Sunrise (4 page)

They’d already been over this three times since the ambulance had come for Cody. Jenny moved closer to the bed. Her daughter didn’t need another lesson on alcohol poisoning. Just the support of knowing that she wasn’t alone, that Jenny would walk her through every step of this trial. The way she and Jim had always walked their kids through the hard times.

Bailey stared at Cody. “Why’d you do it?” Her whispered words were angry and drenched in pain. “Why?” She looked across the bed. “What would make him do it? drink a whole bottle like that? And right in our own house.” She pushed back from the bed, crossed her arms, and shook her head. “He knew this could happen.”

“He did.” Jenny kept her voice down. She understood Bailey. Clearly fear was at the root of her daughter’s feelings. The angry outrage was only her way of dealing with it. “He thought he needed another drink, but that wasn’t what he needed at all.”

Bailey sniffed, and the anger lifted for a few seconds. “He needed us.”

“When Cody wakes up—” Jenny took his hand and ran her thumb along the top of it—“he’ll need Jesus more than us.”

And there it was. The lesson Jenny and Jim talked about so often with their kids. Nothing truly good could come from life without the help of God. Not a single good deed or accomplishment, not the ability to succeed or even to draw a breath. Certainly not the strength to get help at an alcohol treatment center. None of it was possible without Jesus.

Jenny felt tears in her own eyes as she stared at Cody’s still form.

Now they could only pray that Cody would have a chance to learn that truth for himself.

Jim was praying for Cody when his players entered the waiting room. Without their pads and uniforms and bravado, they looked young and small, like three forlorn kids with their heads hung.

“Hey, Coach.” Tanner Williams took the lead. He was the starting quarterback, the guy Bailey had liked since fourth grade. Tanner was always one of the first to find Jim at practice or in the weight room so they could catch up on Tanner’s life or the latest news on the Indianapolis Colts. But since he and Bailey had stopped seeing each other, Tanner hadn’t come around. When he did, he seemed too busy to talk to Jim.

“Guys.” Jim nodded to three empty seats across from him. “Why don’t you sit down.”

Jack Spencer was a senior, the team’s punt returner and backup quarterback. He looked pale and nervous. “Is he . . . is he gonna make it?”

“It’s too soon to know.” Jim pursed his lips. In some ways he wanted to gather the guys into a hug the way he would with his own kids. But they weren’t here for a hug. Tanner had said in the text message that they had something to tell him.

Tanner cleared his throat. He linked his hands behind his neck and stared at the floor. When he looked up, the pain in his eyes was raw and consuming. “We were at the party—the one Cody went to. We . . .” He gave an angry shake of his head. Jim could see that his emotions were too strong to get the words out.

Todd Carson sat in the middle of the three. He took a shaky breath. “We wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else.” He was six feet six, the team’s best lineman. But here he looked like a little boy who’d lost his way. “We were at the party and we drank.” He looked at Jack and then Tanner. “All of us.”

The other two nodded, shame clouding their faces.

Jim felt his heart sink to his knees. His worst suspicions were true. His three captains drinking at a party on Thanksgiving night. A memory came back, something he’d gone through when he was in high school. When the timing was right, he would share the story with the guys. Because drinking had been a part of high school football since the sport began. If only he could get this group of players to understand what was at stake before it cost one of them everything.

He studied his players, and a dozen questions came to mind. Why hadn’t they been home with their parents? How many football players had actually been there? But he settled on the one that mattered most. “Why?” He met their eyes one at a time. “Why’d you do it?”

Tanner started to say something, but his chin was quivering too hard. He coughed and determination came over his features. “Everyone was there, Coach. Only a few guys didn’t go.”

“We didn’t drink until later.” Jack shrugged. “Doesn’t make it right, but we weren’t the first.”

“We weren’t gonna do it.” Todd filled his cheeks and exhaled slowly. “The girls kept pushing us, telling us to go ahead and drink. Just one or two beers.” He pursed his lips. “It was stupid.”

Jim surveyed the threesome. They were pathetic, and what they were saying made him furious. But at least they were honest. He leaned over, planting his elbows on his knees. “So there you are, my captains, at a party where people are drinking.” His tone screamed his disappointment, but he kept his anger in check. “You know what I would’ve expected from you?”

The boys stayed silent, but they didn’t look down, didn’t look away.

