Restart: Chapters 1–4

While my other questions sent murmurs of shock around my hospital bed, this one is greeted with silent resignation.

Amnesia. That’s what Dr. Cooperman says I have. Acute retrograde amnesia — the loss of all memory prior to a certain event.

“That I can answer,” supplies the younger guy, who turns out to be my older brother, Johnny, a college student home for the summer. “Your room has that dormer window. You just open it up and crawl out onto the eaves. You’ve been doing it as long as I can remember.”

“Ex-all-county running back, Dad,” Johnny amends. “You heard the doctor — Chase can’t play football this season.”

In fact, for a middle-aged guy, he’s pretty energetic and spry, despite the paunch and the thinning hair.

It must be Halloween, because there are little kids in costume in the background. I’m wielding a baseball bat, holding it high. Hanging off the tip of it is a mangled, ruined jack-o’-lantern.

The irony is that the case against Chase and company had nothing to do with the attack on my brother.

From out of the hubbub of the foyer, guys who are almost as big are converging on me, slapping at me and calling me their boy.

He heads out of the foyer to an inner atrium with hallways leading off it.

Bear stares at me hard. “Wait—you’re not kidding, are you?”
“I wish,” I say fervently.
He’s stunned. “Wow.”

I have a giddy vision of my phone screen — the three of us brandishing the baseball bat with the ruined jack-o’-lantern.

“This is an awful thing that’s happened to you, but it’s also presenting you with a rare opportunity. You have the chance to rebuild yourself from the ground up, to make a completely fresh start. Don’t squander it! I’m sure you’re not feeling very lucky, but there are millions of people who’d give anything to stand where you stand right now — in front of a completely blank canvas.”

I pull back the shot to include Jordan McDaniel, heading out of the food line with a heavily laden tray.

I speak the craziest, most foolhardy words that have ever come out of my mouth: “You need help with that?”

A chorus of raucous laughter explodes all around me. That’s when I notice I’m surrounded by football players.