Family Fortune

Until this accident, anyone who knew squat about football agreed that Caleb Tanner was at the top of his game. Sportscasters compared him to Montana and Elway. So no mealymouthed quacks were going to say his career was kaput.

“Just because you graduated from Harvard and Yale,” he bellowed at the departing doctors, “doesn’t make y’all God!” Fighting the fear that gnawed at his gut, Caleb grabbed an empty plastic water pitcher and heaved it across the room.

“Take it easy, Cale.” His agent placed a restraining hand on Caleb’s forearm while the last doctor ducked out.

Caleb shook Leland off. “And you...” He scowled at his agent. “What’s the holdup on my contract? I started the season in good faith.”

“Now, Cale. The money man’s dragging his feet. He wants some kind of assurance he’s not buying a pig in a poke.”

“Then assure him. You tell him I’m starting physical therapy in a couple of days. I’ll be stronger than moonshine before we play Detroit. Tell him that.” Caleb poked a forefinger into the agent’s skinny chest, forcing him to take flight, too.

His hand on the doorknob, Leland ran a skeptical eye over Caleb’s collection of wires and pulleys. “We’ve been associates a long time. I’m telling you, Cale, the chance of signing while you’re in this shape...well, it stinks. I can’t...won’t lie to the man.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Cale’s green eyes fired. “I’m gonna lick this thing.”

“Yeah. For a minute there, I thought... Hell, Cale. A lot of guys retire at thirty-one. You must have a sizable nest egg by now.”

Caleb clenched his hands. The thought of quitting the only work he knew set his heart beating so furiously he was afraid it’d fly clean out of his body. Football and farming were all he’d ever done. If he hadn’t signed the farm over to his uncle and aunt last year...

But he had. He’d deeded them the land. They deserved more for putting their lives on hold to take care of the girls. Gritting his teeth, Cale forced a smile. “Emmitt Smith knows a doc who’s first-rate at getting old bones shipshape. Have Medical Records overnight my X rays. I’m not washed up, Lee. That’s God’s honest truth.”

“Sure, buddy. But I expect we’ll have to wait for the new doc’s report before we go back to the bargaining table. ’Cause the way it stands now, unless they see their money’s buying a sound man, the bastards are saying hasta la vista.”

Stunned by the finality of the notion, Caleb watched the door close. Despair warred with terror. Then a blinding rage welled up from his sandbagged toes. He swept a hand across the surface of his table. Paperbacks, a box of tissues, magazines and a water glass flew, hitting the floor with a satisfying crash.

He regarded the mess. It hadn’t even begun to abolish his gut-deep panic.

Someone rapped on his door. Caleb chose to ignore the intrusion. Leland had probably told a nurse he was in a foul mood. Well, he was. How in hell did they expect a man to feel when he’d just been told his career was over? Dammit, it wasn’t over until he said it was over. And he didn’t think it was asking too much to keep the news of his progress—or lack thereof—quiet. At least until he’d recovered enough to prove he was sound.

The knock sounded again. Louder.

“What do you want?” he thundered when the door opened slightly and a woman, a stranger with a pale face and huge blue eyes, peeked in. She was a bitty thing. If Caleb stood, the top of her shiny dark hair wouldn’t hit him midchest. He ground his teeth. “You’ve landed in the wrong room, Pocahontas.” As the woman eased through the opening, she flipped an ebony braid as thick as his wrist over a slim shoulder, facing him head-on, keeping both hands out of sight behind her back. Hiding a needle, probably. Forsythe must have ordered a shot to calm him.

“You can take that syringe and stab it into some other poor slob’s backside.”

As she noted the debris scattered on the floor, Crystal thought at least he hadn’t disappointed her expectations. It was a shame Skipper couldn’t see his idol in the throes of a tantrum.

“I’m not a nurse.” She met the man’s stormy eyes.

“No? Then who in hell are you?”

“I’m, ah, Crystal Jardin. From WDIX-TV,” she said on a flash of brilliance. After all, what football jock didn’t roll over and salivate at the prospect of gaining a little media attention? Crystal suspected he’d offer his autograph more readily if he figured he’d get something in return. Something he’d consider more substantial than the adulation of an ailing child. But if Tanner didn’t act too arrogant, she might ask the WDIX sports director to send a reporter and a cameraman. That should make the man happy.

Busy congratulating herself on her cleverness, she was slow to realize Tanner wasn’t reacting as she’d anticipated. Instead, his brows drew together over smoking eyes and he bellowed, “Vultures. Bloodsuckers! Do I have to climb off this bed and throw you out, too?”

Then he lunged. Pulleys spun wildly, unexpectedly snapping a cord. The flying hook knocked over an infusion stand that held an empty N-drip container. The monitor mounted above his headboard flashed like a pinball machine. As he all but fell out of bed, a noisy alarm began to bleat in the entryway..

