Unstoppable (15 page)

Chapter Fifty-Four

THE NEXT TWO DAYS
were a blur.

The injury wasn't the problem. He had a slight tear in the cartilage that could be fixed anytime. Everyone called the injury a blessing because it led to the discovery of something that might have gone unnoticed until it was too late.

There was something on his knee, on the bone. That's what they called it, “something.” They didn't call it a tumor, and no one said the word
cancer
. Still, somehow Harrison knew in his mind that's what it was. Cancer.

He knew by the look on his mom's face, the red around her eyes, and the way she held her chin at a ferocious angle that seemed to challenge the whole world. She didn't cry in front of him, even though it wasn't hard to tell she had been crying before. It made Harrison feel better that she didn't cry. It made him feel like things might be okay.

They told him from the start that they were going to operate on him as soon as possible, and that made sense to Harrison.

The only question he could ask the doctor was, “Can I still play football?”

The doctor, tall with pale skin and sunken cheeks, patted him on the shoulder and tried to smile. “Let's hope so. No promises, but let's hope so.”

 

The day of the operation, Harrison lay in his hospital bed and reminded his parents of the doctor's words. “He said he hopes so, Coach. I should be okay. I'll be back.”

Coach took his hand and knelt down beside the bed. “Harrison, can you call me Dad? Not all the time, but sometimes. Can you do that? See, I think of you as my
son
. I know I should have said it a long time ago, because that's the way I felt, and when you get out of here, we're going to make it legal. We're going to adopt you, Harrison. Is that all right with you?”

Harrison's throat felt tight. “If I can't play . . . you don't have to keep me.”

Coach glanced at his wife before his glistening eyes locked onto Harrison. “No, no, you don't understand. Of course we'll keep you. We'll keep you no matter what. You belong to us, Harrison, and we belong to you. Please, Son, don't say that. I hate that I let you think it.”

Harrison's embarrassment was drowned out by pure joy. “I'll be okay. I promise, Coach . . . Dad.”

The nurse came in. She put a needle in Harrison's arm and the fog of the past few days evaporated. He knew exactly where he was. His entire life fast-forwarded in his brain and it made him want to cry. The needle stung, but after the plastic bag swinging above his bed dripped cool liquid into his veins for a few minutes, he began to feel light-headed and peaceful. He let his head settle down into the deep, clean-smelling pillow.

They wheeled him down a long hall and into another room. They put a mask on his face, and the room began to spin around, and Harrison thought of the big white fish, so much bigger and stronger than the rest.

Unstoppable.

Just like him.

Then everything went dark.

Chapter Fifty-Five

HIS DREAMS WERE BAD.

Finally, he opened his eyes and saw his mom and Coach—his dad. They looked tired, but they smiled at him and touched his face, and Harrison felt hopeful.

His leg itched.

Harrison tried to sit up. His mom raised the bed for him and she put a straw to his lips so he could sip cranberry juice.

“Itches.” Harrison reached for his leg. Panic filled his mom's eyes. Harrison felt for the itch below his knee. His fingers groped at the blanket.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. A nurse came in and fiddled with the plastic bag over his head. He felt like he was losing his breath and he lay back and began to relax. He slept to the sound of his parents' voices. They were talking to a doctor.

When he woke the next time, he was hungry. They fed him and talked to him and they seemed nervous for a reason he couldn't name. For two days he was in and out of sleep, but he mostly slept. On the third day he felt alert when he woke. His parents slept in two big chairs at the end of his bed. They held hands in their sleep across the gap. Coach needed a shave.

Harrison smiled at the thought of teasing him.

His leg itched and his knee ached in a way he hadn't imagined it could.

When he reached for his leg, he bumped the thick bandage around his knee and winced. Tears of pain pooled in his eyes. He reached over the bandage and tried to scratch his itching leg. He knew it was there, under the sheets somewhere, and the past two days of not being able to find it and scratch that itch all came back to him.

The moments stacked up like the cars of a train wreck, piling into each other, one after another in quick succession, wreaking more havoc with each new crash.

