“I got it!” A paramedic shouted from amid the workers. He tossed a mangled truck door behind him. It landed on the neatly manicured grass that bordered the Marion High parking lot. “I need a backboard, stat. And an airlift. The guy’s not going to make it by ground.”
They were going to get him out! Jake’s knees shook, and again he couldn’t catch his breath. A wild splash of hope colored the moment, and Jake fought the urge to shout Coach’s name above the chaos.
The paramedic began barking out orders, shouting words Jake had never heard before. The one thing he did pick up was this: Coach Reynolds was still alive! That meant there was a chance . . . a prayer that maybe he might make it! Jake’s legs could no longer hold him, and he fell to his knees, his heart thudding hard against the surface of his chest. Hang in there, Coach . . . come on. God, don’t let him die.
Jake had no idea how long he and Casey stayed there, stone still, watching the rescue. Finally, a helicopter appeared overhead and landed on the empty street. About the same time, one of the paramedics waved his hand at the others. “I’m losing him.”
“No!” No one heard Jake above the sound of the chopper. He struggled to his feet, took three steps toward the huddle of medics, and then returned to his place.
Beside him, Casey began to sob.
There was a rush of motion and someone began doing CPR. “Let’s get him out of here!”
A team of paramedics lifted a board, and for the first time, Jake could see the man they were working on. There was no question it was Coach Reynolds. He still had on his Marion Eagles jacket.
A wave of sobs strangled Jake’s heart. What sort of monster was he, to race that way on a city street? And what about Coach, the man who had been more of a father to him than his own dad these past years.
“Please don’t let him die!” Once more Jake’s agonized cry drowned in the whirring helicopter blades and engine noise.
They loaded Coach Reynolds into the chopper, and it lifted off the ground, disappearing into the sky. Jake watched it go until he could no longer hear the whirring of the engine. When it was gone, an eerie, deathly silence fell over the street. He looked around, suddenly aware of the action taking place near the damaged cars. Other police had arrived and were taking measurements, marking the spot from Jake’s car to the wreckage of Coach’s truck. As the paramedics left the scene, two tow trucks pulled up. The drivers climbed out and waited by their rigs.
Jake began to shake again, and his arms ached from being cuffed behind his back. “We’re going down,” Casey whispered beside him. “In flames, Jake. You know that, right? The season’s over.”
The season? Jake wanted to vomit. What kind of a person was Casey anyway? The season? Who cared about the stinkin’ season? He turned to Casey, his eyes so swollen from crying he could barely see. “Is that all you can think about?”
Casey wasn’t crying anymore, but he shook like someone having a seizure. “Of . . . of course not. I’m worried about Coach. It’s just . . . this’ll stay with us the . . . the rest of our lives.”
Jake’s anger blazed, cutting off his tears. “Yeah, and we deserve it.”
Casey opened his mouth, and at first it looked like he was about to disagree. Then he hung his head and finally, the tears came again for him, as well. “I . . . I know it.”
Jake was disgusted with both of them. The officers were right. Coupla rich kids driving cars that were way too fast. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. It didn’t matter what kind of trouble they faced. The police could toss him in jail and throw out the key for all he cared. In fact, Jake would have gladly given his life for the only thing that still mattered.
That Coach Reynolds survive the night.
Because if Coach didn’t live, Jake was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to either.
Thirteen
IT WAS A NIGHTMARE.
It had to be. Abby squinted at the clock and saw it was just after two in the morning. There was no way John would have been out this late. Car accidents didn’t happen to men like him . . . men who should have been home asleep by now.
Yes, it was just a nightmare. Abby almost had herself convinced, except for one troubling detail: John’s place in bed beside her was empty, untouched. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too thick. Why was she trying to scare herself? It wasn’t so unusual that John be missing from bed at this hour. Not after a football game. He could be downstairs watching television or eating a bowl of cereal. He did that lots of times.
Still, as convinced as she was, she had to tell the caller something.
“Did you hear me, Mrs. Reynolds? Are you awake?” The voice was calm, gentle. But the urgency was undeniable. “I said we need you down here at the hospital. Your husband’s been in an accident.”
The man was relentless. “Yes.” Abby huffed out her answer. “I’m awake. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
She hung up, then called Nicole. If the dream was going to be persistent, she might as well work it out, and that meant playing the role expected of her.
“Your father’s been in an accident.”
“What?” Nicole’s voice was half shriek, half cry. “Is he hurt?”
Abby forced herself to be calm. If she lost it now, she’d never make it to the hospital. And only by going through the motions would she ever break free from the awful nightmare. “They didn’t tell me. Just that we need to come.” Her eyes closed, and she knew she was right. It had to be a nightmare. And no wonder, especially after the bomb threat earlier. Her dreams were bound to be bad.
“Mom, are you there?”
“Yes.” She forced herself to concentrate. “Is Matt home?”
“Of course.”
“Have him drive you. I don’t want you going out at night alone.”
“What about you? Maybe we should pick you up.”
“Sean’s already dressed and waiting for me.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine as soon as this nightmare is over.”
