WINSTON-SALEM – Sam Hartman sat in a hospital room in August with his mom, Lisa Hartman, at his side.

The joke was that of course something like this — a blood clot, in this instance — would happen on the eve of Hartman’s final season as Wake Forest’s quarterback.

“It wouldn’t really be my career without having something like that happen, right?” Hartman said on Tuesday. “That was what my mom and I joked about, sitting in a hospital room, was just that it only makes sense for this to happen going into my last year here.

“So, you know, it’s something that I’ll always remember and look back. But it’d have been nice to not have to go through that.”

That’s been Hartman in a nutshell for five years as Wake’s quarterback. He takes the good with the bad — a nod to the rewiring coach Dave Clawson spoke of — and never shied from deploying a dry, sarcastic humor that makes him relatable.

Hartman went from freshman starter to redshirting in his second season, the reverse of what Wake’s staff envisioned for him. Taking that in stride meant playing in varying spots for four games in 2019, a year in which Clawson said Hartman “grew up, I thought, in so many ways.”

The 2020 season will always be remembered as the COVID season in which it mattered more that games were played rather than won. But the game that ended it saw Hartman intercepted four times in the second half of the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

The result that followed saw Hartman score 50 total touchdowns in Wake’s 11-win season last year, with the quarterback lifting the Deacons in one of the best seasons in program history.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a player like Sam who — the way he kind of rewired himself and how he learned from adversity,” Clawson said. “After the ’20 season, he embraced all of the leadership aspects of being a quarterback.

“He didn’t just give it, you know, cliches and he really, truly became the leader and the heart and soul of our football team.”

And yet, there’s an enigmatic feel to Hartman, the heartbeat of Wake’s football team who had a Netflix show feature him as a high school senior, but doesn’t like speaking with the media. The quarterback who came to ACC Kickoff wearing a “Peaky Blinders” hat, but wasn’t made available for a post-game press conference in any of the last three losses.

Fair or not, Hartman is at the center of examination as to why Wake Forest has lost three straight games.

The fifth-year quarterback turned the ball over six times in the third quarter at Louisville; he threw three interceptions the following week at N.C. State; and he was intercepted in the final minutes against UNC, leading to the Tar Heels’ game-winning field goal.

He’s aware of what needs to improve if Wake Forest is going to break this slide and beat Syracuse on Saturday night.

“It’s not like anything that I’m new to,” Hartman said. “For me it’s turnovers, but it’s detail across the ball. We know it and everyone on our staff knows it, we’ve got to play execution football and when you don’t and you play good teams, you’re not going to win.”

Making things abundantly clear: This isn’t all on Hartman. Clawson ruled after the Louisville collapse that Hartman was the main culprit on 1½ of the six turnovers. Hartman doesn’t play both ways, so he didn’t have much to do with the Deacons giving up 30 points to a freshman QB in his first start (N.C. State’s MJ Morris, who lost to Boston College last weekend).

And as poor as a couple of the plays at the end of the game against UNC were, the Deacons aren’t competitive without Hartman also throwing for 320 yards and four touchdowns.

It’s the paradox of what football has become: The quarterback is the most important player in the game, without exception, but he’s never the sole reason a team wins or — in Wake’s case for the last three weeks — loses.

“Sometimes in life, like everyone knows on this Zoom, the ball just doesn’t bounce your way,” Hartman said. “This year, for the past couple of weeks, it hasn’t. And we certainly haven’t helped ourselves to be in the right position, as well.

“But when it comes down to it, it’s a one-week mentality, as hard as it is. And trust me, it gets harder and harder as you slip more and more into the loss column.”

There’s some kismet energy in Hartman playing his final home game against Syracuse, given it’s the Orange’s first trip to Truist Field since 2018. That’s the game in which Hartman suffered a broken bone in his foot, ending his freshman season.

Syracuse games since then have seen highs and lows. There was the overtime loss in 2019 when Hartman played great, but threw a pick-6 to end it; and then there was last year’s overtime win, with A.T. Perry hauling in Hartman’s dime of a touchdown pass to end it.

“Maybe time is a flat circle and then we’ll probably play Tulane in a bowl game, right?” Hartman said, harkening back to his debut on that humid night in New Orleans. “Yeah, I mean, (I think about that connection) a little bit.

“I’m sure if we were winning, I’d probably have more time to sit and relish, or look back and whatever.”

So mark it down: Tulane in the bowl game.

And maybe a little more relishing if the Deacons win this weekend.

Maybe.