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Chiefs DE
Eric Hicks
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Eric Hicks heard the screams.
These were not the type of screams Hicks, a defensive lineman for the Chiefs, was used
to hearing on the football field. They were not the screams of a teammate exulting after a
sack. They were not the screams of a player who had just blown out his knee.
These were the screams of Hicks’ wife, Erica. Their 7-day-old daughter, Shayla,
was in cardiac arrest at an Ozark, Mo., hospital. Hicks and his wife could only watch
helplessly, nervously, frantically.
"It was the scariest thing I had ever gone through in my life," Hicks says.
"I was a parent for the first time. Only a 7-day-old parent myself. And I just kept
thinking, ‘My little girl is going to die.’ Of course, we didn’t know what
was wrong with her at that point. So we were scared out of (our) mind. My wife was
screaming. I was trying to be strong, but it was kind of hard."
How could this be happening?
Hicks looked at his tiny child, fearing the worst. Her heart was failing. His heart was
breaking.
The hospital staff revived Shayla and worked on her for two hours. Then Shayla was
flown to a hospital in Kansas City, while Hicks and his wife drove for two-and-a-half
hours to meet her there. It had to seem like two-and-a-half days.
"It was bad, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been," Hicks says.
"They called us from the helicopter while they were in the air to keep us
updated."
As the helicopter arrived at the Kansas City hospital, little Shayla almost died again.
Somehow she survived.
The doctors fixed the aorta that was blocked near her heart, and she temporarily seemed
fine as her father headed off to his second NFL training camp in 1999.
Then Shayla started having problems eating, so a pediatrician recommended that tests be
taken. It turned out that her heart was like a piece of Swiss cheese. Holes everywhere.
Everything was happening so fast for Hicks. John Browning, who was a starting defensive
end for the Chiefs, suffered a season-ending Achilles injury. The DLE job was up in the
air. Opportunity was knocking for Hicks. That day, Hicks got a call from his wife, who
told him the latest bad news about Shayla. A parent’s worst nightmare was knocking
for Hicks. Which knock should he answer? Which door should he open? What should he do?
How could this be happening?
Hicks thought about his tiny child and tried to decide what to do. Her heart was
failing. His heart was breaking.
"I didn’t know whether to go home or stay there and just keep on
playing," Hicks says.
Should he leave training camp to offer moral support, or should he stay and fight for a
starting job that could provide the financial support that Shayla’s medical condition
was going to require?
There were no flights for Hicks to take that night as he pondered what to do.
Finally, then-head coach Gunther Cunningham came to Hicks and said, "Hey, we got
you a flight home in the morning."
Hicks said, "I don’t know."
Then Cunningham said something marvelous: "If you don’t go home, I’m
going to cut you. So you will go."
The Chiefs’ organization told Hicks that he would get the starting job if he
earned it when he returned to training camp. Hicks went home for two days to be with his
family.
The day Hicks arrived, doctors performed a pulmonary banding procedure to restrict
blood flow and keep it from going into Shayla’s lungs, which was the source of her
latest problem.
"She probably would have died within a month if not for that banding," Hicks
says.
The procedure offered a temporary solution, not a cure. The banding was designed to buy
time until the holes would close on their own as Shayla got older.
As Hicks fought for a starting job with the Chiefs, Shayla’s woes continued the
rest of the summer and through that October.
The lowest moment for Hicks came that August, just prior to what should have been a
happy moment. It was the night before he would get his first pro start in a preseason
game.
"It seemed like nothing was ever going to go right, and it just seemed like she
wasn’t going to make it too many more days," Hicks says. "She just looked
like she wasn’t going to make it, and they had to call a whole bunch of doctors in.
It was just a scary moment."
Shayla survived that night. It was part of what was becoming an all-too-familiar
pattern of Shayla dodging death but not being able to declare the battle won.
More times than he cares to remember, Hicks would go to the hospital after practice and
see that Shayla’s oxygen level had dropped to life-threatening levels.
"Sometimes I would get to the hospital at 5 o’clock after working all day,
and people would be running out of the room, and they’d be calling ‘code
blue,’ " Hicks says.
Shayla kept hanging on for dear life. Not every child is so fortunate. Hicks, being a
Chiefs player, was a celebrity to the kids in the hospital in which Shayla was being
treated. When he wasn’t with Shayla, Hicks would visit these other sick children.
"Then the next day, I would go back to the hospital, and the room would be
empty," Hicks says. "And I’d ask, ‘Did they go home? They were pretty
sick yesterday.’ And they’d be like, ‘No, they died.’
