Chapter 3 Tanner
TANNER
I was halfway through a fluid dynamics problem set when the email notification slid into the corner of my screen—one of those automatic alerts from the research database I’d set up months ago and mostly forgotten about.
I made the mistake of clicking it.
Subject: New Article - Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Former Professional Athletes: A Longitudinal Study
I shouldn’t have opened it. Should have closed the tab, gone back to my assignment, pretended I hadn’t seen it.
But my finger was already clicking, my eyes already scanning the abstract, and then I was reading about brain tissue analysis, tau protein deposits, and the correlation between years played and severity of neurodegeneration.
The apartment went quiet, and I kept reading. Through the methodology section. Through the results. Through the discussion where they talked about early-onset dementia, behavioral changes, and the way the brain ate itself from the inside out.
My hands went numb somewhere around paragraph three.
There was a table. Figure 4: Correlation Between Career Length and Postmortem CTE Diagnosis.
The line climbed steadily upward with each additional year of play—a gentle slope at first, almost dismissible, then steeper and steeper until the curve bent toward something that looked inevitable.
Five years in, and the odds were already stacked against you.
Ten years, and the likelihood more than doubled.
Fifteen years, and the graph showed nearly everyone.
Dad had played twelve years professionally. Another four in college.
How many of his former teammates and fellow players were walking around with ticking bombs in their brains? The thought was enough to make it nearly impossible to breathe.
I closed the laptop, but the numbers stayed burned into my vision. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the distant sound of someone’s TV through the wall, my own pulse hammering in my ears.
I should get up. Should do something. Should move. I stayed in the chair instead, frozen the way I had been so many times over the last two years.
The light from the window shifted. Shadows crawled across the floor. My phone buzzed twice on the table beside me. I didn’t reach for it.
Somewhere in the rational part of my brain, I knew this was a bad sign. Knew I was shutting down, dissociating, whatever clinical term applied to the way the world had gone flat and distant. But knowing didn’t help. Knowing never helped.
I thought about one of the last times I’d been home before the end.
The way Dad had looked at me without recognition, like I was a stranger who’d wandered into his living room.
The way his hands had trembled when he’d tried to drink water.
The way he’d asked me, three times in ten minutes, what year it was.
“Tanner?”
I blinked. The shadows had moved farther across the floor. The light had gone golden, which meant it was late afternoon, which meant I’d been sitting here for—
How long had I been sitting here?
“Tanner.” Closer now. A hand on my shoulder, warm and solid. “Hey. You with me?”
Seth. Right. Seth lived here. We shared this apartment. He’d gone to class this morning, came back around noon to grab lunch, and had said something about film review later.
What time was it now?
“I need you to look at me.”
I managed to turn my head. Seth was crouched beside my chair, one hand still on my shoulder, the other hovering near my face like he wanted to touch but wasn’t sure if he should. His eyes were worried.
“There you are,” he said, and his voice was so gentle it hurt. “You scared me. I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”
“Sorry.” My voice came out rough. “I was just— I got distracted.”
“Tanner.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re freezing. And you’re crying.”
I reached up and touched my cheek. It came away wet, and I stared at my fingers as if they belonged to someone else.
Seth’s jaw tightened. He stood, pulling me up with him, and I went without resisting because the alternative was staying in that chair, and I couldn’t do that anymore.
“Come on,” he said, steering me toward the couch. “Sit.”
I sat. He disappeared into the kitchen. I heard cabinet doors opening, the clink of mugs, and the microwave starting. When he came back, he had two mugs in his hands and a blanket tucked under one arm.
He handed me a mug and draped the blanket over my shoulders. The mug was warm. I looked down at it—hot chocolate, the fancy kind with whipped cream piled high, rainbow sprinkles scattered on top, a drizzle of caramel sauce.
The grief I’d been holding back pressed against my lungs.
“You remembered,” I said.
