From the opposite end of the arena, Ryan had watched the banner unfurl in front of J’Quarius through his binoculars. He now had his answer. J’Quarius did not know about his biological father.
“Weinstien@weinstienlaw.com,” he whispered, committing the email address of the man with the banner to memory.
Two sections and twenty rows closer to the court, Bradford had watched the same scene unfold, aghast at the sight of Melvin Brown’s picture. He was and should have remained a non-factor. Things couldn’t be going much worse. He frantically added Weinstien’s contact info into his phone while the banner was down, inadvertently transposing the “e” and the ”i” at the end of Weinstien’s name.
Back in the locker room, Coach Wright harped on his players about stepping up their pathetic defense and sluggish ball movement, while scattering in just enough praise to keep the team’s spirits up. As he ranted, Hansford briefly dropped his gaze down to his phone and read the new message from Bradford.
As soon as the head coach finished his pep talk, Hansford walked up behind J’Quarius to see how he felt.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ve felt fine the whole time. I’m just nervous.”
“You think you might want to try and play a little bit?” Hansford asked. “The Russians are here to watch you.”
“I guess I’ve gotta try at some point,” J’Quarius said with a tepid smile. “It’s probably harder on my heart having to watch the other team make runs on us, being stuck on the bench.”
“I’ll talk to Coach Wright,” Hansford said, patting him on the shoulder. “Now listen. If you feel like you need a sub, you ask for one. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“I won’t,” J’Quarius assured him. “Oh and Dad, there’s one other thing I want to talk to you about — after the game.” With only four minutes until the start of the second half, there wasn’t enough time to bring up a subject as complex as his biological father.
“Sure, son.”
The subdued crowd erupted, as J’Quarius finally shed his warm-ups and threw them over to the bench.
Bradford heaved an internal sigh of relief, but glanced at his Russian friends with a knowing smirk, as if he’d never had a doubt. The Russians couldn’t help but smile back.
From the opening tip of the second half, the crowd’s discontent evaporated. J’Quarius mesmerized the fans, his teammates, his soon-to-be employers and even the other team with highlight-reel dunks, no-look passes, and lockdown defense. The ESPN announcers screamed out the play-by-play, straining to yell over the crowd.
By the end of the third quarter, Chicago was up by a comfortable fourteen points, and Bradford was seeing green.
Ryan, with his heart pounding out of his chest, made his way down to court level and got in line with a few eager members of the press to gain early access to the visiting team’s locker room. At the front of the line, a stadium security officer sat on a foldable chair, mindlessly scanning barcodes and nodding in the direction of the door to the locker room after each pass cleared. They always did.
Ryan looked over at the Chicago bench, shocked at how huge these high school kids were from his new vantage point.
“Kid!” the security guard said impatiently. “Let’s go!” He scanned the barcode and then flicked his head in the direction of the door.
Synergistic aromas of sweat, spray-on deodorant and bleach belted Ryan in a full-on olfactory assault as he entered the locker room. Most of the media members were transfixed on the flat-screen TV on the back wall where the final quarter was about to start back up, oblivious to the odor. No one seemed to think anything of the smell — or of Ryan’s presence.
“How you feel?” Coach Wright asked J’Quarius.
“Good, coach,” J’Quarius said.
“You got a couple more minutes in you?”
“Definitely.”
With the outcome of the game more or less decided, Coach Wright drew up one more play for the crowd. After that, the plan was to sub each of his seniors out individually, to allow the fans a chance to show their appreciation and then empty his bench to make sure everyone on the team got some playing time.
The overhead buzzer blasted to start the final quarter, as the ref handed the ball to the home team’s point guard. Dribbling it out nervously, he kept a wary eye on J’Quarius who herded him over to the left side of the floor close to midcourt. J’Quarius then gave him a little room to his right, which the point guard took as soon as he saw it.
As he dribbled past, J’Quarius wrapped his long arm around the point guard from behind, poking the ball forward to his waiting teammate. Before his teammate had even secured the ball, J’Quarius was already accelerating toward the other team’s basket.
He looked back as he reached the three-point line and sure enough, the ball was in the air. J’Quarius stomped down hard on the free-throw line and then took flight off his left foot as he caught the pass from his teammate. Palming the ball in his fully-outstretched right arm, he reared back, arching his back as he flew. Then just as he reached the apex of his jump, the totality of his motion — torso, arm, hand, ball — shifted violently forward, culminating in a thunderous dunk that brought everyone in the arena out of their seats. The ESPN broadcasters didn’t even attempt to comment on what they’d just seen, both for lack of words and for the realization that it would be at least half a minute before they would stand a chance of transmitting over the deafening roar of the crowd.
J’Quarius came back down to his feet, turned toward his bench, and looked straight at his dad with sheer terror in his eyes. Then he crumpled to the ground.
As if a switch had been thrown, the crowd went stone silent.
Ryan, watching from the visitors’ locker room, Dillon from high in section 213, Weinstien near the tunnel, and Bradford five rows from the floor simultaneously mouthed the word, “No.”
Hansford sprinted out onto the court with a medic trailing right behind him carrying a defibrillator. For the second time in as many games, Arlene Washington rushed down from the stands screaming, “I’m his mother! I’m his mother!” bypassing the security guards.
J’Quarius lay flat on the court, his face, misted with sweat, slowly turning gray. The medic threw the fallen player’s shirt up and applied the defibrillator pads. His shout of “Clear!” echoed all the way to the rafters of the eerily silent arena. J’Quarius’s chest heaved, as the electricity flowed into his body, but nothing else moved. Hansford couldn’t bear to see his wife watch this and threw himself between her and J’Quarius, holding her tightly in his arms.
The medic hit him with a second jolt. Again nothing.
A group of blue-uniformed paramedics materialized from the far end of the court, running over with a stretcher and as much equipment as they could carry.
One applied a mask over his mouth and nose and squeezed oxygen-spiked air into his lungs by bag, while another applied EKG leads hooked up to a portable monitor. It didn’t take a medical degree to recognize the flat line on the display. One of the paramedics loudly announced that he’d gotten an IV established, as his colleague handed him an ampule of epinephrine, which he quickly jetted into J’Quarius’s vein. Still nothing.
With a man at each corner of the stretcher, four paramedics lifted him off the floor, allowing the collapsible wheeled scaffolding to lock into place underneath him, and raced toward the ambulance to the sound of cautious applause from an apoplectic audience not quite sure how to respond. All the while, the paramedic at J’Quarius’s head continued rhythmically squeezing the bag, inflating his lungs against no resistance.