Soul Survivor

The team members are regathering in the Rubber Room to hear their grades. Devard sees Devaughn sitting beside the trainer with ice packs on his neck, but it's just fatigue, he thinks, it'll pass. "C'mon, Devaughn," he says. Suddenly he sees teammate O.J. Jackson and the trainer carrying his twin out the door as a coach calls out, "There goes our only F."

"I gotta go check on my brother!" cries Devard. He rushes downstairs and into the training room, glimpses his brother on a table with ice bags packed around him, a mask over his mouth, the trainers frantically pumping his chest. No pulse! His eyes are rolling back into his head! Call EMS! Somebody shoves Devard out of the room.

Devard starts screaming, cursing the coaches and their mat drills, running upstairs to tell everyone what they've done to his twin, then turning—his brother needs him!—and running back. Corey Simon, the former Florida State defensive lineman who has just finished his rookie year with the Philadelphia Eagles, comes down the hallway on his way to lift weights and sees Devard's panic and the anger building in the gathering knot of players. He pulls Devard away. He gets him on his knees to pray.

An ambulance arrives. Paramedics rush into the trainers' room. Players hold hands in the hallway. Players howl at coaches, players wail to God.

The trainers' room door opens. Out comes Devaughn on a stretcher, into the ambulance. Devard bolts to the front seat. It's like a movie now, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real. "C'mon, Devaughn!" he keeps shouting back as they race toward Tallahassee Regional Memorial. "C'mon, Devaughn! Breathe!"

The paramedics rush Devaughn into the emergency room. Devard is left in the waiting room. A receptionist hands him forms and a pen. He can't fill in a single blank. A nurse sees his desperation. She takes him to his twin. He sees all the tubes and EKG leads attached to him, screams to his brother, touches his leg—God, it feels so hard—wheels and staggers out of the room. He stabs at his cellphone, blurts craziness to Mummy.

"Devard, calm down," she says. "He'll be all right."

"No, Mummy.... I hate these coaches! I hate them!"

Half the team is in the waiting room, crying, praying, trying to console Devard. An E.R. doctor enters.

Devard sees his face.