The Off Season (16 page)

Win lay there looking at the wall, where the nurses had just rolled him, like he was memorizing the wallpaper.

"How about this?" Dr. Rosenberger asked after a minute, poking him all the time—not hard, but enough that someone would feel it if they had working nerves.

Win still didn't answer, and I started to get a really bad feeling. "Win?" I said. "Please talk to him."

Dr. Rosenberger shot me a look, catching on right away. He leaned right over Win's face. "Listen, Warren"—which no one ever calls Win, ever—"I know this is awful. You have every right to be furious. But we cannot help you—we cannot make you better—without your help. Please, if you feel anything at all, tell me. It is critical that I know."

Win didn't move, didn't even make eye contact. It was like he was in the room alone.

"Win," I pleaded. "Please. For Mom."

Dr. Rosenberger tried a couple more times, but he would have had more luck talking to a rock. Maybe that pinprick was poking Win like a hot needle and it was all he could do not to yell, but I'll never know because he sure wasn't showing anything.

Finally we all left. I must have looked pretty bummed, because out in the hall Dr. Rosenberger took the time to explain to me about the stages of grief, and that it was completely normal for Win to be in denial like this. I nodded, but inside I couldn't help thinking that Win wasn't denying his injury. He was making it his whole entire world, if that makes any sense, and just getting drowned in it without trying to deal with it one tiny bit.

D
R. ROSENBERGER ALSO TOLD ME
that he'd like to have a family conference call in forty minutes. So I had to give Mom and Dad a heads-up, which meant finding a special cell phone room because heaven forbid you use your phone in the regular hospital rooms, and then oh so luckily right as Mom was asking about Win, I got a second call from BRIAN and so I said Win was doing just what he should be doing—because isn't that what the doctor said, that it was normal not to talk?—and that they'd tell us a whole bunch in the conference, and as fast as I could switched to him.

"Hey."

"Hey. How are you doing out there?" He asked, sounding so concerned.

"Oh, you know..." Later I realized I should have apologized right away for my whole
People
mistake. But I didn't, and then by the time I did realize, it didn't matter one way or the other, it was such ancient history, and so irrelevant to what our lives were now.

"No, really. How are
you?
How's Win? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Oh, it was good to hear his voice. It was like the way ice feels on a really bad injury, only warm instead of shivering cold. "You can talk to me," I whispered—whispered because it took so much effort not to bawl. So I probably sounded like I had a bad cold.

"Of course. Whenever you want."

"Okay. How—how was your game on Friday?" Which sounds stupid, but at that moment I really needed to talk about something that wasn't hospitals and spinal cords and all this pain.

Brian laughed like he understood. And he said Hawley lost to Cougar Lake, and then he went into a long description of how on the way home the bus got stopped by a buffalo, because there are a couple buffalo meat farms out that way, and apparently one of the buffalo had got out somehow and was standing in the middle of the road absolutely not interested in letting the bus go by. Jimmy Ott wouldn't let anyone off the bus because he'd been to Yellowstone and seen this video of tourists getting gored by buffalo, stupid tourists videotaping each other getting too close—I remembered that story from Jimmy, and how mad us kids had been that he didn't bring a copy of that video home for us—but eventually this buffalo, the Cougar Lake one, decided he was ready to amble along, like the bus and the honking bus horn and all these football players shouting out the windows had nothing at all to do with his decision.

It was completely hilarious, the way Brian told it, and I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. And then, just as I was cracking up the most, Charlie walked by the door with Bill, and they both saw me laughing on my cell phone like a heartless moron. So I quick told Brian we'd talk more later and rushed out to hug Bill.

You'd think that, being his sister and all, I'd remember how big Bill is, but each time I see him lately I'm just amazed. Maybe I don't see him that often, or maybe he just keeps bulking up. But it felt so good to put my arms around him and feel all those huge muscles. It made me feel safe. "Charlie here's been filling me in on how smart you are," he said.

"He's lying." I grinned. God, it felt good to have Bill there. Although you could see he was faking that good mood because he had big circles under his eyes like he'd been crying.

