Cal rugby player Robert Paylor experienced “sheer terror” three years ago when he found himself lying on the grassy pitch, unable to move or feel anything below his neck.

Then it got worse.

Worse, like the news that he’d never walk again, followed by 11 months in the hospital, the first month of which he spent fighting to keep from choking to death on his own phlegm.

Next month, Paylor will graduate from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

“It’s a pretty big accomplishment,” Paylor says.

Here’s another pretty big accomplishment: If there is a graduation stage to walk across, Paylor will walk across it. Slowly, with a walker, but walking.

That will be no surprise to the 1.4 million people who viewed Paylor’s Twitter post from March 19. It’s a 35-second video of him standing up from his bed into his walker and moving about 8 feet.

I stood up out of my bed and into my walker today. This is a huge step towards me being able to walk around my house on my own. Getting that much closer to saying goodbye to my wheelchair! pic.twitter.com/4Gn1yCcLxp — Robert Paylor (@RobertPaylor5) March 19, 2020

Inspiring, right? But in the story of Robert Paylor’s comeback, it’s hard to sort out just who is inspiring whom. As Paylor was telling his story recently, getting to darkest parts, he was asked, Did you ever come close to giving up?

“It’s been over 1,060 days, and it’s been unwavering,” Paylor said. “When all these (medical) people were saying no, there were a thousand people saying yes, who believed in me. Sometimes when I’m down on myself, I’m getting all these messages from people telling me how I’ve changed their lives, and they pray for me every day — I can’t stop, and it’s for them. This whole thing is for them. When I feel like not walking for myself, I need to walk for them.”

Pause.

“To answer your question, no.”

Not even when, six hours after the accident, a doctor told Paylor he would never walk again, and most likely would never be able to lift a slice of pizza to his mouth. And, by the way, he needed life-threatening surgery immediately.

However, that same day, one doctor cracked open the door to hope, just a sliver. The doctor told him, “Robert, the harder you work, the more you can change your outcome.”

“I don’t know if you’ve seen ‘Dumb and Dumber,’” Paylor said in a phone interview from his parents’ home near Sacramento. “The guy asks a girl what his chances are with her. She says, ‘One in a million.’ He says, ‘So you’re saying there’s a chance!’”

That doctor’s words stayed with Paylor and helped him kick open that door to hope. Figuratively, of course, because at the time, he couldn’t feel his legs, let alone move them.

That one-in-a-million hope kept him going through the dark times, which began May 6, 2017. Cal was playing Arkansas State in Santa Clara for the national championship. It was early in the game. Paylor, a 6-foot-5, 235-pound sophomore lock, was dragged down by the neck by an opponent, who held Paylor’s neck in the crook of his arm as the maul (a cluster of players) collapsed. Three of Paylor’s neck vertebrae shattered, slicing into his spinal cord.

He was taken to a Santa Clara hospital, received an MRI and was given the grim prognosis.

Then it got worse.

Transferred a month later to a spinal-cord injury rehab facility in Colorado, Paylor developed pneumonia, which for a month kicked what was left of his butt. He couldn’t eat, swallow or move, and he lost 60 pounds.

Paylor said that when he reads of COVID-19 patients fighting for life, he can relate, recalling 105-degree fevers and death’s-door lung congestion.

“What I had was different from COVID, in that I was producing phlegm in my lungs, and the name of the game was getting that out,” Paylor said. “I couldn’t cough (it out). My cough was nothing more than a forceful breath. Every three hours, they came in and we’d spend at least an hour (dislodging and expelling the phlegm). They’d get the biggest guy they had among the nurses, he’d just start slamming down on my diaphragm, sometimes for three straight hours.”

During one slamathon, as the gunk filled a large jar, the doctor kept saying, “This is bad, this is bad. Your life’s never going to be the same.”

Then, “when he was walking out the door,” Paylor said, “he turns around and he looks at me and he just says, ‘You’re in trouble, Robert.’”

