LEN BIAS: CROSSOVER
A novel
By: Michael D. McClellan | September 19, 2010
And then: Maybe he'll like being Len Bias so much that he won't want to switch back. Maybe you're stuck being him.
I stare at the neat rows of get well cards on the opposite wall, fighting back an increasingly edgy fear and struggling to make sense of everything that has happened to me. I question my sanity. Given the facts, that theory seems as plausible as anything else I can conjure. Maybe my mind has snapped and I've gone off the deep end, and maybe this hospital is really something more than the Cleveland Clinic. Maybe it's a hospital for the criminally insane.
Criminally insane? Who do you think you are, Frosty the Ripper?
Len Bias, cold-blooded killer?
No. No way.
Maybe...?
I consider it briefly. Maybe I've done the unthinkable. Maybe I've killed someone I love. Maybe I've killed my parents, and all of this other stuff has been created in my mind to insulate me from dealing with the consequence of my actions. Maybe Emily Schuler isn't real, either - maybe she's simply an imaginary figment invented by me, for me, designed to satisfy a psychopath's need for unconditional love and compassion. Or maybe Len Bias isn't real - maybe I've been Jason Schuler all along, an average basketball player on a throwaway college team whose campus is equal parts cornfield and cow pasture. And maybe Len Bias is my imaginary alter ego, the person I became after I snapped, the basketball player born with the God-given talent that I never possessed in the real world.
Enough with the Stephen King stuff, already.
If not that, what? A tumor? Do I have a tumor growing inside my head, doing things to me, causing me to imagine all of this? Is that where all of this is coming from? Or is it the drugs? Did the drugs rip reality out from underneath me, making it impossible to separate fact from fiction? What if -
"Here you go," Emily says, returning. She pulls two small cubes from the plastic cup and places them in my mouth. "How's that?"
I crunch the ice and swish it around in my mouth. When I'm done she gives me two more. Then two more.
"Slow down, you're going to make yourself sick. You still have anesthesia in your system."
She rinses out a washcloth and gently wipes my face. I'm feeling my leg more now - a dull throb capped with a sharp, painful zing. Still, very manageable. My eyes return to the telephone.
"Emily, will you do something for me?"
"What's that, hon?"
"If I give you a phone number will you dial it for me?"
"Whose number? Did you remember something?"
"I know you don't want to hear this, but I want you to call James and Lonise Bias in Landover, Maryland. I'll give you the number, you can do all the talking if you'd like. They need to know where I am. That need to know what has happened to me."
"Jason, I'm not going to do that."
"Please. What can it hurt?"
"You've never been to Landover. And as far as I know you don't have any friends or relatives living in Maryland. You need to focus on recovering from your injuries."
"Are you afraid that I might be right?"
"It's not a matter of you being right."
"Then what is it?"
"You nearly died in that accident," she says, pulling a mini photo album from her purse. She flips it open, holds it out for me to see. "This first picture is from our wedding. That's me and you. The next picture is from our honeymoon in Jamaica. That's us in those beach chairs, having the time of our lives. The next picture is of you coaching your team at Waynedale. See? That's you on the bench. Those are your players. The next picture is of our farmhouse. That's you on the riding tractor. The doctors want you focusing on these types of images, Jason. These are the things that will help to rebuild your memory. Not trying to call someone who doesn't exist."
"301-691-1591."
"Jason, please..."
"301 is the Landover area code. How would I know that? If you call that number you'll see what I'm talking about. Ask for James or Lonise Bias. Ask them about me. Let them know where I'm at."
Emily snaps shut the photo album. Her brow furrows. She stares out the window in silence.
"Emily, what can one phone call hurt?"
"The doctors don't even want you watching television right now. How am I going to explain that I've let you use the phone?"
"Who said they have to know?"
"I'm sorry, baby."
I close my eyes. She tries to coax me to talk, but I dig in like a spoiled child who hasn't gotten his way. My lips are pursed together tightly, my tongue pressed hard against the back of my teeth. Even battered and broken I can be stubborn, ornery, defiant. Even in someone else's body I can be the most hard-headed Bias of them all.
"Okay," she says at last. She walks over, peers down the hallway and then closes the door. "I'll make you a deal. I'll let you call the number, but you've got to accept the result and let this go if I'm right. No ands, ifs or buts. If I'm right, from that point forward you focus on getting better. What do you say? Do we have a deal?"
"Deal."
~ ~ ~
