supper at the best table: injuries priced in months and years of development
the ruptured patellar tendon that’ll cost him at least six months of competitive development. Penn, whose femoral fracture’ll cost him a year, isn’t even back yet from St. E.’s orthopedic.
Context
The regimen's injuries are booked in the only currency that matters here: developmental time. Ingersoll comes back on crutches with "the ruptured patellar tendon that'll cost him at least six months of competitive development," and Penn's "femoral fracture'll cost him a year." A broken body isn't measured in pain but in ranking-months forfeited — six months, a year — as if the boys are projects with fixed schedules and an injury is a slipped deadline. The hall's unease is the whole room doing that math.