The first night in the hospital was a blurry, suffocating descent. Sleep came not as a comfort, but as a series of fragmented, feverish vignettes. I was constantly falling, the ground rushing up to meet my ankle, the sickening pop echoing in my ears, jolting me back to consciousness. The heavy, clinical dose of painkillers took the edge off the physical throb, but they did nothing for the real wound—the deep, hollow-core ache in my soul where my dream used to be.
The sun rose on Sunday morning, streaming through the window with an offensive, cheerful brightness. It felt like an insult. The world was just moving on, unaware that mine had stopped. My parents were there, their faces etched with a weary concern.
They brought me breakfast, tapsilog from our favorite local spot, but the food tasted like ash. I felt like a ghost, a spectator in my own tragedy, watching them try to comfort a son who felt, in that moment, utterly beyond reach.
After they left to get coffee, I was left alone again with the beeping monitor and the crushing, immovable weight of the plaster tomb on my leg. I stared at the ceiling, replaying my teammates' visit. Tristan's promise. Daewoo's quiet determination. Marco's forced, watery smile. Their words were a small, flickering candle in an ocean of darkness. I held onto them, but I could feel the despair trying to snuff them out.
What if they're just saying that? What if, deep down, they've already moved on?
A soft knock on the door pulled me from the spiral. I grunted, "Come in," assuming it was the nurse with another round of pills.
The door opened, but it wasn't a nurse.
It was Christine.
My heart did a painful, awkward lurch against my ribs. Christine Reyes. My girlfriend. The one person on earth, outside of my father, who understood the sheer, obsessive weight of my ambition because she shared it.
She was still in her practice gear, a dark blue sports bra and leggings, her hair pulled back in a high, messy ponytail. Sweat glistened on her collarbone. She had clearly come straight from her own Sunday morning practice, a grueling session I knew she never missed. She was holding a plastic bag from a convenience store.
For a second, she just stood in the doorway, and I saw her mask slip. Her eyes, usually so bright and fiercely competitive, were wide, red-rimmed, and filled with a pain that mirrored my own. She was strong, the strongest person I knew, but seeing me... seeing the cast... it broke her composure.
"Hey," I whispered, my voice sounding weak and thin even to my own ears.
"Hey," she whispered back. She took a deep, shaky breath, visibly forcing the mask back on. The cheer captain, the leader, took over. She walked in, her movements a little too forced, a little too bright.
"The vending machine downstairs is a travesty," she announced, her voice almost normal as she pulled items from the bag. "But I managed to find your secret weapons." She placed them on the rolling bedside table: a bottle of blue Gatorade and a king-sized bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos. My pre-game ritual.
The simple, normal gesture was so kind, so her, that it almost broke me.
She pulled the visitor's chair close to the bed, her eyes tracing the stark, white line of the cast, from my toes up to my knee. She finally looked at my face.
"How... how bad is it, Aiden?" she asked, her voice quiet now, all pretense gone.
I had to say the words again. I'd said them to my parents, to myself, to my teammates. But saying them to her, the partner in my grind, felt like making it real.
"It's bad, Christine. Severe high-ankle sprain. Hairline fracture in the fibula." I swallowed, the words thick in my throat. "Doctor said six to eight weeks."
I watched her process the timeline. She knew my schedule as well as I did. Her hand, which had been resting on the bed rail, clenched into a fist. A single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek.
"The Palaro," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Oh, Aiden... no."
I hated seeing her cry. It felt like my failure was now hurting her, too.
"Don't," I said, trying to sound stronger than I felt. "Please. It's... it's okay. I've already... I've processed it."
She looked up at me, a spark of anger in her tear-filled eyes. "Processed it? Don't lie to me, Aiden Robinson. Don't you dare."
"I'm not," I lied. "It's just... a detour. Not a dead end. That's what my dad always says."
"A detour?" she shot back, her voice rising with a familiar, passionate fire that I both loved and feared. "Aiden, this was everything. This was the showcase. This was the stage you've been working for since I met you. The scouts from Manila, the UAAP coaches, the springboard to get a look from the States... your whole plan. That's not a 'detour,' that's a... a cliff! And we're just supposed to pretend it's okay?"
Her words, the very same ones that had been torturing me all night, hit me like a physical blow. She wasn't just offering empty sympathy. She was angry with me. She was grieving the dream right alongside me. And it made me angry, too.
"What do you want me to do, Christine?!" I snapped, my own voice suddenly harsh, fueled by a night of pain and despair. "What, you want me to scream? To break things? You think I don't know what this means? You think I haven't spent the entire night staring at this stupid, ugly ceiling, realizing my entire future just went up in smoke?!"
I was yelling. I hadn't meant to. The room was suddenly charged, thick with our shared frustration.
"You don't get it," I said, my voice dropping, exhausted. "No one does. Not even the guys. This was my one shot. My father's dream. My dream. It was the path. The only one. And now it's gone."
I expected her to back down, to be hurt. I expected her to go into 'supportive girlfriend' mode and just pat my hand. But Christine Reyes wasn't built that way. She stood up from her chair, her five-foot-four frame suddenly seeming to tower over me. Her eyes were flashing.
"Don't you dare tell me I don't get it," she said, her voice low and furious. "Don't you ever tell me that."
She started pacing, a caged, electric energy pouring off her.
