Chapter 3 - The Jersey with the Faded White Twelve
The blue jersey had been bought at a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Gastonia three years ago, on Ethan’s seventh birthday.
Back then, it reached past his knees like a nightgown. The screen-printed white numerals—the number 12 that Marcus Cole had worn since his rookie year at Ohio State—were thick and stiff, smelling of rubberized vinyl. James had bought it. He had come down from Fort Bragg on a seventy-two-hour pass, his hair cut down to the graying stubble of a sergeant first class in the 82nd Airborne, carrying the jersey in a brown paper bag along with an official NFL-spec Wilson leather football that was too large for Ethan’s hands to grip around the laces.
“Don't throw it with your elbow, kid,” James had said, kneeling in the clover of our backyard while the grill smoked with cheap hot dogs. “You push it with your shoulder, the ball wobbles. You snap the wrist at the top of the arc. Like you’re pulling a window blind down.”
Ethan had thrown eighty-two passes that afternoon. His small, pale arm had turned red from the wrist to the deltoid, but he had refused to come inside until he hit James between the breast pockets six times in a row.
Now, as Mark pulled the jersey down over Ethan’s shoulders in Room 412, the fabric hung loose, but the length was right. Ethan’s arms were like two dry birch poles inside the blue mesh sleeves.
"Easy on the left side," I warned.
The peripherally inserted central catheter—the PICC line—ran into the vein beneath Ethan’s left bicep, secured by three layers of transparent Tegaderm dressing and a stretchy tubular bandage that smelled of chlorhexidine.
"I got it, Mom," Ethan muttered.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his legs dangling. His socks were thick white cotton, the ones with the gray non-skid rubber treads on the soles that the hospital gave to patients at risk of falling. Mark knelt on the floor, holding Ethan’s black New Balance sneakers. He eased the boy’s heels into the shoes with a thumb behind the counter, tying the double-knots with that slow, deliberate tradesman’s precision.
"Head hurt?" Mark asked.
"A little," Ethan lied.
I could see the tension in his temples—the small, rhythmic twitch of his masseter muscle as he clamped his teeth against the nausea. The two units of platelets had finished running at nine that morning, leaving his cheeks flushed with a faint, unnatural pink that couldn't hide the waxy yellow undertone of his jaundice.
"We brought the bucket," I said, holding up a small plastic washbasin tucked inside a canvas grocery bag. "And the cold towels."
"I don't need the bucket," Ethan said, his voice rising in that sharp, stubborn tone he had inherited from his father. "I'm going to the game. I’m not going to throw up at the stadium."
"Nobody said you were, buddy," Mark said, rising from his knees and offering his large, scarred hands. "Come on. Let's see if the legs work."
Ethan took his father’s hands.
He stood up. For three seconds, his knees wobbled, the tendon behind his right kneecap trembling like an over-tightened wire. Mark didn't lift him; he just provided the anchor, his boots planted fourteen inches apart on the white floor, taking thirty percent of the boy’s weight without appearing to move a muscle.
"Sat's ninety-six," I called out, glancing at the small pulse-oximeter clipped to Ethan’s index finger.
"Told you," Ethan whispered.
He took four steps toward the door. They were slow, dragging steps, his toes barely clearing the linoleum, but they were his own. He stopped at the threshold of Room 412, turned his head, and looked back at the bed with its tangled sheets, the stainless steel IV pole with its empty plastic bags, and the small digital monitor that had tracked his heart through three hundred nights of fever.
May you like
He didn't say goodbye to the room. He just reached out, took my fingers in his right hand—his grip surprisingly dry and firm—and pulled me toward the elevator bank.
"Let's go, Mom," he said. "Warmups start at twelve-fifteen."
