Sara had no idea what to do or say. “You okay?”
Philip glared at her. “Do I look okay?” he snapped. She blinked, feeling like she’d been slapped across the face.
“Hey,” Carter interjected. “We heard the doctor say you might need another surgery.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Philip said, speaking in a more even tone to Carter than the tone he had used when he spoke to Sara. “Doesn’t seem like there’s a point to it if I’m not gonna be able to—” His words trailed off.
“Philip, you have to have the surgery,” Sara insisted.
Philip looked at her but didn’t say anything. Then he turned his head toward Carter. “Can you get me out of here, man? I just want to go home.” Then he looked back at Sara with an icy glare. “I want to be alone.”
»»•««
Sara left the examining room after Philip made it clear he didn’t want her there. She wandered around campus fairly aimlessly, not sure where to go or what to do. Should she call his parents and tell them what happened? No, that was for him to do when he was up to it. He needed to deal with this personal tragedy in his own way.
She tried not to feel hurt by Philip’s reaction earlier, but it was hard. His words were sharp, and his tone was ice cold. But this wasn’t about her, she reminded herself, it was about him. It wasn’t really her he was angry at, it was the situation, and the people you love are always an easy target. She rationalized Philip’s anger was borne out of fear and frustration, and who could blame him? The life he’d been planning and preparing for was slipping away from him. That would be a hard pill for anyone to swallow.
Still, his angry words kept ringing in her ears.
Do I look okay?
What a stupid question to ask him. It was only because she didn’t know what else to say. No, he didn’t look okay, he looked awful, so she could understand his need to be alone. He’d just gotten some devastating news, and he needed to process it. He didn’t need her hovering or telling him what to do. It wasn’t even her place to tell him to have the surgery, he was right about that, but it killed her to think this was the end for him, the end of his promising football career. This was going to be a long and torturous road for him, with or without surgery.
God, she wanted to be there for him, to comfort him and tell him that his life was going to be fine, with or without football. But right now, he just couldn’t hear it.
She sat down on the steps of the library building and leaned her head against the column alongside the steps. Then she closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for him to heal quickly and another prayer for him to be back to one hundred percent. She thought about how life was filled with ironies. She didn’t want him to go off and play football all over the country and leave her behind. But now that he probably wouldn’t be leaving, he didn’t want her around.
He’d feel differently in the morning, at least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Sara headed back toward her old dorm room. She fished around in her bag, hoping she had the key on her—and there it was, still dangling from her keychain, right next to the key to Philip’s room. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room seemed so much smaller than she remembered.
Her heart felt heavy, and her head ached as she sat down on the bed. She was at such a loss right now. Philip was her first real boyfriend, and she felt like she was failing him. There was literally nothing she could do for him except pray. She sighed, thinking about how life had been so much easier when she was her own person. Before she fell in love, she had only herself to think about. Now, things were different. She was connected to Philip in so many ways. She hurt when he hurt. She was sad when he was sad, and delirious when he was happy. He was a part of her now, and she was completely wrapped up in him.
Exhaustion set in, both emotionally and physically, so she peeled off her clothes and decided to shower and go to bed. Tomorrow was a new day. Hopefully Philip wouldn’t turn her away again.
»»•««
Somewhere during the night, Sara was awakened by a faint sound. She sat up groggily and listened closely in the stillness of the night. It was the muffled sound of her cell phone’s ringtone. She got out of bed and dug her phone out of her purse. Switching on the desk light, she looked at the display.
4 missed calls
. She must have been really tired to sleep through the phone ringing. She accessed the call log and saw that all the calls were from Philip. She breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the callback key.
“Where are you?” Philip demanded as soon as he answered the phone. His voice was filled with panic.
“I’m in my dorm room.”
“God, Sara,” he exhaled into the phone, “I was getting ready to call campus security.”
“I’m sorry, Philip. I-I didn’t mean to give you one more thing to worry about. You said you wanted to be alone.”
“I did. I do. Hell, I don’t know what I want.” There was a long pause while Sara waited for him to continue. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier.”
