A Time to Dance/A Time to Embrace (62 page)

But it was a lie.

Coach Reynolds was paralyzed.

And as long as Jake lived, he would never, ever be free again.

Seventeen

I
T WAS LIKE DRAGGING AROUND A HUNDRED POUNDS
of dead weight.

Four weeks had passed since the accident, and doctors had moved John to a room in the rehabilitation unit. They had certain goals, certain benchmarks for him to attain: transferring himself from a bed to a wheelchair, and from a wheelchair to the toilet and back again. They wanted him to dress himself and know how to look for sores on his legs and torso.

Today’s lesson was about knowing when an open wound needed medical treatment.

“Sores represent an insidious threat, Mr. Reynolds.” The physical therapist was slender, in his late thirties. Clearly he was passionate about his job, intent on bringing independence to those like John, who had recently joined the ranks of paraplegia.

John hoped the man would forgive him for being less than enthusiastic. “Mr. Reynolds, are you listening?”

“Hmmm?” John hadn’t realized how many people called him
Coach
until he’d been admitted to the hospital. Even after four weeks it didn’t sound right . . .
Mr
. Reynolds, not
Coach
Reynolds. It was as though the doctors and nurses and rehab technicians were talking about someone altogether different than the man he’d once been.

But then that was exactly right, wasn’t it? He wasn’t the man he’d been before the accident. “I’m sorry. Say it again.”

“Sores . . . see, they develop on areas where your body gets rubbed on a regular basis. The problem is, with paralysis you can’t feel the rubbing. The situation becomes especially dangerous after you’ve been in a state of paralysis for several months or more. That’s when your body begins to show signs of muscle atrophy. Without the muscle barrier, bones have been known to rub clear through the skin. So you can see the problem, Mr. Reynolds.”

John wanted to knock the man over with his wheelchair. Better yet he wanted to yell, “Cut!” at the top of his lungs and watch a dozen stagehands rush onto the scene to tell him he could get up now. The filming was over.

Of course, he could actually do neither of those things. If he wanted to get home before Christmas, he could only sit here and listen to some stranger tell him how his legs were going to waste away and that sores were going to appear on his body in the process. John settled against the back of the wheelchair, his eyes on the man’s mouth. It was still moving, still explaining the reality of John’s situation in meticulously vivid detail.

But John was no longer listening. His body might be a prisoner, but his mind could go wherever it wanted. And right now he wanted to think back over the past month.

From the moment he’d come to that Saturday after the accident, John had known he was in trouble. He had no memory of the accident, nothing at all. One moment he was pulling out of the Marion High parking lot, the next he was waking up in a hospital bed, feeling like he was choking to death. And something else, something even worse.

At first he’d been too distracted to notice.

Abby was there, and Kade and Sean and Nicole and Matt. He’d known whatever was happening, it had to be serious if everyone was gathered around him. He’d reached for his throat, and then the nurse had stepped in and warned him to stay still. The stiller the better.

Calm me down, God
. And in seconds he felt his body relax. The tubes weren’t choking him; it only felt that way. The more he relaxed, the easier it was to breathe.

It was only then, when he was able to draw a breath more normally, that John realized it. Something was terribly wrong. His body ached from lying in one place and he wanted to stretch. His brain sent down a series of instantaneous commands. Toes—curl back . . . feet—point forward . . . ankles—roll around . . . legs—shift positions.

But his body wouldn’t obey a single one.

Alarm shattered John’s peacefulness, but he refused to let it show. His family was watching, looking to him for strength. Besides, at first he hoped maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was part of the medication they’d given him, something to make him tired and lethargic. A painkiller maybe. Perhaps his legs had been hurt in the accident and they were still under some kind of deep anesthesia.

By Sunday he still slept most of the time, but he was aware enough to know that none of those things should have taken away the feeling in his legs. That evening he began experimenting whenever he was awake. During the few minutes when no one was in the room, he’d slip his hand beneath the sheet and feel around. First his stomach, then his hips and thighs.

