Page 92 of Challenge
I swallow hard and reply, “It’s not that I never want to play again. I guess I just need to feel good enough to fly on my own first, Dad.” I stare down at my knee that looks perfectly normal, and I still can’t figure out how one appendage can muck everything up like this. “After my injury, when I thought I might never play again, I realised that I don’t know who I am without football. For so long, I let it be the only thing that mattered.”
He releases a shaky sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Son, I understand that more than you could possibly know.”
“How?” I ask. “Your life’s passion is football. Our whole lives, that’s what we’ve always known about you.”
“That was only after I lost your mother, Cam.” His voice cracks and the deep creases around his eyes stack on top of each other as he attempts to hide his emotions. “Christ, I don’t know if I can talk about this.”
My eyes sting as I see painful tears form in his. He never speaks of Mum. Ever. Last year, Vi gave us all a book of poems that she found of Mum’s, and I thought he was going to lose it. The poems were all penned by her and were so incredibly personal. They exuded who she was and what she loved out of life. I swear I could remember how she smelled just by touching the papers.
A grave look washes over his face and he shakes his head. “Camden, I loved your mother with everything inside of me. My heart, my brain, my guts, my everything. Football was just a game I played. I never loved it because there wasn’t room in my heart to love anything else. She filled me with so much passion. Then we had you kids, and when I saw her as a mother, my insides grew. Football still didn’t compete.
“Then she started to die on me,” his voice wobbles and he covers his mouth. My jaw clenches at the intense pain he still feels after all these years. After a few seconds, he continues, “I put her through painful surgeries to try to give us more time with her. But when every bloody doctor came out with those masks on their faces and that look in their eyes, I knew it was all for nothing.”
“Dad, I’m sorry…I didn’t—”
“I don’t talk about it because I’m ashamed. I couldn’t cope with the idea of losing her. With every passing day, she got worse, and my insides deteriorated more and more. My passion died. I was awful to her in the end. Gareth even had to step in a couple of times. When I think about how I treated her and all that he had to shoulder at such a young age, the guilt consumes me. Before I knew it, she died and I was drowning in so much regret that I thought if I could just focus on you kids, things could get back to how they used to be. I could find my passion again. But I was a crap father. If it wasn’t for Vi, who knows how bad things would have gotten.”
I reach out and cover his clasped hands on the mattress. “You did the best you could, Dad.”
He shakes his head, apparently not believing me. “When football came back into my life, things magically got better. Watching you boys practise with Bethnal Green made me happy because it made you happy. I let football become my new passion.
“Then you went down at that match. After your brothers carried you off the field and we came into this hospital, I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing like I did with your mum. I couldn’t wait for everything to come tumbling down around me again.”
“So you started talking to Arsenal,” I say, seeing the picture come into focus so much more clearly now.
“I’m not proud of the way I handled things. I wanted to look past the present and focus on the future, which was wrong. So I’m here now and I’m not going to talk to you about Arsenal, or Bethnal Green, or football anymore. If you don’t want to have this surgery today, let’s postpone it. We have loads of time.”
I look closely at my dad, who’s gazing at me with wide, open, accepting eyes—eyes that are telling me he’ll drive the getaway car. This is a man who knows love. Not the love of football like I always thought. He loved my mum. He loved her so deeply that he lost himself when he lost her. I can relate to that. Maybe I can find my passion again someday, whatever it might be.
I swallow around the knot in my throat and say, “I want to have the surgery, Dad. And if you’re okay with sticking by my side, I’d really like that, too.”
His blue eyes pierce through my soul. “I’m not going anywhere, Cam.”
A while later, the nurse returns and her mouth drops open at the sight of my completely packed room. Dad is in a chair that he pulled up next to my bed. Vi is sitting at the foot with Hayden now tucked up next to her. Gareth and Booker are sandwiched shoulder-to-shoulder on the window ledge, and Tanner slides himself up off the floor at her entry. Everyone has coffee in hand except me.
“It’s time.” She smiles awkwardly and stands back from the door.
“I’ll walk down with him,” Dad says right away.
“No, Dad, I’m good. You can go to the waiting room with everyone else. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? I can walk down with you,” he says again.
“Or I could,” Vi adds, her clear blue eyes touching me with motherly softness.
I shake my head with a laugh. “No. I’m good you guys. I promise. Go get more coffee. I’ll see you all afterwards.”
After a handful of awkward hugs, Tanner comes in last and whispers, “You’ve never looked uglier.”
I punch him in the ribs before he pulls away, smiling as the wind gets knocked out of him. “You’re pretty much insulting yourself there, Twin Genius.”
He waggles his eyebrows at the nurse and makes his way out of the room.
“I apologise for him,” I state in a nonplussed tone.
“Oh, it’s fine,” she giggles. “You have a lovely family.”
That I do, I think to myself as she pushes me out the door.
