Family Matters (5 page)

No defeat would be that bad if you had a child to greet you,
Andy thought. So here was the real portrait of life for these players. It had nothing to do with what happened on the soccer field. It had everything to do with reunions and families and belonging to each other. As Andy saw Buddy starting down the metal stairs, looking disheveled and exhausted, she felt a strong sense that God meant her to spend her life with Buddy, that this man could be ‘the one.'

She met him at the bottom of the steps and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Boy, am I glad to see you,” he said, right before he kissed her.

“Interesting spot to meet an incoming flight,” she commented, teasing him.

“Was there a crowd in the terminal?”

“Yes. A big one.”

“Thanks for dealing with all this.”

She gazed up at him. “Buddy. I…” But she stopped, shy. This wasn't the place or the time to tell him how he made everything worth it, how she felt like the Lord might be leading them to something more.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No. Tell me. What?”

“I missed you, is all.”

“Good,” he said. “I wanted you to miss me. That's the only way I survived the end of that game, knowing I was going to get on a plane and fly back here to you.”

“It was a good game, Buddy. You didn't embarrass yourselves.”

“We didn't win, either.”

“In my eyes, you won.”

“You're prejudiced.”

“Isn't everybody?”

“No. Just you.”

She laughed, a light tinkling sound that seemed to waft up and hang in the air above them. She pulled her keys out of her purse. “Here. I'm the chauffeur for the evening.”

“Good,” he said, grinning, but his eyes showed how exhausted he was. When they arrived at his house, they lay on the floor listening to Mendelssohn, Andy's chin propped on her palm, while Buddy talked about the game. He fell asleep on the floor and, before she left, she covered him with an afghan he usually kept spread across an armchair. She kissed him once on the forehead then gazed down at his sleeping face, figuring that the next time she saw him she'd tell him how much she loved him.

It was the last time she saw him before the accident.

She drove home to her apartment and went to bed. The next afternoon, when she finished with her patients in the gym and went to check her messages, the call from Harv Siskell had come in. She'd driven like a maniac all the way to the hospital. When she got there, they told her he was in intensive care and no one could see him except immediate family. Four days and four sleepless nights later, he moved to a private room and she finally got to see him.

“I wrecked my car,” he told her as she stooped beside his bed.

“I know that.”

“I wrecked my legs, too.”

“So I hear.”

“Oh, Andy,” he whispered to her. “What am I going to do? I've got to play soccer again. It's my calling. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do.”

“You'll play again,” she promised, taking it to heart. “I know just what to do.”

For months he went to physical therapy as an outpatient at Parkland Hospital. For months Andy pushed him even further. They worked in the gym at Children's for what seemed like an eternity. As Andy expected, it paid off. Buddy walked again. He ran again. Just not as fast as he'd run before. And he couldn't run as far. When the Burn assessed him for the next season, he wasn't nearly as certain of himself anymore.

“Well,” he said as he sat down on Andy's sofa one evening. “I made a decision today.”

“About what?” She came around the arm and handed him her favorite healthy concoction, a drink blended from cantaloupes and bananas.

“I told Harv this morning I'm going to retire.”

She'd stopped in mid-sip of her own drink and eyed him as if she were eying a stranger. “Buddy. No. You can't.”

“I have to, Andy. It's the only choice I could make.”

“It isn't.” Then fiercely. “It isn't at all.”

She couldn't believe it. As she watched him sitting not quite so complacently now beside her, all she could think of were his desperate words from not so very long before.

It's my calling.

“You can't do this,” she said softly, hoping the low volume of her voice would cover the frustration she was feeling, only it didn't. “Why would you stop like this if soccer is something you're so passionate about?” She had seen so many children fight so much harder to get their lives back. “You haven't even
tried
yet.”

He stood and glared at her. “Why do you say that? What do you know about what I'm feeling? You don't want me this way, is that it?” She knew what he was thinking, but it made no difference. “You don't want me. I'm not a professional soccer player, is that it?” This must have happened to him all too often before; women agreed to go out with him because he was a celebrity. And now he was obviously thinking she was no different from the others.

“You've got it wrong, Buddy. I'm against this because of how much you wanted it, because of how hard you worked to come back. Because of how hard
we
worked…”

“Tell me something.” His eyes were cold. “Did we spend all those evenings in that gym for
me
or for
you?
”

“You tell
me
something,” she shot right back at him. “You told me that soccer is your
calling
. Does your calling come from yourself, or does it come from God?”

“Now, that's between me and God, isn't it?”

