No One Left Behind, Except for Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Four Jackets
On the night before Homecoming the captain hands out four team jackets and none is for the trainer; the next day the buses are gone, her line on the headcount already says aboard, and freezing rain begins.
The night before the Homecoming game, Tate held up four navy team jackets in front of all forty-two players.
I stood in the equipment room doorway with my clipboard.
I had written the team's cold-weather protocol myself, from the wind-chill limits down to the final headcount before the buses left.
That afternoon the ice storm warning had been raised to its highest level.
Tate laid the jackets across the equipment table.
"One for me. One for my girlfriend. One for my cousin."
He unfolded the last one and handed it to the transfer girl.
The white tape on its cuff read Cahill, 17.
I had sewn that tape on myself three years ago.
The equipment manager had approved four extra jackets for the four of us who grew up on one street.
The transfer girl came last fall, so she never had one.
Now she had mine.
His girlfriend came over and patted my shoulder. "Natalie, you're the athletic training major. You handle the cold better than any of us."
The whole room laughed, and Tate's cousin laughed loudest.
The transfer girl's fingers had gone white around the zipper.
I knew exactly what that meant, because her first week on the team I had done her cold-exposure assessment myself.
Her name was Heidi, and she had Raynaud's.
I had given her two hand warmers, wool-lined gloves and a one-page guide to managing a flare-up.
"Natalie, maybe I should give it back," Heidi said. "I'm really fine."
Tate's girlfriend, Reagan, caught her hand. "Don't. The minute you get cold, you'll flare up. Natalie knows that."
His cousin Rhett shrugged. "It's just a jacket."
I did not argue.
I had already said everything that mattered, in an email to the entire team at 4:12 on Thursday afternoon.
The email warned that freezing rain was coming Saturday evening, with gusts up to forty miles an hour and a wind chill near twenty below.
It asked the coach to move the kickoff up.
It asked that the buses stay in the lot after the game until every single person was accounted for.
Tate opened it at 4:15.
All he wrote in our group chat was: Not the first time we've played in the snow.
The chat was named No One Left Behind.
Tate named it himself when we were fifteen, the night his dad's boat lost power on Lake Superior.
The four of us spent that night in the cabin, alive on a giant thermos of hot chocolate I'd brought.
On the dock the next morning, Tate swore that wherever we went, none of us would ever be left behind.
I believed him for seven years.
I walked out of the equipment room with my phone buzzing in my hand.
It was Doc, the team physician, who had been my mentor for three years.
The Oslo deadline is midnight. Natalie, you should go.
The University of Oslo had offered me a place in a two-year master's program in extreme-environment sports medicine.
For three weeks I had left the offer unanswered.
I had promised Tate I would run his shoulder rehab until his pro tryout next spring, and I had never broken a promise to him.
I stood under the one bare bulb outside the equipment room and read Doc's text again.
At 11:58, I hit Accept.
In the same second, a message from Tate lit up the group chat.
Tomorrow on the bus back, I'm calling the four seats in the last row.
I looked at the word four for a long time.
Then I set my alarm for the morning equipment count, and I told nobody about Oslo.
On Saturday, the coach moved the game up to noon.
That was the only line of my email anyone followed.
By five o'clock the buses were loading in the stadium lot at Harlan State, and I was still inside with the last equipment bin.
The protocol says the trainer counts the gear last.
I had texted Tate at 4:50: Hold the bus for me, ten minutes.
He had written back: Take your time.
At 5:03 my phone buzzed again.
It was the headcount app I built, the one that keeps the buses parked until every name turns green.
43 of 43 complete. Signed T. Rowley, 5:02.
I stopped in the tunnel.
I opened the list.
My own name, Cahill, Natalie, was green.
Aboard.
I had never stepped on a bus.
Tate must have tapped it by mistake, I told myself.
I dropped the bin and ran.
I came out of the tunnel just as the last bus pulled toward Route 9.
I waved both arms over my head.
In the back window, I could see four heads in the last row.
None of them waved back.
The taillights went around the corner at 5:12.
The stadium lights went off section by section behind me, and the lot was empty.
Then the first drop of freezing rain hit my phone screen, right on top of the words 43 of 43.
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