It had been two, long, gruelling weeks since Ty began his rehabilitation; a full month if you kept track from when he was injured. Progress had been too slow for his liking, though he'd kept to Dr Goggins's regime EXACTLY.
The first time he'd seen her again, she'd looked at him in silence for a long time before warning him of what she'd do if he went against her words and pushed himself harder than she said he was ready for. Somehow she just knew he'd even THOUGHT about doing extra.
But he was confident about the session. They'd move on to the next step this time, he could feel it. Progress should've already happened, but apparently this was going to take a longer time than Ty liked, even if Dr Goggins had said he was doing nicely. Did that mean he could've started doing anything else after last week? No; he'd been stuck with the same damn simple stretches for a fortnight.
That would change.
Of course, Coach Long had driven him each time, and once more the man patiently waited in the lobby as Ty sat on Dr Goggins's examination table. She was having him move through the same long stretches once again. But that gave them plenty of time to talk.
'So what have you been doing with yourself these past couple of weeks,' Dr Goggins asked. 'You must have a lot of time on your hands now that football season's over… and now you can't really train much.'
Ty frowned. Hadn't she just answered her own question? What else was he supposed to do now that he couldn't train. He just looked at her, letting her bask in her stupidity.
She raised a brow. 'Come on. Don't tell me you've been doing NOTHING all this time but pining for when you'll get back on the field. There's gotta be at least ONE other hobby you have.'
Ty remained silent. Football was everything. What else could come close to the high he got on the gridiron?
'Don't you play video games like other boys, at least? There's a football one for that, isn't there? What about that?'
Ty scoffed. 'What's the point of that when I could just be playing the real thing?'
'It'd be a way to practice strategy if nothing else.'
'The computer's either moronic or downright cheating, and other people play like monkeys smashing rocks together. There's no strategy other than doing the same brainless thing over and over, because its what your team or players are best at.'
She chuckled. 'And that's different from the real thing how?'
His eyes narrowed. It was clear she was just trying to get a rise out of him, but it was a touchy subject. So many people thought football was as thought-provoking as two gorillas fighting for supremacy.
'There's a lot more strategy involved than that,' he said. 'Something no video game can replicate. When you're out there, and it's just you and the Receiver you're fighting against, there's hundreds of hours of muscle memory and tendencies being condensed into just a few seconds. When it's just the two of you, you have to BECOME your opponent if you want to win. You have to understand them better than they understand themselves, and know what they're going to do even before they know it themselves. To get to that level of understanding takes so much time and study, and if you can't do that, you get left behind.'
Dr Goggins listened closely, and made a few more notes in Ty's file. Then she looked at him for a while, tapping her pen against her dark lips, lost in thought for a few minutes. Finally, she said:
'Would you say that's why you're so empty? Do you think its easier to become your opponents if there's less of your own personality to shed?'
Ty looked at her as if she's spoke in an alien language. '…What?'
'It's an interesting theory, but I don't think it holds much weight under scrutiny. Or are you trying to refute that you're not a hollow shell of a human being? I mean, wouldn't you say it yourself that you're a football player first and foremost and a person a far and distant… third?'
He set his leg down, sitting up to stare at her more closely. Was she crazy? She was looking at him as if they were chatting about the weather.
'Who are you without football?' she asked.
His mouth dropped open. "Nothing" screamed out at him, and was even echoed by a tiny voice in the back of his head, though that voice really meant he was nothing even with football. He shook his head, snapping back with: 'Who are you without your clinic?'
She looked around, unfazed. 'Well, if you were my last patient and I had to retire right after, I'd be alright. I have a couple of cats at home, but I also have my garden. Not just flowers, but a good little veggie patch, too. The looks on my neighbours' faces when I hand them a little bag of my homegrown strawberries always brightens my day. But I also volunteer down at the library, and every month there's even a little baking fair to help raise money for those in need within my community.
'Of course, this place is my passion and where my heart resides,' she said, gesturing around her office, 'but if I were to lose it tomorrow I would still have plenty of other things to fill my soul… what would you do if you could never play football again?'
Ty almost leapt off the table. His knuckles strained against his skin he was gripping the table so tightly. 'You said I'd be fine in six months.'
'I said closer to twelve, and you will be, I'm merely speaking hypothetically.'
Ty took a deep breath, though his heart was still pounding. Never playing football again? It was a nightmare best not thought about. Besides, what else did he need? He'd never needed anything beside football, not even now. There was no time for anything else if he was going to be the greatest. His current circumstance was just a freak accident that was keeping him from football, but even that would change as soon as he was back on his feet without those damn crutches holding him back.
'I can play football,' he muttered. 'Something like that… why even bother thinking about it?'
'Because it could happen,' she said, matter-of-factly. 'It hasn't happened yet, but there are always freak accidents. You play a dangerous game, Tyrese. Isn't one of your coaches in a wheelchair? Don't you think he would've thought he'd always be able to play football, right up until the moment he was paralysed?'
