[chapter 1]

[chapter 2]

[chapter 3]

[chapter 4]

Russell Wilson awoke to the sound of Sports Center. Clean white sheets and sanitary plastic bed-rails enshrined him. He heard the sound of his daughter enjoying a game on her iPad, and his wife trying not to argue with a nurse. An oxygen mask sat snugly on his mouth and nose, pulsing puffs of air. As he shook from his unconscious haze, he felt the dull, medically suppressed ache of a significant chest injury. As he reached to touch the pained area, the o2 monitor attached to his forefinger got caught on a tangle of IV lines. What the hell happened to me?

A gaunt-looking man in a white lab coat flitted next to his bed. “Ah, awake. That’s good. You’ve been out since before we took you in for surgery. Do you have questions for me?” The doctor’s eyes, though sunken and obstructed by thick-rimmed glasses, were warm and comforting.

The QB cleared his throat to speak. It wasn’t pleasant, and if not for the suppressant he’d been given, he certainly would’ve succumbed to a coughing fit. “Yeah, a lot. Why am I here?”

The doctor smiled thinly. “You had an accident at the country club. Your wife tells me that you were being a little too rough with a golf cart, and while rolling into a sand trap you flipped and ended up impaled by a structural metal post.”

That didn’t sound good. Sienna looked up from her iPad to give her thoughts on the matter. “Very scary, daddy.”

“Very scary covers it pretty well.” The doctor made a couple notes on Russell’s chart and began administering an eye-tracking test. “Your surgeon is incredibly talented. You’ll have some scarring, but no major organs were damaged and you should be able to regain as much as 80 percent of your range of motion.”

The QB sputtered. “80 percent!? I have games to win, doc!” As if the gaunt man had already anticipated this reaction, he had pictures ready to hand over. The accident was gruesome. There was blood all over the sand trap and fairway where he’d been struck. Judging by these, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that he didn’t survive. “Oh… oh. What did they say on the news?”

Ciara poked her head in from the hallway, having wrapped up her terse conversation with a nurse. “They said whatever they wanted to say on the news. YOU-” she grasped his forearm gently “need to focus on healing and getting home.”

This was a tough pill to swallow. To have a career end, and not even be awake for it? The QB swallowed the maelstrom of emotions trying to work their way to the surface. “Hey, at least I woke up, right?” He forced a smile.

_____

The unreasonably tall man towered over Russell Wilson’s unconscious body. With his spindly arms he picked him up and moved him about the cavern under Dove Valley. As he moved, he passed many orange, blue, and white uniforms with many different numbers. 84, 18, 30, 7, 15. He raised the QB’s limp form up and into a nook near the ceiling of the cavern. Up there Russell hung, proudly displaying his #3. A draft sent the QB’s form swaying from the rafters. “Needs room for more,” the tall man said to himself, before turning back to the tunnel to await the next delivery.