The Winner's Game
Chapter 1
Dell
FOUR HUNDRED seventy days ago, right before my eyes, my oldest daughter died. Clinically, anyway. When they pulled her body from the pool, it was limp, like one of the rag dolls she kept on her bed when she was still a little girl. According to the giant timer on the swim-center wall, it took rescuers eighty-nine seconds of CPR to bring her back to life.
Those were the longest eighty-nine seconds in the history of the universe; with each tick of the clock I felt like I’d aged another year. The four-hundred seventy days since, by comparison, have been fractions of an eyeblink. I honestly don’t even know why I started keeping track of the lapsed time. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to forget the number of extra days we’ve been graced by her presence.
Or maybe because I’ve been holding my breath since then, nervously counting the days until the next unforeseen hammer falls.
I remember wanting to cover my son’s eyes when the medics began pounding on Ann’s chest, but my greater impulse was to rush to her side. I was helpless, though. Impotent. Unable to do anything but watch and cry as they worked on her. Then she sputtered, coughed, and took a ragged breath.
Within minutes I was riding with her in an ambulance, holding her hand and praying to God that whatever was wrong with her wouldn’t be serious.
When we finally got word from the doctors, my prayer went unanswered. Not only was it serious, it couldn’t have been much worse.
“Congenital cardiomyopathy,” a cardiologist explained. “It’s a defect she’s had her whole life. It’s likely that the strain of swimming caused her to have a brief seizure, and then she went into cardiac arrest. She’s lucky to be alive.”
“What are her chances for a full recovery?” I asked.
“Fair.”
Fair? I hate that word, because nothing ever is. Fair, I mean.
As my granddad used to say, “Life is many wondrous things…but fair isn’t one of them.” The fact that my fifteen-year-old was in the hospital at all was just the latest evidence supporting this truth. Life is too unpredictable to be fair. It takes from some while giving to others, without rhyme or reason or warning. So don’t tell me that my daughter’s chances are “fair,” because then I’ll know for sure they’re not.
As if to prove my granddad right, Ann has spent the last four hundred seventy days in and out of the hospital for ongoing procedures, specialized therapies, diagnostic exams, and countless routine checkups. Yet all of the medicines, tissue ablations, and open-heart surgeries have proven fruitless, which is, in this father’s opinion, far beyond unfair.
Life is many wondrous things…but fair isn’t one of them. My granddad may have said it, but Ann knows the truth of it better than anyone.
It is nine thirty at night and I’m sitting in the car in the driveway, trying to pull my thoughts together. I know Emily is probably worried by now, but I can’t help that. On a normal weekday I would’ve been home three hours ago, but Emily called before I left work and said I should join her at the hospital for some “new news.” New news tends to be bad news, and this was no exception.
Emily and I left the hospital at the same time, almost ninety minutes ago, saying we’d have a chat with Bree and Cade as soon as we got home.
She went straight home.
I took a detour.
I didn’t mean to, but as I turned onto Sunset Street and saw the steamy glass windows of the Sherwood YMCA, I had to go peek. I haven’t been to a swim center in four hundred seventy days, but this seemed as good a time as any to return. I didn’t go inside, though. Looking through the glass was more than enough. The swim team was there, tearing back and forth through their lanes like torpedoes. Ann should have been there too, leading them, but instead she’s back at the hospital coping with the worst news imaginable.
My phone buzzed in my pocket while I was standing there. It was Emily, probably wondering what was taking me so long. I didn’t answer.
I watched the swimmers until their practice ended, then I slowly paced back to the car. As I drove aimlessly around town for another thirty minutes, my thoughts were sunk with the weight of it all. Ann’s sickness, I mean. It’s not her fault, of course, but the effects of her health have been staggering. Financially, the burden has been huge, but I don’t even care about that—there’s no amount of debt I wouldn’t go into to keep my child alive. The heavier strain has been on Emily and me, which is why I was reluctant to head straight home.
It’s like there’s this giant chasm between us that neither is willing to traverse. With each new day the gulf grows wider. We talk about bridging the gap, we pretend to do things that should close the distance, and yet each time we’re given more bad news about Ann, we seem to end up farther apart.