“You were happy, weren't you, Buddy? You were happy as long as the goals and the fame came easy for you. But now that you won't be the star player anymore, now that you won't make so many goals, now that you're going to have to work for it, you
give up.
I think you've decided to take the easy way…”

She faded out. She didn't know what else she could say to him. It was impossible for her to watch him surrendering and not be angry about it. So maybe he wouldn't be the best-loved player on the team anymore. But at least he'd be doing what he wanted to
do.
After all the work she'd done with children who might not ever be able to walk again, she couldn't believe he was standing before her now, a whole man, telling her he was backing away. “Anything I ever did for you—” she told him now in a quavering voice “—was because I loved you.”

There. She'd said it, after so many months. But she'd said it much, much too late for both of them. “All the kids I've watched fighting for their dreams, Buddy. I never thought that you would be the coward.”

“Andy,” he said, his voice pleading now as he draped his jacket over his arm. “Don't judge me by this. Unless you've played the game, you don't realize when you're running out of options.”

“I've played plenty of games,” she said, tears streaming down her face as he stepped past her toward the door. “And I'm tired of them. It just isn't in me to let somebody give up.”

That had been almost six months ago. Andy hadn't seen or heard from Buddy since. Her life was empty again except for her brother, Mark, and the caseload of children that kept her busy at Children's Medical Center.

“All right!” Andy urged the little girl on. “Let's see turtle legs kicking…kicking…” She clapped her hands for the little girl who played beside her on the pallet. “That's what I like to see.” She turned to the two parents sitting beside her, watching. “I can tell you've been working with her at home.”

“We have been,” the proud father told her. “Every day. All the time.”

Andy motioned for the candy striper to bring her a towel from the cabinet. “Let's try something new. Challenge time, kiddo.” Andy rolled the towel and placed it beneath the eighteen-month-old's stomach. She showed Kara how to place her arms to balance herself. Then she dug around in the toy bin.

“Let's see what we can find that's interesting in here.”

Andy pulled out a tin funnel, its rim lined with holes and metal rings and six different sizes of measuring spoons.

Kara squealed and reached for them as they jangled.

The little girl flopped over against the towel and rolled off it.

“Oops.” The therapist caught Kara and laid her on the rolled towel again. “Let's try again.”

Kara reached over and over again for the jangling spoons. And over and over again, she toppled off the mount Andy had made for her.

“She's right where she needs to be.” Andy reassured the parents every time she reached out to catch the child. “This will start to get easier. She's a fast learner.”

Andy stared out the window for a moment, her fingers cupping her chin, trying to remember her schedule. “When's your next appointment with Kara's doctor?”

“Two weeks from Friday,” they said together.

“I'd like to see her before then.” But she caught the worry on Kara's mother's face immediately.

“Is that a problem?”

“We won't have enough for the train fare that soon,” Kara's father admitted.

“I'll make an appointment for the same day she'll see the doctor, then. You can bring her for therapy when you're already here.”

“That would be better. Maybe next month we can bring her in more often.”

It was the most painful thing Andy could think of, a child who needed therapy but who couldn't get it as often as needed. She understood her brother's financial frustrations so well. In many ways, they were her own.

Children's Medical Center charged its patients based on their ability to pay. But what about the children like Kara whose parents couldn't afford the train fare to bring her in? It was for that very reason that Mark had established his bathing suit fund. For some of Mark's water therapy patients, a new bathing suit was as unattainable as a new house.

The other kids didn't know how lucky they were. Kids like Cody Stratton whose parents would be able and willing to give him anything…everything…to make him well again.

Others, like Buddy Draper, could buy the moon and it still wouldn't be enough.

Father, Buddy is out of my life,
she prayed.
I thought I knew Your will. I thought it was safe to give my heart
.

B
uddy Draper plopped his loafer-clad feet atop his desk and leaned back to watch the game video for the third time. He groaned as he watched Townsend struggle to catch up with the ball. He shook his head as he noted the point where the man gave up and began falling back.

I never would have played it that way,
he thought.
If I had been playing full throttle I never would have given up.

Andy's long-ago words echoed in his head.
You were happy being the celebrity soccer player as long as the goals and the fame came easy for you. But now that you won't be the star player anymore…now that you won't make so many goals…now that you're going to have to work for it, you give up.
How dare she compare him with those kids she worked with. This was his
career
. This was different. She'd told him,
I never thought that you would be the coward.

As Buddy watched his friend and former colleague pull up behind the ball, he heard the roar of the crowd in his ears again, remembering what it felt like to run across the indoor field in pursuit of a ball rolling so fast it was only a blur sometimes, while his fans roared.

He reminded himself,
It wouldn't ever be the same.

The phone call he'd received this morning had taken him by surprise. He had been away from the field for so long now that he thought most people had probably forgotten he ever played.