He heard that, but he also heard, “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”

Paylor finally shook off the pneumonia and began his rehab. Long road. Six months from the injury, he could twitch a finger.

He was never alone. Paylor’s support team could fill a stadium. His parents took turns at his bedside in Colorado while his brother was back home finishing high school. Paylor’s mother slept in a chair next to his bed for weeks. He was in that hospital 11 months.

A GoFundMe account raised more than $1 million to help pay his medical expenses. When Paylor returned to Cal and classwork last fall, his rugby brothers got busy. Head coach Jack Clark’s spreadsheet assured Paylor would have a teammate to push him in his wheelchair to every class and every rehab workout, and help him with routine tasks as he fought to regain mobility.

Paylor hit the gym with Tom Billups, Cal rugby’s associate coach and strength and conditioning coach. Billups appointed himself Paylor’s rehab angel, giving himself a crash course in neuroplasticity.

“Here’s a guy who didn’t know anything about neurological rehab,” Paylor said of Billups, “and he’s really taken it on his shoulders to help me achieve my goals.”

The two didn’t know what they might be able to achieve, but they knew there was only one way it would work.

“We had to approach it with some unbridled enthusiasm,” Billups said.

No problem. Paylor had been an outstanding rugby player on a great team. “Probably on his way to being an All-American,” Clark said. Billups said that a lot of players will do what a coach asks, but Paylor would do that and keep going, “Then you’re going to have to tell him, ‘OK, that’s enough.’”

They set to work, four or five days a week, up to 2 ½ hours a day. Paylor is back up to 200 pounds, where he aims to stay.

Any degree of recovery from spinal-cord injury is a mysterious blend of faith, fortitude and luck. Paylor’s spinal injury was incomplete, meaning the cord wasn’t completely severed. A thin thread was left intact, but the odds of success were not great. Paylor knows an Iowa football player with a similar injury who has been given a 3% chance of regaining movement.

“The goal from Day 1 was to be independent from my wheelchair,” Paylor said. “So whether that’s walking with a walker, crutches, a cane or free-walking, that’s my main goal. The likelihood I wind up free-walking and you look at me like a normal person on the street, that’s very unlikely. ...

“For the longest time, my goal was to stand up into my walker, and that’s starting to happen.”

A crucial element of Paylor’s recovery has been emotional — letting go of his anger at the player whose illegal hold caused the injury.

“I don’t think he tried to break my neck,” Paylor said, “I don’t think anybody would try to do that. I do think he tried to collapse the maul (which is against the rules), and he was doing it by whatever means necessary.

“He’s never reached out to me. He’s never said he’s sorry, still to this day, and neither has the coach of Arkansas State. But I forgive him, whether he’s sorry or not — I really do.

“In the beginning, I wanted to be really mad at him, and I wanted him to know how much I hurt, and to at least feel some remorse, and I never got any of that. But that moment of forgiveness was so important for me, and I hope a lot of other people can use that in their lives, because those uncontrollable (factors) that we can give so much power to, and can consume us, things we can’t do anything about, it’s so important to let go. I certainly have.”

While working to regain his physical power, Paylor discovered the power of his message. With Clark’s assistance, Paylor has begun a career as a motivational speaker.

Clark said Paylor’s message goes beyond simply telling his dramatic story. There are lessons.

“He’s got a real point” in his speeches, Clark said. “It’s just really clear he’s going to go on and do some powerful stuff. He’s going to be really good at it.”

It’s not only Paylor’s speeches that are inspiring.

“This is my 21st year at Cal,” Billups said, “and in the big picture, it will probably end up being one of the greatest gifts that my professional life has provided me, is to be able to interact with Robert so intimately and directly on a regular basis.”

Paylor said someone asked him recently how he defines success in his journey.

“There’s a lot of darkness that does surround me, and I refused to let it affect me, to let it affect my happiness,” Paylor said, “so I would say true success in this journey for me is to take everything that’s happened to me, take all the blows to the chin, but still be happy and still wake up excited for the day, every day.”

Scott Ostler is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler