Dan Pompei

In Room 330 of the Marriott Hotel in Providence, R.I., Takeo Spikes tries to sleep. In the morning, he will play in a regular-season game for the first time since Sept. 25 of last year, when he tore his Achilles' tendon.

Tonight, the Bills' linebacker wakes every couple of hours. He dozes off at 3 a.m. And he dreams. He sees himself making a sack. And forcing a fumble.

It's morning now, and he boards the hotel elevator to catch the team bus to Gillette Stadium. When the elevator bell rings, signaling its arrival at the lobby, he feels tingly, a rush of excitement. Spikes asks himself this question as the elevator doors open: "Looking back from the day of my injury, did I do everything I could have done?"

It's 80 minutes before kickoff, and he's walking on the field. He has a slight limp in his gait. The right leg, between the knee and the heel, is smaller than the left. Beneath his white stocking is a 7-inch scar.

He says hello to a friend, then crosses the goal line in the south end zone. He has a vision. "I don't know if it's a fumble or an interception, but I feel a touchdown in this end zone," he says as he walks back to the locker room.

Fifty weeks ago, when Spikes was lying on the field at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo, such visions and dreams were beyond the imagination.

It seems like yesterday. Spikes comes around the corner on a blitz. As he tries to free himself from Falcons tight end Alge Crumpler, his right leg gives way, and he goes down. He feels no pain. He hears nothing. Silence in a room with 73,000 people. He can't move his foot. He can't stand. He doesn't know it yet, but his Achilles' tendon looks like it went through a paper shredder.

The injury is not a surprise. Spikes had experienced pain in his lower right leg for a year. The Thursday before the game, he had felt something give when he took a step. He went in for an MRI, which showed small tears in his Achilles' tendon. He could have shut it down, but the linebacker whose first name means "great warrior" in Japanese is not that kind of player.

Dan Cappellazzo / AP Bills linebacker Takeo Spikes is helped off the field after tearing his right Achilles' tendon against the Falcons on Sept. 25, 2005.

He is carted off to the locker room, where his mother, Lillie, tells him, "You'll be all right." Spikes, who had been playing football for 22 years and never suffered a serious injury in a game, does not want to hear it. "I'm not going to be all right!" he yells. "I'm out for the whole year!" Tears are running down his cheeks.

In the days that follow surgery to repair the tendon, Spikes is miserable. He gets upset with his mother, who stays with him in his Atlanta home, because she feels sorry for him. And because she doesn't feel sorry for him. She tells him he is moodier than a pregnant woman in her third trimester.

One week after the game, Spikes is lying in his bed, unable to even get a drink of water without ringing a bell for his mother's assistance. The Bills are playing the Saints on TV. He listens to the national anthem, which always touches his heart. He sees his teammates lined up. He weeps.

For weeks, he can't bring himself to watch game tape. Even in February, he turns off the Pro Bowl, sickened by hearing broadcasters talk about the linebackers who were given one of the berths that could have — should have — been his.

Teammates, such as linebacker Mario Haggan, phone Spikes to try to lift his spirits. The conversations dance around Spikes' injury and his feelings of detachment. "What's up with the guys? ... How's your baby girl?" Anything to avoid the 1,000-pound ball and chain on Spikes' leg.