“Of course I remembered.” Seth settled on the couch beside me, close enough that our thighs pressed together. “You told me about it when we moved in. Your dad used to make it for you.”
He had. Every time I’d had a bad day, every time the kids at school were cruel, every time I came home crying about something I couldn’t fix.
Dad would pull out the good mugs and make hot chocolate with all the fixings.
We’d sit at the kitchen table, and he’d let me talk or not talk, whatever I needed.
That was before. Before the mood swings. Before the forgetting. Before he stopped recognizing what I needed and started seeing me as a threat.
“There’s schnapps in the cabinet,” Seth said. “If you want it.”
I did. I didn’t. I took a sip of the hot chocolate instead and let the sweetness coat my tongue.
Seth let the silence stay. He didn’t ask what happened or what I’d been doing or why I’d checked out so completely. He just sat there, solid and warm beside me, one hand resting on my knee over the blanket.
We stayed like that until I’d finished half the mug and my hands had stopped shaking.
“I read an article,” I said. “About CTE. New research on brain tissue analysis. I thought it would be good in case there was anything I needed to add to my capstone project.”
Seth’s hand tightened on my knee. “Okay.”
“The correlation between career length and severity is worse than I thought. Worse than the last study I read. Every year increases the risk by—” I stopped. Shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t change anything.”
“They matter to you.”
“They shouldn’t. Dad’s gone. Knowing more about what killed him doesn’t bring him back.”
“No,” Seth agreed. “But it might help you save someone else.”
I looked at him. He was studying me the way I imagined he studied game film—patient, intent, like if he just looked long enough he’d find the pattern that made everything make sense. Like I was worth that kind of attention.
“I can’t save anyone,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word.
“My padding modifications are incremental at best. Six percent reduction in force distribution doesn’t mean anything if the cumulative damage is inevitable.
Six percent doesn’t stop the disease. It doesn’t reverse the damage.
It doesn’t bring back the fathers who forgot their sons’ names. ”
“It means six percent fewer concussions. Six percent less trauma.” Seth’s voice was steady, certain in a way I couldn’t be. “That’s not nothing, Tanner. That’s someone’s dad coming home and still knowing who they are.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s what you’ve got.” His thumb moved in a small circle against my knee, and I felt the touch like a brand. “And you’re doing it anyway. Even though it hurts. Even though reading those studies tears you apart. Even though you can’t save your dad.”
The words hit me somewhere deep, somewhere I’d been protecting. My throat closed up.
I set the mug down on the coffee table before I dropped it. My hands were shaking again, and I watched them tremble like they belonged to someone else. Like they belonged to Dad, those last months, when he couldn’t hold a glass without spilling.
“I hate this,” I said, and the words came out ragged, torn from somewhere I usually kept locked.
“I hate that I can’t just let it go. I hate that every new study feels like watching him die all over again—like I’m back in that hospital room watching the monitors and knowing there’s nothing I can do.
I hate that I’m sitting here crying about research that should just be academic interest, that should be data points and statistics and nothing more.
I hate that I saw that appointment reminder on his desk and didn’t say anything to Mom because he’d snapped at me before about minding my own business.
Maybe if I had just told her, she could have driven him, and he never would have gotten behind that wheel trying to feel like himself again, and he never would have—”
My voice broke completely. I couldn’t finish. The words stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat, tangled up with everything I’d never said—to Dad, to Mom, to anyone. The guilt I’d carried for two years pressed down on me until I couldn’t breathe.
“It’s not just academic for you.” Seth’s hand tightened on my knee, anchoring me to the present when everything else felt like it was spinning away.
“It should be.” My voice cracked on every syllable.
“God, it should be. I’m supposed to be able to look at data objectively.
I’m supposed to be able to look at things objectively.
But every time I read one of those studies, I see him.
I see him forgetting my birthday. I see him throwing a plate at the wall because he couldn’t remember where we kept the forks.
I see him looking at me like I was someone who’d broken into his house. ”
“Tanner—”