Chapter 30 Jaxon

When I awoke from my varying lack of consciousness, I found myself yet again in a hospital bed. Only this time, the room was dimly lit, and no awkward strangers were feeling me up or shining lights in my eyes. I was supported by a pillow and had a blanket over my lap. An IV was hooked up to my arm pumping something into me, and everything—I mean everything—hurt. As I came to and looked around, a cheery, frizzy-haired nurse came into the room. She smiled when she saw me awake.
“Good to see those eyes open,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like somebody related to the Hulk blindsided me like a truck,” I said, which was as close to the truth as I could remember. The nurse laughed.
“Sense of humor is still intact. Good sign. So, you remember what happened?”
“Unfortunately. Most of it, anyway.”
“Well, you got out of surgery last night,” the nurse said. “Everything went well, but Dr. Andrews should tell you more.”
“What did I have surgery for?” I asked, but I was damn hesitant to hear the answer.
“It’s a herniated disk,” the nurse said. “Dr. Andrews will be in soon to explain everything to you. Until then, you have a visitor. Grayce Harrison is here; she’d like to see you.”
Despite everything that was happening right now, especially the fact I was lying in a hospital bed after surgery, I heard Grayce’s name and something in my chest lifted. Suddenly, I could breathe easy again, but I was in a bit of shock. The three days of an icy-cold shoulder had made it clear to me that I wasn’t Grayce’s favorite person in the whole world, so I was surprised to hear that she was there.
“She’s here?” I asked, wondering if the nurse was screwing with me.
“Honey, she never left,” the nurse said, and hurried out to find her. A few minutes later, she returned with Grayce in tow, and for a blinding moment, I was utterly and emotionally overwhelmed that she was there. Somehow, despite her anger, she was smiling at me, and that reassuring grin lit up the room as it got ready to convince me that everything was okay and right in the world.
“So, you survived,” she said, sitting down on the chair next to my bed. She looked tired; it was the first thing I noticed. Exhausted like she’d been awake all night long. The rims below her eyes appeared dark with a lack of sleep, and her brown hair was pulled back carelessly into something that resembled a bun. She was bundled in a sweatshirt, and she looked like she hadn’t eaten well for a few days.
“I survived,” I agreed.
“How are you?” Grayce asked. Although her cold-shoulder attitude seemed to be on hold for the time being, her tone was different, more aloof than usual. Grayce wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it was extra noticeable today. She had her guard up, I could tell, and she was tense around me, as if waiting for the moment I would snap at her or something.
“I’m still waiting on the verdict,” I admitted. “But I think I broke my ass.” At this point, I was starting to hurt again, and it made me wonder how many drugs the doctors had me numb on that were about to wear off.
“You took a hard hit,” Grayce said. “I thought you broke your back.”
“The nurse said something about a herniated disk. As far as I can tell, I’m not paralyzed, but my legs are sore and tingling something fierce.” I wiggled my toes for effect and smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. “Grayce,” I said. “Is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in days.”
“Your coach and your friend Tyler came yesterday,” she said, shoving the question aside like I hadn’t even asked it. She wouldn’t look me in the face; she kept her eyes averted. “They wanted to see you, but you’d just gotten out of surgery, so they left. They’ll probably be back today. Also, your coach called your parents, but according to Tyler, your dad has no plans to stop by because he saw your photo in the paper. You know, for the Women’s Rights March.”
“I wish I could say I’m surprised, but that sounds about right.” I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. My ribs hurt, too. “My mom will get updates from Coach and Tyler so she doesn’t have to go behind my dad’s back to come to visit me. Since I’m not on my deathbed, they won’t bother.”
“It’s my fault, too,” Grayce said. She looked down at her hands.
“Hell no, it’s not your fault. Everything that happened with my parents and me happened because of my own doing, not anybody else’s.”
“Well, I’m sorry anyway,” she said. I smiled and shook my head, not caring one way or the other about what my parents were or we're not going to do. Grayce was my friend and having her here right then and there was all I could have asked.
“Thanks for staying,” I said. “You didn’t have to stay all night.”
“I know,” she said, then said nothing else as the door to my room opened again, and the nurse came back. This time she was accompanied by a man who I recognized very vaguely as Dr. Andrews.
“Good to see you awake,” he said, checking the monitor. Now that company surrounded us, I could see Grayce visibly tense up even more than before, and she looked down awkwardly at her hands again. After a moment, she looked back at me.
“I should go so the doctor can speak with you,” she said.
“You can stay,” I insisted.
