Chapter 2 - Tyler #3
Tyler swallowed hard. “Quit the team. Quit the Olympics.” The last word shook and he stopped.
“You can't.” The coach pushed his chair back and stood swiftly.
“Bannichek, the Olympics are two weeks away.
This is it, your life, my life, all the guys' hopes tied up in one goddamned package that's just within reach.
What in God's name would make you quit?” His eyes narrowed.
“I know your concentration has been shitty all week. Is it because you're gay and you got spooked? Is that what this is about? Is someone threatening to out you? Because I have to tell you, kid, no one will be surprised. We’ll handle it and at this late date no one is going to fucking care enough to matter. You hear me?”
“It's not…” He tried again. “Yeah, I'm gay but that's not what I mean.” The room swayed around him, his vision tunneled in on his coach's face.
So damned ironic that he'd put so much time and fear into the issue of coming out, and here it was done and gone in a sentence, and not even a blip on his radar or the coach's.
“I have to quit because I can't compete. I can't do the moves.”
“Explain.”
“It's my back. The numbness is getting worse. There are times when I land a skill and I can't feel my foot hit the floor. There are times when I go to take off and I don’t get the push and I can't tell until I start the rotations. I'm not consistent enough. I'm not good enough. Not anymore.”
“I’ve asked you about that. Why the hell do you think I sent you to the physiotherapist?
He said you were sore and had some muscle spasms in your left thigh but…
” The coach stared at him. Tyler gritted his teeth and kept silent.
“You told him everything was fine, you told the trainers you could handle it. You said it was mostly a problem with your focus. A mental thing.”
“I lied.” Tyler rubbed his face and stared at the floor.
“I wanted...fuck, I wanted to be okay. The numbness comes and goes.
When I'm fine, I can do every skill. I can do all of it. The big stuff is easy as pie, and I feel like I could make that podium. And then I lose strength during a baby skill.”
“But most of the time you're okay? You hit your pommel-horse routine better than I've ever seen you yesterday.”
“Sometimes.” The physiotherapist hadn’t found anything on his neuro exam, and Tyler had been grateful for the moment of reprieve, but now…
“So maybe we just need to rethink things. Shuffle things around. If floor is screwing you up, drop the event. It means no shot at the all-around, but...”
“No.” Tyler forced himself to meet the coach's eyes.
“I have to quit. The last two weeks, it's happening more and more, randomly, on just about everything.
There are two weeks to the Olympics. Who knows whether I could still be good enough to compete by then.
You put me out there in competition and I might bring home a medal, but there's a good chance I could fuck it up completely. And the doctor said...”
“Yeah, have you seen a doc? What did he say?”
Tyler dug in his gym bag. The envelope was there, battered, bent, and dusted with chalk.
Two days he'd carried it around, hoping he could just stuff the letter back in the drawer at home.
He laid it on the desk. The coach picked the envelope up, pulled out the enclosure, and began to read.
Tyler knew every phrase by heart: spinal instability.
..thoracic and thoraco-lumbar disc herniation.
..weakness...and the killer, “in my professional opinion, continued participation in competition-level gymnastics makes the risk of further incapacitating neurological injury to Tyler Bannichek unacceptably high.” Doctor-speak for Tyler is fucked.
“He said I might be okay, but I have instability from the old injury. There's a chance I could land wrong, twist wrong, just one time, and really blow my back out. He said if I don't want to take a real risk of ending up in a wheelchair, I need to stop. Now.”
“Doctors. What the hell do they know? He probably doesn't want to get sued.” The coach dropped the letter, stepped from behind his desk and paced to the window and back.
“You have a shot at gold, Tyler. You know that.
I've never said as much and I wouldn't want you to get cocky, but you have to be aware.
You did well at Worlds last year, and this year you've kicked it up several notches.
You have a real chance here to medal, maybe even all-around.
This is the fucking Olympics and you're hitting the competition at your peak. And now you want to just walk away?”
“I don't want to,” Tyler said thickly. “But I don't want to end up where I can't walk at all.”
“We'll get another opinion,” Coach Andre said. “A couple of them.”
Tyler shook his head hard. “I did that. This happened once before, about three years ago, only not as bad.”
