Five
GIDEON GARLAND IS dead upon arrival at UNC Hospitals on Manning Drive.
There was nothing the EMTs could do for him once they pulled him out of the wreckage, nothing for the doctors to do once he’d been transported back to Chapel Hill, his heart stopping for good before they could get him into the emergency room.
By then the broken body of Silas is in the hospital’s biggest and most modern trauma room, its team now being asked to save the life of Silas Tucker, national champion.
What looks like half of the UNC student body, and almost as many Cross Rivers locals who’ve made their way to Chapel Hill, are standing vigil for the best quarterback the University of North Carolina has ever seen, in front of a hospital as highly rated as there is in the state.
Only EmmaJean Tucker, Silas’s lone remaining family, has been allowed inside. But Taylor McCarter Webb has been standing at the blue police barrier in front of the crowd since four in the morning, having driven herself here as soon as the alert on her phone awakened her.
The trauma team has long since placed a cervical collar around his neck, cut off his clothes, and managed to pop his right shoulder back into place.
After a brief MRI—a road map for what needs to be done in surgery—they’ve identified that the scapular damage is the least of their problems compared with the severe damage to his right shoulder and the extensive damage to his cervical spine.
The MRI has also shown that the force of impact from when Silas’s body had hit the second tree had done so much internal damage to the area around his heart that it had stopped twice on his way to the hospital before the EMTs had managed to bring him back.
By six o’clock, they’re preparing to wheel him out of the trauma room and down the hall to the operating room. UNC Hospitals’ top orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Richard Gregory, turns to the rest of his team and says, “It’s like this boy got dropped out of the damn sky.”
One of the nurses, a young man named Peyton, says, “Do you think we can save his arm?”
“First we need to save him, son,” Dr. Gregory says.
Outside, Taylor only knows that Silas has gone into surgery because a hospital spokesperson has announced the news from a microphone.
One of the reporters from the Daily Tar Heel calls out, “Are the injuries life threatening?”
“We’ll have a further report when he’s out of surgery,” the spokesperson says.
The nonanswer from the young woman frightens Taylor McCarter Webb even more.
Off to the side is a football surrounded by photographs, large and small, of Silas in uniform. One shows him posing with the national championship trophy. Fans and well-wishers file up, their arms filled with flowers and candles. But Taylor refuses to watch them place their offerings.
Vigils to her mean the worst.
She has known Silas Tucker since the two of them walked to first grade together, and loved him her whole life, as much as she has loved her husband. He is, in all the important ways, the best person she’s ever known, and the best friend she’s ever had, or expects to ever have.
Night has turned all the way into morning by now. But she has no way of knowing if Silas, as strong as he’s always been, has even made it through the night.
A little after seven o’clock, she hears another alert from her phone.
Before she can reach into the back pocket of her jeans, she hears the first scream behind her. Then Taylor hears another young woman cry out, turning to see one in a cluster of college girls staring at her phone almost in horror.
The young woman starts to cry as she hands the phone to the girl next to her, and then that girl is dropping to her knees and covering her face with her hands.
“Nooooooo!” Taylor hears from another part of the crowd, like a siren sounding.
Finally, Taylor’s phone is in her hand, and she’s bringing it up slowly, an inch at a time.
Knowing that she’s about to confirm what she is seeing and hearing all around her now across the street from the hospital, the one with Silas inside it.
Knowing in her heart.
And there it is, the post from X, which Taylor still thinks of as Twitter.
A link to the celebrity website that says Silas Tucker is dead.
Now Taylor screams.