Redemption (29 page)

Kari nodded and stared out at the lake, her thoughts drifting back to a time she’d never been able to delete from her memory. “It was November. I was a junior in college.”

“Right.”

She closed her eyes and pictured her family going about its business that Sunday afternoon. Brooke was already away at medical school in Indianapolis, but the others were home. Mom was in the kitchen. Ashley, Erin, Luke, and Dad were watching the football game on television.

Kari bit the inside of her lip. “By then I’d been hearing things from your friends, you know . . . here and there.”

Ryan’s eyebrows raised a bit. “About me?”

“About how you were spending your time.” Kari had a group of friends she hung out with back then, several of whom had known Ryan in high school and still followed his career. Two of them had even flown out and caught a game a month before Ryan was hurt.

“What’d they tell you?”

Tears stung at her eyes as she struggled to find her voice. “A bunch of us went bowling after they got back. They were full of stories.”

“Like what?” The surprise on Ryan’s face was genuine, and Kari felt increasing tremors of doubt ripple across the foundation of everything she’d believed.

“Like how well you were doing, how much money you earned . . . and the girls.”

Ryan laughed and ran his hand over the top of his head. “I took them to a players’ party.”

“That’s what they said. All they could talk about were the women around you.”

“Sure, there were women. There always were at those parties. I introduced the guys, and that was it. After that, I stayed with the team. I wasn’t interested in those girls, Kari. I told you that.”

A dozen conversations played in her mind. Ryan was right. He’d always claimed that his feelings were for her alone, that when football was over their life together could begin.

An ache settled in her heart, and she traced small circles in the sand with the toe of her shoe. “Yes. You always said that.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“I tried.” She stared at him, her mouth open. “Look at it from my point of view.”

“I want to, Kari.” He was calm. “Why don’t you tell me what happened after I got hurt? Maybe I’ll understand better.”

Kari took a deep breath and continued.

She had watched the game on and off that afternoon, doing laundry, catching key plays every now and then, when suddenly she heard her father’s voice.

“Kari! Ryan’s hurt.”

They were words Kari would never forget, words she had always feared. As she hurried into the television room, she told herself it couldn’t be serious. An ankle or knee or bruised rib, maybe. But the screen showed Ryan lying motionless on the field while the announcers talked in hushed tones.

Kari eased herself, trancelike, into a spot on the sofa beside her father and watched as the network replayed the injury. Ryan had caught a pass in the air and then instantly been sandwiched between two defenders. One pulled him from behind, causing him to lose his balance. The other met him with a direct blow from the front. By that point, Ryan was parallel to the ground, and his head took the full brunt of the impact.

His head and his neck.

The camera cut back to the scene on the field, and Kari could barely breathe as she watched a team of people working on Ryan. Seconds earlier he had been doing what he loved best—running like the wind, his body strong and responding to every signal his brain sent it. But in a single moment, a single hit . . . Kari stared at his image on the screen, unable to believe her eyes.

His legs lay at an unnatural angle, utterly still.

The announcers’ voices cut in. “He hasn’t shown any signs of movement.”

“No, it doesn’t look good.”

A somber silence filled the air.

“Our thoughts and prayers are certainly with Ryan Taylor and his family right now.”

The fear of that moment came back in all its fullness now, and Kari was silent for a while. “I was so scared for you.”

Ryan took hold of her hand and stared at the water. “It still feels like yesterday.”

Looking back, it seemed odd that she and Ryan had never had this conversation, never gone back and talked about what it was like for him, lying on the field unable to move. “How much do you remember?”

Ryan’s features darkened. “My face was planted in the grass. They had to carefully move me so I could breathe.” He clenched his teeth. “My mind was screaming at my feet and legs and arms to do something, move, get my body up and running again.”

He leaned back in his chair, and his grip on her hand tightened. “Look at my legs.”

Kari shifted her gaze to Ryan’s knees. “Okay . . .”

“Try to make them move.”

Kari stared for a few moments, understanding. She looked up at him and winced. “That’s how it felt?”

