Chapter 28 Jaxon

Grayce didn’t talk to me for three days straight, no matter how many times I called, texted, or begged Alex to relay messages for me. I had no idea what was happening. One day we’d been friends, marching side-by-side in the women’s rights parade, discussing politics under the stars on the quad, and the next, she’d shunned me to the edges of the earth. I couldn’t even find her at her regular booths in the cafeteria. Short of going to her house and sitting on the front steps—stalker status—it was impossible to reach her.
When our next game came around that week, I was more distracted than ever, but I tried everything I could to not let Coach and Tyler onto it. They would never forgive me if I screwed this up over trivial friendship problems, so I pushed Grayce out of my mind on game day and did everything in my power to focus on getting through the game and preferably winning it.
The crowd was huge, and people roared their support in the stands. I had to tune them out to focus; by halftime, my team was up by six points. Although we were winning now, there was still enough time for the other team to catch up, so I had to focus long enough for that clock to run out with our team still in the lead.
The second half of the game went downhill fast, and I could imagine it was my fault. Four minutes remained on the clock, and now our rivals were up by eight points. They were only two points behind us, and the crowd was getting restless. It would be close, and I had to save this thing before it fell apart. As we formed on the field, I found my eyes flickering away from the face of the opposing team’s defense and towards the stand of people.
Get your head in the game, I thought. I turned back to my team, my eyes meeting Tyler’s. He nodded at me.
“Six, eight, six, Pump F-Stop on three.”
A silence had settled over the crowd. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, including me.
“Set.”
The linemen dropped into their stances, eager to go.
“Red eighty, red eighty . . . hut-hut.”
Our center player Dylan snapped the ball between his legs, passing it to me. My first intention was to run with the ball, to make it to the end zone myself, but it was too late to run. I was surrounded. Catching Tyler’s eye, I wheeled around, away from the defensive players coming at me, and threw the ball in Tyler’s direction with all my might.
There were only a handful of times I’d seen Tyler fumble the ball, and this was one of them. A player on the opposing team intercepted the ball, but that was the last thing I saw before a defensive player hit me from behind.
The impact of the kid’s body against mine was the first thing I felt—like being blindsided by a freight train. There was no pain, not at first, but as my feet got knocked out from under me and I hit the ground, the agony appeared, radiating down my back and legs as if someone had pressed a red-hot iron against my skin. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the whistle blow and the referee shout, “Roughing!”
I hit the ground with a dull thud; by now, the pain had completely enveloped me. It was so incredible and surreal that every bone in my body could have been broken one by one and had the same effect. A great whoosh of air left my body, and I was lying on my back, trying to suck in a mouthful of breath. I felt like I was suffocating, and I was sure I would die for a moment. I hoped I would because the pain was growing, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath no matter how hard I tried. My lungs were useless, paralyzed.
“That was a personal foul!” Coach shouted from somewhere on the sidelines. I was still trying to make sense of what had just happened, but even lying in the grass in the middle of the field, I could hear a shocked murmur sift through the crowd. As I slowly regained my breath, I tried to sit up—but nothing happened. My legs felt numb, the sensation an athlete gets after lying in a tub of ice water for half an hour. With a jolt of panic and horror, I realized that I couldn’t get to my feet.
“Tate?” Coach called, but I couldn’t respond to him. In mere seconds the sunlight above my head was blocked by a shadow as someone leaned over me. One person, and then more. I squinted and opened my mouth, trying to speak, but I still felt so breathless that no words came out. To the right of me, Coach was hovering over my face. He was saying my name, holding fingers up, and asking me questions, but I couldn’t focus long enough to reassure him. I closed my eyes tight, hoping that this was some horrible nightmare. But when I opened my eyes again, the horrific scene was still in front of me, and I was still on my back in the middle of the field, staring at the bright, glaring blue sky above me. Had I not been in such pain, I probably would have marveled at how beautiful the weather was today. Grayce hated it, I’m sure. She didn’t like the sun. She liked the rain and cool.
Grayce.
I wondered again if she was here today, watching me play, even though she’d been giving me the cold shoulder for three days.
Grayce.
My head was spinning, snagging my thoughts into an abyss of nonsense. I tried to say her name. I wanted to ask Coach if he could go and get her for me, but I couldn’t get a single word out. Grayce would know what to do. Grayce always knew what to do, even if it was just to give me a quirky smile and roll her eyes.
“Get EMS on the field now,” Coach said to someone. I think it was Tyler. He squeezed my shoulder. I felt a tingling sensation, but it was my legs that were hurting the worst. “We’re going to get you some help.”
“Grayce?” I said. Somewhere in the distance, I swore I could hear her voice, but my head was fuzzy, my heart beating painfully against my chest. I think I was being loaded onto a stretcher, and suddenly the ambulance was moving, sirens blaring. The pain was still intense, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Can you speak?” the paramedic asked me. He was hovering over my body, running his hands up and down my arms and legs like he was trying to cop a feel. I opened my mouth to say something funny to break the ice, but no words came out.
“It’s fine,” the guy said. “We’re almost there.”
I must have drifted out of consciousness for a few minutes because when I woke again, I was in the hospital, lying on a bed in some brightly lit room. There was an oxygen mask on my face, a man in navy blue scrubs, and a lab coat shining a small flashlight in my eyes.
“Jaxon, my name is Dr. Andrews,” the man said. “We’re going to take care of you, okay? Just relax.”
And I didn’t seem to have a choice because before I knew what was happening, I was drifting out of consciousness again.