"Do you have any idea what my morning was like? I was at the field at five AM. Five. Because our new pyramid is a mess and one of our flyers is afraid to commit. I held two girls over my head until my shoulders felt like they were on fire. I ran sprints with the rest of them until I tasted blood. I did that for four hours. Then I came here. And tomorrow, I'm going to go to school, take three advanced placement classes, go to practice, do it all over again, and then go home and study until midnight. My 'scholarship' doesn't come from scouts, Aiden. It comes from a high grades and a national cheer title."
She stopped pacing and jabbed a finger in my direction. "I live the grind, same as you. I know exactly what sacrifice is. I know what it's like to have your entire future riding on one performance. So don't you ever tell me I don't understand what this loss means."
I was stunned into silence. She was right. She was my parallel, my mirror.
Her anger seemed to deflate as quickly as it had come, her shoulders slumping. She sat back down on the edge of the bed, her expression softening into an aching tenderness. She reached out and took my hand, her own hand calloused and strong, lacing her fingers with mine.
"I know what this is," she said, her voice soft now, and heartbreakingly sad. "This is you, pushing me away, because I'm the one person you can't lie to. You can't put on the brave face for me. You can't just say 'it's a detour' and expect me to nod."
She squeezed my hand. "So stop. Just for a minute. Stop being the hero. Stop being your father's legacy. Just be Aiden. The kid whose ankle is shattered and who is terrified that his dream just died. It's okay. You're allowed to be broken. I'm strong enough to hold us both up for a while."
And that's what did it. Not the pain. Not the doctor's words. Not even my teammates' visit. It was her. It was her permission to finally... break.
A sound, a low, guttural sob, tore its way out of my chest. The dam of forced strength, of stoic resilience I had been building since the moment I hit the floor, shattered completely.
The tears came, hot and heavy, and I couldn't stop them. I hated it. I hated feeling this weak, this helpless, especially in front of her. I turned my head away, but she just moved closer, squeezing my hand tighter.
"It's okay," she whispered, bringing her other hand up to my face, her thumb gently wiping away a tear. "I've got you. It's okay."
"What if... what if this is it?" I whispered, the words tasting like poison. The question that had been lurking in the darkest corner of my mind. "What if I never get back? What if the speed... the cut... what if it's just gone? That was my one shot, Christine. I know it. And I blew it on a stupid, meaningless practice game."
"No," she said, her voice suddenly firm again, not angry, but absolute. It was the same voice she used on her squad before they took the mat. A voice that did not allow for doubt. "That's not how this story goes."
She leaned in, her eyes locked on mine. "You know the speech you always give me? The night before a competition, when I'm freaking out about a new stunt?"
I nodded, my vision blurry.
"'Control what you can control,'" I whispered, the words a familiar mantra.
"Control what you can control," she repeated, like a vow. "You can't control the bone. You can't control the calendar. You can't control the fact that the Palaro is in two weeks. But you can control everything else."
She tapped her finger against the stiff, white plaster of the cast. "This is your new opponent, Aiden. This cast. This injury. And you are going to attack your recovery the same way you attack a closeout. You are going to be the most dedicated, annoying, passionate rehab patient this hospital has ever seen. You're going to do every stupid little toe-curl, every band-stretch, every single thing they tell you to do, and you're going to do it with the same fire you use to run suicides. That is what you can control."
A new feeling was starting to burn through the fog of my despair. A tiny, flickering ember of... fire. Of a new purpose.
She wasn't done. "And your team? You think your job is over? You're one of the smartest players I've ever met. You see the floor better than anyone, even Tristan. You're going to be on that sideline. Cast, crutches, and all. You're going to be in Coach G's ear. You're going to be in Tristan's ear. You're going to watch film until your eyes bleed, and you're going to break down every single thing about that Cebu team, that NCR team, and every other monster they have to face. You're going to teach Daewoo every single one of your moves, every read, every cut. You're not their motivational story, Aiden. You're their new assistant coach. You're their secret weapon. That is what you can control."
I stared at her, my heart hammering. She had just taken my vague, desperate resolves from the night before and forged them into a concrete, unbreakable plan. She wasn't just comforting me; she was coaching me. She was reminding me who I was.
A slow smile, the first genuine one in twenty-four hours, spread across my face.
"You're terrifying, you know that?" I said, my voice thick.
"I'm a cheerleader," she replied, a small smile of her own playing on her lips. "Terrifying is part of the job description. So," she said, her tone shifting, all business. "Are we going to sit here and cry all day about the path that closed? Or are you going to ask me to get your laptop so we can start breaking down that Imus game tape? Because I took notes on their high-post offense, and I have thoughts."
I let out a laugh. It was a watery, broken sound, but it was a laugh. "You... you took notes?"
"Of course I did," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm not just your girlfriend, Robinson. I'm your partner. And we've got work to do."
She leaned in and kissed me, a soft, firm kiss that tasted of salt and strength and an unshakeable, shared resolve. It wasn't a kiss of pity. It was a kiss of purpose.
When she pulled back, the despair was gone. The hollow ache was still there, the pain in my ankle was still throbbing, but they didn't matter. The path wasn't gone. It had just changed. And I wasn't walking it alone.
"Okay," I said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "My laptop is in my bag. And grab my notebook. Let's talk about their weak-side rotation."
My comeback had begun.