The Crush
Karla Sorensen
This one is for all the readers who’ve waited patiently for the last member of the Ward family to get his happily ever after.
Thank you for loving them along with me for the last few years.
Mid-January
Emmett
It was an unlikely combination of things that made me think about the night I told Adaline Wilder I didn’t have room in my life for a relationship—a lineman’s spinal cord and a house made of pink Legos.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of her in the past five years. I did think of her. Often. But those thoughts were fleeting. They’d come and go without disrupting much about my life, simply because I knew—or thought—she was happy in another relationship. They weren’t the kind of thoughts that shifted priorities or spurred me into action.
And I did best when I was in a situation where I could take action. Make a plan. Execute. Every quarterback in the league felt that way. We didn’t do well being passive. Really didn’t do well when absolutely nothing was within our control.
Sitting in the hospital waiting room, still clad in the ripped-up T-shirt that went under my pads and my jersey, was about the worst kind of out-of-control feeling.
That was the first part of how this all started—with a misjudged tackle and a spinal contusion that left my teammate Malcolm Delgado unable to move his legs.
In our post-season-ending loss against Denver, one of our veteran defensive linemen attempted a tackle and crashed helmet-first into the thigh of the receiver carrying the ball. There weren’t many words to describe what it feels like to stand on the field where you’ve dedicated your life and see one of your friends unmoving against the bright green.
It was icy hands and a hollow pit in your stomach. It was pressure in your chest and roaring in your ears.
And it was the recurring thought none of us wanted to think too long on … what if that was me?
We were all shaken, standing around him on the field while the medical staff said things like, no feeling in his legs … he can’t move his feet … spine needs to be stabilized.
The guys on our team—in Ft. Lauderdale blue—knelt around the field with Denver players, hands over each other’s shoulders while they prayed for Malcolm. We lost by a touchdown, too far down at that point in the game to rally, even with the emotional surge we all felt when they carted him off the field strapped to a board. But it wasn’t even that moment that had me looking back at my choices. It was later, in the hospital waiting room, with Malcolm’s four-year-old daughter, kicking her feet as she sat in the chair next to me.
“I’m bored,” she said. On her feet were sparkly pink shoes covered in gold and purple flowers. She was wearing her dad’s jersey.
On the other side of Gabriela was an empty chair where her mom had sat just a few minutes earlier. I glanced down the hallway where Malcolm’s wife, Rebecca, paced with her phone glued to her ear and her eyes red and puffy.
Gabriela slumped down in her chair with a sigh, and I gave her a sad smile. There was a strange blessing in the fact that she didn’t understand the significance of why we were here.
“Maybe we could change the channel on that TV up there,” I said.
Gabriela’s eyes widened. “He has the clicker thing. Will you ask?”
I eyed the guy she was talking about. “You’re gonna make me do it, huh?”
She tucked her little hand under my arm and leaned closer. “He looks scary,” she whispered.
I laughed under my breath because he did. The giant pouf of his white hair stood straight up, and his gnarled hands gripped that TV remote like it was a gold brick. “Maybe he’s here waiting for someone he loves too.”
“Maybe.” Gabriela looked over at her mom. “Can I see Daddy soon?”
There it was again. That icy pit, the hollow ache.
Rebecca was off the phone, but she stood leaning against the wall, her eyes closed and her lips moving in a silent plea.
What if that was me?
It felt like someone shoved a wooly sock down my throat as I glanced back and forth between them. I remembered when Malcolm told us Rebecca was pregnant, just as we started our rookie season together. They’d been dating for almost a year when he was drafted to Ft. Lauderdale. I was their first-round pick, and he was the second. I bolstered the offense, and he was the stalwart in the defense. I attended their wedding a month later, where he told me I had no business being on the dance floor.
Attempting to swallow that wedge in my throat, I gave Gabriela a smile. “I don’t know, G. Wanna see what your mom put in that backpack?”
The distraction worked well enough. She dropped to the floor and tugged the zipper open on her purple backpack. Inside were some coloring books, a tablet, a doll with terrifyingly big eyes, and a container of Legos.
“I don’t want to play with any of this, E,” she grumbled. “There’s nothing fun.”
“Oh man, sure there is.” Tugging open the front of the bag, I pulled out the container of the Legos, peering at the contents carefully. “We can make something really cool.”
“We can?”
Skepticism was stamped all over her little face, and she reminded me so much of Malcolm that I grinned. “Oh, yeah. You think I’m good at throwing a football? I’m even better at building really cool houses with stuff like this.”