Paralyzed (7 page)

As I walked toward the clinic entrance, I stared up at the third floor of Gower General, wondering which room Nate Brown was in. I tried to push the thought out of my mind as I headed through the glass doors and reported to the receptionist.

I'd only been waiting for about three minutes when an athletic-looking man in his forties with sandy brown hair came into the waiting area. He smiled at me. “Reggie,” he said. “Come on in.”

We shook hands at the doorway. “I'm Reggie Scott,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already.”

“Middle linebacker for Lincoln, right?” the psychologist replied. “You're quite a player.”

“Thanks, Dr. MacIntyre,” I said. “But not so much lately.”

Dr. MacIntyre ignored my last comment and smiled. “You can just call me Jim,” he said. “We like to keep things informal around here.”

As I stepped into the room, I couldn't help but notice that it looked more like a sports hall of fame than my idea of a psychologist's office. There wasn't a couch or anything even remotely medical. There were a few overstuffed leather chairs and a whole lot of trophies and pictures—some showing a young football player and his teammates, others showing the same young man on a basketball court.

“You're probably wondering about all the pictures and souvenirs,” Jim said.
“I'm a sports nut. Played every sport I could when I was a kid. I just can't seem to bring myself to get rid of all this stuff. My wife doesn't want it at home, so I keep it here.

“Besides,” he continued, “it kind of fits in with what I do here. There are a lot of good psychologists out there, Reggie, but I focus specifically on sports. A lot of people thought I was crazy when I told them I was going to specialize in working with athletes, but I'm so busy, I have to turn patients away. It's a big field, if you'll excuse the pun.”

I laughed at his lame joke. I hoped his treatment was better than his sense of humor.

“Anyway, what we try to do here is help people find out what's stopping them from achieving their best performance,” he said. “We identify what's bothering them. Then we teach them ways of coping with those things so they can reach their potential.
So I guess the first thing I have to ask is this: What's bothering you, Reggie?”

I gulped. I guessed I'd better just get it out there. This was what I was here for.

“Well, I don't know if I actually need to be here or not,” I said, hedging a little. “But my coaches think I do, and my parents think I do, so I guess I do.”

“Well, Reggie,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “This is only going to work if you want help. If you're here just to satisfy somebody else, you might as well not waste your time or mine.”

“I guess I do need some help.” The second I said it, I felt a little weight come off my shoulders. Dad had been right.

I spent a little while telling Dr. MacIntyre about the game against Milbury: how I hadn't even seen Nate Brown until he made contact with me. I told him about celebrating the interception before I realized that Nate was seriously injured. I told him how angry Nate's
mom had been with me that day at Gower General.

“So why do you suppose your coaches asked you to come see me?” Dr. MacIntyre asked.

“They say I haven't been hitting well in practice, that I'm not myself out there. They say they're worried about me getting hurt.”

“What do you think, Reggie?”

“I guess they're right,” I said. “I mean, every time I draw a bead on a kid to tackle him, I think of Nate lying in the hospital. Then something happens. I can't hit hard or sometimes even at all. For some reason, I let up.”

“What do you suppose causes that?” Dr. MacIntyre asked.

“Well, I don't really know. I guess I'm still freaked out by what happened. I don't want something like that to happen again, maybe. And I don't want to keep feeling responsible for Nate.”

“That's a great start, Reggie,” Dr. MacIntyre said. “We're going to have to wrap it up for today. I'd like you to come and see me at the same time Wednesday morning. Does that work for you?”

I was surprised the session was already over. We hadn't solved anything but, as I looked at the clock on my way out of the reception area, I realized I'd been in there for nearly an hour.

I don't know quite how it happened or when I decided to do it. I had been planning to head straight for the bus stop and catch the bus that would take me to school.

But as I left the medical center, I took one look at Gower General and realized that I had to go there instead. If Nate Brown was still in there, I had to make another attempt to see him.