“And you recovered.”
“I took off three weeks completely. It was right after....” He swallowed.
Right after Mom died. “I rested it and did the cortisone and the ultrasound and the acupuncture and every fucking thing there was. Then I came back slowly, so fucking slowly.” He had been enormously lucky the reinjury had happened months before competition season.
“Eventually my back was okay. But the doctors said then I was crazy to risk going back to training that hard.
It was a long shot that I'd ever get to compete, better odds that I'd fuck myself up completely.
But I couldn't stop back then.” His mom had sacrificed so much for his dreams. How could he have quit, after she'd wished him success and Olympic gold practically with her dying breath?
“And now you can? Two weeks from the goddamn Olympics?”
“Now I have to.”
“You could stay on the team. Come along to London, stand with the guys. If you can't compete then you can't, but maybe keep training.” The coach's eyes were avid, demanding. “Just one event, maybe. Your vault’s up there with the very best. You could ease back, just do one or two events.”
Tyler brushed past the coach to reach the window, clutching the sill in shaking fingers and turning his back to the room.
He stared out at the sun-drenched parking lot.
Wanting almost drowned him. “Just one event.” Just vault, the skill he'd put a lifetime of sweat and tears into perfecting, the event where he truly felt like he could fly.
Or maybe two events. Pommel horse had fewer impacts.
Or three… He wanted it so much it hurt to breathe.
Wanted to stand there with the team and hear the anthem and wave to the crowd, with that USA on his chest. A lifetime of work and all his mother's support had pointed him toward this goal for as long as he could remember.
But he couldn't go as a freeloader, planning to back out at the last moment.
And he couldn't risk everyone's hopes on the kind of routines he'd been throwing the last two days.
He recalled a pair of hazel eyes, pleading and compassionate. Eli saying, “What about the rest of your life?” One person in the world at least didn't think his life would be worthless without Olympic gold.
“I have to quit,” he repeated.
There was a long, long silence. He closed his eyes, standing at the window, feeling the sun on his face. Somewhere outside the room, a door slammed. Footsteps ran past. Fast, even, unfettered steps—without a limp. Tyler gripped the windowsill with both hands and waited.
Finally, Coach Andre's voice came, flat and cool. “If your decision is made, I'll call a press conference. You can go home and clean up. I'll let you know when it's set up so you can come back to talk to the reporters, give them the straight story.”
Tyler licked his dry lips. “Tonight?”
“No sense in waiting. Get it done, and give the team more time to adjust. Good thing the committee chose three alternates. Stephen Walsh can hit the big vaults we were counting on from you. Although there’s also floor to consider. We’ll see what the committee thinks.”
Tyler winced and then nodded. That was good.
That was the other part of this decision.
The guy who would step into his slot deserved to know as soon as possible.
No matter what anyone said, there was a world of difference between the way you trained hoping against hope that you might be needed, versus knowing you were chosen to step out on that floor in London.
Stephen deserved to know he was getting that chance.
But the thought of a press conference sank like lead in Tyler’s stomach.
What if he got up there and couldn't get the words out?
What if he cried? He really wanted to ask the coach to just announce his departure for him.
The last thing he felt able to do was sit in front of a bunch of cameras and defend his decision, explain it, justify.
.. “Do I have to talk to the press?” The words slipped out. Christ, he sounded like a whiner.
“Yes, son, you do.” Finally, there was a hint of warmth in the coach's tone. “This is the big leagues, and you're a star. A lot of hopes are riding on this team. If you're stepping down, you still need to step up one last time and talk to the media.”
“Okay.” He managed that on barely a breath.
“Do you need anything right now? Trainer? Medic? Should I find someone to give you a ride home?”
“No.” Tyler braced his shoulders and moved away from the window. He turned to look at his coach. “Do you think I can just make an announcement? Like, read a prepared statement? And not answer a bunch of questions?”
“We'll see what we can do.” As Tyler walked past him, the coach reached out and touched his shoulder. “Tyler?”
“Yeah?”
“I'm sorry, son. I know this is as hard for you as it is for me.”
Tyler almost laughed, but held back the bitter sound. He managed to say, “Thanks,” and mostly mean it.
“I'll call you later. Close the door on your way out.”