“Get some rest,” she said, monotone, then she got up and walked out of the room. I watched her go, wishing I could go with her and resume my silly life outside these hospital walls.
“Okay, doc,” I said. I pushed Grayce far from my mind and averted my eyes to look at him. “Lay it on me. What’s the damage?”
“You have a herniated disk,” the doctor said.
“Yeah, no kidding.” I forced a laugh. “That's not a big deal, though, right? I mean, I hear about a slipped disk happening in people all the time. Especially athletes.”
“Yes, this is a common injury in athletes, and it’s commonly an easy recovery,” Dr. Andrews said. “However, in your case, we had to do surgery.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why surgery? Don’t these things usually heal with time?”
“In most cases, yes,” the doctor said.
“But I’m not most cases.” It wasn’t a question.
“Jaxon,” Dr. Andrews said, and I flinched internally because it was never good when a doctor said your name amid explaining something like this. “A herniated disc occurs when the outer fibers of your intervertebral disc are damaged, okay? The soft inner material of the nucleus pulposus ruptures out of its normal space.”
“English, doc.”
“If the fiber happens to tear near the spinal canal, the nucleus material can put pressure on your spine.”
“My spine? But I feel fine. My back doesn’t hurt.”
“Do your legs hurt?” Dr. Andrews asked.
“Well, I mean, they’re sore,” I muttered. “But, I was blind-sided by a football player, so, you know.”
“Do you feel any tingling or numbness in your legs?” he pressed. I met his gaze, debating on whether I wanted to answer his question aloud.
“A little bit,” I said.
“Jaxon, it’s very rare with a herniated disk that surgery is even required, but in your case, we had to decompress the pressure of the fibers against your spine.”
“That’s good, though, right? It’s fixed. Isn’t it? I mean, you fixed me.”
“When you came into the ER last night, you were already presenting with signs of myelopathy.”
“Which is …?”
“Spinal cord dysfunction,” Dr. Andrews said. “What that means is even though we could relieve some of the pressure on your spine, the disk you slipped in your back is now at a much higher risk of slipping out of place again.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, what does that mean?” Dr. Andrews hesitated, just briefly, but his silence couldn’t have been any louder.
“It means that if you ever slipped that disk again and it hit your spinal cord the wrong way, you could be paralyzed from the waist down. For life.”
We were past dangerous territory at this point. Part of me wanted to close my eyes, end the conversation, and pretend none of this was happening, and the other part of me wanted to know every horrible detail.
“There’s a chance you will never play football again,” Dr. Andrews said. “Not with this injury.”
It took a moment for the words to register, and when they did, all I could do was lay there with my hands in my lap and stare at Dr. Andrews with what I could only assume was an insanely stupid look on my face. He stood patiently at the foot of my bed, and I saw the remorse in his face. I wondered if it was sincere, or if he’d practiced it so many times with other patients that it just came with the job.
“I don’t understand,” I said finally. The words weighed on me, and I waited for him to tell me again in a way that made more sense than this did. Did doctors joke? Maybe he was kidding, pulling my leg, whatever you want to call it. Would laughing in his face be too inappropriate this early in the game?
“I feel fine,” I continued. “I’m sore, there’s some tingling, but it’s nothing I haven’t felt before. I’m a quarterback. I’m lucky if I get out of practice without some part of me hurting every day.”
“You’re lucky that you’re still able to walk at all,” Dr. Andrews said. “Had that herniated disk been pushed a couple of centimeters over, you’d be lying in this hospital bed while I told you that you would never walk again.”
“But—”
“And while you will recover just fine for light to moderate physical activity, the fact that you’re an athlete is where the issue arises. This injury will inhibit you from being able to play football the way you used to, Jaxon.”
I tried to sit up on the bed and then realized that the pain in my legs was too much to tolerate, so I settled back down. “Then I can get into physical therapy,” I said. “Gain the strength back and get back into it.”
“You’ll have to do physical therapy anyway, yes, but that’s so you can continue to function without losing the feeling in your legs completely. The numbness and tingling will come and go, but may never go away completely. Unfortunately, there’s a very slight chance that you’ll never heal enough to reach your full potential. At least to what it was.”
Another blanket of silence settled over the room. I was staring at Dr. Andrews, waiting for him to give me some sliver of underlying hope that I could cling to.
“What if I do anyway?” I asked. “What if I play football?”
“If you were ever hit again like you were hit yesterday—not even to that extent, actually—the chance of slipping that disk out of place and up against your spine is about ninety-six percent. And if that happened, it’s not something surgery would fix. You would be paralyzed. For life.”