The Off Season (23 page)

At first I thought Win was going to make me play pickup with them, which I wouldn't do no matter what—it wasn't fair because I could intercept just about any shot, and it also wasn't fair because they'd roll into me and I'd end up with a broken leg. Instead I went to the other end of the court and started shooting three-pointers, keeping it gentle to hold off that shoulder twinge.

"Oooh," I could hear Dennis behind me. "Check it out there!"

"Drop the camera," Win said from the sidelines, which I learned was his term for showing off. "You're playing! Make a space for yourself." Which meant don't just shoot, but use my elbows like I had two defenders on me, and spin a little, and dribble, and imagine the game and the pressure instead of just playing Horse.

Win seemed to feel I was just about the worst basketball player he'd ever seen. He kept yelling all the things I should be doing. Plus he was turning his whole body as much as possible, using all the muscles he could, to watch my shots because of course he couldn't turn his head. Within fifteen minutes we were both soaked, and he was so hoarse he could barely talk. But he talked enough to order some wind sprints, which I did even though I didn't want to because, well, he's Win, and also I knew sure as shooting that wind sprints happen every day at b-ball and I might as well get used to them.

I was pretty embarrassed to be running in front of Dennis and his friends, but Dennis came right out and rolled beside me, chattering the whole time, and it was all I could do to stay ahead of him because my shoes are so old that they don't have much grip left but it's not like I had a big wad of money available to buy new ones. That wouldn't count as a Mom's-credit-card emergency no matter how much Dennis busted me for being slow.

When we got back upstairs, Win just drooped, he was so exhausted. But he still told me all the drills we'd do tomorrow.

Only the gym was so crowded most times that I couldn't do much, and other times I just plain refused because watching a girl with two good legs wasn't something the guys in there needed at that specific moment. Once Win got on my case so much that I had to remind him of his first time there, and then at least he had the grace to shut up.

Instead he found out the gym didn't open until seven, and he asked around some more and got a gym key, which was kind of funny seeing as his hands didn't work so well—and whenever he tried to do anything it looked like he was wearing giant oven mitts. The very act of picking up a key was half an hour of PT right there. Which should make you count your blessings, thinking about that.

And which explains why the hospital folks let us do it at all. We were down there at six-thirty one morning—Win "let" me come in at five to get him up so we could be in the gym by five-thirty for a good ninety-minute workout before the PTs took it over—and I was practicing foul shots. Whenever I made one, the ball would land pretty close to Win and sometimes he could get a hand out enough to slow it down and nudge it back my way.

Just then, one of Win's doctors walked in. He stood for about ten minutes watching, although I was so mad I really didn't think about it much. Win had gotten himself a whistle—Maryann gave it to him, actually, the PT who was so nice to me that first week, and it was a huge deal for him just to get the whistle into his mouth because he was just getting his pinch and grasp movements back. It took a couple minutes each time and he'd finally get it in there, but then he'd come up with something he
had
to tell me and spit the whistle out, only to struggle away to put it back in and then to blow it. Even though we were the only people in the gym! It wasn't like he had to get my attention, make sure I could hear him over the noise—I could hear him just fine. And so every time he blew that thing, I got a little bit angrier, and every time he'd spit it out to tell me something I already knew, I'd get a little more, and I was about ready to rip that whistle right off its cord. Which is probably a good thing for Win, then, that the doctor showed up.

So the doctor kept watching, especially how Win was using his hands to roll himself to the closer basketballs, which is really technical because the wheelchair has to end up exactly the right distance from the ball, especially when you're strapped in and wearing a cervical collar and thick rubber-surfaced gloves so you can get your second-rate hands to move the chair at all.

"Are we doing anything wrong?" I asked finally, just in case there was something about how Win was moving, or even our just being there, that we should know.

"You're providing the best therapy in the world." He sounded really serious too. Though I didn't know whether he meant basketball was helping Win, or just that I was getting him out of himself for a while.

A
FTER OUR DAILY SUPER FUN MORNING WORKOUTS,
I'd need a shower and Win would need a nap because he was so worn out from yelling at me. Then a couple hours later he'd wake up all raring to go to the daily beehive of therapy.