“It was like my arms and legs belonged to someone else. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move.” Tears glistened in his eyes. “I might have already made a decision to love God, but I guarantee you, that day I was praying like never before. I promised God if only he’d give me a second chance, I’d get serious about him.”

It was a detail she’d never heard before, and Kari was terrified at what other truths he might share. What if she’d been wrong about what happened?

It would be more than she could bear.

She swallowed back a lump in her throat and nodded. “Dad called us together in the room, and we prayed. Then we watched along with everyone else in the country. Waiting and wishing you would move. Even a little.”

Instead, paramedics had arrived, strapped him to a backboard, and carried him off the field. The announcers had promised to keep the viewers updated, and the game had resumed.

“I was so scared I could barely breathe.” She ran her thumb over his hand. “That’s when Dad made the plan.”

The Cowboys had been playing at Soldier Field in Chicago that afternoon, and the hospital was only a five-hour drive away. Within thirty minutes, he’d phoned someone at the university and gotten the okay for a few days off from teaching. “Dad and I threw our things in a suitcase and set out to find you.”

Ryan’s mother had been at the game that weekend, so Kari and her father knew they’d find her at the hospital.

“I think my dad was as worried for your mom as he was for you.” Kari inhaled sharply, her insides tense at the memory of the next twenty-four hours.

The drive up was one of the quietest Kari could remember. Her fears were so all-consuming she could barely think straight. What if Ryan died en route to the hospital? What if he never walked or ran or moved again? The possibilities were too awful to consider.

When they got to the hospital, they found Ryan’s mother right where they’d expected. Sitting in the lobby in intensive care.

“She told us they were operating on your spine. That there was a chance—a small chance—you might walk again.” Kari ignored the tears now streaming quietly down her cheeks. “Sometime that night my dad and I fell asleep on a couple of padded benches in the waiting room.”

Ryan released her hand and turned to face her. “Here’s where things get a little weird.” His jaw muscles flexed. “My mom has tried to explain it to me, but I want to hear it from you. What happened when you woke up?”

Kari’s stomach dropped. She could hardly believe she was here, at Lake Monroe alone in the dark with Ryan, discussing the events of that time. She exhaled slowly and found a way to continue. “Your mom was gone, and my dad was still sleeping.” She angled her head, her eyes burning with tears. “I went to the nurses’ station and asked how you were.”

Ryan waited, his eyes locked on hers, hanging on every word.

“A nurse told me you’d come through the surgery beautifully.” A sob escaped from a place in Kari’s heart that had not forgotten. “They . . . they couldn’t know if you might walk again, but there was a good chance.” Kari caught two quick breaths and fought to maintain her composure. “I asked if I could go in, and they said maybe later because . . .”

His face came closer to hers, his features frozen in anticipation of what she was about to say. “Because . . . ?”

“Because right then your girlfriend was with you.”

Ryan stood and let out a moan that echoed across the lake. He dropped his head back and stared straight up, then paced in a circle around the fire. “I knew it. I knew that’s what happened.” He stopped and stared at Kari, and for the first time his eyes blazed with a kind of anguish she’d never seen there before. “Why didn’t you ask my mom about her?”

Kari’s head was spinning. What was he saying? Certainly none of this was a surprise to him. She pictured the other girl at Ryan’s side, comforting him, holding his hand, wanting a private moment for just the two of them. If that’s what the nurse saw, then it was too late for Ryan to explain it away.

Her voice rose a notch, and she leaned forward, tossing her hands in the air. “I asked the nurse if she was sure it was your girlfriend in the room. I thought maybe she’d made a mistake, that maybe your mom was in there.” Kari shook her head hard. “But she told me she was sure it was your girlfriend. Your mother had said so herself, told the nurses all about how your girlfriend had rushed to be there and how the two of you might need some time alone together.”

Ryan stared at her for what felt like an entire minute. When he spoke, his words were slow and full of pain. “Yes, my mother said that.” He uttered one very loud laugh that was anything but funny. “You know who she meant?”

