Page 13 of Colliding with Ten

I glanced toward the tunnel where they’d wheeled her away and then toward Callahan, who was leading his team between first and second downs. His eyes fixed on me between plays, promising annihilation. The kid was supposed to be my easy win, but instead I had sparked a feud that would outlast a season.

5

EN POINTE, ON HOLD

AYLA

There are many ways to tell you’ve been hit hard. Ringing in your ears? Check. Dizziness that makes your skull feel like a snow globe somebody shook for sport? Double-check. Another, subtler sign happens when your brain focuses on something irrelevant…like blue eyes.

He knelt next to me, breathing hard, his hand cupping my face with trembling fingers. My head ached, but all I saw was the frantic look in his eyes. What did he see that I couldn’t? The tension in his shoulders eased when I spoke. He wiped a tear from my temple, shouted to the trainer, and then he was gone.

People swarmed me. Trainers and cheerleaders occupied the space he left. When someone moved my leg, a sharp pain shot through my left knee. I could hardly breathe as I grabbed pieces of the turf.

“Don’t move,” one of the trainers said, which, fun fact, is all you want to do as your knee feels like it’s detaching from your body.

“We’ve got you,” he continued.

Everything happened fast. Hands held my head and neck while someone did vitals and asked questions I hardly understood. Someone mentioned swelling and stabilization. When they lifted me onto the stretcher, I looked at the lights, trying to breathe past the pain. AJ stood on the sidelines, turning toward me as if he might run over. Helmet off, we locked eyes, and the look on his face wrenched my heart. God, I’d been so stupid.

I gave AJ a tentative thumbs up, not knowing how that would go down, since I had promised him I wouldn’t become a distraction to him or the team. They wheeled me toward the tunnel. I stared back at the field as the players reset to start again.

By the time they rolled me into the training room, my leg burned. It was the same room the players used after injuries. I turned my head toward the Hawks’ purple-and-gold banner on the wall to avoid the light. Each bump of the stretcher worsened the pain, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

The trainers moved fast. As people who saw injuries every week, they worked on me with sure hands. Someone called out vitals while another cut away the flesh-colored stockings around my knee. I focused on their faces to keep from breaking down.

“All right, Ayla,” one of the doctors said. “We’re going to run through some checks, okay? Just stay as still as you can.”

Hands pressed along my neck and shoulders. I tried to stay calm as they tested reflexes, pupils, range of motion, and everything to rule out a concussion.

“Head’s clear,” someone said from my right. “No neck pain, no loss of consciousness longer than a few seconds.”

Small mercy. My brain, at least, was intact. Then they turned to my knee. Just the look of it made my gut roil. The joint was swollen, skin stretched tight, and the shape distorted. The doctor palpated my knee and noticed me flinch.

He lowered his voice and said, “The swelling’s severe with possible ligament involvement, maybe both MCL and ACL. We’ll need imaging to confirm.” He turned to the trainers. “Let’s get ice on it now.”

My heart fell. A torn ligament could be a career killer. I was hyperventilating now.

“Cool,” I said, voice trembling. “Love that journey for me.”

“It’s gonna be okay. You can recover from this,” the doctor said.

But what did he know? Ballet’s finer movements were very different from football’s brute force. My turns balanced on a single point. Any instability and it fell apart. I gripped the leather covering of the cushioned training table with white knuckles. This could be really bad.

They wrapped my knee in cold packs, shocking me out of my thoughts. Theresa tried to give me a water bottle, but I couldn’t hold it without shaking. She tipped the bottle to my lips, and I drank like a child, as dignified as that sounded.

“Pain level?” the doctor asked.

“Eight,” I rasped, though it felt closer to twelve. “Maybe thirteen if you count my shattered pride.”

He nodded, chuckling, already preparing a syringe. “We’re giving you Toradol for the pain, all right? It’ll help for now, but you’ll get more medication at the hospital.”

I nodded, tears slipping toward my ears as the injection hit my arm. The burn hardly registered over the throbbing in my knee. The doctor met my eyes again.

“You did great, Ayla. We’ll stabilize the knee for transport. Try to stay still.”

The journey to the hospital was fast. Since the team doctors phoned ahead, procedures began immediately. Minutes later, I had an IV and was rolled into the imaging room with only a quick signature. Afterward, they took me to an examination room with white walls and sterile containers. The doctor looked at the scans and then turned to me, relaxed.

“Good news and bad news. No fractures and no concussion, which is good.”