Physical therapy meant lots of stretching so his body wouldn't curl up, and electric stim to all sorts of muscles, from his quads to his hands, so they'd be ready to work when and if the nerves ever decided to reconnect. some of the muscles already were working, like when he moved his toes, but other ones only worked sometimes depending on how fresh he was, or other factors no one could figure out due to the whole mystery of nerve regeneration. He'd lift weights—three pounds, or five pounds, which was a huge deal when he got to that. And very soon—too soon, I thought—they had him hanging in a big harness so he could practice walking movements, to get
those
muscles going and to work on balance, which is another huge thing for SCI.

It could have been really depressing considering what he used to lift and how fast he used to run, but no one brought that up, not even Win. The nurses just said how lucky he was to have all this strength coming in, like his whole football career had been preseason training for SCI. And Dennis spent a lot of time in the PT department cheering him on. That was his job actually. The hospital folks, not being stupid, paid him real money to encourage PT patients, and he also drove a delivery truck, which is just as amazing.

The whole time Win was being worked on, he'd be on my case about
my
PT, yakking about my form so much that I had a little pang of guilt at how I'd yakked at Brian all summer. Although Win wasn't the only one who'd lost muscle mass. When he called me flabby—which I remember like it was burned in my ears, thank you very much—he meant my muscles looked like they hadn't been used in a while, which they hadn't been thanks to him. And I have to say that it felt pretty good to get them back into action. Plus those goofy PT lifts the doctors recommended really did seem to help my shoulder.

Then we'd go to OT. The occupational therapy room has a little pretend house all set up with a working kitchen and bathroom, even one of those little tables for changing babies' diapers, and a huge part of OT is just learning how to get around this house. Loading the dishwasher for example, if you have hands enough for that job (which Win did after a while, ha, even though he'd never once loaded it at home), or navigate with an electric wheelchair even if nothing on your body worked except your mouth. OT means learning how to help someone transfer you (or transfer yourself if you can) from a bed to a chair or a chair to a car, to dress yourself, to brush your teeth. To eat. Which Win did as well, and watching him shovel in meatloaf with a spoon strapped to his wrist made me just as proud and excited as watching him score a touchdown. Even Win let his guard down enough to smile, although it wasn't a big secret to anyone in the hospital how much he hated having other people feed him. He was even letting me feed him now, without any silent treatment, in the cafeteria.

By the time Win finished therapy he'd be shaking all over, so tired he was like a rag doll, and it took three of us to get him into bed so he could sleep for a bunch of hours. The nurses swore this was normal, and really good, especially considering how hard he was pushing himself. They were constantly reminding him not to overexert, and then boosting him, and me too, when things seemed to slide and he couldn't do what he'd done the day before. That was normal. Everything was normal. Not a normal I'd ever seen, but normal here in this hospital.

Sometimes Win and I would just talk. Like once he was getting stretched by Maryann who'd gotten him that whistle—she'd played basketball in college—and he said, grunting at the stretch, which Maryann said was a good sign because it showed he was feeling it, "So who's this guy?"

"What guy?" I asked.

"This guy from
Hawley.
"

"It was nothing," I said, wishing I were smart enough to change the subject.

"Was that the guy in the article?" Maryann asked. "He sure didn't look like nothing."

Which made me feel even better, you can be sure.

"Are you sleeping together?" Win asked.

"Win!" For one thing, you don't talk like that, not if you're a Schwenk, and you sure don't talk like that in front of a
stranger,
even if she is a physical therapist. "No!"

"Oh, come on!" Maryann said. She grinned at Win. "I mean, if he asked nicely..."

"Did he ask you nicely?" Win asked me, grinning himself.

"No! Jeepers..." In the end, I told them the whole story, how Brian came by the farm to help, which made Win raise his eyebrows, and the turkey farmers who turned out to be reporters, which made them both just about fall over laughing if Win could fall over, and how Brian was two different people when he was alone with me and when he was in public, and how I figured out he was embarrassed about me. It hurt to talk about it, especially that I embarrassed him, but the fact I could even say this stuff out loud showed the hurt was going away a bit. I think.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," said Maryann.

