Quarterback Read online

  Squinting, Kris looked down at the fuzzy image of the hospital gown he was wearing and the series of tubes running from his right arm. They extended down over the edge of the bed, connecting to various IV’s.

  Beside him a single chair sat empty.

  Kris blinked his eyes several times, trying to force them to bring the world into focus. The increased effort sent a searing pain through his head, his face contorted in agony.

  “What the...” Kris mumbled, rolling his head towards the door.

  Almost as if summoned on command it opened, a single person dressed in pale green scrubs passing through. Kris guessed by the general shape that it was a woman, but his blurry vision made it impossible to know for sure.

  “Where am I?” he asked, his voice seeming older, tired, even to his own ears.

  The nurse jerked towards the sound of it, raising a hand to their chest and taking a deep breath.

  “Whew, you scared me,” the nurse said, her voice confirming Kris’s initial reaction.

  Definitely a woman.

  “You’re at Good Samaritan Hospital,” she said, abandoning what she was doing and walking over to the side of the bed. “You shouldn’t be awake right now.”

  “Sorry,” Kris replied as beside him the nurse checked each of his IV lines. “How did I get here?”

  His head felt like an oversized vise was squeezing on it from either side, compressing his brain, forcing his eyes to bulge out of focus.

  “You suffered a concussion earlier this evening,” she replied, a modicum of detachment in her voice. She turned away from him for a moment and took up a syringe from the table, removing it from its plastic wrapper.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kris stammered, “the game. Did we win?”

  Without answering him, the nurse jammed the syringe into the rubber stopper on his IV and depressed the plunger, emptying the contents. The medicine dispensed, she pulled it from the IV line and tossed it into a medical waste bin.

  “Just go to sleep now,” she said, grabbing up his chart from the foot of the bed and making a notation of the encounter.

  Kris watched for a few seconds as she wrote, a dozen protests moving through his head. One at a time he tried to enunciate them, his words coming out garbled, before his eyelids drifted shut, the world receding back into darkness around him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Warriors owner Tom Riggs took a deep breath and turned the corner into the conference room, unsure what to expect. In his fifteen years of owning the team it was the first Monday morning press conference he’d ever attended, let alone hosted. Already he could feel sweat forming in the small of his back and underlying his snow white moustache.

  When he purchased the team a decade and a half before, he did so with a firm belief in a management style predicated on delegation. While he still played an active part in draft strategy and player assessment, press conferences were something he handed off to the coaching staff.

  It made sense to do so. They were better situated to answer the types of nuanced questions that reporters would be firing, both about the previous day’s game and the upcoming matchup.

  That wouldn’t be necessary this week though. There was no doubt that all reporters would be asking about was the condition of Kris Hopkins. The relationship between him and Coach Dumari was well-documented as being tumultuous at best, a shit storm at worst. Any questions on the subject that were fired at the coach could be expected to be handled less than delicately.

  When Dumari came and asked Riggs to handle the morning conference, it didn’t come as a surprise. At one point the night before Riggs had even had the same thought, dismissing it just as fast to avoid the appearance of stepping on toes.

  Even if he was less than enthused about actually going through with it, he knew deep down it was best for the situation. Within the organization the ongoing animosity between the two most visible faces of the team was well known, but that didn’t mean it needed to be put on display.

  Forcing a plastic smile onto his face, Riggs strode towards the front podium. As the owner, press conferences weren’t something new for him. He had made his fortune in timber before retiring to Portland, spending a lifetime speaking in front of employees and investors alike.

  Still, this was the first time he had ever done so the morning after a game. It was bound to be noticed, and likely even questioned, by someone.

  More importantly, he was for sure going to be questioned about Kris Hopkins, and for those he had no clear answers.

  Gripping either side of the podium, Riggs leaned forward into the microphone, overhead lights reflecting off his forehead.

  “Good morning,” he began. “As always, we want to thank you for being here, for caring about our team. We value the work you put in covering us, knowing full well it is no small feat.”

  He paused a moment, surveying the crowd before him. It was a bit larger than he remembered seeing most weeks, watching on the closed circuit television in his office. All of the familiar faces from local affiliates were on hand, as were a few new additions from larger media outlets.

  “Just to be upfront with what I know most of you are here for, I have no new information about Kris Hopkins. He was taken to a local hospital last night and will undergo a CT scan sometime in the next few days. We have asked that all inquiries be held until the results of that test are completed.”

  Once more he paused, watching as many of the reporters before him scribbled down notes.

  “And with that, I’d like to open the floor to questions.”

  Unlike the jostling of the postgame press conference a day before, the group was much more subdued. There was no pandemonium of waving hands or screaming questions, simply a smattering of heads nodding upward to indicate their intention to speak.

  Riggs picked up on the movement of a young brunette female on the second row and pointed to her. “Yes, Miss?”

  “Mr. Riggs, is it true that Kris Hopkins could have suffered yet another concussion?”

  The heat increased along Riggs back, dampening more of his shirt. He felt a flush of blood hit his cheeks, the realization that his attempt to stem this line of questioning was for naught.