Above his bellybutton he could feel his hand quite normally. He could sense the coolness of his fingers and feel pain when he pinched himself. But below that, nothing. No sensation whatsoever. It felt like he was touching someone else, as though someone had taken his lower half and replaced it with that of a stranger.

Then he’d glance around the room, and if no one was coming, he would stare at a part of his body and order it to move. His pelvis or his legs. Even his toes.

It was always the same: nothing. No movement.

So when they pulled the tubes from his throat and performed a series of X rays and tests on his back, John knew what they were looking for. He could have saved them the time. Finally John asked what was going on, what had happened to him. When Dr. Furin entered the room, closed the door, and announced that he had bad news, John beat him to the punch.

“I’m paralyzed, aren’t I?”

“Yes.” The doctor looked pained. As though he wished he’d become a plumber or a lawyer or an accountant. Anything but a doctor forced to tell a healthy man like John Reynolds that he’d never walk again. “I’m afraid so. We were hoping once the swelling went down that . . .” The doctor struggled to find the right words. “We were hoping the paralysis might be temporary.”

The moment John knew the truth, he had only one concern. How would Abby take the news? In those early hours, he’d refused to be devastated. He was up to the challenge, wasn’t he? He would take to a wheelchair and do all the things he’d done before. And one day he’d learn to walk again, no matter what the doctors said. Not just walk, but run. Yes, he’d be running again in a few months or a few years. Whatever it took. He’d show the doctors how it could be done.

The only thing that mattered was whether Abby could stand the shock.

As soon as he saw her, he knew he needn’t have worried. Her face was a direct reflection of her heart and the love she felt for him. A love that couldn’t possibly be affected by something like paralysis. In her eyes was a strength that reflected his own. They would fight this thing, battle it. And one day, together, they would overcome it.

Then, when she’d told him about the accident, that he’d been hit by none other than Jake Daniels, his concerns shifted completely to the boy. Jake would be devastated by the news, distraught beyond his ability to carry on. For the next two weeks John survived by praying for Jake, begging God to bring good out of what had happened, asking Him to give Jake the courage to visit John. That way the boy could see for himself that John wasn’t about to check out on life just because of a lack of feeling in his legs.

Hardly.

One of his visitors that first week had been Nathan Pike. The boy looked uncomfortable, dressed in his usual black garb. But something was different . . . It took John a few minutes to figure it out, but then it was clear. The defiance was gone.

“I heard what happened.” Nathan scuffed his feet around, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “I had to come. Health class’s no fun without you.”

John chuckled. “Health’s not much fun, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Nathan shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

There was a silence, and Nathan looked uncomfortable.

“You okay, Nathan?”

“Actually . . . about what happened at the game . . . I was gonna call you up the next day, but then . . . well . . .” He stared at his feet. “You know. You got hurt.”

“What’d you want to talk about?”

“The threat . . . whatever it was.” He lifted his head, his eyes more earnest than John had ever seen them. “Mr. Reynolds, I didn’t do it. I swear. I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but I didn’t do that. I was at the library all day. Really.”

“Okay.” It went against all reason, but John believed him. “Whatever you say.”

“You believe me, right?”

John made a fist and brought his knuckles up against Nathan’s. “I believe you.”

“You know something, Coach?”

“What?”

“You’re the only one who does.”

There were other visitors after that, dozens of students and players. All of them helped distract John from the gravity of his situation. But when John started rehabilitation, the reality came crashing in on him.

John had told Abby that after a few days of therapy, he was certain he would have movement in his toes again. At least that.

Instead, a therapist spent the better parts of two days teaching him how to slide from the bed to his wheelchair. Movement in his toes or anywhere else beneath his waist was as impossible as willing a body part on another person to move.

“How much rehabilitation before I’ll be able to move my feet?” John asked Dr. Furin the question on the evening of the second day of therapy.

