Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not dating anyone.
Dad always traveled for work. My whole life. It caused a lot of problems, the main one being that it precipitated my parents’ divorce. I can’t do that to my family, too. I can’t have a family until I quit football. But I can’t quit football. It’s really the only connection my dad and I have ever had.
So it’s a rock and a hard place type of thing. Football, the only thing that connects my dad to me, is my life. But because of that, it’s like my future is on hold.
Chapter 3
Charlotte
Ronshiftsuncomfortablyinhis recliner and then answers a question from someone off-screen, probably his wife.
I wonder what four-year-old me would think of how things are now? That twenty years later, she’d be getting fired from her job. And that she doesn’t have a boyfriend because she can’t ever seem to go on a second date.
It’s never really bothered me before, but with Willa’s engagement, I’m feeling a little bit lonely these days. Not that I can do anything about it. I can’t even think about a serious relationship until I get my initiative going—the one that provides free gait screenings for kids throughout the city every quarter. And even after that, I don’t know about the whole dating thing. I’m not exactly “dating material.” I have a terrible track record of never being asked out on a second date.
When he returns his gaze to the screen, his smile is bleak. “Some of our work these next couple of months will be to place the kids with another clinic in the area. San Antonio has a lot of good options.”
“None like ours,” Willa says. “A lot of places require a fee, and most of our kids can’t afford it.”
“There are some free or cheaper options. Some outpatient clinics have programs.” Ron sighs. “But you’re right, it’s definitely going to affect them. Which is why Tracy and I will be working hard to acquire alternative sources of funding.”
“So, if we can get more funding, we won’t have to shut down?” My tone holds a spark of hope.
“To reiterate, the university is not shutting us down, per se.” His gaze reeks of bureaucratic red tape sound bites that the university force-fed him. “We’re just losing so much of our funding that it’s impossible to continue here in this building with the center’s caseload. Tracy and I will spend the next few months looking for donors and coming up with an alternative plan…a new way to run the center.” He glares down at his helpless arms, and even through the screen, I can feel his frustration. “It’ll take time. We’ll get things up and running again as soon as we can, but you need to look elsewhere. You won’t have a problem finding something. You’re all very skilled.”
Except, what if wedohave problems finding new jobs?
“We could get a petition going,” Skyler says. “Or a GoFundMe or something.”
Willa scowls, “This isn’t like the time your garage band needed funds, Skyler. We’re talking in the hundreds of thousands for next year, right, Ron?”
He nods. “The university pays for this building and keeps our lights on. They pay for my salary and Tracy’s salary, but for everything else, your salaries, our equipment, our insurance, the cleaners, referrals and recruitment, we’re beholden to grants, donors, and gifts from the university. And it looks like the university is giving those gifts to other programs this year.”
“Like the Sports Medicine Institute?” I smirk, flinging my hand in its direction. My gaze goes out the window to the sleek steel behemoth down the sidewalk from our humble little building. I swear the beast has been under construction for years, the constant beeping from machinery part of the soundtrack of my working life.
I wish I could flip it the bird because it represents what’s wrong in academia these days.
Sports.
The coddled baby of pretty much every university I know, especially in Texas. Texas loves its sports and its athletes. Children who need early preventative screenings and occupational therapy are low on the list of importance.
“You said it, sister!” Tracy’s voice is passionate.
Ron, ever the diplomat, shakes his head with a sad smile. “No, we don’t know where the funds are going,” he says, his image glitching on the call for a moment. “I imagine the sports medicine institute has a lot of big donors outside of the university.”
He’s probably right, but this whole thing is unfair. My stomach turns when I think of the master’s program I was planning tostart in the fall. The one that the university would partially fund because I’m an employee here.
Wasan employee here.
A line of sweat drips down my back. This acetate shirt sings the praises of all sweat stains.
Master’s program aside, another even worse thought enters my mind. “What about the initiative?”
I’ve been creating an initiative for a free early preventative screening event for Dysplasia and other functional problems because what happened to MJ isn’t okay. It’s not okay that a five-year-old would be forced to have surgery for something that should have been detected years earlier. If I’d been able to see her and start working with her right when I started here two years ago, we wouldn’t be in this boat. She would have received OT and physical therapy, and she probably would have been fine.
Ron frowns. “The initiative will be put on hold, but I promise you it won’t be forgotten. I won’t let it slip through the cracks.”
Slip through the cracks. Like MJ did. Like so many other kids do. I press my hand to my stomach. I don’t know if it’s the bad news, the heat in the room, or because I didn’t have time to eat breakfast this morning, but I’m feeling…out of sorts.