  “Again, we do not know at this time,” he replied. “Next question.”

  An older man with a thin ring of graying brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses took the opening.

  “If Hopkins is unable to go, what would this mean for the Warriors moving forward?”

  “Well, I think that’s a question best directed to Coach Dumari, but I can say we drafted Jon Walsh because we believe he can be a successful quarterback at this level. We have every confidence he can win football games for us if called into action.”

  The answer was the truth, but the moment the words left his mouth Riggs felt dread well up within his stomach. He had left an opening, and would no doubt pay for it.

  “Your allusion to Coach Dumari,” the reporter pressed, letting the statement trail away. “We’ve all noticed a bit of tension this year between Hopkins and Dumari. Is there a correlation between the injury yesterday and your standing here today?”

  Riggs could feel the entirety of his morning coffee oozing out through his pores, soaking his suit damp. He fought a full moment to keep his face impassive and make sure his voice was level and even.

  “Not in the slightest. With our being on the road this week, we have one less day to get Walsh ready in the event we need him to play this weekend. Coach and I discussed the issue last night and it was decided I would handle the press conference so he could spend time in the film room with our rookie quarterback.

  “Any correlation beyond that is nothing more than conspiracy theory, I assure you.”

  A few heads nodded as several hands continued to scribble notes. In the back of the room a twenty-something young man motioned upward with his chin and asked, “Would it be fair to say it sounds as if you guys are preparing for life without Kris Hopkins this weekend in Los Angeles?”

  Riggs paused, hi
s eyes focused on the back wall of the room. On it was a poster announcing the Warriors schedule, an action shot of Kris Hopkins front and center. For several seconds he stared at it, not wanting to give the answer he already knew to be true.

  Chapter Twelve

  The final question of the interview somehow pierced the darkness in Kris’s head, the nasal voice of a young man asking something about the Los Angeles game in six days. For the second time his eyelids cracked open to just slits, so narrow that Kris could still perceive the ends of his eyelashes in his vision.

  The light was a bit less destructive than the last time, allowing Kris to open his eyes without recoiling. Still, it was brighter than he would like, his eyebrows bunching up to limit the amount getting in.

  The bigger concern was the television mounted on the wall overhead, the graveled voice of Tom Riggs echoing through his ears. Kris glanced up at it just once, the ambient glow burning his retinas. Pulling back in a wince, he raised a hand to his brow, blocking the light from above.

  “Hello?” Kris asked, his voice coming out in a croak. “Hello?”

  A moment later a nurse appeared, swinging around the corner and entering the room. Being several inches taller than the girl the night before told Kris it was a different person, despite having no idea what either one actually looked like.

  This nurse had dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail with blue scrubs and brand new running shoes that squeaked when she walked. The sounds seemed to echo through Kris’s head, bouncing off the inside of his skull.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hopkins. How are you feeling?”

  “Afternoon?” Kris asked, his eyes squinting at her. “What day is it?”

  “Monday,” she replied, lifting his chart from the foot of the bed and scanning it.

  Kris kept his gaze aimed at the opposite wall, computing what he’d been told. In his ear the interview continued to blare, making concentration impossible.

  “Can you turn that off, please?” Kris asked, a bit of a gasp in his voice.

  A moment later the television fell silent, the nurse returning to her spot at the foot of the bed. “Sorry, we thought you might want it on.”

  “Yeah, just not so loud,” Kris said, trying to piece together a timeline of the last couple days in his head. The last thing he could remember with any clarity was the game, everything since a hole in his memory.

  The nurse looked at him for a moment, one eyebrow cocked, before laying the chart on the bed by his feet. “Dr. Kirby will be right in to see you.”

  She disappeared before Kris could respond, her place taken in the doorway a moment later by Dr. Kirby. Just north of forty, she stood just below six feet tall with long black hair held in a loose knot at the base of her skull.

  She was halfway across the room before Kris noticed her, lifting a pair of thick framed glasses held by a chain around her neck and perching them on the end of her nose. She went straight for the chart, flipping through the top two sheets in rapid fashion.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Hopkins. How are you feeling today?”

  “Like a truck hit me,” Kris said, watching as she moved on to the third page.

  “From what I understand it was a two hundred and seventy pound defensive lineman,” she responded.

  Kris’s eyebrows rose a half inch, letting in extra light. Again he winced, narrowing his eyelids. “Yeah. Did we win?”

  Kirby dropped the chart back beside his leg and moved around to the side of the bed, nudging the glasses up a bit higher on the bridge of her nose.

  “Yes.” She extended her index finger upward and held it directly between Kris’s eyes. “Look right here please.”

  Moving slowly, Kirby shifted her finger back and forth across Kris’s field of vision.

  “My name is Dr. Alison Kirby, attending neurologist and head trauma specialist here at Good Samaritan. You were brought to me because you suffered a pretty severe concussion yesterday.”

