116. Definitely a Ranger
DEFINITELY A RANGER
LIVY
August is tough. Preparation for the season is in full swing.
We’re operating with all hands on deck. Medical evals are needed for all players.
Peak physical condition athletes with one bad spin or snap, a play gone wrong, or a tackle that lands too high or too low can land in my office or on my table.
The workload is intense and changes daily.
My yoga classes are full, sometimes with bodies and all the time with egos. Men who know they’re elite in one sport, assuming it can’t be that hard if a woman can do it.
Marshall still takes his practice seriously. He’s older than the bulk of the players and protecting his body, one class at a time.
He’s become the man who corrects attitudes and behaviors when the punks who think they “have arrived” leave their egos unchecked when they walk in the room.
Five o’clock has long since come and gone. Seven days on as we prep for the season means I have no clue what day of the week it is.
So when my phone rings, I don’t even look at the screen. I grab and swipe. “Livy Morgan,”
“Miss Morgan, my name is Braxton Ranger. Do you have a moment we can talk?”
Wait. What? I pull the phone away from my face to see a Texas number and shake my head as if that will reset my brain.
“I’m sorry. Can you start again?”
“I’m Braxton Ranger. Layton is my brother. May I have a few minutes of your time?”
“Sure, Mr. Ranger. What can I do for you?”
“Well, that’s to the point. So I will be too. I want to hire you to help my brother’s recovery.”
“Mr. Ranger—”
“Braxton.”
“Braxton. I have a job. We’re in the throes of kicking off our season. I’m not seeking other employment.”
“Miss Morgan? You know my brother?”
“I do.”
“Would you say he takes no for an answer?”
“Not when he sets his mind to it.”
“I’m not any different.”
Uh-oh.
“I appreciate your honesty. That said, I am in no position to consult at this time.”
“I’m not looking for a consult. I’m offering to hire you as my brother’s therapist. Correction, I’m not offering.
I’m begging. If you’ve met my brother, you know his zeal for life.
If you worked with my brother, you know his commitment to performance.
What you may not know is that I lost my brother.
Or I’m losing my brother… every day that he isn’t well. ”
“Go on.”
“Layton is withdrawn. He’s lost a tremendous amount of weight.” Not good. “He’s able to move without a walker when he’s angry or obstinate. Otherwise, I’d add tennis balls to that thing to save Pop’s floors, but that could set him off, and we just got him back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the man I’ve known for the last decade and the brother I’ve known for nearly three is not the man who came home from Florida. He’s a shell of himself and has spent months that way.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ranger.” I truly am. More so for the man I knew than anything. Layton is a rare commodity and didn’t deserve this.
“Call me Braxton, please. My fiancée, Emberleigh, is working with my brother to get some of his affairs in order. She and his agent negotiated his separation from the team.”
“Oh?”
“She is the one answering his emails. She’s the one who cleared his voicemail box. She read his texts.” He lets that hang in the air. “And she recommended that you might be just what the doctor ordered.”
“I see.”
“She was going to make this phone call. But I asked to be the one. I need you to know something. My family is everything to me. Not a part. Not a good chunk. Everything. My soon-to-be wife and my son. I’d lay down in front of a train for them. My Pop, nothing I wouldn’t do for his happiness.”
“I met your dad. The word I’d use for him is formidable. He seemed unflappable in the face of all that was thrown at your brother, not to mention his staunch protection of his family.”
“We come by it honestly, Livy. My sister and my two brothers. We’re a unit. I need you to get this. They cut; I bleed. Layton’s health directly impacts all of us. Layton’s depression is cutting us with a thousand dull slices a day.”
“When you say depression, what do you mean?”
“I mean a dark room with no windows and no human contact. It’s how Pop and my brother found him and why they packed him up and brought him home.
I mean he expresses anger, but mostly is a specter of who he once was.
No jokes, no humor, no sarcasm. His eyes are hollow with purple stains beneath them.
