Falling Away (2 page)

I shrug. “Okay, I guess. It aches.” That’s an understatement. It fucking kills.

“Need something for the pain?” she asks. The nurse is a pretty middle-aged woman with brown hair and brown eyes.
 

I nod. “Sure.”

I want to ask, but I don’t.

So I wait until she returns thirty minutes later with a paper cup containing two pills and a half-can of ginger ale. I take the pills and settle back, then finally get the courage. The nurse’s name tag identifies her as Pam.
 

“Pam?” I touch the bandage around my knee. “How bad is it? When can I play again?”

Her expression goes carefully blank and she doesn’t answer right away. “Um, I think maybe you should talk to Dr. Lane, Mr. Dorsey.”

“Shit.” I lean back and squeeze my eyes shut. “That’s not good.”
 

She tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You’ll be all right, sweetie. I’ll page Dr. Lane for you.”
 

Two hours later, a tall, thin, balding man in a lab coat sweeps into the room and pulls up a seat beside the bed. “Ben, how are you, son?”

I shrug. “Depends on what you’re about to tell me, Doc.”

He’s quiet for a minute, and then he leans back in the red plastic visitor’s chair, letting out a long sigh. “Well, then…I’m not gonna bullshit you, son. You messed up your knee pretty bad.”

“How bad?”

His eyes meet mine, and I see pity in them. Fucking pity. “Pretty bad. The hit you took…that was a career-ender, Ben. I’m sorry.”

“Career—” I have to clear my throat and blink hard several times. “Career-ender. You’re kidding. Tell me you’re—you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Dr. Lane shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Ben. You’ll need intensive physical therapy just to be able to walk on it again. With months of work, you
may
be able to jog short distances. But competitive football? That’s over for you, son.”

How many times is this guy going to call me
son
in one conversation?
 

I nod and stare at my knee rather than at him. He’s just the bearer of bad news; it’s not his fault. Smashing his nose in would be bad form, I’m guessing.
 

“Can I have…a minute, please?” I ask.

He stands up, but doesn’t leave right away. “You got family to call?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

But even after he’s gone and I have my phone, I don’t call home. I’m not sure why.
 

That’s a lie, though. They’ll make me come home, and I’ll have to see Kylie and Oz. Mom let it slip a few weeks ago that they got married recently. So now she’s Kylie Hyde. She married him. I got wasted when I found out. Missed work the next day, and skipped practice.
 

I can’t go back.
 

Dad bought me my own health insurance policy before I left, so this’ll be covered by the deductible, and what’s not I can take care of on my own. I don’t need them to visit me. I don’t want them to.

They’ll be sad and tell me it’ll be fine.
 

It’s not fine.

I’ll never play football again.
 

I nearly cry, sitting there alone in the hospital bed. But I don’t.
 

*
 
*
 
*

A taxi takes me home. Timo swings by and gets my keys and then brings my truck back for me. I thank him, and he leaves, even though he clearly wants to stay and hang out. But he’s a football buddy, and I can’t handle that right now.
 

I flip through the folder of instructions I got when I checked out of the hospital. Primarily, I look through the list of outpatient physical therapists in the area. I settle on the closest one. It’s a mile and half away, so I can take a taxi there until I figure out a better way to get from place to place. Driving is out of the question for the immediate future.
 

At home, there’d be Mom and Dad to drive me to therapy. Or even Colt and Nell. Here? It’s just me. But I’m determined to do this on my own. It’s fucking stupid, even I know that. I should call Dad and tell him what happened, let him come get me and bring me home. But what then? Back to Vanderbilt? Where everyone will know me, where the pity over my ruined football career will be the talk of the whole college. It was bad enough when I dropped out at the end of my junior year and vanished, but if I were to show up a year and half later, in a fucking wheelchair? Fuck no.
 

Next morning, woozy from pain, I hobble with the help of crutches into the kitchen of my rented apartment and make coffee. It’s easier to drink it standing up than to lower myself onto a chair only to have to stand back up again. I call a cab and give the driver the address of the physical therapist.