The entire ride to the hospital, Abby was shocked at how real everything felt. The cool breeze on her face, the steering wheel in her hands, the road beneath the wheels. Never in her life had a dream felt like this.
But that’s what it had to be.
John hadn’t been doing anything dangerous tonight. The danger had been back at the football stadium, when he could have been blown to bits. But driving home from school? There couldn’t have been a soul on the road.
Abby whipped the car into the hospital parking lot and saw Matt and Nicole just ahead of her. They entered the emergency room together and were immediately led to a small room behind the double doors, out of sight from the rest of the public.
“What’s going on?” Nicole started to cry, and Matt put his arm around her. “Why’d they bring us in here?”
Abby clenched her fist as a realization slammed into her. She had no information whatsoever. Not about the type of accident or whether another car was involved. Not about the extent of John’s injuries or how he got to the hospital. She was completely in the dark, and in some ways that brought her comfort. Dreams were like that—strange, missing details, disconnected . . .
Beside her, Sean began to cry, too.
“Shhh.” Abby hugged him to her side and stroked his back. “It’s okay.”
A doctor entered the room and shut the door behind him. The first thing Abby noticed was his face. It was marked with tension and sadness. No, God . . . don’t let this be happening. Not really. Make me wake up. I can’t take another minute . . .
Lean not on your own understanding, daughter . . . I am here with you even now.
The words seemed to come from nowhere and speak straight to her soul. They gave Abby the strength to look up, to meet the doctor’s eyes straight on, and ask the hardest question in her life. “How is he?”
“He’s alive.”
The four of them straightened some at the doctor’s words. “Can we see him?” Abby started to stand, but th
e doctor shook his head.
“We have him on life support in the intensive care unit.” The doctor lowered his brow. “It’ll be touch and go for the next few days. There’s still a significant chance we could lose him.”
“No!” Nicole screamed the word and then buried her face in Matt’s chest. “No, God . . . not my daddy. No!”
Abby closed her eyes and held more tightly to Sean. She remembered then that she hadn’t called Kade. There he was five hundred miles away and he didn’t know his father was fighting for his life. It was one more disconnected piece, a part of the nightmare.
But the dream was growing more terrifyingly real by the moment.
Nicole finally quieted down, her face still smothered in Matt’s plaid, flannel shirt.
There was sanity in staying calm. Abby looked down and saw that her hands were trembling, but she managed to meet the doctor’s gaze. “What . . . what are his injuries?”
“He suffered a severed trachea, Mrs. Reynolds. That type of injury is fatal in most cases. My guess is that the way his body wound up after the accident somehow held the trachea in place long enough to save his life. As soon as they moved him, he stopped breathing. They kept him on life support until he arrived here by helicopter.”
“Helicopter?” Abby was seeing spots before her eyes, circling spots that threatened to take up her entire field of vision. She shook her head. No, she couldn’t faint. Not now. “What . . . what happened?”
The doctor’s eyes fell to his clipboard, and he grimaced. “Apparently he was the victim of a couple street racers—high-school kids.”
“Street . . .” Abby’s world began to spin around her. “Street racing?”
No doubt about it, it was just a nightmare. Real life didn’t have that kind of coincidence. John Reynolds, the coach accused of looking the other way while his players participated in street races . . . hit by teenagers doing that very thing? It was so ridiculous, it couldn’t possibly be real.
“The boys were probably going about a hundred miles an hour when your husband pulled out of the school parking lot. He was hit from behind.”
“So . . .” Abby pushed her fingers hard against both sides of her head. Again her body wanted to faint, but she wouldn’t let it. Not until she heard it all. “So his trachea? That’s the problem?”
The doctor’s expression grew even darker than before. “That’s the most critical problem at this point.”
“There’s more?”
Nicole moaned and clung to Matt. Abby glanced at Sean and realized he was sobbing into her sleeve. Poor babies. They shouldn’t have to hear this. Still, if it was only a bad dream, it wouldn’t hurt anything. Besides, the sooner she worked through it, the quicker she’d wake up.
The doctor checked his notes again. “It looks like he broke his neck, Mrs. Reynolds. We can’t really be certain at this point, but we think he’s paralyzed. From the waist down, at least.”
“Noooo!” Nicole screamed again and this time Matt shot Abby a pleading look.
But there was nothing she could do. The word was still making its way into her conscious. Paralyzed? Paralyzed! It was completely impossible. John Reynolds had just coached the Eagles to victory. He had walked her to the car and climbed the school stairs to his office. Later that night they had dance lessons to attend.
Paralyzed?
“I’m sorry.” The doctor shook his head. “I know this must be very hard for you. Is there anyone I can call?”
Abby wanted to tell him to call Kade. Instead she stood and gathered Sean to her side. “Where is he? We need to see him.”
The doctor studied the group and nodded. He opened the door and motioned to them. “Follow me.”
They looked like a trail of walking wounded as they moved along behind the doctor down one hallway and then another. The clicking of the man’s heels against the tile floor reminded Abby of some macabre clock, counting down the hours John had left. She wanted to shout at him to walk more quietly, but it wouldn’t have made sense. Even in a dream.
Finally the doctor stopped and opened the door. “The group of you can only stay for a few minutes.” He looked at Abby. “Mrs. Reynolds, you can stay beside him all night if you wish.”
