Navy inspired by Chris Ferguson's story

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In a hotel in Annapolis, Md., on the last night of September, Navy freshman safety Chris Ferguson decided to spill a secret he'd kept for 11 years.

He sat among his teammates and coaches in a reception hall just off the lobby. The next day, the Midshipmen would play Air Force, and tonight, to prepare for it, Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo had organized a meal for his team, followed by a rally of sorts about what it meant to play for Navy. Niumatalolo had put a cardboard box near the front of the hall that he called "the all-in box," and he asked his players to in essence proselytize, to proclaim why they were all-in, why they chose the Midshipmen, Annapolis, this way of life.

The first guys to walk to the front of the room talked about their commitment to cause and country, but soon the topics became more personal: growing up in rough neighborhoods, in broken homes or with parents who had cancer. It inspired Ferguson. They've gone through just as much, he thought. And suddenly, the 6-foot-2, 195-pound plebe was up and out of his chair and walking to the front of the hall, sharing with roughly 100 men a story he had been loathe to tell anyone.

He said he remembered rising out of bed that morning in 2000, an 8-year-old boy late for school, and just collapsing on the floor. Every time Ferguson tried to stand, his legs wobbled, strained and gave out under him. His dad, Keith Ferguson, was down the hall in the family's two-bedroom house in Clayton, N.C., telling Chris and his older brother, Keith Jr., to get dressed and eat breakfast. When after a moment Chris didn't emerge from his room, Keith went to check on him. He found Chris on the ground, in a half-crawl.

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Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesChris Ferguson is beginning to make a name for himself on the field with Navy.

"C'mon, Chris. Don't play," Keith said. The boy, like his father, could clown and joke with the best of them. But Chris said he wasn't joking. He couldn't get up. Keith watched him try a couple more times, and that's when Chris vomited all over the floor.

Keith and his wife, Savita, rushed Chris to a nearby hospital. Doctors ran tests on him but could find nothing wrong. The Fergusons were told to take their son home. But Chris grew uncomfortable there, looked pale and still couldn't stand. Keith and Savita took him back to the hospital, where doctors transferred him to a larger one, in Raleigh, a half-hour away. More blood drawn, more probes, but still no answers, so the doctors in Raleigh moved Chris to the children's ward at the medical center in Chapel Hill, the best in the state. By this point, it was 10 p.m. and a fever burned through the boy, leaving him sweaty and limp.

The doctors in Chapel Hill tried everything they knew -- even performed a spinal tap -- but could not reach a diagnosis.

Day after grim day, Chris remained in the hospital, doctors testing his liver again or his kidneys, or drawing more blood, or trying to see whether he could stand. But the only thing that changed was Chris' appearance. He was a large, almost chunky boy in Clayton, and now, in Chapel Hill, when Keith or Savita pulled back Chris' bedsheets, they could see his bony ribs. After a week in the hospital, he'd gone from a size 14 to a size six. Keith and Savita tried to comfort Chris by telling him he was sick but would get better. "But there was death in that room," Keith says today. "You could smell it on him."

One night, doctors told Keith and Savita to make preparations for Chris' funeral. Keith got up and walked away in a daze. Savita, though, eyed the doctors. "I refuse to believe that," she said.

One physician said he had a friend in New York he wanted to contact, to ask his opinion. The next thing the Fergusons knew, the New York doctor was flying down on the red-eye. When he walked into Chris' room in Chapel Hill, he spent a few moments studying Chris and his charts, then turned to Savita and Keith. "I think I know what's wrong with your son," he said.

He told them he thought Chris had something called Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system. No one knew what caused it, but one way to treat it was through plasma exchanges, in which blood is separated from plasma, a colorless fluid that contains antibodies, and then both the blood cells and plasma are returned to the body. During the first plasma exchange, Keith saw a dim light shine and then expand across Chris' face.

Chris stayed in the hospital for a month. He had lost much more than weight. He slurred his speech, didn't have the fine motor skills necessary to write his name, couldn't differentiate between colors. And he still couldn't walk.

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AP Photo/Mel EvansFerguson got his first start at Rutgers this season.

Some doctors warned the Fergusons before they returned home that Chris might not regain his full range of motion until he was in high school or even later; how quickly he'd recover mentally remained relatively unknown, too. But at home, Chris always wanted to do more physical therapy. He chased after Keith Jr., two years older, in his wheelchair, and his parents encouraged him to reach for what was outside his grasp. Chris' second-grade teacher, Alison Brian, came by twice a week to tutor him. Brian was amazed by his tenacity. Even with neighborhood kids playing outside Chris' window on sunny afternoons, the boy focused solely on her and her lesson plans.

"He just wanted to be a normal kid again," Savita says.

The more extraordinary his progress, the more ordinary he became. Slurred speech gave way to clean diction, long pauses to quick answers during lessons. Chris migrated from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane and then, finally, after a year, to his own two feet.

Suddenly, he was not ordinary at all. By fifth grade, he starred on the basketball team. By seventh grade, he told his parents he wanted to play quarterback for the junior high squad. That's when Keith told Chris what he'd spared him as an 8-year-old. "You nearly died," he said. "This is your second chance. Don't waste it." The already focused teenager furrowed his brows further. He pursued everything with purpose, intensity, a gratitude for life.

Chris' high school coach, Kwame Dixon, remembers a young man, a clear leader among his friends, never really goofing off with them. "He was always more quiet, serious," Dixon says. By his senior year, Chris' play at West Johnston High School had gained the notice of East Carolina and NC State. But he liked the ethos at the Naval Academy, the discipline, even though heading there meant switching to safety.

Ferguson finished his story that night in the reception hall to stunned silence. A couple of players later approached Savita to say they had tears in their eyes when Chris told them about his life. Buddy Green, the defensive coordinator who recruited Ferguson, now says his story explains his maturity.

Ferguson's approach to football has been rewarded. Two weeks after the Air Force game, on Oct. 15, Green started Ferguson at safety against Rutgers. He forced a fumble and returned an interception for a touchdown. "Not a bad first game, huh?" Green says. Two weeks after that, the freshman got another pick against SMU, in a big 24-17 win in Dallas. "He is only a freshman," Niumatalolo says. "But he doesn't act like one -- and he doesn't play like one, either."

On Saturday, Ferguson will have his first game before a national television audience. And if he performs like he has this season, even more people will know his name by game's end. The expectations will only rise, and the kid who worked so hard to be ordinary again, just one of the kids, will be anything but. Ferguson, though, is nonplussed at the prospects. "Especially after what I've been through," he says.

Paul Kix is a general editor at ESPN The Magazine. Follow The Mag on Twitter @ESPNmag and like us on Facebook.

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