“Please stop!” she begged. “Lie still.” Football forgotten, she charged forward. The sound of crunching glass-and the strangled epitaphs coming from the man who now dangled precariously—sent her into full retreat again. “Help!” she called, with her head stuck out into the corridor. “We need a nurse!”

Two nurses tore down the hall at a dead run. Crystal’s last look at Skip’s hero, after one nurse thrust her aside, was of a man writhing in pain.

Shaken, Crystal felt partially. to blame, although she’d done nothing to warrant his outburst. He’d obviously been confused, thinking she was a nurse. Hurrying back to the children’s ward, she caught a glimpse of herself in a window. He could have mistaken her summery white pants and loose-fitting blue tunic for a uniform.

Suddenly she smiled. So big tough Caleb Tanner was scared of a needle? He’d seen her white pants, thought nurse-with-a-needle and gone ballistic. It did make him more human, she decided, gazing at the football she still gripped.

The problem was, how did she tell the boys that she’d come back empty-handed? At least Tanner’s fear of needles was safe with her. She’d never tarnish his image with boys who’d already been let down by too many male role models.

Or maybe she would. Boys Skipper and Randy’s age ought to admire men who were sensitive and kind. Not ones spoiled by fame and fortune.

In the end, though, Crystal couldn’t trample their rosy picture of Caleb Tanner. It was hard enough having to brave their crestfallen faces.

“Look, guys, I’m really, really sorry. You have my solemn word—” she placed a hand dramatically over her heart “—I will get Skip’s ball signed. Even if they ship Tanner to a private facility, I’ll track him down through his agent.”

Skipper, ever the optimist, accepted Crystal’s word. “It’d be neat if you could get the other guys some signed pictures of Cale in his uniform. Before he got hurt, he handed out a bunch of ’em at a new brew pub in the Quarter. We saw it on TV.”

“Why, you little con artist. I failed my mission today, so I have to hit him up for photos, too? Can’t you phone the Sinners’ PR department?”

The boys exchanged worried looks. “Pablo’s just back from therapy. He heard a tech say the Sinners won’t renew Cale’s contract because his knee ain’t gonna heal. Would Nate Fraser know if that’s true?”

Crystal glanced up from opening her instrument case. Nate Fraser, WDIX-TV’s sports director, could find out if he didn’t know. Even though Crystal passionately disliked Tanner’s choice of career, she experienced an unexpected surge of compassion. She knew how she’d feel if she had to give up her music.

“I’ll ask Nate tomorrow. If the story’s true, maybe we should wait on that autograph. Tanner might be having a hard time dealing with the news.”

“Yeah,” Skipper said, suddenly empathetic. “But maybe hearing that some kids still think he’s number one will cheer him up.”

“It might at that, Skip. Hey, not to change the subject, but would you like me to play some tunes?”

“Yeah!” the boys exclaimed as one. Next to watching TV and talking endlessly about sports, they liked listening to Crystal belt out jazz.

She ran through a few warm-ups. Before long, nurses, residents and interns drifted in to listen. Patients on crutches and in wheelchairs lined the walls.

She didn’t think any audience appreciated her more.

THE MUSIC, AS IT HAD on other nights, filtered into Cale’s private room and shaved the edge off his pain. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine the talent it took to make an instrument sob and wail like that. A seductive sound. His blood pulsed as the beat possessed him. N’Awlins blues certainly made a man feel... something. Any kind of feeling was preferable to the terrifying emptiness he’d plunged into earlier.

Why had he let the doc’s words get to him? This wasn’t his first injury. He’d always bounced back; he would this time, too. Yeah! He let those deep, shivery notes absorb his anger.

Ordinarily, when it came to music, Cale could take it or leave it. He knew when it was too loud at a party or too fast if he was trying to seduce a new lady with slow dancing. The music tonight lit a fire in his soul. But he couldn’t put into words how it touched him, couldn’t explain the way it made him feel. That was why he’d never asked the phantom soloist’s name. Knowing the nurses, they’d parade the guy in here and expect Caleb to give him all kinds of flowery compliments.

Well, he couldn’t. He could rattle off plays in a year’s worth of football games, but he got tongue-tied trying to express the stuff he felt inside.

When fans waylaid him to praise a great pass, he loved it. He frowned as it occurred to him that musicians probably liked praise, too.

The distant beat slid like silk into a bossa nova, and Caleb felt a sudden urgency to connect with the artist whose music pounded through his veins. He fumbled to locate his call bell, then pushed it repeatedly. He’d just give the dude a locker-room clap on the back and tell him man-to-man that his playing had balls. Yeah. He drummed his hands on the bed covers. Where in hell were all the nurses? He pressed the button again.

A timid aide opened his door. “You rang, Mr. Tanner?”

Caleb had discovered that if you didn’t speak with authority in this place, requests got ignored. “Tell that musician to stop by and see me. Tonight,” he ordered.