Abby led the way as they crept inside, and only then did her veneer of shock and disbelief give way. As it did, she collapsed in a heap near the foot of his bed, her head spinning.
It was real. Dear God . . . it’s really happening.
Light narrowed, darkness swept in, overflowing her. “I’m fainti—”
That was the last thing Abby remembered.
When Abby came to, she was sitting in a chair beside John’s bed. Nicole, Matt, and Sean were gathered around her. At her feet was a nurse with smelling salts. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reynolds. You passed out.”
Abby looked beyond them to the bed, to her precious John lying there. Tubing ran in and out of his body from his mouth, his neck, his arms and legs. A full brace was fixated to his head and neck, making John looked trapped. Abby wanted to throw it off him, free him and take him away.
But she couldn’t.
All she could do for the rest of the night was stay beside John and try not to cry too loudly. Because if he was here, then he wasn’t at home. He wasn’t watching television or eating cereal or grading papers into the wee hours of the morning. He was strapped to a hospital bed, clinging to life.
And that could only mean one thing.
She wasn’t dreaming after all.
Her dear husband, the man who had run like the wind across the football field at the University of Michigan . . . the man who played tennis with her and jogged with her and ran patterns for his players when a diagram wasn’t enough . . . the man who danced with her on the pier behind their home a hundred different times . . . might never dance again.
This wasn’t the kind of nightmare a person woke up from.
It was the kind that lasted a lifetime.
The hours became little more than a blur.
By Saturday afternoon Kade had joined them at the hospital. He arrived sometime between lunch and dinner, Abby wasn’t sure. But they were all there, gathered around John’s bed. Praying for him. Jo and Denny had come, and with them a dozen people from church and the high school.
Word was getting out.
Coach Reynolds was in an accident; he might never walk again. Teary-eyed football players kept vigil in the waiting room with the others. Only immediate family was allowed in the room, which meant Abby and the kids and Matt. Abby never left John’s side except to use his private rest room. She completely avoided any conversation in the waiting room about who had been arrested and what penalty they might face for hitting John’s car. She didn’t care about that right now. All that mattered was John’s survival.
So far he hadn’t regained consciousness, although doctors thought it could happen anytime.
Abby had long since let go of the idea that what was happening was merely a dream. It was reality. But a reality she prayed would turn out differently than the doctors imagined it would. John would wake up sometime that evening, look around the room, and flash that silly grin of his.
Then he’d wiggle his fingers and toes and ask the first passing nurse to take off the neck brace. His throat would be sore, of course—any time a person had a severed trachea that was bound to happen—but other than that he’d be fine. A few days in the hospital and they could walk away from the scare of the accident and get on with the business of living and loving and taking dance lessons with Perky Paula.
That’s how it would happen. Abby was sure of it.
For now, the group of them was quiet. Kade stood anchored against one wall, his gaze locked on his father. Eyes dry, face pale, Kade hadn’t moved from his spot for two hours. Beside him on the floor was Sean, his knees pulled up to his chin, his face in his hands. Most of the time, Sean cried quietly to himself. At times when he would stop crying, Abby could see it wasn’t because the sadness had passed. It was because he was too sca
red even for tears.
Matt and Nicole had taken up their position on the opposite wall, Nicole in a chair, and Matt standing beside her. The doctor had encouraged them to talk, explaining that John was more likely to wake up if he heard their voices. Occasionally Abby and the boys would say a few words, but Nicole was the most verbal of them. Every ten minutes or so she would cross the room and stand near the head of John’s bed.
“Daddy, it’s me.” Her tears would come harder then. “Wake up, Daddy. We’re all here waiting for you and praying for you. You’re going to be okay; I just know it.”
After a few sentences, her tears would be too strong to speak through, and she would walk around the bed and hug Abby for a long while. Then she would return to her place next to Matt. Occasionally one or more of them would leave the room for something to eat or drink.
The only good news of the day had come that morning when the doctor upgraded John’s condition from critical to serious. “He’s had a great night. I’d say his chances of surviving are very strong.”
Abby had no idea how long ago that was or whether night had come again or not. She knew only that she didn’t dare leave, didn’t consider being gone from the room when John first opened his eyes and told them all the truth: that he wasn’t that bad off after all.
Finally, as the nurses were pushing dinner carts down the hallway, John let out a quiet moan.
“John!” Abby moved closer to the bed and took hold of his hand, the one without the wires and tubing. “We’re all here, honey. Can you hear me?”
The kids gathered closer, waiting for his response. But there was none. Abby studied his face. It was bruised and swollen, but she was almost certain his eyes were twitching beneath the lids. That hadn’t happened since Abby arrived at the hospital.
Nicole ran her fingers lightly over John’s other hand, careful not to bump the various lines attached to him. “Daddy, it’s me . . .” She sucked in two quick breaths and fought to keep her tears at bay. “Are you awake?”
John gave the slightest nod of his head, enough that Sean muttered a soft “Yes!” under his breath. It was one thing to have John injured and facing a life that might never be the same again. But to lose him . . . that was something none of them could bear to think about.