We get glimpses of the old him. Tonight at dinner, I saw the man I used to know.
And we desperately need him back. So tell me what that would take? ”
“Off the top of my head? Good therapy, physical movement, sunlight, decent nutrition, a great support system, and his own willingness to be well.”
“I’m asking what it would take for you to spearhead that effort.”
“Braxton, my job is here in Florida. My home is here. Kyle is here.”
“Kyle is…?”
“My dog.”
“So if your job were here, your home and your dog were here, at least for a time, could you help us?”
“Braxton, I appreciate your desire to help your brother.” More than you know.
“Name your price.”
“What?”
“I don’t think you understand, Livy. I don’t assume this is free.
I assume you’ll need a salary and a place to live.
I’m assuming there will be equipment needs.
I’m also assuming my brother trusts you.
And I know Layton is worth fighting for.
I’m fighting his demons the only way I know how…
by calling on someone he trusts, who is skilled, who cares that he is well.
He needs someone who knows the real him and will be vested in his well-being. ”
“You’re asking me to give notice to my job, to uproot my life, to abandon my home in the hope that Layton is willing to do the work. You do see what a risk you’re asking of me, don’t you?”
“I do. If I were to double your salary and offer you a place to live here free of charge with free veterinary care for Kyle, would that help your decision?”
Well, it doesn’t hurt.
“It’s a heck of an ask, Braxton. I can’t say yes. But I won’t say no yet either. I’d like to think about it.”
“Thank you. If I can be so bold, think quickly and say yes.”
Definitely a Ranger, that’s for sure.
“Just out of curiosity, how do you plan to offer free vet care? Kyle’s healthy, but that seemed to be an easy fix for you.”
“Did Layton tell you at all how we grew up?”
I think for a moment. “No. He didn’t mention his childhood, though he did mention your dad once.”
“Ah. Layton never wanted to be a part of the family business. As in never. He did what he had to growing up, but this wasn’t his thing.
We have a ranch. To be more precise, we’re horse breeders.
My sister is a vet, albeit she specialized in large animal medicine instead of companion animal.
That said, she handles her dogs in addition to our horses.
Kyle would be in good hands. He would, for as long as you’re here, have horses to mingle with and her two errant pups to play with.
We also have a menagerie of barn cats, but they’re not domesticated. They’re for mice.”
The picture he paints is as foreign to me as the wheat fields of Kansas. I know the Delaware shore. I lived in big cities—Boston, Pittsburgh, and Miami. Now I’m outside of the hustle of metropolitan life. I can’t imagine horses in Texas, other than things I’ve seen in Westerns.
“I thought Kentucky was the place for horse breeding.”
His deep chuckle rumbles through the line, and I imagine a man as big as Layton on the other end as well.
“Kentucky is okay, Livy, but it doesn’t have shit on Texas. What do you say?”
I hedge. I can’t make this decision right now. As intriguing as the offer is, I can’t say yes.
“I’ll need some time. And I’ll need to know that Layton wants to be well.”
A sigh drags across the line. It’s not exasperation, but something else I can’t place.
“I know it’s a risk. I know it’s barely reasonable. It’s my baby brother, and I have to do everything I can for him. For my family. Thank you for considering this.”
My family was frustrated I wore the wrong clothes on a billboard, at least in their estimation. And this man called a perfect stranger to beg for help.
“I certainly will. Have a good night.”
“You too, Livy. Talk to you tomorrow.” With that, he hangs up.
Tomorrow? As in he’ll call again tomorrow?
Immediately, a text comes through. It’s Braxton Ranger’s contact info. I follow the web link to the ranch site and am floored.
I don’t know a thing about horses or breeding them, but I’d pictured something I’d seen in the movies as a kid. This is state of the art and huge.
Braxton Ranger is the CEO and looks like an older, less angular version of Layton. He’s handsome, but not in the way Layton is. There’s no mischief in his face. He’s all business.
