Page 2 of The Law Student

He was medevaced immediately to a hospital in Winston-Salem where it took hours of frantic scanning and probing to assess the injuries. A roomful of machines kept him alive as his doctors frowned at the X-rays. When he was considered stable enough, the surgeries began and continued for months.

Natalie gave birth in January but he wasn’t told. He had brain damage that the doctors reluctantly realized could not be repaired. He was paralyzed from the chest down. A ventilator breathed for him. Release from the hospital was never discussed. His medical team was still trying to save his life.

The town reacted admirably by establishing a relief fund to support Natalie and the sickly child. She was living with her parents, in the bedroom of her youth, and was as overwhelmed as any nineteen-year-old mother would be under the circumstances. Her father hired a local lawyer who filed a claim for workers’ compensation. In North Carolina, employers are required to pay into a pool that provides insurance coverage for on-the-job injuries, regardless of how they happen.

Unless.

Unless there are allegations of the employee’s wrongdoing that caused the accident. The warehouse covered four acres and had long, wide aisles for the forklifts and loaders. Occasionally, when things were slow, someone would find a football and the boys would toss it around. Most of them were in their twenties and had played the game in high school. Breece, being the once-famous star, was often challenged to fire passes here and there to see if anyone could catch one of his bullets. Several of his coworkers reluctantly came forth and described what had happened. They did not want to talk but their jobs were threatened.

The insurance lawyers finally pieced together the narrative: Breece had fired a shot that went through the hands of a buddy and hit a forklift driver in the face, causing him to lose control and crash into a row of shelving thirty feet high. A lightning-fast chain reaction brought down tons of furniture and Breece, who was racing after the forklift, got crushed in the mess.

Because of the enormity of his medical expenses and the certainty of long-term care, the insurance company saw an opening and denied the claim. In doing so it not only sidestepped the medical costs but also prevented Breece from receiving statutory payments for lost wages and disability. The denial was catastrophic for Breece and his family.

His lawyer appealed. Months went by, then years. The relief fund kept growing as the town chipped in. The brotherhood of former players stepped up and wrote checks. I was in high school and kept a few bucks in a checking account, cash earned from summer work at Nash Lumber. I pledged fifty dollars a month to the Breece Fund. My parents committed two hundred. Such generosity was not uncommon in Conroy. Once a month, the lawyer posted an accounting in the newspaper as a show of transparency, but it was always disheartening. The medical costs far exceeded the town’s charity and the gap kept widening.

Two years after the accident, another group of lawyers, some trial experts from Charlotte, filed a huge lawsuit against the employer alleging faulty construction of the shelving, and overstocking, and a long list of other misdeeds.

As the court cases dragged on, Breece was finally released from the hospital, then later from a rehab facility where he’d spent six months breathing and eating with tubes. By then, he was a shriveled-up mess of skin and bones who couldn’t speak. He grunted occasionally and smiled at his mother, and when you spoke directly to his face, there was no doubt Breece was there.

Two of his uncles took charge and organized a building project. Using some of the money from the Breece Fund, we gathered behind his parents’ home early one cold Saturday and went to work. At least fifty men scurried about, taking orders from the carpenters and electricians and plumbers. There were clean jokes and crude ones, lots of laughs, and plenty of ribbing, especially for the guys who wore suits every day and were not sure how to grip a hammer. I was proud Nash Lumber donated over $15,000 worth of supplies. My father had said, “Whatever it takes.”

Breece was wrapped in blankets and sitting on the back porch, watching us. He seemed to know what was going on. At noon, a group of church ladies brought lunch and we feasted on venison stew and chicken gumbo. By dark, the flooring, walls, and roof were completed. We returned the following afternoon, after church of course, and finished the interior. That night Breece was rolled into his little room, his new home, complete with a fancy hospital bed and a wall full of monitors. A short hallway led to his mother’s kitchen.

We were proud of our work. Breece’s room fit him perfectly, but there was little room for joy. He would die there soon enough, probably before reaching the age of thirty.

