His retreat, his escape from the guilt and pressure and “shame” of it all – his word – arrived halfway across the world. Andrew Luck spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in the Netherlands, carving a turkey he bought from the local butcher, poring through books, trying to learn Dutch. It was there he finally started to see it, this reality he'd long resisted. Hope withering, pain persistent, he realized he might never play football again. Worse yet, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
He was 28 years old.
It sent him into a dark place, a place where hope was hard to see.