"It was really sad. We’ve developed relationships with people there that
we’ve actually gone to their funerals, their children’s funerals that died, the
children that died while Shayla was there."
Shayla, one tough little cookie, was still fighting for her life. There was talk of the
possibility of a heart transplant, but that was not an ideal solution.
"She wouldn’t have lived probably past 5 years old," Hicks says.
"So we were really hoping that they could just, by the grace of God, fix
everything."
A father worried about the worst and prayed for the best for his daughter. Her heart
was failing. His heart was breaking.
And then, finally, a burst of sunshine. In October of that year, a test showed that,
miraculously, all but one of the holes in Shayla’s heart had healed. The third
open-heart surgery of Shayla’s young life fixed that last hole. Problem solved. These
days, Shayla is completely out of harm’s way.
"Shayla is perfect," Hicks says as he holds her. "She’s never going
to have a problem, they say. She just has to get stress tests before she does sports when
she’s older.
"She’s really tall. I think she’s going to be a basketball player,
personally. I obviously will let her do anything she wants. She’s just a miracle. She
can do nothing if she wanted, but I think she’s going to be a real go-getter, just an
active type. I can’t wait until she has kids so she can tell them a story of what
happened to her."
Don’t be surprised if Shayla tells her kids a story about her dad as well. It is
quite a tale. Remember how the Chiefs told Hicks he could win the starting job when he
returned to training camp from Shayla’s hospital bedside if he earned it? Well, guess
what? Hicks did just that.
A year earlier, he had not even been drafted, yet he made the team. Then, during
Shayla’s health trials and tribulations, he somehow maintained the focus to win the
starting job left open by Browning’s injury.
"I think it was easier for me to focus because I knew I needed to work and have
good medical insurance because her hospital bills ended up being … now it’s
around like a million dollars," Hicks says. "Football actually gave me a little
bit of relief. The hitting and everything in practice just let me get out a little bit of
my aggression because I couldn’t obviously do it at the hospital."
Hicks started all 16 games during the ’99 season. In the Chiefs’ 13th game,
he returned a fumble 44 yards for a touchdown to break a 21-21 tie in Kansas City’s
31-28 win over the Vikings. Hicks got home a little bit after midnight from the game. The
first thing he did was go to Shayla’s room and put the football from his touchdown in
her crib. It still sits there to this day.
The best was yet to come, although, as seems to be a recurring theme, not without an
unwanted detour.
Hicks, who had only four sacks in ’99, got off to a blazing start in 2000, posting
seven sacks in the first seven games. In that seventh game, however, disaster struck. He
tore the medial collateral ligament in his knee.
"I can remember sitting on the field, saying, ‘Why now?’ " Hicks
says. "I usually am not big on questioning God about things, and I didn’t do it
that day, but I just was (thinking), ‘This really stinks.’ "
Hicks returned to action after missing three games, yet still managed to finish the
season with a whopping 14 sacks, the third-highest total in the AFC in 2000.
Not bad for an undersized defensive end who was not drafted and made himself into a
player by drinking a gallon of milk a day during his first NFL offseason, thus adding a
much-needed 25 pounds to his frame. Not bad for someone who had every excuse in the world
to lose focus as a player during his daughter’s health woes but instead fought for
his family, his team, his future.
This offseason, for the first time since he turned pro, everything is great for Hicks.
No longer is he a long shot to make the team. No longer does he have to fight to be a
starter. No longer does he have to wonder if he is capable of becoming a big-time player.
And most importantly, no longer does he have to worry about Shayla’s health.
He and his wife just bought a new house. A vacation to the Bahamas was on the offseason
agenda.
"We pretty much don’t have any worries now," Hicks says.
Anxiety is only found in the rear-view mirror these days, so it’s full-speed
ahead.
"Now I’m just going to try to honor my daughter as much as I can and try to
make the Pro Bowl, All-Pro, things like that, and try to go down as one of the best pass
rushers in Chiefs, if not NFL, history," Hicks says.
His foot is still on the accelerator in terms of these professional goals, yet there is
also a sense that Hicks can finally relax, finally breathe comfortably, finally stop and
smell the roses.
"Everybody is healthy, and it’s just a lot of fun," Hicks says.
The only screaming going on in the Hicks family these days is the healthy crying of
young Shayla. Oh, yes, and the desire of her father to scream for joy.
Her heart is working. His heart is swelling with pride. |
