Red Zone: From the Offensive Line to the Front Line of the Pandemic by Laurent Duvernay-Tardif

Author:Laurent Duvernay-Tardif
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2022-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The Epiphany

One of our patients at the long-term care centre began to deteriorate. It was time for a doctor’s involvement. The head nurse handed me the phone and asked me to call Dr. Moser. I didn’t know him well. Among the many physicians who rotated in at the facility, he was the one I’d had the least contact with.

I didn’t know at the time that this was at least partly by design.

Dr. Moser, it turned out, was a football fan, a very enthusiastic one. When he’d learned that I was coming to work at the facility, he’d told the nurses that meeting me would be like “meeting my idol,” and that he might “black out” from speaking with me. Because most of the staff did not follow American football, and because he sounded like a pop music fan who was afraid of attending a Justin Bieber concert, they would just laugh. They told him that I was easygoing, open to questions, that I would understand. But their teasing did nothing to help him relax about my presence. Better, he decided, to steer clear so we could both focus on our jobs.

Five weeks in, the nurses decided enough was enough. That day, they handed me the phone, knowing he was the doctor on call—that he would have no choice but to face talking with me. Having no idea what was going on, I simply introduced myself when Dr. Moser answered.

“You’re joking!” he exclaimed.

We quickly managed to steer away from football to the matter at hand. I explained the situation with the patient. He asked what I thought, agreed with my diagnosis and gave some instructions for care. But I learned later that after hanging up, he sat for a good 15 minutes—numb, recuperating—much to the delight of the nurses who’d set him up.

The call served as a catalyst for a friendship with Dr. Moser. But the nurses accomplished more than that. Dr. Moser wasn’t the only one who’d been trying to avoid my very public NFL profile on the job. So had I.

I was trying so hard to prove that I wanted to be useful and productive, rather than be seen as a famous athlete, that I did my best to avoid any allusion to that other side of my life—the pro football side. Now that the ice had broken with Dr. Moser, I realized I could bring the workplace a commodity that was in short supply—a bit of playfulness and release—simply by letting people into that strange, rarefied world of professional sports, one they normally wouldn’t have such direct access to. Dr. Moser wasn’t the only staff member who loved the game, but most, like him, had been too shy to approach me about that part of my life. So I started telling tales from the sidelines, sharing inside jokes, letting them know what it was like to play alongside celebrated teammates like Pat Mahomes. It was a great delight, and a huge relief, to see my colleagues’ enjoyment.

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