Game Changer

If the ending appears to promise an optimistic resolution to Teddy’s experience in the critical care unit, that promise hinges on the reader’s interpretation of the only line he speaks: “I remember” (285). If by that assertion Teddy indicates he is willing to participate in a full investigation into the football camp, the hit-for-pay bounty game, the deliberate hit by a supposed friend raging under the influence of the seniors’ taunting, then the ending is hopeful. As the therapist repeatedly tells Ethan, problems cannot be resolved if they are not recognized. If Teddy, in regaining his awareness, is ready to relive the last two days of camp, then the program will undergo necessary corrections to redirect the fury and the muscle of its young athletes into the actual goal of the game: to run a disciplined game plan that both respects the opposition and respects teammates. That is how athletics builds better people.

Because Teddy, despite being the center of the narrative, is something of a mystery, his dialogue at the end might indicate his willingness to declare what happened at summer camp was something other than Ethan’s cheap shot. Will he contest or somehow mitigate what Ethan so publicly confessed? Will he extend a generous forgiveness that might promise little will be done to address the program or ensure such an injury never befalls another young player? After all, unlike Ethan, Teddy was a genuinely promising player, reassured by the seniors and by his coach that the program could use his talents, could shape him into a legitimate blue-chip player. So, perhaps Teddy will side with the team and reassure his parents, his sister, his school, his town that, yes, he was injured, but the team and the game were hardly to blame. The program need not be sacrificed for a single lone rouge player, Ethan. I remember, Teddy begins, but the novel does not reveal his intentions or where they lead.

Equally uncertain is the future of the Youngblood family. Against Teddy’s recovery from the coma, the family conducts an impromptu prayer circle, holding each other’s hands to pray for Teddy even as he appears to be coming out of the coma. Sarah’s question—“Can you forgive me?” (272)—is particularly startling. Sarah has struggled to define her place in a family she abandoned, yet these words appear to indicate she will return and attempt to put back together the family she so completely fragmented. Like Teddy’s simple statement, Sarah’s question closes the novel with more ambiguity than clear-cut optimism. After all, the answer to the question she poses to her almost ex-husband is a cryptic assurance: “We’ll find a way” (272).

The book thus refuses the easy dodge of a happy ending. Both plot lines end in the challenge to confront what is difficult, to recognize in both Teddy’s injury and in Sarah’s discontent, problems that beggar easy explanation and resist simplistic solutions. In the end, the only solutions offered are so obvious they escape the notice of the parents, the school friends, the administration, and the team: the commitment to confront rather than ignore problems and to move forward together. Or, to borrow from the wisdom of young Janey, “Just feel my hand holding your hand” (273).