Copyright © 2021 to the author
**
Coach Spencer pulled his coat closer to him, shivering against the November chill. He glumly regarded the spectacle before him as the announcer intoned, "And the extra point is good. The score is now Warriors, zero, Southwestern, twenty."
Four days of rain and fifty minutes of football had turned the field into a sodden mass of frigid mud. The white lines still showed at the edges of the field, but no longer marked the middle. His players' red and white uniforms and Southwestern's gold and blue uniforms looked almost alike under their coatings of muck. He sighed. The rain had stopped yesterday afternoon, but the humidity had remained, and the ground still squelched like an Irish bog.
The amount by which his team trailed would not have bothered him so much had his star player not slipped and fallen onto his left wrist. The coach shook his head. Surely Rohrbach knew by now not to stretch out a hand to break a fall, but the silly kid had done it anyway. In the mud, it had slid out from under his body and another player had landed, knee first, on his forearm. The hospital would have a time cleaning up that compound fracture. The coach shuddered. He hated seeing bones sticking through skin.
The injury had occurred at the start of the second quarter. It was now midway through the fourth. The coach shook his head again. Without Rohrbach, the team hadn't a prayer of getting to the divisional finals.
He saw the defensive players loping back toward him and turned his thoughts to the problem of getting through the rest of the game without suffering any further humiliations. The injury had rattled the kids -- cripes, the sound of the bone snapping had shaken even him -- and they had backed off from their usual aggressive style. Not even his half-time pep talk had helped. He scowled. Why did Rohrbach have to choose today to get injured? Couldn't he have waited until the end of the game, at least?
**
Kate Taylor never tired of the bustle of a busy emergency room. She enjoyed doing her job, liked the stimulation of never knowing what would happen next, and found a good deal of satisfaction in helping not only her patients but their families and friends. In her opinion, emergency medics did not consider the needs of the patients' loved ones as often as they could. She realized the need for speed overshadowed everything else about the job -- the Golden Hour had a way of slipping by all too quickly -- but still, one team member often could spend a few seconds reassuring the family as the others loaded the patient into the rig or packed up. If Kate had time, she made sure she did it.
Right now, she scanned the nearly empty waiting room for the father of a boy her squad had brought in from a football game. She saw only one clump of women and children. With a little frown, she returned to the nurses' station.
"Someone called the father of the Rohrbach boy, didn't they?"
"Yeah," a nurse said. "He said he'd be in."
"Wonder where he is?"
The nurse shrugged and went back to her paperwork. Kate tried to put the boy out of her mind as she shuffled to the crew room to fill out her trip sheet, her account of what had happened during the run from the football game. On it, she jotted down her assessment of the patient, his vital signs, which treatments they had administered and such. Most trip sheets took several minutes to complete, with complex cases requiring half an hour or more to record. Kate spent about ten minutes on hers, after which she used the restroom and meandered back out to see if the boy's father had arrived.
He had. From where she stood near the nurses' station, Kate could see a husky man with graying blond hair arguing with the nurse at the sign-in desk. Kate couldn't quite hear every word, but she could see the nurse recoil from him, an unusual sight. Nurses generally brooked no nonsense from anyone. The scene caused one of the doctors behind Kate to look up, mutter something, and stride out to intercept the man before he took it into his head to charge into the patient treatment area.
"Are you Jeffrey Rohrbach's father?" the doctor asked, courteously enough. He gave a brief nod to the security guard that stood near the automatic doors, signaling him to keep an eye on the situation.
The husky man turned, his mouth open to complain. The strong scent of stale beer wafted toward the doctor. Once the man noted his white coat and stethoscope, though, he deflated.
"Yeah, I'm Bill Rohrbach. Are you the doctor who saw my boy?"
"I'm one of them," the doctor said. He motioned toward a grouping of chairs. "I'm Dr. Yates. Let's have a seat and I'll tell you what's going on with your son, Mr. Rohrbach. And before we say anything else, let me reassure you, he'll be just fine."
Bill Rohrbach sank into a chair.
"That's good. You sure?"
"Absolutely. Kids his age heal in no time."
"They said he had a broken arm?"
"That's right. Compound fracture of the left radius, the larger bone in the forearm. This one," and the doctor inched up his coat's sleeve to point to his own radius. "It didn't help that your son was covered with mud at the time, let me tell you. But we've cleaned him up and he's next in line to go to the cast room."
"Huh?"
"The cast room is where we put plaster casts on people."
"Oh. I didn't know there was a special room for that."
"Anyway, once he's in a cast, he'll be much more comfortable."
"How long'll he have to have it?"
"Oh, I'd say about a month, but that's really Dr. Wong's call. He's the bone doctor who's treating your son now."
But Mr. Rohrbach had stopped listening.
"Are you saying he won't play football again this year?" he barked.
"I'm afraid not. The cast won't come off until mid-December at the earliest, and after that he'll need a couple of weeks of physical therapy."
"That's not good enough! My boy's
got
to play ball. The scout from, uh, Penn State's coming next week. How else is he gonna get a scholarship?"
Dr. Yates leaned back. He hated this part of the job.
"I'm sorry this happened to your son, Mr. Rohrbach. I'm sure a solution will come up. Now, would you like to see your son?"
Bill Rohrbach blinked. See his son? Why would he want to see his son? The stupid kid had just screwed up his chance to get out of that scrap heap the city called a house and for which it charged him indecently high taxes. Jeff was supposed to be his ticket out of there. If Jeff didn't get a football scholarship, how was he, Bill, supposed to escape his shabby little existence and live in style, in a nice house with all the scotch and women he could handle?
He realized the doctor was waiting for an answer to a question Bill no longer remembered.
"Yeah," he said, guessing.
"Right this way," Dr. Yates said, relieved this interview had ended.
The nurses watched with suspicious eyes as the doctor led the man past them. Nadine at the sign-in desk had warned them that the man reeked of booze, and they all knew drunks too well to feel comfortable with one in their midst.
They passed a couple of patients in cubicles bounded by curtains. At the end of the row, Dr. Yates opened a curtain and led Bill into his son's makeshift room.
"Jeff, your dad's here," he said cheerily.
Jeff barely opened his eyes.
"Great," he said in a flat voice.
"Your son's still in a good bit of pain," Dr. Yates said, covering for Jeff's lack of enthusiasm. "He'll feel much better after he gets his cast. Well, I'll just leave you two alone for a couple of minutes, until they're ready for you in the cast room. After that, Dr. Wong will explain what happens next. Good luck on your recovery, Jeff."
He left the two eyeing each other. Not the happiest father-son relationship he had ever seen, although he had, in fact, seen worse. Dr. Yates wondered where the mother was, then put the twosome out of his mind as he collected the folder for his next case.
For several seconds, the Rohrbachs simply looked at each other.
"Well," Bill Rohrbach finally said, "you've really done it this time."
"Thanks a lot for your love and encouragement," Jeff said, heavily sarcastic.