“I would’ve hoped my captains would tell the other guys how wrong they were.” Jim pointed at Tanner. “If you had left, just about every guy on the team would’ve done the same thing. That’s the sort of pull you have, Tanner.” He looked at the others. “You too, Jack . . . Todd.” He worked to lower his voice. “You were named captains for a reason. Because the other guys look up to you.”

“It was stupid.” Tanner folded his hands and stared at a spot on the floor again. “Nothing but stupid.”

“It was.” Jim sat up straight and crossed his arms.
God . . . give me wisdom. I don’t want to crush them, but I want them to understand . . . please.
He exhaled and another thought hit him. “How many of you drove home after you drank?”

“Lots of us.” Todd seemed the most ready to spill the entire story. His cheeks were red, and he looked mortified. His expression told Jim that he wanted to come completely clean before this moment passed. Todd gestured at Tanner and Jack. “I drove these guys home.”

A sick feeling twisted Jim’s gut. His players hadn’t only been drinking; they’d driven drunk. He remembered something he’d seen online a week ago, and he wondered if he could show them. He’d brought his laptop with him because he was fielding dozens of e-mails from Clear Creek students wanting to know about Cody’s condition. Now he pulled it from its case in the corner of the waiting room. He sat back down and motioned for the guys to gather around him. “There’s something I want you to see.”

Jim had come across the video when he was surfing the day’s news stories. A trial was taking place for a drunk driver who, a year earlier, had entered a highway going the wrong way. Driving seventy miles per hour, the drunk driver hit a limo bringing home several members of a wedding party.

The horrific crash was captured on the limo’s dashboard security camera, and the video was being used as evidence in the trial against the driver. The Internet news services had the short video available for anyone to see, and Jim had taken a look. The images were not graphic so much as they were dramatic in their speed and finality.

Now, with his three captains gathered around him, Jim ran a Google search and found the link. Then he looked at the guys. “This video shows you what can happen when you drink and drive.” He explained about the wrong-way driver and the limo carrying the members of the wedding party.

He hit Play and the video came to life. First there was the image as it had looked through the limo’s windshield that late night. Then, from out of nowhere, headlights appeared bearing down on the limo with a speed that left little time for reaction. The limo driver started to turn his wheel, but it was over before he could get out of the way.

Next, the screen went black, but there were four more seconds of screeching tires and breaking glass and twisting metal. Mixed in with those sounds were human cries and moans and then nothing but silence.

Jim quit the Web site and closed his laptop. “Just like that—” he looked at his football players—“the seven-year-old flower girl in the back of the limo was killed. One minute she was giggling with her family, pretty in her flower girl dress and fancy shoes.” He paused. “The next she was dead.” He made eye contact with each of them. “All because some guy made a decision to drink and drive.”

Tanner and Todd were both pale. Jack’s face was red and splotchy, and he looked sick to his stomach.

Jim stood and returned his laptop to its bag. Then he faced them. “How many football players drove drunk last night?”

Todd swallowed hard. He crossed his arms in front of his big gut. “Fifteen. Maybe more.”

“And by the grace of God, none of you killed someone on the way home.” Jim was shaking, imagining the flower girl and how easily one of his players might’ve killed someone on the road, maybe a family coming home from Thanksgiving dinner. He shuddered before turning his attention to Tanner. “How did Cody get home?”

“Some girl.” Tanner looked shaken. The memory of the images from the short video clip hung in the room. He licked his lower lip and swallowed hard. “She goes to another high school, but she was hitting on Cody. She had the hard stuff.” Tanner seemed too embarrassed to go on.

“So what happened?” Jim was upset with all his players, but he had more interest in Cody’s actions. The players knew Cody lived with their coach. “Tanner? Finish the story.”

Tanner gripped the arms of the chair and breathed in hard through his nose. “He and the girl went off for a while. Into one of the bedrooms.” He looked humiliated at having to tell the story, but he kept on. “After an hour or so, she led him back into the living room. She . . . she had a full bottle of some kind of liquor, and she held it up.” He massaged his brow and caught his breath. “She said it was a gift for Cody.”

Jim’s nausea grew stronger. Why would Cody do this? For a girl? He’d come so far in the last few months that it was hard to believe there wasn’t more to the story. Jim cleared his throat. “At that point Cody could still walk?”

