Caleb saved birthday money and money from mowing lawns until he could afford that player’s jersey.
He wore it every Sunday.
Then, one afternoon in October, everything changed.
Caleb was walking home from school.
He was only two blocks from our house.
A five-year-old boy was playing outside near the corner when his ball rolled into the street.
The little boy ran after it.
At the same moment, a pickup truck was approaching.
The driver didn’t see the child.
Caleb did.
He ran into the street and shoved the little boy back toward the sidewalk.
The truck hit Caleb instead.
Thirty miles per hour.
The driver hadn’t been drinking.
He wasn’t looking at his phone.
It was simply one of those horrible moments where several things happen too quickly for anyone to undo them.
Caleb’s surgery lasted six hours.
I spent every minute of those six hours in the waiting room wearing the clothes I had worn to work that morning.
