Chapter One
House of Horrors
Mitch Mustain’s initial reaction was to reach up and pull his facemask down.
It had become almost instinct for the quarterback after being sacked
or hit hard, a way to momentarily collect his thoughts when something had gone wrong on the field.
Only this time, Mustain knew something had gone terribly wrong.
He tried to lift his right arm off the worn turf at Quigley Stadium,
only to be greeted by a sharp pain in his forearm. It was the kind of pain he had felt before, similar to when he broke his jaw after falling from that tractor just before his seventh birthday. The pain was so sudden he instinctively reached up from the ground with his good arm, probing the painful area.
His first thought was to stay on the ground. He rolled over to his back
while teammate Mason Price stood over him, signaling to the sidelines
for the trainers once he saw the bulge in Mustain’s right arm.
In the next moment, Mustain decided not to wait for the trainers, instead rolling over, his elbow digging into the ground to keep his forearm off the grass. He then used his other arm to lift himself up and pull out his mouthpiece as he stood.
He had only taken a few short, wobbly steps toward the sideline before being met by team trainer Jamie Croley.
“It’s broken,” Mustain told Croley as they met.
Mustain could feel the bones shifting under his skin, and when Croley stopped the quarterback to feel his arm, the Springdale trainer knew Mustain’s spontaneous diagnosis was a correct one.
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