The Girl

My boyfriend broke his C7-T1 in a football game. We've tried a couple of times, but I'm not sure how to show him that I'm okay with the way things are now. He's so sensitive to what's happened and what he can and can't do. I'm not sure how to show him that I love him, and it's not about how things used to be between us.

Lyla looked at the screen and reread what she'd written. She took a deep breath and pressed enter.

A message popped up in the corner of her computer. She opened her e-mail. You have a new private message. She clicked on the link.

My husband had the same injury eleven months ago. I know exactly what you're going through. I know you've heard it before, in rehab, from friends, but honestly, it just takes time. Please let me know if I can help with anything. I'd be happy to chat or you can call if you like—sometimes it's easier to talk about these things off-line.

Lyla looked down at the keyboard, trying to decide how to respond. Her boyfriend. Was that even true? What was Jason to her now, other than the one she loved—and the one she'd hurt more than any other person in her life.

"Lyla, telephone," her mother called from the hallway.

She reached over and picked up the phone on her desk. "Yes?"

"Lyla?"

Jason. It had been two long days since the night she'd crawled into his bedroom. He'd been so cold at church that morning, so unlike the Jason she had known since grade school. Jason had always smiled at her, always been happy to see her, always until he found out about her and Tim.

"Hey," she replied quietly. She suddenly felt so shy around him, unsure of what he wanted or expected.

"Can you come over?"

Lyla pulled down the cover on her laptop and stood up. "Sure. Give me a few minutes and I'll be over."

Lyla pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror. She put on a little more lipstick and pressed her lips together.

It was starting to feel hopeless—that she would never work things out with Jason, but as long as he was still asking, she'd go.

She would never forget the sound that night; the bodies hitting each other on the football field, the cheer for the fumble and then the silence. She could hear someone screaming Jason's name. It wasn't until she talked to her friend Melanie the next week that she knew it was her.

She had followed the paramedics off the field, trying to see Jason, to tell him it would be okay. She watched as his mom climbed up into the ambulance, wondering where she was supposed to go. Jason's dad had taken her hand and led her to his car. She just sat in the passenger seat, not noticing as he pulled the seatbelt across her and hooked it.

Logically, she knew it was shock, but it had all felt like a blur. Jason's dad had rushed in to find Mrs. Street and talk to the doctors, but she had stayed in the hallway. She wasn't even sure how long she'd been there when people had started arriving after the game.

That first night was so long, not knowing what was happening, if Jason would even live. Finally the nurse came out and found her, saying Jason was asking for her.

"He's just coming out of the anesthesia, but he is asking for you," the nurse said.

Lyla nodded, not sure what to say.

"He's in a halo vest right now and has a lot of tubes, but he's breathing on his own and doing pretty well," the nurse added.

A halo? Lyla thought as she nodded at the nurse. She wondered how anything about this horrible night could resemble anything like angels. Where were the angels on the field when they could have protected Jason?

"It's to keep his neck stable, until we're sure the surgery did what it was supposed to do," the nurse explained. "He's got a vest on and rods that go up to the brace on his head."

Lyla followed her silently. Jason's mom was asleep in a reclining chair next to his bed. His dad wasn't in the room. The halo—it was awful, with long bars going to the vest on his body. He was so still. Jason was never like that.

She walked over and slipped her hand in his, touching his fingers. There was a clip on his finger that connected to one of the many machines. A tube was in his nose, helping him breath. She reached up and touched his cheek. Jason's eyes opened and he looked at her.

"You don't have to talk," she said. "I love you, Jason."

A tear dripped from the corner of his right eye. She reached up and wiped it away. "You're going to be okay. I know you are."

And the thing was, she really thought he'd be okay. Never in a million years did she think that night that any of this would happen. If that nurse had come back in and said, "Your boyfriend will never walk again. He'll barely be able to use his hands. You won't be able to have sex normally with him. You'll start sleeping with his best friend." If she had said any of that; Lyla would have laughed at her and walked away. It was all so impossible to comprehend, or at least it had been that night.

But in the last two months, all of it had come true and Lyla couldn't really pinpoint a time when she realized it was happening until it just was the way things were.

She pulled up in front of Jason's house. She started up the sidewalk when the door opened and Jason came out.

"Let's go somewhere," Jason said as he came closer. "I want to talk and I don't particularly want my parents hanging on our every word."

"Okay," Lyla responded as she turned and walked back toward the car. "Do you want to drive somewhere?"

Jason stopped and thought for a moment. "Yeah. Do you think you can help me in the car?"