What this man is requesting is one hundred percent reward with the potential for absolutely zero risk. The reward for him, for his brother, for his family is worth it.
For me, those scales are flipped the opposite direction. All risk. It’s the loss of the security of everything for a potential. But what potential?
Layton’s health can be achieved. Will he ever be a wide receiver again?
No. Can he regain his body? I’m sure of it.
It’ll be harder this many months later for sure.
A dark room with no human contact means he didn’t do any of the needed things to protect his body, and I can only presume that’s gotten measurably worse since the surgery.
So an uphill climb, all fight and pain for Layton, with my reward being that a friend—really more of a colleague—regaining quality of life. I lose my job. While I’m well respected, I risk my professional reputation, and my résumé will have an odd gap.
Braxton Ranger is asking a hell of a lot from someone he’s never met.
I toss and turn all night.
My brain conjures images of the old west. Of ten-gallon hats and dusty streets. Of cowboys with a weird X of bullets strapped across their chests saying, “Howdy, Ma’am” to every woman in a dress and those pointy cowboy boots.
There’s a saloon shoot-out at one point with the old guy falling through the rail of the upper deck, his lifeless body smashing a table on the way down. Beer bottles fly as bartenders duck behind the solid wood bar.
I’d swear there’s banjo music, and somewhere a coyote howls in the distance.
I wake in a cold sweat. At least there was no shoot-out at high noon. No coyotes, but Kyle is howling in his sleep as his paws flip with his dreams.
“It’s okay, baby. Kyle, you’re okay.”
He stirs and resettles, falling back into sleep, but not howling any longer.
I grab my iPad from the nightstand and Google Ranger Ranch. Of course, their site comes up, but I pass it by to look at reviews.
Wow. Their horses are highly spoken of, but clients talk about staying for dinner or meeting at the barn in the early morning hours over cups of coffee and talking horses with Kimpton.
I discover, after digging some more, that Kimpton is their dad.
He inherited the business from his father before him.
There are pictures of four kids much younger on another site. It appears to be a magazine write-up. Mom and Dad and four kids, stair stepped, in front of a split rail fence while horses graze in the background.
Layton, the youngest, is the least comfortable in front of the camera, or the least willing. He looks annoyed. The picture names them out in order of age: Braxton, Exton, Brighton—the only girl, and Layton, with their parents Kimpton and Emilia.
Emilia. That was the password to get into his hospital room. It was a woman, but not who I assumed.
He hasn’t mentioned her. Braxton didn’t either.
With some trepidation, I Google Emilia Ranger.
My heart falls when I see an obituary. I read it, and my eyes are warm and stinging by the end.
Some obituaries are perfunctory. Hers is anything but.
It’s intimate and full of the emotion of the person who wrote it.
She died of cancer. She knew it was coming.
I look at the dates to see it’s been a year and a half. This family—Braxton called them a unit—has had a lot of loss in that time.
The search for Kimpton Ranger comes up with news stories and blog posts of a kidnapping attempt on their ranch and even more with a land deal that ended up in court just this prior January.
This family needs to stick together. It seems something is always trying to bring them down.
My fingers hover over the search bar. I type in Layton Ranger and wait for the inevitable pain that rises with seeing his search results.
There are his stats, an ever-evolving Wikipedia page, news articles with pictures of the wreckage. There’s a horrid photo from the scene when they were loading him into the ambulance.
Then there are the pictures in his jersey, in a suit walking off a plane, one is a wind suit with air pods in as he walks into the stadium.
There are pictures on the beach. Photos in the gym.
If I scroll far enough, I can find my favorite…
the one of the two of us at that night club, where he’s protecting me, giving me his warmth, that stupid wig dangling from my fingers.
A scary moment made less scary by a man doing the right thing, even when it wasn’t convenient.
And that’s what it boils down to, isn’t it?
Doing the right thing at the right time, even when it’s inconvenient.