor confirms.
White knuckled, I clutch my purse as I head downstairs. The hit he took didn’t look pretty on the screen and once they took him back into the locker room, he never came back out. Muffled conversations are happening all around me as my head swirls with different scenarios. I hear fans saying things like “he’s done” or “there goes our playoff run” and my heart rate picks up thinking about those things being true.
When I get down to the players exit, I find myself waiting an awfully long time beforeanyoneeven walks out. It’s like the entire team has stayed back or something. Slowly, team members begin to filter out of the double doors. My phone dings with a text from Mia, letting me know that Diane is taking CeCe home.
God, CeCe. She watches every second of the games she can. When the other team tackled Chase, she didn’t flinch at first. She’s seen tackles happen often, but it wasn’t until the rest of usgasped in the suite as we saw the replay on the screen that she looked back and forth between me and Diane. Looking for one of us to give her more insight into what just happened. When Diane told her that he was just going to get checked out in the locker room, she seemed to take that well. I don’t think she understood what it could potentially be yet.
I know Chase has been dealing with knee pain all season. To my knowledge, he hasn’t had any injury to them in the past, but you’d have to assume after a lifetime of playing a contact sport like football, your joints would eventually start to feel some aftereffects.
“He’ll be a bit, Summer.” Nate extends his arms to hug me as he walks out.
“Is he okay, though? What did they say after the game?”
Nate looks me in the eye and shakes his head. Shrugging his shoulder, he says, “You know him. Anything other than telling him he’s fine isn’t going to sit well with him.”
My shoulders drop and I nod at Nate as he turns to walk away.
Almost thirty minutes later, I see Chase hobble out of the doors with a pair of crutches assisting him. He’s working hard to keep himself steady and I can tell he’s pissed off. Telling him it’ll be okay is a waste of breath, even though it’s the first thing I want to blurt out. I know one of his first thoughts had to be CeCe, though.
“Your mom took CeCe home. She saw the play, but I don’t think understood what actually happened. I’m not sure if your mom will explain it to her or wait for you.”
He nods, placing a hand on my shoulder. Whether it’s for balance or out of a need to touch me, I’ll take either right now.
I’ve seen Chase look frustrated. I’ve seen him sad and angry, but he looks hopeless right now. He doesn’t even comment onthe jersey he brought for me that I’m wearing. In fact, he doesn’t say much of anything, but I tell myself not to take it personally.
“I don’t really know what to say right now,” I admit as he stands in front of me. His head hangs and I tilt mine underneath his, looking up at him. “Can I ask what the doctor said?”
I’d have to assume the crutches aren’t a sign of good news, though.