"Where's your thing? The transfer board?" she asked as she followed Jason to the car.

"Uh, it's in the house," Jason replied.

"Are you running away? Or do you just not want your parents to see me with you?" Lyla asked.

"Let's just go," Jason retorted.

Lyla came over to the passenger side and opened the door. Jason pulled his chair closer and set the brake.

"Here, lean over and I'll hold on to your neck," Jason directed. "Then just pivot and let me down."

Lyla leaned over as Jason looped his arms around her neck. She lifted and turned as Jason balanced, then let him down into the seat.

"Thanks," he said as he lifted his legs into the car. Lyla leaned in and hooked the seat belt around him.

She pushed the chair around to the back of the car, laid the back seat down and slid the chair into the back of the car.

"Okay, where to?" she asked as she got in the driver's seat.

"You want to go to the lake?" Jason asked.

"Sure," Lyla said as she pulled onto the highway and headed out of town.

Spinal cord injury recovery

Lyla looked up at the computer screen. She'd been googling all night, trying to find something, anything to give her some hope—to find something to give Jason some hope.

Foreman Makes Amazing Recovery

Lyla opened the link and began reading. Nathan Foreman had fallen off a balcony at a party. After ten months of therapy he had returned to his position as guard on the UC-San Diego basketball team.

Jason could recover. He could still go to Notre Dame. He could walk and run and play football. All of their dreams could still come true.

As Lyla slipped into her pajamas, she smiled. She'd tell Jason all about Nathan Foreman tomorrow when she visited him in the hospital.

*~*~*~*

"So, is it weird to go out there again? To the lake?" Jason asked.

Lyla turned and looked him. They'd been quiet for the ten minutes they'd been in the car. "Sure. Dad took the boat out for the season, but the dock is still in."

"Good."

Going to the lake did seem like a strange choice. The last time they'd been there had been that amazing day with Tim. Was he going to bring that up? What was going on with them?

She pulled away from Tim's house. She could feel his scent on her, the roughness of his lips against hers as he had grabbed her and kissed her. What was she doing? She loved Jason.

It's not like she thought it would be just like it always had been—Jason had always done such special things for her birthday, so take-out in a hospital and watching a movie was already a sign that their lives had totally changed, but his anger had shocked her.

He had never spoken to her like that. Never. She'd never seen that side of Jason, ever. He was so angry, so hurt, so lost.

They were all lost. Everything was gone. Everything.

She drove to her house without realizing—not sure if she had obeyed any traffic laws. She pulled the car into the garage and sat there, not moving.

Jason's words played over and over in her head—they were done, not getting married.

It couldn't be ending, not this way.

She walked into the house, and ran upstairs, avoiding saying goodnight to her parents. She needed a shower—she needed to get Tim off her.

She was Jason's girl.

Lyla pulled the car up near the dock and got out. She walked around the back and retrieved Jason's wheelchair. She pushed it around to his door and they carefully reversed the process of getting him back out of the car.

"Can you get down there?" she asked, knowing she couldn't carry Jason like Tim had a few weeks before.

"Yeah," Jason replied. "I'm a lot stronger, now."

Lyla nodded. It was true. It was like Jason was back to himself, for the most part—well, except for this distance between them. That had never existed before.

She followed him as he pushed down toward the dock. At the end, he popped the front wheels of his chair up slightly and rolled onto the dock. He stopped a couple of feet down, turned to face her and set the brakes.

Lyla sat down on the dock next to him. If she forgot about the distance between them, this felt right—this had always been their place to get away from the prying eyes of their families.

"So," Lyla started.

"Yeah," Jason replied.

She looked out over the lake. It was still. All of the boats had been pulled for the season and only a few ducks remained along the edge, swimming silently. A fish jumped out in the middle of the lake, causing a ripple to move across the water.

"Tim gave me a piece of his mind today," Jason finally said.

Lyla looked up at him in surprise. "You talked to Tim?"

"Yeah," Jason answered. "He came over the other day and then I saw him this afternoon—ran into him at the park."

"What did he say?" Lyla asked, her voice quiet.

Jason looked down at her, then out at the lake. "Well, the other night he asked me to forgive him and then today he got on my case—told me to stop being the martyr."

"Seriously?" Lyla asked.

"Yeah, said we'd all been hurt, not just me—that we were all at fault."

Lyla didn't answer.

"He told me about that night—the night he kissed you, that it was your birthday."

"That's no excuse," Lyla answered quietly.