I was already familiar with the hospital layout, so I bypassed the lobby and headed straight for the elevator. When the doors opened on the third floor, I proceeded to
the head nurse's station. I just hoped that I didn't run into Nate's mother again.

The nurse on duty was the same woman with jet-black hair and hazel eyes that I had met the last time. She seemed to recognize me.

“He's not here,” she said softly, before I could even ask for Nate's room number.

My face dropped. Not here? What did that mean? Oh, God. It couldn't mean that he was...

The nurse's warm smile calmed me. “Don't worry,” she said. “He's doing much better. He's in recovery. He's not in the ICU anymore.”

“What does ‘in recovery' mean?” I asked. I felt completely at her mercy. Every bit of information she had about Nate was like precious gold to me.

Instead of answering me, she said, “You're the boy who was here before, aren't you?”

I nodded, half expecting her to kick me out in the next breath.

“I felt so bad about what happened last week,” she said. “You didn't deserve to be treated like that. His mom was so stressed out, she didn't know what she was saying.”

I wasn't so sure about that. I had felt the hatred in Mrs. Brown's stare that day. I didn't want to feel that ever again.

“So, how is he doing?” The words clogged my throat. I wanted so much for the news to be good.

“He's getting better. He's got some movement back in his legs. The doctors are hopeful that, as the swelling on his spine goes down, he will get more and more mobility back. With lots of hard work in physiotherapy, he could make a full recovery.”

A full recovery? I sat down in the chair next to the nurse's desk. My legs felt weak. This news was so good, so welcome, that I was numb all over.

“Do you want to see him?” the nurse asked. “I might be able to arrange it.”

“For sure,” I said. “I mean, yes, if that's okay.”

The nurse picked up the phone and dialed some numbers. “Hello, this is Harrison from ICU. Is Nathaniel Brown awake right now? Oh, good. I'm sending a friend down to see him. All right then. Thank you.”

The nurse turned to me with a smile. “It's your lucky day. He's awake, and his Mom isn't here. Poor thing. She went home to get some sleep this morning. She hasn't had much of that since this happened.”

The nurse told me to go to the fifth floor and ask at the desk there. I could see Nate for a few minutes before his next round of medication.

I turned to leave, and then I turned back. “I just wanted to say thanks for helping me,” I said to the nurse. “I never introduced myself. I'm Reggie.”

“Nice to meet you, Reggie.” She smiled. “I'm Brenda Harrison. I had a good feeling about you. I'm so happy you came back.”

I rode alone in the elevator to the hospital's fifth floor. I was nervous. I didn't know what to expect when I got to Nate's room. And I was anxious about the possibility of running into his friends or, worse yet, his mom.

As Brenda Harrison had instructed, I went to the head nurse's station on the fifth floor. I asked the older woman at the desk where I could find Nate Brown.

“Nathaniel is in room five,” she said. “I'll take you down there.”

I followed the nurse down the hall.

“It's right here,” she said, pointing to a door. “He has a roommate, and he's pretty tired. So you can only see him for a couple of minutes. And you have to keep the noise down. Okay?”

“Sure,” I replied. “Thanks.”

I opened the door. The lights were off. There wasn't enough light coming through the lone window to fully illuminate the room. There were two beds, about ten feet apart. A light was on above the far one. I guessed this was Nate's.

My heart was pounding as I crossed the room toward where he lay. Nate was reading a football magazine. He obviously hadn't heard me come through the door. I bumped into a metal cart beside his bed. The noise made him look up from his magazine.

I'm not sure whose face wore more surprise, mine or Nate's. His eyes widened as he looked up. He didn't look sick or hurt—just tired—and he smiled at me.
I had never been so relieved to see a smile in all my life.

“Hey, Reggie.” Nate grinned from his bed. “Thanks for coming in to see me.”

“Hey,” I replied. “I've been really worried about you, dude.”

A few seconds of awkward silence followed. “So how are you doing?” I said, finally. “I guess that's a stupid question, huh?”

