Leomont Evans, a free agent safety who played in the XFL last year, suffered a serious neck injury while trying to get to the Giants' punter. Now his family must deal with the uncertainty of not knowing if he will walk again.
"Is my baby dead?", she wondered as she saw her fourth and youngest son, Leomont, a backup Texans safety, laying motionless on the turf at Fawcett Stadium. "Is he breathing?" No one knew. "Will he ever move?" No one knew. That was the worst part, that no one knew.
She called Leomont's wife, Felicia. She, crying, also didn't know. Felicia was on her way to an airport, ready to board any plane she could. Only at the time the doctors were thinking of moving Leomont from Aultman Hospital in Canton to a larger one. They didn't know, either....
Then came an update from the team. Then from the television. When a reporter called with an update, she said through tears, "God bless. You call me if you hear anything. The phone is by my side. And I won't be going to bed tonight."
As the game dripped on, the phone kept ringing, bits of good news trickling in. A CAT scan and MRI showed Leomont's spine and neck to be normal. No breaks, but a spinal cord contusion. The difference between the two is a lifetime of a chair or the stairs. Improbably, wonderfully, heart-warmingly, the news was inching better.
The steroids the doctors jammed into his body were working. A half hour later, she learned Leomont could feel his right foot. Then he started to regain feeling in his upper body. Gradually, Dorothy was not only praying to God but thanking Him, too.
That's the thing with miracles: they work on their own time.
If all goes well, Evans will walk again. Football? Well, it IS only a game, and I doubt that football is really a primary concern for his family just now.