Jason reached down and took her hand. "I was really awful that night. Totally out of line, to be honest."

"You were hurt and scared. We both were," Lyla answered as she looked down at her hand in Jason's. "It doesn't make up for what I did."

"I talked to Mrs. Taylor the other day," Jason said.

Lyla looked up at him. "Really?"

"Yeah—really kind of went over to talk to Coach, but he wasn't home and we ended up talking about—well, what's been happening. She's a really good listener. Told me that it wasn't the worst thing to just forgive people."

Lyla nodded. "I talk to her, too."

"Does it help?" Jason asked.

"I think so," Lyla answered. "I'm not blaming her, but she told me not to tell you about what happened. I—I talked to her after it was over, before you found out."

Jason didn't answer for a moment, and then looked back down at her. "I wish I didn't know. It's like there's this thing that's stuck between us and it's out there and we all know what happened and I know that I can say that I forgive you and move on, but what if I hold it against you or Tim later? What if I can't actually forgive you or worse, what if I can never forget what happened?"

"I don't know how you could forgive me," Lyla answered, quietly.

She stood at the top of the bleachers and looked down at Tim on the field. Seeing him out there, running and catching the ball from Saracen, made her sick. It just reminded her all over again of what they'd lost and what she'd ruined.

She didn't need to be standing out here watching over Tim Riggins. She needed to go to the hospital and see her boyfriend—the one who loved her, who had a broken neck and needed her more than he ever had.

She thought about her conversation with Mrs. Taylor. How could the counselor ask her what her plans were? She'd had a plan—follow Jason to Notre Dame. There was no other plan. Ever.

She couldn't think about what she was going to wear to school tomorrow, how did anyone expect her to know what she would do with her life now?

She was supposed to be Homecoming Queen. She was supposed to be the valedictorian. She was supposed to ride off into the sunset with her prince.

Instead she was a dirty cheating whore.

"I don't know if it's gonna be a conscious decision," Jason replied. "I keep asking God for peace, to stop feeling this way and if it's his will for me to forgive you, then it will just happen."

"I ask God for forgiveness every night," Lyla answered quietly. "I don't really know what else to do. This isn't exactly how I thought things would end up."

"Yeah, me either," Jason answered, looking off at the sunset.

"I didn't mean to push you the other night," Lyla said.

"Push me?"

"About being together—I mean, about sex. I just, I want you to know that I still want to be with you, no matter what has changed, as long as you want to be with me."

Jason pulled her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. "I'm scared, you know. I know that I feel like I want to be with you and then it's so different and I just don't know how it can ever be like it was before. My body feels totally different. I can look down and see that something got me hard, but I can't feel that, Lyla. I don't know if it would stay that way if I tried to get inside of you. Sometimes, like the other day, when there's nothing else I want than to be with you, I can't get it up. And…" Jason's voice trailed off as he dropped Lyla's hand and turned away.

"What, Jason? Tell me what's worrying you," Lyla asked.

"Remember that day—the one before I got my brace off, when we got interrupted?" Jason asked.

Lyla stood up and moved behind Jason, her hand on his shoulder. "When Francine came in?"

"Yeah," Jason replied. "She—she told me that I had to be careful, that I couldn't ejaculate because it would cause UTIs, that I could get sick."

Lyla reached down and pulled Jason back around so he was facing her. "She told you what?"

"That sperm would go up in my bladder and give me an infection."

"Did you ask anyone else about this?" Lyla questioned.

Jason shrugged.

"Well, I'm not an expert, but I've read a few things since you got hurt and I've never heard that, Jason. Never."

Jason looked up at her. "What?"

"You must have misunderstood or she was just flat out wrong, but ask Herc—I'm sure he's having a lot of sex.

"Everything I've read or heard from people says that it's unlikely that you can ejaculate, which is why it might be hard to have kids naturally, but it doesn't hurt you," Lyla explained. "Is this why you were so freaked out?"

Jason shrugged again. "Yeah, kind of—I mean nothing in my body works like it did before and my plumbing is all messed up. I just figured she knew what she was talking about and…"

Lyla leaned in and kissed Jason. "We can't hurt each other making love and heck, now we probably don't even have to worry about an accident."

"How do you know all this stuff?" Jason asked.

Lyla shrugged. "I looked it up, read some message boards and asked some questions."

"Asked questions?" Jason responded.

"Yeah," Lyla answered. "You know, we aren't the first people to go through this. You should get out there as well and meet some more people. They share tips and offer support. It's a good thing, Jason. You're not alone in this. We're not alone in it.