Nate shook his head. “I'm still pretty messed up,” he said. “But I can feel my legs and my feet again. The doctors say that's a really good sign. For a couple of days, it was pretty scary.”

He had hardly finished his sentence when I just blurted it out. “Nate, I wanted to say sorry,” I said. “I've felt so bad with you lying in here. I wanted to let you know that I didn't mean...”

“Naw,” Nate said, shaking his head. “Don't worry about it. It didn't have anything to do with you. I'm the one who—”

The door to the hospital room burst open. In strode Nate's mom.

“What are you doing in here?” she yelled, flashing me the same angry look she had given me last week. “I told you not to come back. We don't need you here!”

“Mom,” Nate interrupted. “It's okay. He's my friend. We've been to football camp before. He's just checking to see how I'm doing.”

“Friend!” the woman shrieked. “What kind of friend does this to somebody?”

When she said the word “this” she pointed to Nate, lying in the hospital bed. I was feeling sick to my stomach again.

“Stop it, Mom!” Nate yelled. “Reggie didn't have anything to do with this. It was my fault, not his. Why are you doing this?”

I didn't know what to say. I started to back away from Nate's bed. “I'd better be going, anyway,” I stammered. “I've got to get to school. Take care, Nate.”

The woman had taken a seat in the corner of Nate's room. She had her head buried in her hands. It seemed like she had already forgotten I was there. Nate waved at me and shrugged his shoulders, looking over at his mom and back at me.

I left his room feeling a little better than when I had entered. The fact that Nate's condition was improving was awesome news. He didn't seem the least bit mad at me, which was also a huge relief. His mom, however, was a very different story.

For the entire bus ride to school, all I did was think about what had happened in that hospital room. Nate's Mom had been so upset. I still didn't really understand why.

My detour to the hospital meant that I had missed third-period math. It was lunch hour by the time I arrived at Lincoln. I was heading to the cafeteria to find some of the guys from the team when I heard my
name being paged. I was to go to the office. Probably because I'd missed math.

When I got to the office, Coach Clark was there waiting. Beside him was another man, wearing a dark suit and carrying a briefcase.

“Hi, Reggie,” Coach said, smiling. “This is Mr. Danton from the Northeast Athletic District office. He wants to speak with us. Can you spare a couple of minutes?”

“Sure.”

The three of us walked down to Coach Clark's office. Once inside, the coach pointed each of us to a chair and then closed the door before sitting down.

“Reggie, I'm sure you're curious about what's going on,” Mr. Danton said.

I nodded.

“Here's the situation. We've had an official complaint about you from Milbury. It didn't come from the coaches or the players. But the complainant feels that you behaved inappropriately during and after the play on which Nate Brown was injured.”

Once again, I felt queasy, and my mouth went dry. Hadn't pretty much everybody been telling me that none of this was my fault?

“I'll be straight with you, Reggie, because you deserve to know,” Mr. Danton continued. “The complaint is from Nate's mother, Elizabeth Brown. She feels strongly that something you did on the field caused or helped to cause Nate's injury. And she's particularly upset because she feels you were celebrating after the play. She wants you suspended.”

I was speechless.

“We've looked over the video from that play and directly afterward,” Mr. Danton continued. “There is no evidence to suggest that you did anything wrong. In fact, the accident was clearly Nate's fault. And it's obvious that what you were celebrating was your interception, not the fact somebody got hurt.”

I was relieved to hear that. At least the athletic district believed me.

“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Danton, “the district has procedures it must follow. In cases like this, where there is an official complaint, we are compelled to hold a hearing. So that's what I'm here to inform you about, Reggie.”

A hearing? Sounded more like a trial to me.

“What for?” I said, my voice squeaking. “I mean, you just said that it was an accident.”

Coach Clark interrupted. “Reggie, it's just procedure,” he said. “The hearing will be at the athletic district office on Thursday morning at nine AM. It will give you a chance to explain yourself in front of Nate's parents. I'm sure once they hear your side, everything will be fine.”