For four days, I’d held it together. Checked vitals, managed medications, and kept the apartment dark, quiet, and safe. I’d answered questions with a steady voice and said “I’m fine” until the words lost meaning. I’d been exactly what Seth needed me to be.
Now, alone in the bathroom at midnight, I let myself stop.
The first sob caught me off guard. It tore out of my chest like something breaking, loud in the silence, and I clamped a handover my mouth to muffle it. Couldn’t wake Seth. Couldn’t let him hear this. He was supposed to be resting, healing, not worrying about me falling apart in the next room.
But the tears came anyway. All the fear I’d been swallowing for days, all the memories of hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ appointments, and watching someone I loved slowly become someone I didn’t recognize. The terror that this was just the beginning, that Seth’s concussion was the first step on a path I’d already walked once, that I was going to spend the rest of my life watching people I loved get destroyed by this fucking sport.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, knees pulled to my chest, shaking so hard my teeth chattered. The tears wouldn’t stop. Every time I thought I had control, another wave crashed through me, pulling me under.
Dad’s face in the hospital bed. The slack confusion when he didn’t recognize me. The funeral I’d helped plan, while everyone told me to be strong.
Seth waving from the stretcher. The too-long pause before he answered a question. The moments when his eyes went unfocused and I couldn’t tell if he was tired or if something was wrong.
I pressed my face against my knees and let myself cry. Really cry, the ugly kind, snot and tears and sounds that didn’t feel human. All the grief and fear and exhaustion I’d been carrying for years, for days, for longer than I could remember.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. Long enough for my legs to go numb, for my throat to go raw. Long enough for the worst of it to pass, leaving me empty and wrung out and strangely calm.
I pulled myself up. Splashed cold water on my face. Looked at my reflection and practiced the expression I’d show Seth in the morning.
Steady. Calm. Fine.
I turned off the light and went back to bed.
Seth shifted when I climbed in beside him, reaching for me without waking. I let him pull me close, let his warmth seep into my cold skin. His breathing stayed even. He hadn’t woken up.
Good. That was good.
I lay there in the dark, listening to his heartbeat, and told myself I could do this. That I was strong enough. That this time would be different.
22
SETH
I sat in the exam room while the doctor ran through the tests—follow my finger, walk in a straight line, answer these questions about what year it is and who’s the president—and watched her face for any sign of concern. There wasn’t one. Just the same professional neutrality she’d shown since my first follow-up visit, the distance of someone who did this a hundred times a week.
“Headaches?”
“Gone.”
“Light sensitivity?”
“Back to normal.”
“Any dizziness, confusion, memory issues?”
“No.” I’d answered too quickly, and she looked up from her tablet.
“You’re sure?”
I thought about the moments when words slipped away from me mid-sentence. The split-second delays between hearing something and understanding it.
“I’m sure,” I said.
She made a note. “Then you’re cleared to start working out again. You can resume practice tomorrow—non-contact drills, conditioning work. Barring any setbacks, you should be good for full contact by the twentieth, which gives you a few days before the bowl game.”
December twenty-sixth. Two weeks away. The team had won the final regular-season game without me, clinched the division while I lay in a dark apartment counting the hours between doses of ibuprofen.
The words should have felt like a reprieve. Three weeks ago, they would have. I’d have texted my teammates immediately, started mentally preparing for the game that could cap off my career.