“Buddy,” Harv Siskell had boomed at him over the line. “I'm sending a courier over with tapes. I want you to have a look at them and tell me why we didn't win last night.” Harv had been coaching Buddy since he'd been a sophomore at Southern Methodist.

“Why does it matter what I think?” Buddy asked him brusquely.

“Because I need a new assistant coach!” Harv bellowed at him. “I want to know what's wrong with my game. Then I'll tell you what's right about your input.”

“Suppose I'm not interested in viewing your tapes?”

“Too late, Buddy. They're already on their way. And, Bud…”

“Yes?”

“Don't worry about tipping the courier. He's my nephew. He was drooling buckets just to ring your front doorbell and have a look at you.”

“Thanks, Harv.” His tone said,
Thanks for nothing.

“Call me as soon as you've got comments for me.”

Even with the advance notice, Buddy jumped at the knocking on his door a few minutes later.

“Gee, Mr. Draper…Buddy…” the boy said, stumbling in his excitement. “It's great to meet me…I mean, meet you!” He held the package out to Buddy. “My uncle sent these over. He told me I could bring them.”

Buddy took the package and handed the little boy a dollar bill. “Thanks, son.”

The kid never even noticed the tip. He just kept staring at Buddy. “I'm in the fourth grade at Prairie Creek Elementary School in Richardson. We play soccer every Saturday. I've been playing since I was five years old and I practice all the time.”

“That's what it takes,” Buddy said, standing there holding the door open and waiting for the boy to leave, for no good reason deciding he was in a hurry now to tear open the packet and watch the game. “It takes hard work and practice…for all your life…”

“That's what my uncle says, too. He got us all tickets to the last three Burn games. He can get them for us anytime we want.”

The boy just stared up at him, his brown eyes huge and glowing.

“That's really nice,” Buddy said, touched.

“Oh, gee, Mr. Draper…Buddy…would you mind…? I mean, if you've got time…I really wanted…”

“Yes, son?”

“I really wanted…your autograph?”

Buddy grinned. It had been months since anybody had asked him to sign anything. “Sure thing, kid.”

“I thought about you signing my soccer ball but it gets kicked around so much that I knew it would rub off. You don't mind writing on paper, do you?”

Buddy invited the boy in. His eager guest followed him as he pulled a Sharpie out of his drawer and fished around in the closet for a team sweatshirt. “Here,” he said when he found it. “Now. What's your name, son?”

“Billy,” he said. “Billy Siskell.”

Buddy hated to admit it but he felt better than he'd felt in a long time. He looked at the little boy again. “B-I-L-L-Y? I want to be sure I spell it right.”

“That's right,” Billy told him.

“To Billy Siskell,” he wrote, “an excellent courier and soccer player. Keep on kickin'. Buddy Draper. The Dallas Burn.”

It wasn't until he'd scribbled the last part of it that he realized he couldn't officially write “The Dallas Burn” beneath his name anymore.

He handed Billy Siskell the sweatshirt and Billy clutched it to his chest. “Thank you, Mr. Draper. Thank you for the shirt!” The boy reached over and pumped his hand, trying very hard to be a man. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome, Billy.”

Then Buddy stood, smiling now, genuinely smiling, watching the kid pick his bike up out of the grass and ride away.

Exactly ten days had gone by since Cody had gotten sick. When Jennie Stratton arrived at her office at the
Dallas Times-Sentinel
this morning, she felt oddly out of place. It startled her that everything could go on as usual, day in and day out, despite what had happened to her son. Reporters clacked away on the computer keyboards and the phones were ringing off the hook in the newsroom. She felt as if she'd stepped outside herself and were watching everything from some vast distance.

Someone spoke to her. “We're so sorry about your little boy.” She wished people didn't think they had to say things. It would be much easier if she didn't have to respond.

“Thank you,” she said. “It's been very hard.”

She made her way up the stairs to Art Sanderson's office. In one hand, she clutched the portfolio containing cartoon sketches she hadn't worked on in days.

Her editor met her at the top of the stairway. “Our sympathies, Jen. We're sorry about Cody.”

“The flowers were lovely, Art.” The staff had sent a huge bouquet to Cody's room at Children's, big purple carnations and yellow mums, topped off with a half dozen balloons. Cody had loved the balloons, of course.

“You up for a staff meeting?” Art asked her. “I'd like to bring you up to speed on what everyone's doing. We had to go ahead and make decisions about the gubernatorial series.”

“That's fine.”

“We made the decisions in a pinch. We hated doing it without you.”

“You'd better call everyone together and fill me in.”

She could tell by the guarded pleasure in Art's eyes that he was impressed she'd returned to work so soon after Cody had taken ill. Which was fine. He ought to be. She
was
going beyond the call of duty. But she was doing it for herself, not for anyone else.

