href="#u4f345878-5efb-5823-9c11-b5d7d716f2ed">CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
LOGAN’S STOMACH HAD been in knots since the day before yesterday, when the general manager’s executive assistant had called to schedule this appointment. Now, as he walked through the door, the receptionist’s smile—something between pity and dismay—told him contract addendums and codicils had nothing to do with the meeting.
“I know I’m early,” he said, “but any way Fletcher will see me now?”
Mandy’s I-feel-so-so-sorry-for-you expression intensified. “Sorry, Mr. Murray, but he left explicit instructions that they weren’t to be disturbed.”
“They?”
She shot a glance toward the door. “Just the coaches and the doctors.”
Just the coaches and doctors. Plural. His heart beat a little harder as he admitted that he had no one but himself to blame. If he hadn’t gone ballistic when that last concussion put him on the injured list, they might not feel it necessary to gang up on him this time.
“It shouldn’t be much longer,” she added. “Can I get you something to drink while you’re waiting?”
In other words, sit tight and keep your mouth shut, like a kid sent to the principal’s office for acting up in class.
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” In truth, he was anything but. He couldn’t remember a headache this bad. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t hold down anything heavier than soup. Couldn’t admit any of it to the guys on the other side of that door.
The phone on Mandy’s desk beeped, startling him. Logan added “jumpy” to his list of complaints.
“Yessir, right away,” Mandy said. Then, “You can go in now, Mr. Murray.”
He was halfway to the door when she added, “Can I at least bring you a bottle of water?”
Logan wondered what sort of Logan Murray gossip had prompted her concerned tone. “Sure. Sounds good,” he said. “And please call me Logan.”
As he entered Stan Fletcher’s office, the five men who’d gathered to decide his fate stood: the general manager, head coach, doctor, team psychologist and offensive coordinator. Logan hoped, as he shook each extended hand, that they wouldn’t notice the tremors pulsing from his hard-beating heart to his fingertips. His agent was in New York, celebrating...wedding anniversary? Wife’s birthday? Logan only knew that he’d walked into this meeting alone and unprepared.
The GM pointed at the chair nearest his own. “Take a load off, son.”
Logan sat in a buttery leather wingback and did his best to look at ease, despite a strange new empathy for Daniel in the lions’ den. Three quick knocks cracked the prickly silence, and Mandy joined them, carrying a cobalt-blue water bottle.
“Here you go, Mr. Mur— Logan.”
“Thanks, Mandy,” he said, taking it. Once the door closed quietly behind her, Doc Dickerson broke the brittle silence.
“So. Logan. How’s the head?”
He nodded. Smiled. Pretended the team doctor’s bedside manner didn’t need fine-tuning.
“Good,” he lied, propping an ankle on a knee. “Fine. Never better.”
“I’m surprised to hear that, frankly.” He got up and handed Logan a large manila envelope.
He willed his hands not to shake as he removed CT scans and X-rays. “Might as well be reading hieroglyphics,” he admitted, holding the films up to the light. He’d seen enough of these things during the course of his career to know how to read and interpret them. But this time, his eyes refused to focus.
“This is your third Grade 3 concussion,” Gerard continued. And, as if to soften the blow he was about to deliver, the doctor added, “That hit you took when we played the Steelers? One of the worst I’ve seen in my career.”
No one, not the men on the field or fans in the stands that day, would deny it. Neither would anyone who’d seen replays on the news. The ensuing pressure had compelled the Knights’ high muckety-mucks to call in a neuropsychologist. Logan wondered why he wasn’t now present to reiterate the results of the California Verbal, Rey Auditory, Benton Visual Retention and the Stroop Cognitive tests. Clearly, the sole purpose of this summit was to use the test results to sideline him for a couple of games. Much as he hated the idea, it beat the heck out of the alternative. Logan decided to take it on the chin, without complaint.
Gerard
