USA TODAY International Edition
Practice- squad player visits sick kids Sundays
Athousand miles and two time zones from where his teammates had just kicked off against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, Taurean Nixon, a cornerback on the Denver Broncos practice squad, was crouched next to a hospital bed, putting pink and white leggings and a cardigan sweater on a doll named Caroline.
The game in Indianapolis played out on a small television across the room. But Nixon’s focus was on Caroline Pakiz, the precocious, bespectacled and sometimes bossy 4- year- old who has named all but one of her dolls after herself. She has been at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children since late October, one of her many extended stays as she battles chronic intestinal pseudo- obstruction, a rare congenital disease that has prevented her from eating food since January.
Minutes earlier, she greeted Nixon not by saying hello but with a wary, “Who are you?” But after Nixon started filling her bed with gifts — a Broncos superhero cape, eye- black stickers, fuzzy blue and orange socks and a signed mini- helmet, which was soon placed on Caroline the doll’s head — their friendship was solidified. Soon they were laughing as she pretended to be a kitten.
It was about as far from a typical NFL Sunday as one can get. And yet those were the best hours of Nixon’s week.
A rookie seventh- rounder out of Tulane, Nixon lives the typical practice- squad life. He serves multiple roles on the scout team, covering wideouts Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders on one series before switching to offense and run- ning receiver’s routes against cornerbacks Aqib Talib and Chris Harris. It’s the same grueling schedule as his teammates — practices, weightlifting and conditioning sessions and long hours of meetings — but for a fraction of the paycheck and none of the glory on game days.
When Nixon realized in early September that he wouldn’t travel to road games, he figured he needed to find a way to make himself feel useful Sundays. His solution: Go to the hospital and make a kid’s day.
Plenty of NFL players visit hospitals as part of their teamsponsored charity work, and Nixon is often part of a crew of Broncos who do it Tuesdays, typically the team’s day off. But Nixon’s Sunday visits — this was his third such trip — are different, because these are personal.
Nixon and his family understand what it feels like to constantly be in the hospital. Three years ago, his little brother T. J. was born with hydrocephalus, or fluid on his brain. T. J. had four surgeries in the first five months of his life, and each time the family steeled itself for the chance he wouldn’t survive.
“I was always thinking about my little brother, because I never knew when would be his last day, if he had a last day, you know what I mean?” said Nixon, who was in his sophomore year at the University of Memphis at the time. “I tried to use it at first as a motivational thing, like, ‘ I’m going to do this for my little brother.’ But it became too hard.”
Nixon would drive six hours from Memphis to his hometown of Baton Rouge each weekend just to spend about 24 hours at the hospital. Before long, he transferred to Tulane.
It’s still hard to be so far away from his family, which has relocated to Memphis. T. J. is crawling and trying to talk. His brain is still growing, and, though he’s developmentally behind other children his age, his relatives call him their “super fighter.”
Nixon admits these Sunday visits can get emotional because he remembers how lonely the hospital can be. During the Broncos’ previous road game, against the Cleveland Browns on Oct. 18, the teen whom Nixon visited told him he hadn’t been so happy in months. A week before that, Nixon revisited a kid he had seen earlier on a group visit, when the child was in a coma. That child’s relatives filled the room in the intensive care unit, and their cheers could be heard down the hall.
“I’m actually more happy about it, I’m pretty sure, than most of the families are, because I’m able to spend my time with a kid that may look up to me. And after I leave, they’ll understand, ‘ Dang, he’s just like us,’ ” Nixon said. “I want them to know that I’m the same as they are and that my family went through the same that they’re going through.”
Unlike his two previous Sunday visits, watching the Broncos lose to the Colts proved to be excruciating. Nixon sat in a chair near the television and talked through the game with Caroline’s father, Andy, as much as it pained him to see his teammates falter in the game’s crucial moments. It’s another aspect of practice- squad life for Nixon and so many players like him — even though he’s not in uniform, he celebrates the wins and laments the losses as if he were there.
“This is my first loss,” Nixon said, shaking his head.
But then he stood and walked to Caroline’s bed. She smiled and meowed. Nixon laughed and gave her a hug goodbye.
He’d won after all.
“I want them to know that I’m the same as they are.” Broncos cornerback Taurean Nixon, whose little brother T. J. spent months in the hospital