It’s a storefront in a strip mall, sandwiched between a Supercuts and a dry-cleaner.
Leveaux Physical Therapy and Fitness Training.
I pay the small fare, grip my crutches in both hands, lean on them and lever myself to my feet. I find my balance, and then adjust my crutches and make my way to the appointment. It’s hot as hell outside, and I’m sweating by the time I reach the door.
 

Alan Jackson is playing from the overhead speakers, and it’s blessedly cool inside, the way Texans like it. It’s a fairly small space, filled to the max with weight machines of all kinds, free weights, treadmills, stair-steppers, and a space cleared around the perimeter of the room for a small walking track. I scan the gym: there’s an older man working a leg-lift machine, an overweight woman sweating buckets and puffing and gamely limping along on a Stairmaster. A woman with blonde, braided hair stands beside a young black guy with an athletic prosthetic from the knee down, encouraging him as he squats, lifts a free-weight bar, and stands up with it, lifts it over his head, and then bends, squats, and sets it down again.
 

A bell dings as I walk in, and the blonde woman pats the young man on the back. “Keep going, Nick. You’re doing great. Six more reps, okay? I’ll be right back.”
 

She approaches me, a bright, warm smile on her face. She’s gorgeous. Not real tall, maybe five-six or so, but she’s clearly fit as hell. She extends her hand to me, and I take it and shake, squeezing gently.

“Hey there,” she says. “I’m Cheyenne Leveaux. How can I help you?”

My gaze wants to roam down, take in her body, but I keep my eyes on hers. “Hi. I’m Ben Dorsey. I had a knee injury recently, and the hospital referred you as a physical therapist.”

Cheyenne nods. “Sure. Why don’t you come on back to the office and we’ll set things up.” She nods at a door in the back. We pass by the guy with the prosthetic. “That’s great, Nick. I saw that set. I think that’s good for today. See you Wednesday, right?”

“See you Wednesday, Cheyenne.” Nick waves.

Her office is clearly a converted storage closet, containing no more than a tiny desk with an ancient laptop, a filing cabinet, and a medicine ball rather than a desk chair. There’s a folding chair leaning against one wall. Cheyenne unfolds it and waits while I lower myself carefully onto the chair.
 

It’s interesting: she watches me like a hawk as I sit, watching the way I do it, but she makes no move to help me. When I’m arranged with my crutches between my legs, she takes a seat on the medicine ball, bouncing gently.
 

“So, Ben. Tell me what happened.”

I shrug. “Football. Took a hit to the knee, needed surgery…now no more football.”

“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” She leans with her back to the wall, crosses her ankles and props them on her desk.
 

Now that I have a moment to examine her in the context of conversation, I realize she’s older than my initial estimation. Originally, I’d pegged her to be a handful of years older than me, but now I’m realizing it’s more than that. She’s insanely fit, dressed in skin-tight yoga pants and sports bra, showing off ab definition I know a lot of guys would be jealous of, toned arms, powerful legs. But there are wrinkles around the corners of her eyes, a hardness in her gaze, a world-weary wisdom that only comes with age.
 

“What doesn’t seem fair?” I ask.

“How quickly a dream can be snatched.”
 

I shake my head. “It doesn’t seem real, yet. I keep thinking I should be able to work it out and go back to playing next season.”

“The doctor was firm on the prognosis, huh?”

I nod. “Yeah, Dr. Lane was pretty clear. He said it’d take months to even be able to walk without a cane, and even longer before I’ll be able to jog short distances. Competitive ball will never happen again for me, he was very clear on that.”
 

She blows out a breath of commiseration. “I know Dr. Lane very well. He’s a great doctor. But I’m sure we’ll have you mobile quicker than expected, especially if you’re determined. I can’t promise miracles, meaning your career playing football is over for sure, but I can get you walking in no time.” Her gaze pins me. “As long as you’re dedicated, and determined. Your success depends on you.”
 

“Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”

Cheyenne shrugs. “I’ve been a physical therapist for eight years, and I was an ER nurse for ten years before that. And, yeah, I also know from experience.”