“Barely.”

“He was pretty drunk.” Todd winced and stared at his trembling hands. “More than the rest of us.”

“And the girl left with him?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think she took him straight home.” Tanner couldn’t make eye contact with Jim. “She said something about taking a drive.”

Jim’s anger resurfaced. He gritted his teeth. He wanted to ask why none of the players had tried to stop their friend, but there was no point. They hadn’t stopped each other, either. The rest of Cody’s story was easy to piece together. The girl had stayed with him until late that night, then brought him home. He must’ve still been sober enough to give her directions.

The bottle they’d found empty beside him must’ve been the girl’s gift.

And now—because he wasn’t strong enough to resist the pull of the bottle—Cody was fighting for his life. Jim stared at the guys one at a time and scrambled for an idea. A plan that would make a difference to his players. He could be coaching in the NFL, but he was working with high school kids instead. Maybe seeing Cody would be enough to change things for his three captains, but what about the other players?

Suddenly he remembered something. Officer Joe could help him make the point. The retired policeman loved the kids and was a weekly presence on the Clear Creek High sidelines. Joe Agueda was forty-three, a hardworking family guy whose first language was Portuguese. A handful of years ago, he’d retired from police work in Los Angeles so he and his family could open a dairy farm on the outskirts of town.

The guy was crazy about football, and long before Jim and his family came to Bloomington, Joe Agueda had taken on the job of maintaining security at the football games. Every Friday night throughout the season, Joe and his wife, Sandra, could be found on the sidelines with their three grade school kids—Sarah, Greg, and Lori. Joe and his family hadn’t missed a game in years.

“Don’t worry about your security,” Joe would say whenever Jim or the other coaches walked by. “I’ve got everything under control.”

In the last few years while Jim had been Ryan Taylor’s assistant coach, the only security issue that had ever come up was a fistfight between a couple of Clear Creek students and a few boys from the crosstown rival. Joe had taken care of the fracas and spent half an hour lecturing the kids on the dangers of fighting. That’s how much Joe loved his job. He volunteered his time, and the players saw him as something of a mascot.

Now, with his three captains struggling to make eye contact, Jim remembered the offer Joe had made him at the end of the season. “It’s that time of year.” Joe gave him a wary look.

“Play-offs?” Jim chuckled. The more comfortable Joe had become around Jim, the more he offered his suggestion on a play or a defensive set.

“Not the play-offs.” Usually Joe’s smile never left his face as he joked with players and line judges alike. But in that conversation he had been deeply serious. “The holidays are when the guys drink. I’ve seen it with other football teams. They finish the season, and it’s one party after another.” He made a light jab with his pointer finger at Jim’s chest. “When I worked as an officer, I saw enough to scare the guys away from partying. Let me know if you ever need me.”

So maybe Joe was the answer.

Jim clenched his fists. “As soon as Cody—” A surge of emotion grabbed him by the throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited until he had control. When he did, he focused on Tanner. “As soon as Cody comes out of this thing, we’re having a meeting.” He looked down the line at Jack and then at Todd. “I’ll want you three to say a few words to the guys.”

There was a round of “Yes, Coach” and “Definitely.”

Todd was the first one to stand. “Can we see Cody?”

“I’ll check.” Jim knew that Bailey didn’t want to run into the guys, but by now she and Jenny would be ready to take a break, maybe head down to the cafeteria for lunch. Jim rose and faced the captains. He wasn’t sure whether to yell at them or pray with them or wrap them up in a hug. He settled with putting his hand on the shoulders of Tanner and Jack. “You guys know where I stand, my faith, my convictions.” He heard the sincerity in his tone. “I won’t stand for drinking on my team. Not another day.”

The guys nodded.

Tanner gulped and squinted at him. “We’re sorry. Really, Coach. That’s why we came here.”

“I know.” Jim felt his shoulders relax a little, and he lowered his hands to his sides. “I respect you for that. Still, we’ve got a lot of work to do. All three of you have families that attend churches in town. Right now . . . Cody could use your prayers.” He excused himself and went down the hall.

Jenny and Bailey were standing next to Cody’s bed. They both looked up when Jim entered the room. He met Jenny’s eyes. “The guys want to come in.”

“Okay.” She didn’t ask any questions.