Panic stole his breath.

Harrison heard a scream and he knew it was his own.

The sound ripped his parents from their sleep.

“My leg!” The voice was ragged and torn; he barely recognized it.

“Momma!” He had never called Jennifer that before; Mom, yes, but not Momma, and she rushed to his bed to hold him tight.

He pressed his face into her chest to muffle his scream. “My leg is gone!”

Chapter Fifty-Six

DURING THE NEXT FEW
days at the hospital, Harrison didn't really want to talk. He would watch TV, movies mostly. He nearly forgot about the game, until Coach came in on Saturday with the whistle around his neck. The fact that the team lost didn't matter. It also didn't matter to him who was there with him, even though his mom and dad usually were. Justin didn't matter. Doc. Even for Becky he could only muster a weak hand squeeze before the TV drew him back into its blinking world.

The day after the game, he was watching the Turner Classic Movies channel when he saw an old black-and-white picture about a submarine. When the Japanese hit the sub with depth charges—bombs shaped like barrels dropped into the sea—water began to surge into the ship, filling it, crushing everyone inside until only lifeless hands and faces with wavy blurs of hair floated across the screen. Harrison snapped off the TV as the credits rolled.

“That's me.” He said it to himself, but his mom looked up from her book.

“Honey?”

Harrison shook his head. He didn't have the energy to explain that the ocean of fear and misery that was his life had only been held back by the walls of something man-made, like the metal skin of a submarine. The protection that held everything back was football, a made-up game that people loved to play, watch, and talk about.

It held back all the evil in Harrison's life, and Harrison had come to think that life on his new submarine was the natural state of things. It wasn't. The natural state was for him to drown in a briny soup, to be crushed by it and forced to breathe it in until he was as useless as a floating body.

“Honey?” His mom wore a worried look.

Harrison sank his head back into the pillow and rolled his head to the side, away from her.

His leg was gone from the knee down and his hospital stays had just begun. They told him that over the next few months he would spend a couple of days in the hospital every other week for chemotherapy. Harrison had bone cancer, and it might have spread through his body already, into other bones that might have to be removed. As bad as it was to be a cripple, Harrison knew it was ten times worse to have cancer. Cancer was evil. Cancer ate away at you from the inside out, until you were dead. Over the next several days they brought doctors and counselors and shrinks and even Reverend Lindsey to his bedside. They tried to coax, shame, and urge him to look at the bright side. There was no bright side, only pain and misery.

Then Major Bauer arrived.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

COACH NEARLY JUMPED OUT
of his chair. The major had to brace up when Coach threw himself into the old soldier's arms. They patted each other's backs the way a cowboy might thump his horse's neck.

His mom stood. “Kirk!”

The major hugged them both.

Major Bauer looked older than in his picture. His hair had begun to turn gray, his beard was gone, and his tan face wrinkled at the corners of his dark eyes and mouth. He stood straight and tall, though, and when he finished greeting Harrison's parents with kisses and hugs, he marched up to the side of Harrison's bed and held out his hand.

Even in his miserable state, Harrison couldn't refuse the iron grip. Despite his serious face, Major Bauer's deep, dark eyes brimmed with kindness.

“I heard I'm needed.” The major looked around the room, and his eyes came to rest on the stump that was once Harrison's leg. “And I see that I am.”

Harrison shifted in his bed and reached down to itch the missing leg. Suddenly it felt like his leg—from the knee to his foot—was being crushed, stabbed, and burned at the same time. Harrison cried out and reached for the missing limb. The pain ripped a hole in his pride and he wailed for it to go away.

As the wave passed, Harrison was surprised to realize it was Major Bauer holding him and not his mom. His grip was as gentle as it was strong.

“It'll pass.” The major spoke soft as a nurse. “It'll pass.”

Finally, Harrison's heart slowed.

“There,” the major said, releasing him. “Phantom pains. The nerves will fire like your leg's still there. Nothing quite like it. Trust me, I know.”