“What experience, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She smiles, and god, that smile of hers is an expression of pure warmth. “Well, I was a dancer. Ballet and contemporary. My mom started me in ballet when I was four, and I was competing with a troupe by the time I was seven. I got into Juilliard. I spent two amazing, glorious years there. Then…god, it was so stupid. I was ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center with my boyfriend, I slipped, and fell. Snapped my ankle. I tripped, and when I hit the ice, my boyfriend’s skate sliced across my Achilles tendon as he tried to get out of the way, so he didn’t land on me.
 

“I healed fine, and I can run and walk and I’m totally normal, but competitive, professional dance was out. My ankle and the tendon just couldn’t take the strain. I tried. I toughed it out a whole ’nother year, but my advisor eventually was just like, Cheyenne, I think you need to face facts.” She shrugs, but I can tell it’s still hard for her. “I probably could have kept dancing, could have gone easy on myself, taken some time off and rested it longer, maybe joined a troupe and taken it slow. But I was competitive, you know? I had to be the best, and if I couldn’t…well, why bother? So I quit, left New York…eventually had my daughter and studied to be a nurse.”
 

“You’ve got a daughter, huh?” This is an oddly personal conversation to have with a potential therapist. I’m not at all sure this is how things usually go.
 

Cheyenne smiles. “Yeah. About your age, off at college.”
 

I’m not sure where to go with that, so I let a silence hang briefly and then change the subject. “So. Where do we start?”

She takes her feet off the desk, opens a drawer of the filing cabinet, and withdraws a folder, handing me a stack of papers. “Well, with paperwork of course. Fill these out, and I’ll be right back. I need to check on my clients.”

She disappears out the door, and I can’t help appreciating how well she fills out her yoga pants. But then I feel oddly guilty about that thought, considering she mentioned having a daughter my age. But jeez, however old she is, she’s beautiful, and I can’t help noticing it.
 

I turn my focus to the paperwork. At least physical therapy will be something to look forward to, what with having such a lovely piece of eye candy as my therapist.

*
 
*
 
*

We agree to start with three appointments a week, evenings, seven o’clock. It seems late to me, but Cheyenne claims she works weird hours, especially since a lot of her clients are fitting in their therapy appointments around their own work schedules.
 

I end up quitting the bar, since there’s no way I can manage a full shift on my feet any time soon, and they can’t exactly hold a position open for me indefinitely. I’ve got enough money put aside that I can afford to take some time off. The biggest enemy at this point, for me, is boredom.

I discover the bus stops not far from my apartment, and it stops near both the library and the gym, so I spend a lot of time at the library, reading. I can settle in a corner with a book and stay there as long as I want, which ends up being from open to close a lot of days. Once it was clear football was over for me, I distanced myself from my former teammates, which wasn’t that hard, honestly. We were football buddies, workout buddies, drinking buddies. None of them knew where I came from, or why I’m in San Antonio alone, so it’s easy to withdraw and retreat back into myself.

Therapy is fucking hard.

For a sweet, warm woman, Cheyenne is a fierce motivator, unrelenting in her determination to push me to my limits, while still managing to be encouraging and unfailingly kind.
 

But Cheyenne, even though she doesn’t ask me very many personal questions, has a way of drawing things out of me while she works on me. I tell her about growing up as the son of a famous football star, about Mom and her work with people with speech impediments. I even manage to casually mention my best friend Kylie without totally losing it, although the way Cheyenne quickly pushed our conversation past that topic tells me I might have sounded a little
too
casual.
 

Slowly, quietly, Cheyenne becomes my only friend. I find myself looking forward to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. We end up sitting on the weight machines after my session, the door to the gym locked, and we talk. She tells me about dancing in New York, how she and her friends would go to Central Park or Bryant Park and dance together, just for the fun of it, and how they’d draw crowds even when they were just goofing around. She tells me about how angry she was when she was faced with the decision to quit dance, how she was so angry for so long, angry at life for taking her dream away.

I understand that, perfectly well. I’m pissed off. I want to hate the motherfucker who drilled my knee. I want to hate life. I want to wallow in self-pity. What the fuck am I going to do? Another season or two in San Antonio and I could’ve gone to the draft, gone pro. My coach told me as much, and I had a few talks with scouts about it. They told me to spend another season or two here, hone my skills, put up more stats, and I’d be in good position.