She looked so perfect outside - all I could remember of her by now was seeing her in my room or in the quarterbacks’ training room deep in the bowels of the facility. Seeing her outside took the vision of her beauty to another level, I could barely contain myself.
I waved after a particularly long throw and pointed to my knee, a big smile on my face, and I could see Charlotte’s face soften even from this distance. I knew I would catch hell for this from her when I came back in, but for now I was just having way too much fun to stop.
It felt good to move again, to stretch dormant muscles and push them tentatively at first toward their limits. This was what I did for a living; this was who I am. If I wasn’t exercising, pushing my body every day to do just a little bit more, I wasn’t alive anymore.
And now that Charlotte was watching me again, it was even better. Yeah, things were finally starting to look up again.
Hud took another step back and threw me the ball, a little off, but I only had to lean over a little bit to make the catch. I took a big step back then eyed the distance between us. I could definitely make this.
I looked back at Charlotte on the sideline before I threw and I could see her shaking her head again, but this time she was smiling. I knew she thought I was showing off, and I totally was showing off, but I’d never let her know that.
I thought the throw went off clean, but as I was entering my customary follow through, one I had done literally tens of thousands of times in my life, I felt a wrenching from my right knee and I crumpled to the ground, just barely getting my hands down fast enough to avoid taking a face full of dirt. As I went down I could see Hud and Charlotte both running toward me already.
I lay there on the ground, trying not to move. I was angry already, angry at myself for not taking things slower and angry that two of my favorite people in the whole world were going to see me helpless like this.
“Lance, are you alright? Where does it hurt?” Charlotte had reached me first, but I heard Hud huffing right behind her as he caught up.
“Same knee, right knee,” I said, and started to roll myself over onto my back. Hud reached down and helped me out, and I lay on the ground staring up at Charlotte’s worried face.
“Hey there, Charlotte,” I whispered to her. “You’re looking mighty-fine today, girl, where you been keeping yourself.”
Charlotte held up a finger. “Don’t pull that crap with me, Lance Parker, not now.” She got down on her knees and started feeling around my knee with her practiced hands. “You didn’t break anything, you probably just twisted it around again.”
That didn’t sound good, but at least nothing was broken. I almost choked up as I asked, “Will it slow me down? I was feeling really good out there.”
Charlotte looked back at me like she was trying to decide what to say, or how to break it to me. “Yes, Lance, I think it might slow you down a bit. I can’t believe you snuck out and came here of all places.”
I looked at her like she didn’t understand me at all. “It was the place I wanted to be most in the world.”
“The field?”
“Hell yeah, the field. Out here and tossing a ball back and forth. This is who I am, Charlotte. If I’m not out here, or getting ready to be out here, I don’t really exist, I don’t really matter anymore.”
Charlotte stared at me like she was weighing whether to argue the point with me or not, but she decided not to in the end. She looked up at Hud, towering above us, clearly not knowing what to do. “Help me get him back in the wheelchair, Hud. We gotta get him back to his room before anyone figures out what happened.”
Hud sprang into action, racing over to the wheelchair and bringing it over. With Charlotte’s direction, Hud helped me up and soon I was safe and back in the seat. A couple minutes later and I was back in my room in the medical wing. After they had helped me back into my bed, Hud excused himself sheepishly, telling me he’d text me later.
That left me and Charlotte alone in the room. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
That clearly wasn’t good enough for Charlotte. She whipped around as she checked the room and my leg. “How could you do that unsupervised, Lance? Do you know how much you could have hurt yourself out there?”
I cocked an eye at her. “More than I actually did?”
“Don’t get glib with me. That was a really dumb thing you just did. I can’t believe you didn’t ask me first.”
I looked at her like she’d grown another head. “Because I wanted to avoid a conversation like this, duh.”
She crossed her arms under her amazing chest and sighed, shaking her head. “Well, would you rather have gotten just the talking to, and not re-aggravated your injury, or does this present situation feel better to you?”
“Fine, fine, thank you very much.” I said, staring down at my knee. She was right, though. I shouldn’t have gone outside yet. “I just, I just…I just needed to get out there, Charlotte.”
“I know you did. But you didn’t need to take things so far so fast.”
“I know. Think it’ll really set the recovery back?”