Harrison tilted his head at the old soldier. Major Bauer smiled, stood, and tugged at his left pant leg. A chrome joint gleamed just above the shoe. Jutting straight up from that was a shiny, thick metal rod. Harrison thought of a magician he'd seen on TV, an illusionist, but the leg really was metal.

“The latest and greatest.” Major Bauer pulled his pant leg all the way up to the knee, showing off a chrome piston and yet another shiny joint. “Yours will look a lot different. You're lucky. There's a lot more you can do when you've got an upper leg.”

The major winked at him and dropped the pant leg. Harrison's spirits were lifted by the sight of the soldier. He was strong and handsome and he moved through the world as if nothing was missing. Then Harrison thought about what his life had been for a brief couple of months—his life as an athlete, a football player.

His face fell, and he looked away.

“Hey,” his mom said. “The major is talking to you.”

“Won't be the first young man to look away from me.” The major's voice was soothing as he spoke to Harrison's mom. “Harrison? Harrison, will you look at me?”

Harrison couldn't resist.

“You can come back from this,” the major said. “I know you're pitying yourself right now. Next you'll get depressed, then angry, but it'll all pass. It will. I've seen it many times, and I've lived it myself.”

“I can't come back and play.” Harrison glared up at Major Bauer.

“Play?”

“I'm a football player. They said I was unstoppable.” Harrison ground his teeth together.

“Football?” Major Bauer put a hand to his chin. “I don't know, but let me show you something, okay?”

Harrison just stared.

Major Bauer had a shoulder bag Harrison hadn't even noticed. The old soldier set it down on the windowsill, then removed an iPad and switched it on. He fiddled with the screen for a few moments, then held it out for Harrison to see.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

HARRISON STUDIED THE PICTURE
of a man in a ski cap, red jacket, white winter gloves, and dark blue sweatpants running down a desert highway. Beyond him lay low hills spotted with scrub brush beneath a pale and empty sky. Protruding from the cut-off end of his right pant leg was a chrome football-shaped thigh with a mechanical knee and a yellow shock absorber for a shin. The man's young face looked strong and determined.

“Who is that?” Harrison asked.

“Jeff Keith. The first above-the-knee amputee to run across America.”

“Run?”

“San Francisco to Providence. Thirty-four hundred miles.”

“How?” Harrison stared at the picture.

“He just did it. Here, look at this.” Major Bauer's fingers scrolled through his iPad before he showed Harrison another picture.

“Is that him?” Harrison studied the old newspaper photo of a young man playing goalie in a lacrosse game. Across his chest it said
BOSTON COLLEGE
. His legs were covered in baggy cotton sweatpants, but Harrison could tell the right one was stiff and unnatural.

“That was with a
wooden
leg, a division-one college athlete. Lost his leg, like you, only a year younger, when he was twelve. Also bone cancer, like you. Look at this quote. I love this quote.

“‘Believe in the incredible and you can achieve the impossible.'”

Harrison huffed impatiently. “It's not football.”

Major Bauer took the iPad back. “Yeah . . . look at this.”

This time he handed Harrison the picture of a football player in an electric blue uniform with one leg in the air, marching in a high-step toward the camera.

“There's nothing wrong with him,” Harrison said.

“Except his lower right leg is missing.”

Harrison looked closer.

“His name is Neil Parry. He played for San Jose State.” Major Bauer sat down on the side of the bed and put a hand on Harrison's shoulder. “I'm not making any promises, Harrison, but I want you to know you're not alone, and some of the people who are like you have done some amazing things. The technology gets better every year. Maybe you can do what they did, or maybe you can do more.”

Harrison looked back at the football player. Major Bauer reached over and scrolled through the other pictures too. It was like an escape hatch. Suddenly, in the dark crushing flood inside his submarine, a light appeared. It was like Major Bauer was thrusting a life jacket at him, something that would propel him up, out of the darkness and the dead floating bodies to the surface above, to light and air.

Harrison grabbed hold.