He gripped the table again, grinding his teeth. 'This is bullshit. Every football player knows the risks. Us especially BECAUSE Coach Hoang is a reminder every day how quickly this can be taken away from us. Isn't that all the more reason to dedicate our lives to this sport as wholeheartedly as we can?! It's not like we even get to play this for that long anyway. Unless you're a Quarterback or some fucking Kicker, you're lucky to still be playing when you hit thirty, let alone past it.
'Every football player is burning the candle from both ends. We know we're not here for a long ride but a good one. So I'm giving this brutal sport the respect it deserves by dedicating every bit of my life to it until I CAN'T anymore. But that won't happen until a LONG time from now. I promise you.'
'And if you want to get the most out of that you can, you need to give not just your body—but also your soul—that same respect and dedication, too. It'll even help you on the field. How else are you going to truly read and emulate your oppoent, when you're so empty and hollow you don't even know what it's like to be human?'
'You're a fucking quack. Stop talking crazy, and stick to physical therapy, because no matter what you might think, doc, you're not a real therapist.'
She laughed, smiling through his insults. 'Actually, this has everything to do with your physical therapy. There's no better way for you to recover, AND it'll help you stay healthy in the future. I mean, honestly, Tyrese, are you really surprised by what happened to you? It was bound to occur one of these days. And you know why? Because if you have NOTHING else but football, you were bound to burn yourself out on it, if not mentally, then physically.
'Life isn't like one of those video games, or a cartoon, where you can just endlessly throw yourself against a problem, or keep training day after day until you're exhausted and suffer no consequences. If you keep pushing and pushing AND PUSHING, you're eventually going to break down. And that's exactly what happened to you, Tyrese.'
His jaw quivered. His blood boiled with white-hot rage, and if he didn't scream at her he felt like he'd explode… but could he seriously listen to that and tell her she was wrong after everything that had happened to him?
She exhaled, and Ty's anger started to defuse; it felt as if his whole body was deflating. 'I'm not trying to offend you, or crap on you and your life choices, Tyrese. You made a mistake, but that's not the end of the world, and it's not even fully your fault. Someone else should've been there for you—should've stopped you before it was too late—but they weren't, so now WE have to pick up the pieces.'
She moved over from her desk chair and perched beside him on the table. 'These are strange times for a kid your age. Your teenage years are when you start to figure out who you really are, or at least who you want to be. Football might've seemed like everything before, and it'll stay that way if you close yourself off to the rest of the world, but it won't lose any importance just because you start valuing something else. Life's too short to only care about ONE thing.
'The tricky part is in the figuring out. I mean, some people don't really know themselves until their late twenties, if they figure it out at all. I'd like to help you with that, because if you don't know who you are, how are you going to reach your full potential?'
There was more to his life than football? It put a strange taste in his mouth, like foreign cola, the subtle difference was enough to sour the whole thing. Football was—IS—everything. It was what he lived for, what got him out of bed to start the day. How could he turn his back on it now?
…But hadn't it turned its back on him when it ripped his knee to shreds and left him for dead on its red-stained field?… But wasn't that a price he'd been willing to pay if he had to? Nothing had been confusing about his teenage years before, though there was suddenly a lot of confusion within Ty.
'I'm not telling you to drop everything and become a doctor, lawyer, or astronaut,' Dr Goggins said, her voice soft but not condescending; her words were for Ty personally. 'You have a plethora of time on your hands, and there's only so much focus you can give to football and still do anything productive with that thanks to your injury. So how about you start expanding your horizons a little bit? Maybe you can take a book out on loan from the library, something like Percy Jackson, or maybe even an autobiography of Michael Jordan or whoever, and when you come in next week you can tell me about it. Or maybe you can do the same with a TV show or documentaries, just make it SOMETHING engaging.'
Silence dragged on for a minute. Dr Goggins waited patiently until Ty nodded. She pat him lightly on the back and stepped away from the table. Before she sent him home she also gave him a new set of exercises to do throughout the week in addition to the stretches he'd been doing, which he could do less of now.
The new exercises came on a handy little sheet with diagrams and pictures. And a resistance band that was going to see a lot of use in Ty's future.
He could stand and pull against the band with his injured leg straightened out, shifting it backwards. He could do the same thing forwards, too, and even add the band to his earlier stretches.
Or hip abductors while he was lying down—he'd lie on his side, and, keeping his leg straight, would lift it up into the air, not TOO high. He could even try this while standing with the resistance band if he wanted.
And if he was feeling real good, he could even add in a few squats, though Dr Goggins warned him not to go further than a quarter of the way down.
The best news of all was that he could start leaving his crutches behind if he needed to go to the bathroom or to the kitchen, or just doing stuff around the house in general. He could even try walking up and down a step half a dozen times. She didn't want him on his feet for longer than five minutes at a time, however, and definitely not walking outside of the house yet.
He thanked her, taking the exercise sheet with him, and she even picked up his crutches, letting him walk to the lobby to meet up with a surprised, but joyous Coach Long.
Leaving the clinic had to be done on his crutches, however. As Ty made the short trip around the back to Coach Long's car, he wondered if it wasn't just the Dons who were going to be resurrected like a phoenix—changed into something both new and familiar—but also himself.
'Don't you think it's time you came back to school?' Coach Long said as they got into the car.
Ty sighed heavily; it was going to be a long drive.