I have to do something to keep from hurting. Only it never stops.

Jen went to her own desk and sifted through the papers. She flipped through several rough sketches to remind herself what she'd been working on. She jotted down several notes to herself and was in the middle of organizing them when a thin young man with unruly hair stuck his head in the door. “Jen! Hello! I've been trying to call you for days.”

“I haven't been home much, Kirby. I've been at the hospital with Cody.”

“I haven't seen you looking this exhausted since you were going through the divorce.”

She flipped a pen at him. Kirby had been the entertainment editor at the
Times-Sentinel
for years, an aging dancer who had long since retired from the Dallas Metropolitan Ballet and turned to reviewing performances instead. He had proven a loyal friend over the past years. “It's good to see you, too.”

“I've been worried about you.”

“Everybody's been worried about me.” She smiled; she appreciated his concern. Just talking to Kirby helped her get a little of her spunk back.

“Has it been tough spending time with Michael?” he asked.

She sighed. “I haven't had time to think about it,” she answered honestly. “This has been a lot more traumatic than anything I've gone through before.”

Kirby sat on her desk. “You've forgotten, I think. Your divorce from Michael was pretty traumatic. All those days you could hardly work because you were so upset. And what about the night you waited up for him until three in the morning to come home from the hospital?”

“Kirby…”

“He didn't deny that, did he?”

“There is nothing,” Jen said quietly, “more traumatic then thinking you might lose a child.”

“What about the day he came storming in here waving your latest cartoon at you and accusing you of ruining Buzz Stephens's career? That man ruined his career all by himself, Jen. You just drew a cartoon about it.”

“Kirby, Michael and I made a career of accusing each other of things. We're still doing it. I don't want to talk about this right now.” For some reason, she felt as if she were betraying a close friend by rehashing all of this today. Michael had just helped her too much during the past days. They had to stand strong together because of Cody. He didn't deserve this from her now.

She gathered up her things and walked down the hallway with Kirby to the meeting. She perched on the stool at the drawing table, her usual spot, and called them all to order. “Okay,” she said, and it struck her as bizarre just then, that this was just where she'd been sitting, these were just the people she'd been talking to, when her world had turned upside down. “Tell me what we're doing. Art says he doesn't know if I'll like it.”

“We had to trash the idea about the poodles at the picnic,” one of the artists told her. “Art thought that, by the time you could get it drawn, it wouldn't be relevant anymore. He wants us to go with an entire series about—” he hesitated almost imperceptibly, but it made Jen steel herself for what was coming. Something was up “—the Texas politicians who are having affairs. Art thinks it'll be a nice satire, something they might even pick up for
Texas Monthly.
” The other heads around the table nodded in agreement.

“No.” She shook her head. “No…no…no.” It was all so incredibly stupid and trivial. She tried to remember when political satire had meant something to her. Certainly it had. But no more. “I'll talk to Art about it. Don't do anything yet.”

They went on to other things. At the end of the meeting, Jen sat feeling incapable and out of touch while her entire staff filed by her, chattering. Her meeting with Art later wasn't much better. “We've done too
much
of that,” she told him, referring to the “Adulterous politician series,” as she'd started to think of it. “I wanted something creative. I wanted something that would make people laugh instead of saying, ‘Oh, no, not again.'”

“You've got to go with me on this one. We don't have time for anything else.”

“I hate it,” she said matter-of-factly, jumping up off the chair and prowling around like a cat, her hair hanging in a gold sheath down her back.

“I did the best I could without you.” Art leaned back in his chair. “I'm not going to change it now.”

So that's where it ended. Jen returned to the artists that afternoon and told them to start working where they'd left off. Everyone knew she'd been overruled.

Michael and Jennie had just come from a visit with Cody, and had left him fast asleep.

“It was a mistake, going to work today,” she told Michael. “I thought it would help me forget for a few hours. But nothing helped.”

“I'm still not seeing patients. I couldn't have diagnosed a child this week if the President of the United States had brought one in. Russell's covering for me until further notice.”

She looked up at him, surprised he was referring all his patients to someone else. When they had been married, he'd never done that.

Her gray eyes were huge. And her questions were telling, filling him with questions of his own. “We're good parents, aren't we?” she asked.

They looked at each other wordlessly.

When they reached the lobby of the hospital, Jennie didn't want to say goodbye to Michael just yet. She needed to be near him, just as she had needed him for the past few days. She needed not to be alone now.

“You want to go get something to eat?” she asked. He didn't even hesitate before he nodded. He must have felt the same way. Together they walked to the cafeteria. They both bought sodas and hamburgers wrapped in greasy paper. Then they sat down at a table and sipped their drinks. For an eternity, neither of them spoke.