I wondered if this was what it had been like for Mom, watching Dad play. Before everything went wrong. Before the sport became a slow-motion death sentence instead of something to celebrate.
Fourth quarter. Our ball, third and long, two minutes left. The crowd was deafening, everyone on their feet, and I stood with them because staying seated felt impossible. Seth lined up in the backfield, his stance coiled and ready.
The ball snapped. Bodies collided. I lost track of which jersey was which in the chaos?—
And then I saw him.
Seth, ball tucked against his chest, cutting across the field toward the first down marker. Full speed, head down, fighting for every yard the way he’d been taught.
The linebacker saw him coming. Lowered his shoulder.
They met in the middle of the field with a sound I felt in my spine.
Seth went down.
He didn’t get up.
The stadium went quiet. Not silent—sixty thousand people don’t go silent—but the roar dropped to a murmur, confused and uncertain. I watched the players gather around him, watched the trainers sprint onto the field, watched his teammates take a knee like they’d been trained to do when someone was hurt.
Seth wasn’t moving.
The sound that came out of me wasn’t human. It was something animal, something torn from a place I’d spent years trying towall off. My knees buckled, and I grabbed for the seat in front of me, missed, felt myself going down?—
Arms caught me. Mrs. Thompson, stronger than she looked, was pulling me back up, holding me against her.
“I can’t—” The words came out broken, jagged. “I can’t do this. I can’t?—”
“Breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe.”
But I couldn’t breathe. The stadium was too loud and too quiet all at once, the lights too bright, the air too thick. I was back in the hospital hallway, waiting for news about Dad. I was in the waiting room when the doctor came out and said words like “swelling,” “induced coma,” and “prepare yourselves.” I was standing at a grave watching them lower a casket into the ground while Hunter held my arm because my mother couldn’t.
“He’s not moving.” I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. “Why isn’t he moving? He should be moving by now?—”
“The trainers are with him. They know what they’re doing.”
“You don’t understand.” I was crying now, ugly and desperate, and I didn’t care who saw. “My dad— It wasn’t one hit, it was all of them. Years of them. He kept playing, and we kept watching, and every single time he got back up, but it didn’t matter because the damage was already happening. And now I’m watching Seth take hit after hit, and I can’t— I can’t do this. I can’t watch someone I?—”
Mrs. Thompson’s arms tightened around me. She didn’t tell me it would be okay. She didn’t offer empty promises or hollow reassurances. She just held me while I fell apart, one handrubbing slow circles on my back, her voice a low, steady murmur against my hair.
“I know, honey. I know.”
My phone was in my hand. I didn’t remember taking it out.
On the field, the trainers were kneeling beside Seth. One of them was checking his neck, holding his head still, and that couldn’t be good, that meant something was wrong with his spine or his skull or?—
His hand moved.
I saw it from fifty yards away, the slight flex of his fingers against the turf. Conscious. He was conscious.
The breath I released came out as something closer to a sob.
They were bringing out the stretcher. The careful way they lifted him onto it, immobilizing his head, strapping him down—I knew that protocol. I’d watched it a hundred times, had memorized it the way some people memorize sports statistics because knowing felt like control, and I was so fucking desperate for control.
Seth’s arm lifted as they carried him off the field. Waving, maybe. Letting everyone know he was okay.
I didn’t believe it.
I was already moving, pushing past the people in my row, ignoring the annoyed mutters as I stepped on feet and knocked into knees. The tunnel. I needed to get to the tunnel where they’d be taking him, needed to find wherever the medical staff brought injured players, needed to see him.
