Running Game(7)

“A lot of who?”

“Didn’t you hear? You know the Denver Mustang that got hit by a car? Blew his knee out, along with some other minor injuries?”

“No, I didn’t hear about it,” I replied slowly, my heart slightly accelerating.

“It was all over the news,” he said.

“I try not to watch television,” I replied, the hair sticking up on the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right. My stomach flipped, just like it always did when I heard one of the Broncos was coming here for treatment.

“Don’t you read the internet?” Larry asked.

“Not if I can help it,” I replied. “Unless I’m doing research or something…”

“What about the radio?” he asked “You trapped in some kind of time warp? This is the biggest news of the whole year.”

“The radio in my car is broken,” I replied, my voice laced with annoyance. “Who’s coming? What happened?”

“Oh, man, it was bad. He was running downtown, ran into an intersection, and BAM!” Larry slammed his palm on my desk loudly and I jumped. “Some kid was texting, didn’t see him, plowed right through the light and slammed into him. Busted up his knee, ACL’s torn, gonna be in rehab for a while. Hell, he’s lucky to be alive. Thank God it’s off-season so he has a few months to heal up, but we’re going to have to work fast if he’s going to make it back onto the field…”

“That’s terrible,” I replied, starting to recite a little prayer in my head that my gut feeling was wrong this time.

“Sure is. I’m going to assign you to his case. You’re my best PT, Maisey. But you gotta perform some serious magic if this guy’s going to be back at full force by September. I have faith in your skills, though, Maizie. You’re really great,” he said, smiling that creepy smile at me again. It didn’t bother me this time, because I just wanted the answer to one question.

“Who is it, Larry?”

“Oh, I didn’t say?” he asked. I shook my head, resisting the urge to jump across the desk and strangle him.

“No, you didn’t,” I replied, my voice sounding like someone else’s suddenly.

“It’s Colorado, Maisey! Jesse Colorado!” Larry was as excited as if he’d won the lottery.

My mouth dropped, my heart dropped, and my ass almost dropped right out of the chair, too. I gripped the arms of my chair and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard to keep from fainting.

Here it was.

My worse nightmare, my worst case scenario, my greatest fear was coming to life right before my eyes.

I wanted to run. I was good at running. I’d run from him before…

But this time, I was trapped. There was no where to run to, no where to hide. I’d built this life for myself and I couldn’t unwind the threads that bound me to it.

I would have to face this demon head-on now, and all I could do was hope my world didn’t get turned upside down in the process.





3





JESSE





After surgery, my knee was the size of a fucking football and stained yellow from whatever weird stuff the surgeons used on it. I looked down at what I was now calling my ‘frankenstein leg’ and tried to move it.

Nope. Nothing.

No movement, but no pain either. The Vicodin were doing a good job of masking the pain, but I was ready to be done with them.

I hated the way pain pills made me feel. Sleepy, groggy, my head all fogged up. That wasn’t my game. I preferred having laser-sharp focus. My life required clarity and for me to be as clear-headed as possible. Instead, I felt like a pile of fucking mashed potatoes or something. I could barely move the parts of me that still worked, let alone the pieces that were broken… I felt like my head weighed a ton and my limbs were limp and useless.

I was laying here like a weak little kitten and I hated every fucking second of it.

I wanted to smack that stupid texting kid upside his stupid fucking head for what he’d done to me. My left ACL was torn, my thigh was deeply bruised, and I had a groin sprain to go along with it. His car had hit me so hard I’d bounced a dozen feet away. The surgery had repaired my ACL by putting in pins and grafts but I still had a long road of physical therapy ahead of me if I was going to recover fully.

And if I didn’t recover… I didn’t even want to think about that…

I’d been in the hospital all weekend and today they were sending me home. Grady sat in the corner of my hospital room reading the newspaper and I was sitting up in bed scrolling through the dozens of well-wishing text messages I’d been sent from my friends and teammates over the weekend when my nurse walked in.