We walked down the hall, Charlie staying a bit behind us so that we'd have some privacy. I could see the nurses up and down the hall checking Bill out, and the families too, the moms and sisters. I hoped it would bring Win extra-special care, all those females grooving on Bill like that. Plus Bill was carrying this big pizza box with a big hot-pizza smell.

"How is he? Really?" Bill asked, and all the pain he'd been hiding came out in his voice.

"He's right here," I said, motioning to Win's door.

Bill squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "Hey there, bro! I brought your favorite."

"You have to lean over him so he can see you," I whispered, kind of angling Bill that way.

He grinned down at Win. "Hey, man. We're going to get you out of here."

Win's eyes flicked over Bill's face for a second. He didn't even look at the pizza box, though the smell was pretty powerful in that little hospital room.

"Hey, Win, you're going to beat this. I just know it."

There was a long silence. Finally Win spoke. "D.J.? Don't you remember my instructions?"

Again, that kicked-in-the-stomach feeling. I tried my best not to gasp, the pain was so strong. As gently as I could, I led Bill back into the hall. He didn't deserve to stay in there and get abused like that.

"He, um ... Don't take it personally—it's just the stages of grief," I explained. What else could I say? I hoped Bill wouldn't ask me to explain the stages, but he looked too upset, too in shock, to ask anything at all.

There were a couple other doctors and folks at the phone conference besides Dr. Rosenberger, and Charlie of course, and we all sat around this table with a fancy phone thing in the middle. Dr. Rosenberger explained to Mom and Dad the same things he'd said to me, how we really wouldn't know anything for at least another day and maybe several, although the break in the vertebrae looked very clean, which was a good sign, and his spinal cord bruising wasn't that extensive, and how these injuries heal in very different ways and sometimes it takes months for things to happen.

I noticed he didn't mention Win not talking.

"Is he—is he going to walk?" Dad asked, his voice cracking.

"We do not know," Dr. Rosenberger answered in a really no-nonsense way that was actually very reassuring. "We don't know what he's going to be able to do. I can't make any predictions."

Then he said we had other stuff to talk about like rehab, and that there was a great rehab place near Minneapolis we should look into.

Mom asked in a scared voice how much it cost.

Charlie Wright leaned into the table. "That's not something you need to worry about, Linda." Which led to a long discussion about insurance and other financial stuff I wasn't too interested in once I heard we wouldn't be going bankrupt.

Then Dr. Rosenberger said what a great job I was doing, how much it meant to Win.

"I wish I could be there," Mom said, starting to choke up.

"Don't worry, Mom," I said. If Dr. Rosenberger could lie, then so could I. "Win's doing great. You just work on getting yourself better so when you see him, you can give him a big hug." Which was pretty thick, but it seemed to cheer her up. Dr. Rosenberger nodded at me like I'd said the right thing.

Finally the conference call ended, after the doctors recommended a bunch of Web sites so my folks could do that at least. Then everyone cleared out with their piles of papers, and Charlie left too, and it was just me and Bill.

Bill sat there staring at the table. He hadn't said one word, I realized all of a sudden. He hadn't even moved. He looked like a statue. A really sad statue. With big muscles.

"You okay?" I asked.

"It should have been me," he whispered.

I sat on the table next to him. "What are you talking about?"

"It should be me in there, it shouldn't be Win. He doesn't deserve this."

"And
you
do? Come on, Bill—"

He started to cry. "I could handle it better. I don't need football. But it's all he's got."

Bill was right, but I couldn't say that. Also, the very last thing I'd want is Bill hurt. Not that I wanted Win hurt either, but wishing the injury could switch to Bill—not only was it impossible, it was wrong. "He's got us," I said.

Bill snorted. "He's got you. I'm no good at this."

"Me neither," I said, wishing again someone else could step in. I'd been so hopeful about Bill showing up. Now I could see, though, that he wasn't going to be any better at this than me.

***

Only Brian Nelson put it a lot differently when we talked that afternoon. We had a really long conversation about Win and Bill, and though I tried not to badmouth either one of them, Brian still got the gist of what was going on.