I rubbed his head and said goodbye, then cried all the way back to Davidson.

—

It was fortunate Breece could not comprehend how complicated his life had become. The hospital sued him for the unpaid bills, over three million dollars’ worth. His lawyers immediately ran to bankruptcy court and sought protection. The higher courts affirmed the lower courts’ split decisions to deny workers’ comp benefits. The hospital tried to garnish the balance of the Breece Fund, which was around $80,000 and declining. His lawyers fought back but it chilled the town’s generosity. Why give money if the hospital might get it? We, the donors, were under the impression that our gifts were for the support of Breece and his family. Then there were the rumors about Natalie. I had seen her a couple of times when I visited Breece—she and the child were not living with him. She had definitely regained her form and looked pretty great. She had always been stylish in high school, but now she had added a little suggestiveness to her appearance. It was apparent to me, and certainly to others, that she would not be waiting around for some miracle to bring back her husband.

In January of my junior year, the case against the employer went to trial in federal court in Charlotte. I had never watched a trial before and couldn’t stay away. I cut classes here and there and made the forty-five-minute drive half a dozen times. Breece was in the courtroom, in his special wheelchair, with his ventilator humming quietly under his seat. His head permanently listed to his left side, and his gaze was fixed on some indeterminate object in the near distance. Natalie sat next to him, dutiful and dressed appropriately. There were rumors she had a boyfriend.

His lawyers were magnificent and far superior to the defense team. They were masters at presenting a complicated story in simple terms, and the experts they hired made mockeries of those used by the employer. I was in the weight room, not the courtroom, when the jury’s verdict was returned in favor of Breece: $11,000,000 in damages for medical care to date and in the future, and for permanent disability, plus pain and suffering.

I drove home that weekend and sat with Breece for an hour, along with another teammate. We watched a Clemson basketball game on his big screen and reveled in the fact that justice had finally been served. Maybe it would somehow make things easier for Breece and his long-suffering parents.

A month later, the employer filed for bankruptcy, closed the warehouse, retreated to Asia, and has not been seen since.

They simply walked away and disappeared.

—

My father, Harold Nash, retreated to his office every Sunday afternoon for various reasons. He and my mother attended services at the First (and only) Presbyterian Church of Conroy, where they were married and where they had the same unmarked but still reserved pew, fourth from the altar, left side. I often felt like I was born there. After church, they had lunch with friends at our small country club, then went home for the Sunday nap. His bedroom was on one end of the house, as far away from hers as possible. The marriage was not a happy one but they kept things civil.

Around 5 p.m. every Sunday, he went to Nash Lumber and locked himself in his office. He neither expected nor wanted visitors. His longtime secretary, Verna, might have been involved, but I’ve never wanted to dig too deep.

To be safe, I called ahead to make sure things were clear. He was alone and glad to hear from me. We settled around an ancient table in his office, the same one his father built in 1962. The entire office wing reeked of old leather and dust. But it was a lumberyard, not a downtown high-rise filled with bankers.

I told him that I had just spent an hour with Breece, and of course he approved. The football fraternity that once practically smothered our fallen comrade had gradually shrunk. Life goes on. People lose interest. The lost verdict and bankruptcy had crushed the spirits of so many. The family was barely surviving on the charity of local churches and a few friends.

Before the topic of the spring football game could surface, I cleared my throat and said, “Dad, I’m retiring from the game. No more football for me.”

Always the stoic, he absorbed it, nodded, and said, “I’m not surprised. Why?”

“Several reasons, but the big one is that I don’t love the game anymore. Yesterday I was on the field for eighteen minutes, four series, two punts. One tackle, one fumble recovery. Not exactly a breakout performance. I sort of expect more of the same next season, and I’m just tired of the game. The practices, constant conditioning, and so on. You know what it’s like.”

“Oh, I got tired of it too, Stu. Everybody does. I loved it for the first two years, then messed up my knee. You know the story. I never quit the team but there were times I wanted to.”