  The words fought to register with Kris, his entire focus trying to move back and forth with her finger. Try as he might he couldn’t quite keep pace with it, the image blurring each time she moved it. His head spun as he did so, his mind trying to concentrate on her finger and compute what she was saying.

  “Another one?” Kris asked.

  “Yes, which according to your chart makes five,” Kirby said, watching his eyes. “Is that correct?”

  “I don’t know,” Kris muttered. “Sounds right.”

  “Hmm,” Kirby said, her finger coming to a stop in the same place it began. “Your blood work also seemed to indicate a high level of opiate painkillers. That sound right, too?”

  Kris shifted his gaze from the finger to the doctor, saying nothing.

  “Just in case,” Kirby said, inferring his answer, “you should probably lay off of those until this clears up. It’s been known to compound the effect.”

  Again Kris remained silent as Kirby removed a pen light from the breast pocket of her coat. She wrapped her fist around it and held it by her chin, peering at Kris.

  “This might sting a little.”

  She clicked her thumb down against the plunger on the rear of the pen, the implement kicking to life. A narrow shaft of light shot out from it, hitting Kris in the eye. On contact his head exploded with pain, the light searing into him as he rolled his head to the side, waving his hands to try and block it.

  “Ow! What the hell?” he snapped, waiting until he heard her click it off before chancing a glance back in her direction.

  Kirby returned the pen to her pocket, no sign of compassion on her face. “Light sensitivity is a common side effect of concussions. It will diminish with time.”

  In short steps she returned to the foot of the bed, picking up the chart and flipping to the last page.

  “How much time?”

  “Every case is different,” Kirby replied without looking up. “Could be a few days, could be months. We won’t know until the initial swelling in your brain subsides and we can get an accurate CT scan.”

  Kris’s face twisted up in confusion, the corners of his eyes bunched tight. “What? Months? No, I have to play this weekend.”

  A moment passed as Kirby wrote out the last of her notes, dropping the rest of the pages back into place and hanging the chart off the foot of the bed. She returned her pen to the breast pocket alongside the light and folded her hands in front of her.

  “Mr. Hopkins, you just suffered your fifth concussion that we know about. Right now there is still too much swelling to even get an accurate scan. We’re hoping to get one within the next few days, but it might very well be longer than that before we can see anything conclusive.”

  Kris stared back at her, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was telling him, but was fairly certain she would spell it out for him soon enough.

  “There is no way you’re playing this weekend,” Kirby said, her voice firm. “You’ll be lucky to ever play again.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Kris was taken by emergency squad from the stadium, the team sent an intern to the hospital to drop off the clothes and personal effects from his locker. The delivery was made sometime while he was asleep, the generic red and black Warriors duffel bag sitting in the chair usually reserved for family or friends by the bedside when Kris woke the second time.

  The irony of it was not lost on him.

  After a full day in the hospital, the bag had moved to Kris’s lap as the taxi he was riding in pulled to a stop in front of his home. It took quite a bit of convincing to let the cab past the front gate of the community, the guard insisting on seeing identification despite knowing Kris for over three years.

  If not for the fact that Kris didn’t trust himself to make it up the steep drive heading to his place, he would have just gotten out and walked.

  Digging his wallet from the bag, Kris paid in cash and trudged up the front sidewalk, wincing as the cab made a three point turn to exit, its brakes squealing out. Bag in hand Kris tur
ned and glared at the cabbie, waiting until the brake lights disappeared down the hill before unlocking the front door and heading inside.

  Darkness enveloped the house as Kris entered. The only visible light came from the digital readouts on the appliances in the kitchen to his left, everything else cloaked in shadows.

  Off to the right was the living room, the furniture and electronics all done in black. Beyond them were three bedrooms, only two of which Kris ever entered. In the four years he had lived there, nobody had ever gone into the guest bedroom.

  The visitors he tended to entertain were not the kind to need a separate bedroom.

  Out of reflex Kris reached out to flip on the lights, stopping himself just short of another certain headache. Instead he twisted the knobs on the tract lighting system, a pale fluorescent hue illuminating just enough to make for safe passage.

  Pulling his cell-phone from the bag, Kris punched in the speed dial for voicemail, setting the volume to speaker phone. He left the gym bag on the floor just inside the door, nothing left in it but a pair of running shorts the intern grabbed by mistake.

  The heels of Kris’s boots sounded out against the hardwood floors as he circled around the black marble island in the middle of kitchen. He slid the phone atop it as the voicemail connected, an automated voice announcing he had three missed messages.

  “Major head injury on national television and I get three calls,” Kris muttered, his hand resting on the handle of the refrigerator door. Thinking better of the burst of light he knew waited inside, he grabbed a glass from the rack beside the sink and filled it with water from the faucet.

  The first message began to play.

  “Hey Champ, it’s Riggs. Just calling to see how you were doing. Swing by my office when you get here tomorrow and we can chat. I, uh, hope you feel better. We’ve got a division to win!”

  The last line was filled with a false bravado Kris knew was more for his benefit than anything Riggs was feeling. Unable to help himself Kris smirked and rolled his eyes, taking another swig from the water.