The doctor had been on his way out of the room and he stopped, frozen in his tracks. “Mr. Reynolds, paralysis is a permanent condition. Some people have made miraculous strides, depending on their situation. But at this point we don’t expect you to have feeling in your legs ever again. No matter how much time we spend on rehab.”

It was the first time since his accident that John had felt anger. “Then why bother?”

“Because—” Dr. Furin’s voice was kind—“if we don’t, you’ll never get out of bed.”

The answer infuriated John, and he told Abby as much that night. “They could at least give me a reason to hope.”

Abby had been strong as steel, rarely crying—at least not in front of him. He knew her well enough to know she was crying somewhere, sometime. But he appreciated the fact that she kept her chin up around him.

She had worked her way onto the hospital bed and soothed her fingers over his weary forehead. “Since when do you find your hope in what doctors tell you, John Reynolds?”

His anger had faded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Yep.” A smile filled her face. “That’s why you have me. To remind you of the truth.”

“That my hope can only be found in God, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, then, Abby . . . you gotta do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Pray for a miracle.” His eyes were wet, and he blinked twice to see her more clearly. “Don’t ever stop praying.”

In the days since then, the Marion Eagles finished their football season with a second-round play-off loss. John’s assistant coaches had taken over since his accident, and a quarterback from the junior varsity squad was brought up to lead the team. Nearly all the players and coaches had been by, most of them making only a brief appearance to bring John a signed football or a card or a bouquet of balloons.

When the season ended, the visits tapered off and John put his energies entirely into rehabilitation.

Day by day, he learned the things his therapists asked of him. He could balance his torso with the strength of his arms and swing himself into a wheelchair. His efforts at getting on a toilet were trickier, but he could do so unassisted now. In fact, Dr. Furin had assured him that he was maybe one week away from going home.

“Definitely before Christmas.” Dr. Furin had grinned at him the other day. “I’ll bet that’s the best news you’ve heard in a while.”

It should have been, but somehow it wasn’t. After a month in the hospital, a month of not coming a single centimeter closer to moving his feet or legs, John’s usually fiery determination was cooling fast.

Christmas? From a wheelchair?

The past few days he still prayed for a miracle, but not with any real sense of it actually happening. He was no longer thinking about fighting his diagnosis or beating the odds or somehow gaining the ability to walk again.

Rather, he was thinking of all that he’d lost.

Last night was the first time Abby had noticed it. She gave him the update about Jake. The judge had delayed making a decision about whether to try the boy as an adult, and at the same time, the district attorney was refusing any sort of plea bargain. The hearing on how he would be tried was set to take place in ten days. But either way, it looked like Jake would have to stand trial.

When Abby was finished talking, she planted her hands on her hips. “John Reynolds, you’re not even listening.”

John blinked. “I’m listening. That’s too bad. About Jake, I mean.”

“Too bad?” Abby huffed. “When you first got hurt, you couldn’t stand the thought of Jake going to jail. Now it’s just, ‘too bad’?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, John, be
mad
. Be furious. Be upset. But don’t lie there with that monotone and say you’re sorry. That’s not the man I married.”

John’s voice remained the same. “You’re right.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m not the man you married, Abby. I’ve lost the fight.”

“You’ve
what?”
Abby seethed, pacing from one side of his hospital room to the other. “Don’t tell me about losing the fight, John. The fight hasn’t even begun! You can’t ask me to pray for a miracle if you’ve already given up. I mean, come on . . .”

The conversation went on that way for an hour until finally Abby broke down and wept. She apologized for expecting so much and assured him he had the right to be discouraged. Before she left, she admitted he wasn’t the only one. She was discouraged, too.

No wonder he couldn’t concentrate on the therapist and bedsores. For entire hours of the day—even in the midst of rehabilitation— John could do nothing but remember. How the earth felt beneath his feet as he flew down the football field; how easily he’d strolled in front of his classroom day in, day out for the past twenty years. How his children had bounced on his knee as babies, and how he’d carried them on his back when they walked through the zoo.