Chapter 15: A Turning Point in the Season

CHAPTER 15

We walked together into the school office to turn in our early dismissal note. Mrs. Roscoe laughed when she saw it. “Don’t trust him to go on his own, eh Cinda? I can’t say that I blame you. I never let my husband go on his own either. He can never remember what the doctor said. Okay, here’s your pass.” She handed Cinda the blue excuse slip and we walked out into the hallway. One of the first people I saw was Mitch. He didn’t look very happy.

“Surely you’re still not pissed about New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, but not your part. We got stopped by the cops not even five minutes after leaving your place. Jeremy was arrested for DUI and all of us were taken in for possession of alcohol by a minor. My parents had to leave a party and wow, were they pissed! I’m grounded for a month. I can’t even hang out after school. I am so fucked.”

“That’s what happens when you mess with alcohol. It might be different if you were at home, but you’re just asking for it in a car and especially on a holiday like New Year’s Eve. You can read about it in the paper or see it on TV every day. Just be glad you weren’t in an accident where someone was injured or killed. Then you’d really be fucked. C’mon, Cinda we need to get to class.”

We left school at 9:30 and were in the doctor’s office twenty minutes later. This was a big practice with eight surgeons and several physician’s assistants. The waiting room had dozens of chairs and two TV’s. As badly as I felt I realized I was lucky. There were patients in all kinds of casts including one man with both legs encased from his toes all the way up to his hips. We waited for twenty minutes before I was called to an exam room. I took Cinda by the hand and followed the nurse. I turned down her offer of a prescription for more painkillers then we waited for the doctor. Luckily, we didn’t wait long.

He handed me a plastic mask with adjustable elastic straps to go both behind and over my head. “What do you think, Ty?”

Moving it in my hands I could see that it was much too wide and much too flat for my head. “I don’t think it’ll fit.”

He laughed. “That was a trick question, Ty. It won’t fit until I’ve adjusted it to your head. Watch this.” He took the mask from me, placing it on the counter. He turned on a blue light which I recognized as UV—ultraviolet. After exposing it for about five minutes he picked the mask up and held it to my face. I was amazed when it bent around my head. It fit almost perfectly when he was done. He adjusted the straps being sure to tell me—okay, to tell Cinda—not to make them too tight. He finished by checking my nose and cheek. I felt better when he told me I was making excellent progress. He gave me a note releasing me to play again. We were out the door five minutes later and back to school by 11:30.

I got a few expected laughs when I walked out to practice with my mask in place. I wore it at every practice and every game. My only problem was sweating into my eyes. I solved that by removing it and toweling off at every time out and every foul shot. We were undefeated through the regular season and into the playoffs as I had a spectacular season averaging more than 31 points and double figures in rebounding and assists, too.

We ran over the competition in the regionals and went all the way to the state finals still undefeated, this time facing a team that had a highly skilled seven-footer. Even a collapsing zone couldn’t cope with him. Kenny got into foul trouble early and we didn’t seem to have enough with him on the bench. Trailing by fourteen at

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THE END