"He's not quarterback material," Win sniffed, like this was the biggest insult ever.

"Why do you say that?" she asked.

"Because he's not a leader. If he can't get those guys to respect his girlfriend, how's he going to lead them on the field?"

Maryann nodded. "Oh. I thought you were going to say a real quarterback wouldn't diss someone as great as D.J."

I blushed, but Win frowned in his football coach way. "You're probably right about that."

Win and I talked a lot, actually. At night I'd do his range of motion work, or help him with the ones he could do himself—all these specific exercises to keep him flexible. Keeping his joints moving was pretty critical, especially because a tiny bit more feeling and control was coming every couple days to different parts of his body. I had to do each exercise ten times and there were about two dozen exercises, so the whole thing took a while. We talked about the family, Dad's big dreams about going organic, the whole cheese business that made Win laugh. Especially when I asked who'd want to buy handmade cheese once they'd seen Dad's hands. Although Win didn't think it was such a bad idea. He'd done a project on organic farming in one of his business classes and said there really could be some money in it.

We even talked a bit about the Fight, and how Win never even wanted the farm and had wished his whole life Dad would change his mind.

"Well, at least you won't be stuck with it now," I said. Which wasn't so nice to point out, I realized as soon as I'd said it, but Win just laughed.

He looked at me. "It really should go to you, you know."

I snorted. "That's a real brilliant idea."

"You're the best damn farmer I've ever seen," he said in that don't-argue voice he's got. "A helluva lot better than Dad."

Which was something to think about, you can be sure.

And we talked about Curtis. Win couldn't believe Curtis had a girlfriend, and he busted a gut about Curtis and the science fair, once he stopped sputtering about Curtis joy riding illegally and cutting school, and he made that barf/curious face about the rats. He was really tickled that Curtis and Sarah had done so well, and said it was about time one of us did more than just run around.

With all the workouts Win was putting me through, and the rest of the time I spent being his slave, or doing all the homework I was forever trying to catch up on, I'd crawl into bed at nine o'clock each night just delighted to go to sleep. Maybe Win still had his midnight crying jags, but I sure didn't have the energy to stay awake and find out, or the courage to ask him. But I don't think he did. I felt so much better, in my brain as well as my shoulder, which by now was so strong that I could shoot almost anything. Having Win back—back emotionally, and ready to fight for his recovery the same way he'd always fought for football—that was a relief like you can't even imagine. Like a two-hundred-pound weight had been lifted off my heart. Mom said she was improving as well. She and I talked every day, and she had long conversations with Win and was just so happy about him that I know he was healing her back more than any medicine or the stretching she was doing. She'd been working from home ever since she'd slipped that disk, having people stand in for her as principal (seeing as she couldn't stand, ha) at the elementary school. Now, though, she was going to take an official leave of absence, once Dr. Miller said she was up for it, so she could come to Win. And she and Kathy Ott were trying to figure out how to come over with Curtis for just for a day or two before then, which depended on Mom's back and whether she could manage the ride. That was great, thinking about them visiting.

I thought about Brian a lot still, but not with quite as much hurting. I missed him so much, but I had to keep reminding myself that I didn't miss all of Brian, I just missed part of him, the part that was okay with being my friend. And sometimes I'd have to tell myself, like I was Win giving a lecture or something, that I was worth more than half a guy. But all in all I was too busy to spend too much time thinking about romance.

I guess I was alone on that one, though.

See, the one thing Win wouldn't let me help him with was showering. Which of course is another thing you have to practice because a shower becomes a whole new experience in a wheelchair. Win's room had a bathroom all set up with a special shower chair and handholds, and that's where you had to practice taking a shower. But Win wouldn't let me go in with him even though I'd seen a lot more of him these past weeks than I ever wanted. He went with a PT instead, and then the next time he did as well, and because I was so busy trying to recover from his coaching, it took me a while to notice that that PT was always Maryann.