Sara suppressed a cry in her throat. She was so touched that he even gave that any thought under the circumstances. “I know. It’s okay Philip. You’re going through something awful and I understand you need some space.”
“You’re better to me than I deserve. And I’m pretty useless to you.”
“Don’t you dare ever say that again! You are not useless,” she scolded. It absolutely killed her to hear him talk that way. “You can do anything you put your mind to.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not my mind that’s keeping me from playing football.”
She struggled to find some comforting words. “Is there…Is there anything I can do for you? Philip, do you want me to come…to come home?”
“No, not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Of course. Philip? I love you.”
She paused for a reply, but he had already hung up.
Sara didn’t have a huge assortment of clothes to begin with, and at this point, there weren’t many clothes left in her dorm room closet. Most of her clothes had migrated to Philip’s dorm room. So the next morning, she threw on the same shirt and jeans she wore the day before, topped off by her zippered EFU hoodie, and she headed out. She was so anxious to see Philip, yet a little afraid of how he’d feel this morning, of what his mood would be like, and whether she could find any words that would comfort him somehow. How could she give him encouragement when things seemed so hopeless to him right now? There had to be something she could do. There just had to be!
Instead of going directly to Philip’s dorm, she found herself taking a detour and walking into the sports complex. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know who she wanted to see or what she wanted to say, but she wound up outside the baseball coach’s office.
A tall, thin, black man was standing behind his desk. He had just ended a phone call, and now he turned his attention to his laptop. Leaning over, he tapped on his keyboard. When she rapped on the open door, he looked up.
Sara glanced at the nameplate on the desk. “Coach Williams? I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“We don’t have no female softball team here.”
“Oh, that’s okay. That’s not why I’m here,” she said, nervously tugging on the bottom of her open hoodie. “I wanted to talk to you about Philip Mason. Do you know him?”
“Sure. Everybody knows him.” The coach looked at her quizzically. “If you’re looking for an introduction, I gotta tell you, this ain’t no matchmaking service, you know.”
Sara laughed a little and stepped farther inside the office. “No, that’s not it. See, my name is Sara, and Philip is…he’s my boyfriend and I’m sure you heard about his injury.”
“Ah. Yeah. Lousy break. We’re all pretty upset about it.”
“We are too. So, I was just wondering. How different is baseball from football?” On the way to Naples, Philip told Sara that he was interested in baseball before he started playing football. She also remembered Philip’s father suggesting baseball as a backup plan, so she figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
The coach let out a hearty laugh until he saw Sara wasn’t joking. “It’s completely different. What are you getting at, young lady?”
Maybe she needed to rephrase the question. “Well, I mean, throwing the ball. If someone is good at throwing a football, wouldn’t he also be good at pitching a baseball?”
The coach eyed Sara without answering, so Sara continued. “I mean, pitchers do a lot less running than quarterbacks, don’t they?”
The coach nodded slowly. “I think I get where you’re going with this.”
“I’m sure you know that Philip is a really talented athlete,” Sara asserted. “Even if he can’t play football, there has to be another sport he could play that wouldn’t be so hard on his knee.”
Taking a seat behind his desk, the coach bobbed his head. “In the American League, pitchers never have to hit unless there’s interleague play, so the amount of running they do is minimal.”
A little smile crossed Sara’s lips, thinking this could turn out to be a brilliant idea. “Could you maybe talk to him?”
“If he’s interested, he’d need to try out for the team.”
Her gut twisted as she remembered Philip saying he didn’t pursue baseball when he was younger because he didn’t make the team. But that was a long time ago and he was a seasoned athlete now. “You have pitching coaches, right?” The coach nodded. “I just don’t want him to give up hope.”
The coach finally smiled at Sara. “Sure, I’ll talk to him.”
Sara exhaled. “Thank you, Coach. Thank you so much!”
»»•««
Sara used her key to unlock the door to Philip’s dorm room. When she entered the bedroom, she was surprised to see an older man with him. Philip was sitting up on the bed wearing an EFU T-shirt and shorts, and the older man was sitting in a chair next to the bed, wrapping Philip’s knee.
