Page 1 of Lessons in Lemonade

I’VE THOUGHT A lot about the day.

The unavoidable fateful day.

The day all professional athletes know is coming . . . the day it’s going to end.

Unfortunately for me, deep down in the very fiber of my being, I know for me, that day is today. It’s here, it’s finally arrived, and on a day I thought we would win it all. Instead, I lost everything.

It’s as if I should have known—like a premonition, for lack of a better description—because with every dream, every thought, every scenario, I always come back to this one specific end: injury.

To be more specific, in my dreams it was the one-way-ticket-to-retirement injury—a knee injury.

At the moment I don’t know which is greater: the pain in my knee or the pain in my heart.

As an athlete, we all know any day could be the day. Should it come to pass, we’re trained to bury the pain, reflect, and feel grateful for all the days, seasons, and years we’ve been given—only now that I’m here in this empty locker room thousands of miles away from home while my teammates are out there playing the most coveted game of our lives, I can’t.

“You hanging in there?” asks Dr. Leffers, our team orthopedic physician.

I look up to find a concerned expression set deep in the wrinkles across his forehead, and I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say.

“You’ll be all right,” he says confidently, nodding then giving me a closed-mouth smile.

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I mumble on an audible exhalation.

He frowns at whatever he sees on my face, purses his lips tightly, taps me fondly on the shoulder, and then walks away. He puts his phone to his ear, mumbling something, and I glance down at my leg. It’s wrapped tight from mid-thigh to mid-calf and has ice packs strapped all over it. They’ve given me a heavy dose of a pain reliever, but it’s not touching the sharp, debilitating pain in my chest.

A roar from the sixty-thousand-plus fans just past these walls slips down the hallway and vibrates anything not tied down. I don’t know if the cheers are for my team or not, and I can’t help but feel bitter that this is where I am, that this is how my life has suddenly turned out. Every day, every minute—hell, every second a bead of sweat dripped off my body was leading up to this, to this game. I should be with my team. I should be on the field, helping lead them to victory. I should be winning my first Super Bowl, but I’m not.

They’re out there, and I’m in here.

I made it a little over seven minutes into the first quarter of the game of my lifetime, and that’s all I got. That’s all I’ll ever get.

Closing my eyes, I put that last play on repeat. I knew both of those defenders were there. I didn’t know how close the guy coming from behind was to me, but I knew he was coming. Was it going to be a tricky catch? Of course it was, but this is the Super Bowl, and if there’s ever a time for big, risky plays, it’s this. That said, if I ask myself if the benefits outweighed the risk, the answer is resoundingly no.

Would I have done anything different? No. I certainly wasn’t going to drop the ball or let him throw it away with the potential of a fumble—or worse, a pick six—and yet, this is suddenly my reality.

My whole life, ever since I put on my first set of pads and laced up those cleats, I’ve dreamed about playing in and winning the Super Bowl. Every sacrifice, every decision, every ounce of my heart—it was all for this, for this sport, for the love of the game. As I sit here now, staring around the unfamiliar red and black Washington Wolves visitors locker room, I feel more defeated than I ever have in my entire life.

Shifting my hips, I resituate myself and lean my head against the back of the bench. After they brought me in and moved me here, one person raised this end to act as a recliner while others undressed me and the medical staff began to examine me. One removed my shoes, leaving my socks. Another literally took a large pair of scissors and cut off my pants, leaving me in my compression shorts, and a third had me pull off my pads. Once the jersey cleared my vision, I wasn’t prepared for the sight of my knee. Yes, I knew from the pop on the field that I had an ACL tear, but what I wasn’t expecting was for it to look deformed. What should be the straight line of my leg is now angular, crooked, and that means only one thing: a dislocated knee, the most feared knee injury for an athlete.

When I gasped, the medical staff took that to mean I was in pain and forced me to lie back. In actuality, visions of my future were flashing before my eyes: surgery, pain, six to twelve months of physical therapy, and not even a fifty-fifty chance of returning to the job I love.

Who am I kidding? At thirty-two, there is no chance. There is no returning.

Time passed as they wrapped me up, fielded the questions being fired at them by unwelcome people who had made it into the locker room, and then just as quickly as they all blew in, the majority of them headed back out to the field to see what happened next. Dr. Leffers stayed behind, and his assistant brought me my gameday bag. I tossed on a hoodie, he helped me slip on a pair of athletic shorts, and I stared down at what has become my reality.

“Sir, can we get you something to drink?” a young guy asks as he warily approaches me.

“No, thank you,” I tell him. Just the thought of ingesting something has my stomach rolling. I know it would come right back up.

He nods, his face solemn, and resumes his duties.

People are moving quickly and quietly around the locker room, coming and going, but no one says a word to me. They’re keeping their heads down, doing their jobs: cleaning, rearranging for halftime activities, and putting out food. There’s everything from sandwiches to cupcakes on the table, though I don’t know who they think is going to eat it. At halftime, adrenaline is high, and appetites are not. Then again, it’s not like I’ll still be here to see it.

Shaking my head, I grab the towel in my lap, run it over my face, and close my eyes. They burn from the thousand pounds of disappointment strapped to my back, and I can’t help but mourn the memories, the wins, the years I’ll never have. It’s a loss we tell ourselves we’re prepared for, only I find I’m not. I’m devastated. I’m angry. I’m at a complete loss for what happens next, and I have to remind myself to breathe because the weight of this reality is crushing me.

From behind me, the internal locker room door opens, and I twist to see who it is. I’m expecting security so I can be escorted—well, I should say, transported out. I don’t want to be in here when the team is; my emotional state can’t take the avoidance from people I consider family or the pity looks I’ll be given. I’ve been a captain for the last four years, a leader, and being helpless in front of men who look up to me, this shift in the dynamic—it’s not only confusing for them, it’s mortifying for me. I won’t do it. Besides, injuries also make people superstitious, and I can’t have that, nor do I want to be a part of that.

I also can’t have just anyone operating on me. I need someone I know, someone the team knows.