I looked back at the TV, unable to hold eye contact with him. “Thanks, Leo,” I said. “After the game, maybe.” Yet even as I said it, I knew all the talk in the world wasn’t going to fix this. “But for now, do you think you could maybe . . . just . . . turn the colors off? Just make everything old-school black-and-white?”

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he might push for an explanation. But then finally he picked up the remote. “I can do that.”

He tapped a few buttons, and I watched as the colors faded and were gone. And although it didn’t calm me entirely, it narrowed the bandwidth of my stress to simple light and shadow.

“There you go,” Leo said. “Black-and-white. Just like the old days.”

The rest of that week was so unremarkably normal, I was lulled into a false sense of security. People talk about “the elephant in the room,” but this thing with colors, I beat it down until it was more like a mouse in the corner. One tiny blip of weirdness in an otherwise rational world. And if I was apprehensive about our next game, I was in denial about that, too.

There was no reason to think that what happened last Friday would repeat. And for three whole quarters, it didn’t. But the fourth quarter was an entirely different story.

Less than five minutes to go in the game. It was third down for the opposing team, first and goal. We were down by six, and the other team’s quarterback was throwing passes like guided missiles. I knew I had to take him down before he could throw the ball for the touchdown.

It began like a normal play—and perhaps for everyone else it was. The ball was snapped, I engaged the offensive linemen, getting past them like a greased pig, and headed straight for the quarterback, feeling as fast and powerful as a locomotive.

This time it happened the moment I sacked the quarterback.

I felt the impact. Felt the instant of ice—and this time I actually sensed myself sliding sideways, but just like the chill, it only lasted an instant. And then I was running off the field with the rest of the defensive team. I didn’t remember hitting the ground, or getting up. I must have tackled the quarterback, because the other team was punting. I must have lost at least five seconds, maybe ten, and that weird scrambling in my head—the ache-less headache—was back.

I told myself it was nothing. I had a game to play and couldn’t let something like this get in the way. Whatever it was, whatever it meant, it could wait. For all I knew everything was now back to normal, and this was the end of it.