CANTON, Ohio -- While the NFL and the city of Houston celebrated a beginning last night, Dorothy Evans was on bended knee in Abbeville, S.C., with her head down and eyes closed. She knelt before her television, weeping uncontrollably, her phone next to her, praying with everything she had that Monday night wouldn't bring her an end.

	A motionless Leomont Evans is taken off the field after a first-half hit. He woudl later be diagnosed with a bruised spinal cord.

"Is my baby dead?", she wondered as she saw her fourth and youngest son, Leomont, a backup Texans safety, laying motionless on the turf at Fawcett Stadium. "Is he breathing?" No one knew. "Will he ever move?" No one knew. That was the worst part, that no one knew.

She called Leomont's wife, Felicia. She, crying, also didn't know. Felicia was on her way to an airport, ready to board any plane she could. Only at the time the doctors were thinking of moving Leomont from Aultman Hospital in Canton to a larger one. They didn't know, either.

At 12:24 of the second quarter of the Texans' first-ever game, the Giants punted. Leomont rushed punter Rodney Williams, but 10 yards into his drive he lowered his head and tried to power over New York running back Sean Bennett. Evans collapsed. He lay face-planted in the turf, his right leg straight, the left off to the side, his arms motionless. Doctors flowed onto the field. Then more came. No matter how many were there, Evans didn't move. Not a twitch, not a flinch. The Texans team gathered into a group prayer. On the other sideline, Giants coach Jim Fassel said, "I was just praying. Just praying."

Back in South Carolina, Dorothy, just off work and not yet changed into more comfortable clothes, froze. Leomont's cousin, Linda, at her home a couple miles away from Dorothy's, froze. Leomont's grandmother, Annie, froze. Felicia, in Houston, froze. Monday Night Football went to a commercial. Never have there been 45 seconds more painful in that family's life.

"That's my baby," Dorothy said, crying. "That's my baby out there. The baby of my four children." She thought about what her baby was going through, what he was thinking. After all, that Evans was even on the field was a small miracle of its own. This is someone who missed his entire junior season at Clemson due to chronic headaches. Why? The doctors said he ate too much chocolate.

But now, on the field, Leomont was breathing, but that was about it. Team doctor Walter Lowe said Leomont muttered words that made no sense and had no idea where he was. He had no movement in his upper and lower extremities. As Leomont was rushed off the field on a stretcher, Lowe's sunny side told him Leomont might be OK. His realistic side told him he might be paralyzed for the rest of his life.

Back in South Carolina, the calls started coming in to Dorothy, and as they did, she stopped crying, sort of, then started up again. First from Felicia, saying she was on her way to Ohio. She gave a report that Leomont regained feeling in his right leg. Dorothy, without call waiting, took any incoming call and got off the phone as quick as she could.

Then came an update from the team. Then from the television. When a reporter called with an update, she said through tears, "God bless. You call me if you hear anything. The phone is by my side. And I won't be going to bed tonight."

As the game dripped on, the phone kept ringing, bits of good news trickling in. A CAT scan and MRI showed Leomont's spine and neck to be normal. No breaks, but a spinal cord contusion. The difference between the two is a lifetime of a chair or the stairs. Improbably, wonderfully, heart-warmingly, the news was inching better.

The steroids the doctors jammed into his body were working. A half hour later, she learned Leomont could feel his right foot. Then he started to regain feeling in his upper body. Gradually, Dorothy was not only praying to God but thanking Him, too.

That's the thing with miracles: They work on their own time.

In a cramped room a punt away from the Hall of Fame, Lowe stood before cameras and managed to smile. Leomont would be flown back to Houston on Tuesday. He could speak. He could feel. He knew where he was. Lowe wasn't in the mood to predict Leomont would be walking, but as he spoke he breathed and sighed and shook his head in wonder. "It's better than it could have been," he said.

When that news was relayed to Dorothy, for the first time, the mother was calm, as if whatever torment she felt had sank and the elation that replaced it rose straight to her heart. She spoke slowly and breathed at a perfect rhythm. She was bracing for an all-nighter on her knees, by her bed, praying sometimes aloud and sometimes silent. But as if some prayers were already answered, her night would be spent with a strange, uncanny, sudden bit of peace.

And finally, as midnight passed, for the first time since she walked through the door, the work clothes were going to come off.

Seth Wickersham covers the NFL for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at seth.wickersham@espnmag.com.