"You sound really disappointed in Bill," he said, using his family therapist voice.

"Yeah, well, now I feel like I've got
two
brothers to take care of." And no one to take care of me, though I didn't say that out loud. It sounded bad enough already.

"That's really rough." There was this little pause. "Isn't Bill younger than Win?"

"Yeah! But so am I. And Bill's older than
me.
"

"But ... isn't it different?"

"No!" Although it was. I could see what Brian was getting at. Because Win has always been such a big brother to Bill, bossing him around when they were kids, and then I guess again today when he blew off Bill's pizza and kicked him out. Bill's always been happy-go-lucky, but that attitude doesn't work so well in a situation like this. Kind of like Dad and needles. It's just not in him.

Not that I thought that all out on the phone. But Brian planted the seed.

"You know," Brian said, "my mom—I was talking to her about this, I hope that's okay, and she said some people are just amazing, people who are hurt like this. They decide from the get-go to get better. And some people take a while."

"The stages of grief," I said, glad I had something to add. Brian's mom is a family therapist herself, that's why he's so good at talking—all the time us Schwenk kids were milking cows, he was learning how to talk.

"Yeah. And it sounds like you're doing the right thing by just waiting."

That was nice. Even though I felt like I couldn't be any more useless if I had my thumb stuck up my nose. We talked a bit more about stuff that wasn't quite so heavy, a movie he said I really needed to see, which was fun to hear, normal life talk, and we hung up.

Then I checked my messages. I had one from Kyle Jorgensen, who I didn't even know had my number, and Amber asking what she and Dale could do, and other people as well asking to help. But I didn't call any of them back because I didn't know what to say. Even if Amber and those other folks were here in Seattle, even if they were standing right next to me, I wouldn't know how they could help. Because if Win wasn't going to talk, no one could help him, not one little bit.

When I got back to Win's room, Bill and Charlie were chatting with a nurse who was holding Bill's pizza box like she was a waitress or something. "I'll see if I can find a haz mat fridge," she said, grinning at Bill, who grinned back because grinning at girls just comes naturally to him, and then she walked past me with a big thumbs-up sign.

"What was that all about?" I asked, though the flirting part was pretty clear to me already.

"Win just ate half a pizza," Charlie said proudly, "though I don't see how. That kind of seasoning would just go right through me."

"Well, you know Win," Bill added, shaking his head. He looked pretty proud too, which I guess he had a right to be considering it was his idea to pick up the pizza in the first place. Win's special pizza was made of broccoli and pineapple and anchovies and those little hot peppers from Mexico that burn my tongue right off. You see, Win figured out pretty early in college that when you order a pizza, everyone comes around asking for a slice, so he started getting pizzas with the most disgusting ingredients he could think of so that other people wouldn't snag it all. And guess what, people didn't because they're not insane, and then he actually developed a taste for that combination and now that's all he'll eat.

Anyway, while I had been on my cell phone talking to Brian, that nurse asked Win if he was hungry, and it turns out that one of the feelings you have left after a spinal cord injury is hunger, and Win couldn't help but admit that he was. So the nurse offered him some of Bill's pizza and he said yes, and then she cut it into little bits and fed it to him with a fork. Apparently Win wouldn't even look at her as she fed him. He just kept his eyes closed, and the only words he said were "I don't want any more." And when she offered to save the rest for later, he didn't answer. But at least he ate, which I guess merits a thumbs-up sign even if the way he ate was incredibly rude.

So that was extremely good news, that Win still had a taste for hot peppers and broccoli, only that evening when Bill asked if he'd like the rest of the pizza, Win wouldn't answer. He wouldn't answer any of us. We talked to the nurse about it—the same one, thank goodness, so she knew what was going on—and she just sighed, and microwaved the pizza and brought it in all cut up, not saying a word, and sat down next to Win and fed him without even asking if it was okay. And Win ate, again not looking at her or acknowledging her in any way, and when it was all finished and she asked if he'd like anything else, and then asked if he had any special requests for breakfast, he acted like she didn't exist. So in the end Win's eating wasn't really such good news at all.