The First Play Belonged to Riley

In the second week of October, Riley was in what the doctors called consolidation, which sounds like a bank term and means about the same thing, a month of consolidating the gains. He had been doing well. He had been doing so well that I let myself stop counting.

On Wednesday evening, he touched his own forehead and said he felt warm.

There is one rule in that binder with the rubber band around it, written in red. A fever of a hundred point four or higher means the emergency room, no matter the hour, no matter the weather, no matter how well the child looks. It does not mean wait and see. It means go.

His thermometer said a hundred and one. We were at the hospital in St. Cloud by nine and in Minneapolis by midnight, where they started antibiotics in his arm and told us what they tell everyone: this is what the medicine does, and we had done exactly right.

On Friday morning, the fever broke, but he was worn through. He slept until noon. He picked at a bowl of broth.

At 4:40 in the afternoon my phone buzzed. Coach Dunn.

“Anything from R?”

I looked at my son, asleep with his mouth open and his bare head against the pillow. I typed: “Asleep. Fever’s down. I’m so sorry, Hal. He couldn’t do it today. Run whatever you want.”

I watched the three dots appear and vanish and appear.

“No apology,” the phone said. “We’ll wait.”

Mark had driven down after work with a sandwich and a charger. At seven o’clock we set up the iPad on the tray table. The school’s video club streams every home game, and the picture comes through a little late.

It was a Friday night game under the lights, our field, our stadium, our team in white. The sound came tinny out of the tablet. The announcer on the stream was the same retired agronomy teacher who does the radio. He said Sauk Centre had won the toss and deferred, which meant that the other team would take the first possession.

“Hal never defers,” Mark said, from the window. He had his arms crossed. “Twenty-eight years, I never saw him defer.”

Our offense did not take the field. The other team came out and began to eat clock. A fullback ran into the line, and a halfback ran into the line, and the chains moved, and the clock ran down.

At 7:08, Riley opened his eyes.

“What time is it?”

“Eight past seven.”

“Who has the ball?”

“They do. It’s nothing to nothing.”

He blinked at the tablet. He watched the other team line up and run a play into the line, and for a few seconds he said nothing.

Then he said, “Did we run it?”

“Run what?”

“My play, Mom. Did they run my play?”

“You didn’t send one, honey. You were asleep. I told Coach, and he said he would run his own.”

My son sat straight up in the bed so fast that the pole rattled.

“Where’s a pen?”

“Riley, lie back, you don’t have to do this.”

“Where’s a pen. Dad. Dad, get me a pen.”