"I know you're not quite ready for it now, but when you are, let's go somewhere that we can be alone, not worrying about our parents and we'll just give it a try and see what happens," Lyla said.

Jason reached out for Lyla's hands. She wrapped her hands around his curled fingers. "You're amazing, you know," he said as her fingers played across his.

"So, I'm forgiven?" she asked, looking up at him.

Jason nodded. "I don't know why sometimes, but I love you, Lyla Garrity."

Lyla reached up and kissed Jason. "I have always loved you, Jason, and I don't know just why you're forgiving me for what I've done, but it's part of why you're such an incredible person."

Jason leaned down and kissed her again, his hands pulling her closer to him.

Lyla slid back, breaking the embrace. "And what about Tim?" she asked.

"What about him," Jason responded, his chin set.

"Will you? Can you?" she asked, her face covered with concern.

Jason shook his head. "I don't know, Lyla. I just don't."

"But, if you can forgive what I did, why can't you forgive him?" she asked.

"Because I know that I hurt you and you were broken inside, and I know Tim—I know that he took advantage of that. He could be with anyone and he chose to be with you. What you did was a mistake. What Tim did was malicious. That's the difference, Lyla."

"But, do you want to spend this much of your life so angry at him?" Lyla asked. "You're giving him a power over your life by being so upset about this."

"So, I can forgive him but I don't have to be best friends anymore?"

"If you want, I guess," Lyla answered. "But, honestly, Jason, is that what you want? Do you really want to never be friends with Tim again? He's like a brother to you."

"Was," Jason answered. "Or maybe he's Esau to my Jacob."

"Isn't that Jacob to your…"

"Sunday school was a long time ago," Jason replied. "It's harder cause it's Riggs, you know. If it happened with someone else—it would be different."

Lyla looked down at the dock. "I know."

Jason looked up as a truck pulled down the road to the lake. It stopped next to Lyla's car and Tim got out. He stood next to the truck, not moving.

"Did you tell him we were coming out here?" Jason asked, his voice quiet.

Lyla looked up, surprised to see Tim there. "No—I didn't even know we were coming out here, remember?"

"You think he's going to just stand up there?" Jason asked, looking up at Tim—the friend he had counted on for years.

"You want me to go up and talk to him?" Lyla asked, her eyes locked on Jason, ignoring Tim.

"No—" Jason said. "Well, maybe. I don't know."

"If we ignore him, he might just leave," Lyla responded.

Jason looked up at Tim again. "He won't come down here with both of us," Jason said. "There's no way he's going two on one tonight."

"Is that what we are now?" Lyla asked. "Two against one?"

Jason shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, it's not like either you're for me or you're against me."

Lyla stood up. "Let me go talk to him a minute."

Jason reached out for the edge of her coat, holding her back for a moment. "You don't have to, Lyla. Just let him figure out we don't want to talk to him. He'll go away eventually."

Lyla leaned in and kissed Jason. "I'll just tell him to go and then I'll come back down and we can get out of here."

"Hey, actually—let me go up there and talk to him," Jason responded.

"Okay," Lyla responded.

She sat on the dock and watched as Jason headed up the hill toward Tim. He paused at one point and she tried to decide if she should go help, but soon enough he started again, pushing himself toward Tim.

*~*~*~*
"You follow us out here?" Jason asked as he approached Tim.

Tim shook his head. "Nah, actually just headed out here to think."

Jason sat in front of Tim, his hands in his lap.

"You and Lyla…" Tim began.

"Yeah, I think we worked things out," Jason answered.

"Good," Tim replied. "I never meant…"

"I'm not sure what you thought you meant or not, but Riggins, you abandoned me when I needed you the most, you stole my girl when I needed her the most and when I needed to trust you the most, you lied to me. So, Tim—it's not gonna be resolved as easy as it was for me and Lyla."

Tim looked down at his boots and kicked at the dirt.

"But," Jason started again, "I don't know what's going to happen, but it's also hard for me to imagine never being your friend again."

"Me too," Tim replied, his eyes still locked on the ground.

"So, I hope you can wait until I can do it," Jason said. "Right now, I need to keep figuring life out, stuff with Lyla, get back to school—all that stuff."

Tim looked up at Jason. "I'm glad you were able to work it out with Lyla. I've felt real bad about the two of you—I mean, losing each other along with everything else."

Tim turned and started walking toward his truck. He stopped before he got in, leaning on the edge of the truck bed. "I'd wait the rest of my life for you, Six. You don't have to worry about that."

FIN

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