Kari felt dizzy, and she closed her eyes, trying to regain her bearings. When she opened them, she forced herself to be calm. She had nothing to be nervous about; the answer was obvious. “She meant the girl in the room with you.”

“No.” Ryan came to where she was sitting. He dropped to his knees at her feet, resting his hands on her legs. “She was talking about
you
, Kari. You were the girlfriend. The girl in the room with me was one of the team trainers.”

“What?” Kari’s breath left her body. Her voice was barely a whisper, and she wrapped her arms around her waist, bracing herself against the explosion of pain that welled up within her. It wasn’t possible. “Why . . . why did the nurse tell me it was your girlfriend?”

Ryan dropped his head against her knees and stayed there, even when he finally spoke. “I’ve talked to Mom about this a dozen times.” His hands trembled against her legs. “She swore up and down there couldn’t have been a misunderstanding about the trainer. She figured the accident just made you realize it was time to move on.”

Kari’s sorrow was so deep that she felt she was drowning in it. “I told my dad what the nurse said, and he went to find out more information. Before he could ask, he heard the nurses talking about you, how everyone hoped for a miracle and how devoted your girlfriend was, sitting by your side until you woke up.”

Ryan lifted his head, and his eyes looked tired, as if he’d aged ten years in the past few minutes. “My mom couldn’t stop talking about you. She told them how you’d waited for me while I focused on football, how you came the minute you knew I was hurt.” He spoke straight to her soul, his voice barely louder than the breeze. “She was talking about
you,
Kari. Can’t you see it?”

Fresh sobs lodged in her throat, and she shook her head. “It’s impossible. I waited in the lobby and . . . when your mom came back, she told me you were doing better. She’d been in to see you. And the doctors were able to get you to move your toes . . . your fingers. She didn’t say anything about the girl, and I figured she didn’t want me to know. Otherwise, why was she telling the nurses and not me?”

The pieces were coming together, and neither of them liked the picture they formed—a picture of pain and hurt feelings and misunderstanding that had gone on to define their entire future. “You never came in to see me. I was drugged and half conscious, Kari. I didn’t know the trainer was there. She was doing her job.”

The sobs made their way up from Kari’s gut like so many volcanic eruptions. “I stayed the whole next day . . . and when I left, I told your mother I didn’t want to . . . to bother you.” Kari hunched over, her head near his, and struggled to keep from falling out of her chair. “I thought she knew what I meant . . . that I didn’t want to interrupt you and . . . and your girlfriend.”

Ryan’s hands were still on her knees, and Kari laid her fingers over them, grieving the loss, calculating what the misunderstanding that day had cost them.

For the first three months after surgery he had lived at a rehabil- itation center in Dallas, his care supervised by the Cowboys. And when he was well enough to be released, it had been to a condo in the team’s training center where he was tended to three times daily by trainers and therapists.

“I called you, but everything seemed different.” Ryan’s eyes glistened once more. “I was so busy trying to get better. I guess I figured we’d work it out later.”

A soft rustling sifted through the branches above them, and Kari sniffed. “I wanted to ask you about the girl, whoever she was . . . but I figured you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.” She tightened her grip on his fingers. “Besides, by then I was trying to forget about you.”

Ryan sat back on his heels, his eyes caressing her face. “Did it work?”

She thought about Tim and the good times they’d shared, about her strong desire to salvage their marriage. Then she thought about Ryan and how she felt here, now, and she knew her answer as surely as she knew her name. “No . . . I never forgot.”

He worked his fingers between hers and gazed at the sky. “I never understood why you changed, what happened. My mother’s answer about your being tired of waiting made sense. I figured you’d finally decided to go on with your life.” He looked back at her, his voice tired, as if the reality of their loss had drained him of something vital and life-sustaining.

“I kept thinking you’d tell me about the girl. Whoever she was, I knew she must be special or your mother wouldn’t have talked about her to the nurses. And she wouldn’t have been in the room with you hours after your surgery.” Kari shrugged, her throat thick. “You and I talked only a few times over the next five months.”