Only a month to go before playoffs started. Each game meant more. We were getting closer to the end goal. If only we could fend off the Wranglers today. We’d be one step closer to clenching the division.

The fans were rowdy. They usually were when the San Antonio team was in town. It was a bitter rivalry that had divided more than one Texas family in half.

I stood on the sideline, waiting for a defense to get a turnover. It was almost halftime. The score was tied seven to seven.

I looked up at the jumbo-tron, just as Lenny sacked Wes Blakefield.

“Yeah!” I pumped my arm in the air.

The Wranglers offense ran off the field. It was fourth down. They had to punt the ball.

The wide receivers coach walked over to me. “We’re changing the route,” Benji smacked his gums. He was a smoker, and during games he was stressed so he went through packs of gum, mints, anything he could chew on since cigarettes were off limits.

Dylan leaned over. “Changing the route?”

“Yeah. The Wranglers are all over you two. Let’s mix it up. Price, you’ve got the right and James you take the left. Count stays the same.”

Dylan and I nodded. We’d run these plays backward and forward. But it was rare we changed up sides of the field like this in the middle of the game.

“Got it.” I slid the helmet on over my head.

Warriors special teams ran the ball back to the forty-yard line. Dylan and I ran to the line, waiting for Luke to take the snap count.

I looked to my right and to my left. These were the moments that defined us. When we proved we were better than the enemy. When we showed our strength and endurance. That our training and skills could take them down on the battlefield.

I knew the ball was coming to me. I had to run thirty yards and keep the defender off my tail. It was simple. I had run the play a hundred times.

Luke yelled for the ball. The line took off. There was a blitz.

Everyone scrambled as I sprinted for the opening in the field. The offensive line held the pocket long enough for Luke to rocket the ball in my direction. I kept my eyes on the spiral soaring through the sky. I ran, one long yard after another. My arms reached upward as I snatched the ball from the air.

I yanked it toward my chest as the defensive back lunged for me. He missed my waist, clinging for any part of me he could grab, when his hands clutched my knee. He jerked my knee to the side bringing me down with sudden force as if I were a huge oak being toppled. I did everything in my power to hold on to the ball. I had moved us at least thirty yards, if not thirty-five. We had the first down and great field position.

But as the rest of my body fell forward, the defenders hands wrenched my knee into an awkward position and it twisted under my weight.

I howled with the pain. The fans erupted in cheers. I heard them chanting my name. I couldn’t move. I rolled on my back, trying to figure out how I was going to limp off the field, but the pain paralyzed my ability to move. The pain spread up my back. Fuck. My leg was killing me.

I gripped the sides.

The defender grinned, running back to the sidelines.

“Fucker,” I growled.

Dylan jogged over when he saw I didn’t hop up. “Man, you ok?”

I bore my eyes into his. “Medic,” I answered.

He nodded, motioning to the sideline. Within seconds the entire medical team surrounded me.

“I want to walk off this field.” I gritted my teeth.

The head team physician knelt beside me. “Isaac, let us get the cart. You need to have your leg secured. We don’t know how bad it is.”

“No,” I fired. “I’m walking, hobbling, whatever the hell I have to do. I’m not going to carried out of here. And if you try to fucking touch me, so help me…”

I had seen men who lost limbs find a way to drag their blooded bodies out of a firing zone. I’d seen them carry their best friends through ditches. I watched men bleed out in front of me in the desert after they’d been shot and walked five miles on their own two feet. It was a disgrace to my fallen comrades to be carried off this field. A playing field. A place where I lived a game. Not when they died for so much more.

I was going to walk on my leg even if it was shattered in a hundred pieces.

Doc backed away. “You heard the man. Let him walk off the field.” He looked at me. “But we are taking you straight to medical.”

I nodded. I knew my leg was destroyed. I didn’t need the tests to confirm it.

The entire stadium was hushed in an eerie silence. They were waiting to see what would happen. They were watching for the stretcher or the cart.

I raised my thumb in the air and the stands erupted. I couldn’t use my bad leg, but I balanced all my weight on my right and carefully rose to a standing position. I was glad my helmet was still on. They would have seen the tears seep from the corners of my eyes with every step I took.

Dylan was next to me. “Give me your arm or something. Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

“No,” I barked. “I’m walking to the locker room.”

“Then I’m walking with your stubborn ass.”

“Fine.” I pressed my lips together. He marched beside me, giving me distance as I shuffled off the field.

By the time I reached the locker room I was gripping the wall for support. The pain was searing through me. “Fuck,” I groaned.

Doc was right behind me. “Get him in the back of that ambulance immediately.” He pointed to his assistants. There were no cameras. No fans.

“I’ve gotta get back out there,” Dylan explained. “The injury time out won’t last forever.”

“Go,” I ordered. “Just win the damn game.”

He jogged back toward the tunnel.

I let them load me into the back of the van. They could have slowed down. My knee was already busted. Getting to the hospital wasn’t going to change that.

I stared at the ceiling as the ambulance whirled out from under the stadium.