When Philip saw her, a fleeting smile crossed his face before he turned his attention back to the man. The man turned around and looked at Sara.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “Should I come back later?”
“No, stay,” Philip said, holding out his hand. “This is my girlfriend, doc. Sara, this is Dr. Garino, the sports doctor for the school’s athletic program.”
She approached the two men and took Philip’s hand. She nodded at the doctor and recognized him as the man who had taken care of Philip yesterday after he collapsed. “How’s he doing, doctor?”
The doctor looked at Philip, and Philip nodded his consent to discuss his condition with Sara. “We were just talking about his surgery.”
“So you’re going through with it?” Sara asked Philip.
He shook his head from side to side. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Your MRI clearly shows you reinjured your ACL. You should have the surgery, Philip. This isn’t just about playing sports. It’s about having full function of your knee.”
“Hang on.” Philip interrupted the doctor. “What do you mean by full function? A minute ago, you said my knee will never be what it once was.”
“No, what I said is that you have a better chance of playing football again if you have the surgery than if you don’t,” the doctor answered calmly. “But let’s put football and sports aside for a minute. You need to think about the rest of your life—activities of everyday living, walking, light jogging at some point. Throwing the ball around with your kids someday. If you don’t have the surgery, you might very well be limping your entire life. You’re too young and healthy to start out with a disability.”
Releasing Sara’s hand, Philip leaned back against his pillow. She could see he was disheartened. “There’s no guarantees, doc. You said so yourself.”
“What I said is that all operations have a risk factor. I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to play again, but your prospects are better with the surgery. I can’t tell you what to do, Phil, but I can advise you. If you were my son, I’d give you the same advice.”
The doctor secured the ACE bandage on Philip’s knee and got up. He placed a blood pressure cuff back into a medical bag that was sitting open on top of the nightstand.
“Can I ask a question, doctor?” Sara looked from the doctor to Philip, who appeared to be skeptical before he even heard what she was going to ask. “Doctor, suppose Philip wanted to play some other sport—you know, down the road, like you were saying—something less punishing than football. Could he do that?”
The doctor glanced at Philip and then back at Sara. “Well, most other team sports don’t have three hundred and fifty pound men pulling on their opponents’ limbs and trying to crush their bones, so I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Still, I don’t want to make any predictions until after the surgery.”
“Will you be performing the surgery?” she asked.
The doctor smiled. “No, I’m one of the university’s sports doctors, not a surgeon. We have a top orthopedic surgeon lined up if Phil says yes. The surgery would be performed at the Orlando Medical Center.”
Somehow that didn’t give Sara a lot of confidence. “Should…shouldn’t Philip maybe go to New York or Chicago or Philadelphia or…or the Mayo Clinic for the operation?”
“That would be up to Philip and his family. However, I can tell you that we have the utmost faith in Dr. Patel. Again, I’d trust him to operate on my own son.” The doctor patted Philip’s shoulder. “Call me if you have any questions.”
After the doctor left, Sara sat down on the edge of Philip’s bed and ran her fingers through his hair. “Can I get you anything? You hungry?”
He surprised her by pushing her arm away. “Don’t patronize me.”
“Excuse me?”
He crossed his arms. “Look, I don’t need someone to ask the doctor questions or to wait on me or clean up after me or feed me or wheel me around. You can leave.”
Sara’s jaw dropped. “Philip, what are you—”
“Just go. Just go and leave the key.”
Sara’s eyes widened. When Philip said she should leave, it felt like she got punched in the stomach. She thought they were past this, but she had apparently overstepped her bounds again, at least in Philip’s opinion. Blinking back tears, she spoke defiantly. “Fine, if that’s what you want, I’ll go.” She got up, pulled the key out of the pocket of her hoodie, took it off the key ring, and slammed it down on the nightstand. “But only because you asked me to.” She started to walk to the door, but stopped and turned back around. Injury or no injury, she wasn’t going down without a fight. “I get that you’re angry and scared and in pain. I’m just as worried as you are, but I’m tired of you taking your frustration out on me. I don’t deserve it!”